“Tell me why are you doing this? Have you forgotten that we grew up together? Remember those pictures of our pregnant mothers? I always thought we were friends even then, how can you not realize anything?”
The words are sharp, angry, poisonous arrows that can rip even the hardest heart.
But not mine. Rather. I’m tempted to take him by the neck and attach him to the wall. I cannot stand the tranquility that he flaunts. Between the two of us it was always him the one having the most glowing character of brawler.
Many quarrels happened for banalities and some stupid misunderstandings. Screaming the worst things at each other’s face, being angry with each other like children;
then we would meet after a few days at the usual shed near the sea, smoking joints, drinking a beer and giving a good kick to, both the ball and our grudges. Yet something makes me think that all this will not be enough for him to go over it.
My best friend, my “little brother” as I used to call him, is turning his back at me and it seems that he no longer wishes to turn around to look back.
This scares me … “Can’t you realize that you’re destroying your brain with drugs?” …
“How dare you, who are you to judge me?” I can’t stand him anymore. I don’t want to hear him speak, ever again.
An impulsive gesture, a moment of madness, a sudden black out in the filter of thoughts and without even realizing, my malignant fantasy becomes reality.
I take him by the collar of the coat and crash him against the wall. I cannot believe what I am. No, not me, I have never been violent. I hate the thought of being able to hurt someone.
The violence I suffered as a child led me to reject it sharply, without compromise.
Yet, it is me, who is threatening him, what’s even worse is that he’s my best friend. His face suddenly changes, so that it seems about to tear.
His expression turns into a grimace, gritting his teeth terrified. Davide knows fear. After all the stupid things we did together. After the joints came ecstasy, then coke.
Being in dangerous situations ranging from petty thefts, drug dealing and dangerously cruising with mopeds. An escalation of increasingly worsening challenges, to tell the world that not even “fear” will stop us.
But the years passed changing the state of mind that starts to understand things more maturely. Shame that this happened only for Davide. I continued to not want to understand. But I could not accept to continue my journey to hell alone.
Then moments of endless and freezing silence, occurred. Davide tries to say something but words choke in his throat.
Then, my hands slowly loosen the grip on the collar, while the embarrassment, squeezes and tangles me. I murmured some confused words, placing my hands filled with shame, back in my pockets. Davide is pale and intimidated.
I try to compose myself, to take on a semblance of dignity, but the more I try the more I feel dirty. My movements become clumsy and awkward. While gambling a remedial hug, Davide dodges me full of disgust.
We stand there staring dazed for a few seconds. Then our eyes lower, Davide’s skin color returns normal. “Do not apologize, just do one thing for me, when you go home look into the mirror, but not to feel cool as you usually do.
Do it so that you can see how foul you’ve become and will increasingly become.
In fact, do it to see the presumptuous kid you still are … Bye”
Look at yourself in the mirror
