He never told himself that he loved her. He buried it with all his other thoughts, deep inside where no amount of drunkenness would ever bring it out. He remembers one time, when he was too drunk to remember his own name, blurting out these forgotten feelings somehow trying to convince himself not to speak. That night was long gone. She would’ve forgotten and he hoped she would. The following day, he barely remembered what happened the night before. All he could remember were tiny frames of time, walking and swaying, talking and dancing. Her smile, he could clearly remember, and her every word that somehow got stuck in his fragile mind.
Two days it took for her to tell him what happened that night. The night that he didn’t remember. He was drunk. Shots after shots and beer in-between. Until finally he started drinking from the rough bottle of Old Monk. He was never a rum guy, but that night was different, he was happy, extremely happy, and if he could stand, he drank.
When the spirit finally took over his tired body. He fell, he fell onto the table and then landed on the floor. He tried to pick himself up, but he wasn’t at his best and his friends helped him up and put him to bed. None of this he remembers. Pieces that he put together after hearing bits from everyone who was there with him that day. Someone told him he puked while sleeping, and all of them had to change his clothes and put him in bed again. This, was true, he was in someone else’s trousers and shirt. Some friends told him that it was great fun to watch him go all out. Go crazy and be full of life. Some told him he danced like a duck. But all he wanted to hear was what she had to say. And her words struck him like thunder on a sunny day.
“What emotion do you have towards me.” She asked him, on the way to class. He looked at her, he couldn’t find her eyes, they kept looking forward into a fixed space in that empty corridor.
“what emotion? why are you asking this now?” he asked her, surprised and a sudden thought of losing her made his steps a little heavier. He sat down on the dusty staircase right in front of their class, and listened to her, staring at the wall ahead of him, trying to place her words in his memory of that night.
“You were too drunk. You kept telling me you had something to tell me but couldn’t say it. You kept repeating it. “she said, smiling.
He tried to smile too, but couldn’t. “oh, shit. I messed it up again” he knew that he might’ve said it. But he couldn’t believe it. He never could. This was something that he had buried long back, something that he would cherish and burn alone. But now it was there in the open, staring and taunting him. He knew he had to end it or else it would come and haunt him and the pain would suck him into a downward spiral that he avoided.
“It was just the drunk me talking. Don’t take it seriously. “he said, somehow trying to convince that all of that was nothing more than a drunk guy who lost his head. And when he was sure that she was convinced it was just that, he never brought up the topic. He never talked about it. Never thought about it. It went back to that same old cupboard where he had buried many of his desires and this crazy unrequited love, that melts like ice and bursts like fireworks. It somehow covered itself and everything went back to normality.
Some days, strange flashes of memory hit him. Something that he completely believes to be an illusion. He somehow has a memory of her telling him something the day that he was drunk, something that is too good to be real and something that he believes isn’t real. And it loops, every now and then this memory goes knocking into that old cupboard and keeps knocking until he finds a way to shut it out. Now he’s on his way, with nothing to win and nothing to lose, on his way to carve out and erase memories.
Armed Hermit 