Damn it, why did he look?
Maybe somebody should have given the godforsaken cat a warning. It's been a long time since anyone got this close to Corey. He has never been able to handle close relationships, either way, because he has been raised a man, and they are weaned off feelings at about the same age that they are weaned off diapers.
Briefly after they learn that, for hygienic reasons, they should do their business in the toilet and flush it down, they are taught to treat their feelings just like they have learned to handle their smelly piles of poo. Like something inappropriate, disgusting, unhygienic, and stigmatized in the adult world. Like something that they should break themselves off. Because if they squeeze a pile of feelings into the diaper that is a relationship to another person, so they are taught, this mishap will eventually only make them feel uncomfortable. It will start giving off a stench, and in public people will turn up their noses at them.
That is what they internalize, and as soon as they notice the smallest skid mark of feelings in one of their relationships thereafter, they quickly throw it away, wipe their bottoms clean, and wrap them up in a new diaper, which initially fits particularly well and feels exceptionally fresh.
Depending on how digestible the time spent with another person is, a smaller or larger pile of feelings will end up in their new relationship again, and before it, too, develops a disgusting stench, they throw this one away, as well.
In the long run, this manner creates a huge amount of waste. Which is why after a while they decide to keep their bottoms bare, rather than wrapping them up in relationships. If a rumbling in their stomach announces a pile of feelings, either way, they hurry to a quiet place and push it out as fast as they can, and with as much sweat on our brow as pain around the anus ring.
They don't even give the end product in the toilet a glance goodbye, before they flush to make it disappear. Flushing once isn't enough. They flush over and over again, so they can be sure that no trace of it remains which could reveal to someone else that a pile of feelings has ever cooked inside of them.
They themselves, however, will be reminded of it for a while. By their growing hemorrhoids, and a sore anus that takes some time to heal. In some cases a particularly hard squeezed out pile of feelings leaves a bigger wound, and if it contains exceptionally aggressive bacteria, too, then their own emotions poison their blood, travel to their heart, and cause an infection, which is often fatal.
This is how men like Corey would sometimes give their lives for a feeling that they rather flushed down the toilet and didn't even allow themselves to be feeling.
With a sigh, he is looking at the cat. Maybe he should have resisted what he has been taught, but even if man eventually recognizes what's happening and wants to change it, resisting it is just as difficult on the mind as is wearing diapers as an adult.
Even though Corey was never able to handle close relationships, he used to long for them. Now a black cat purrs right next to him. Its head pushes the can of beer away that his hand took up again, so it can jump up on his lap and rub against his chest, but he no longer has any desire to be as close as this to anyone.
It's been too long, and close relationships aren't the same thing as riding a bike or swimming. Unlike the latter, you forget how to entertain them, the longer you don't experience them, and at some point you're too old to even understand them.
Maybe the black cat that has pushed its way onto his lap can sense it and is trying to challenge him, with its constant purring, stamping, and rubbing.
What a bastard!
That's enough now!
Corey will move, so it will realize that it is no longer welcome. Apparently it is a female. When she realizes that he is pulling away, she starts clinging to him even more. She is clawing at his pants which are ridden with holes as it is. At least it isn't like her claws are destroying much, but they sure are stinging. Like a tattoo machine, he thinks, and should probably scold her for it, but honestly? It feels good to him.
Feeling anything is rare out here. The trash in the hollow doesn't feel, and neither do the crackheads, or the cell phone-addicted teenagers who are drinking here on the weekends, and homeless people like him cannot really feel anymore, because the past winter gave them frostbite as a Christmas gift, before it took off again.
A bit like Corey´s father, who wasn't really one at all and only came by once a year, completely drunk, with the first snow. After his binges, he would usually not have enough money for presents. So he would only give Corey a void in the soul, and the certainty that he would never celebrate Christmas again. Thinking about it, even the frostbite that the last winter bestowed on him is more pleasant compared to that.
Only a few shaded spots still wear a dusting of snow, but the numbness in Corey´s fingers and toes has remained. Even though they are touched by the first rays of sunlight, he can no longer feel their warmth. Therefore, he should perhaps welcome the cat's stinging claws and stroke her, so she keeps on clawing.
Does she even like me, he wonders.
More often than not, the answer to this question would be no, when he would wonder about it after first dates in his early adulthood. With the cat it is probably a No, as well.
The tiger she is is only doing what cats are meant to be doing. It is following an innate instinct, he thinks to himself. It is stomping for milk when it feels safe. Well, great news, it feels safe with him, which means that she is. at least not afraid. Somehow, that's a plus, and more than he could say after most of his first dates back in the days.
Most people find him intimidating. Perhaps because he lets the sun bite him, with his eyes wide open, and despite the pain he cannot look away.
I should have bought a cat when I could still care for one, he catches himself dreaming. He should have, back when he still had options. An apartment and a job that he misunderstood as a calling,
Why did he pass on everything that could have made him happy? What fool considers the search for the truth more important than that for their own happiness?
He must be a madman to believe that without truth happiness is worthless. It may be true that joy is reserved for the stupid, because they don't think about anything, and certainly not about things like this.
Stupid Corey is not. That's why he failed to prioritize his happiness. Thus, there was no cat for him. No companion like the black one that is vibrating on his lap right now. Ironic, isn't it?
Perhaps his obsession with the truth was a mistake. Now everyone can see where it has led him. Never to pleasant places, but here, where the sense- and useless accumulates, because the truth itself has no meaning or purpose these days. In a world where no one wants it, it ends up under the train bridge with people like him. Amidst the outdated, discarded, and broken things that no one needs or misses.
Who even knows what to do with anything that is true in a time that is caught between two stools? In a time amidst the emptiness, a time just like this that confuses people's senses with nonsense, so that no one is surprised anymore, when they declare the truth a madman's thought. Or, like in Corey´s case, a terroristíc act.
The black cat continues to purr, like she is unfazed by it, even though these days everything is as twisted as a hockey player's arm after a foul.
She keeps on purring, even though modern people rather change their gender than anything that truly matters.
She purrs and purrs, while the masses wholeheartedly support a war in order to restore the peace and don't even hear how paradoxical they sound when they are saying it.
She doesn't stop purring, while hundreds of billions are invested in warring parties, instead of used to declare war on the housing crisis or poverty.
She continues to purr, as freedom of speech mutates into a facade that is camouflaging the recently built prison for the opinionated, where anyone who dares to think ends up these days.
Damn you, René Descartes, Corey thinks. You have been proven wrong! "I think, therefore I am" is not valid anymore. People who think for themselves are no longer, nowadays they are declared insane.
The black cat on Corey´s lap keeps on purring, either way. She purrs and purrs, even though modern people would rather have no opinion than a point of view that they have to stand behind.
She is purring and vibrating, even though no one tolerates the truth anymore, but what they want to tolerate, instead, are women who are men, men who are women, and those who want to be both.
For a long time no one has wanted to be who they really are anymore, and being real is what people nowadays cannot endure at all: because on most days it is painful. Perhaps most can no longer even be genuine, since you forget how to entertain a close relationship with yourself just like you forget how to be close to someone else.
Apart from that, being who and how you are means committing to a thing, and commitment has long gone out of fashion, either way. No one has to commit anymore, not to a gender, not to a partner, not to an opinion, not to a promise, and least of all to a personality.
For the past years it has not only been like the need to commit has been missing, but more like you aren't allowed to commit. You stand out and are despised for committing yourself to yourself or anything else, for that matter..
That´s what happened to Corey. He stood out and is now despised for his commitment to himself and to the one thing that ever truly mattered to him, the truth itself.