Section II: Who Said to Whom

There are times when you just want to go back to simpler days; when the biggest challenge was evading your chemistry teacher’s eye in case she asked a question.
There are times when you walk around Cesspool with squelching dirt oozing in and out of your toe nails and wind tangling your ready-for-office hair and you leave your empty house only to go back in the evening. On such days you might be reading a biography and you think – what would mine read?
And thump. That was a metaphorical pole.
Most biographies tell one entire episode of a person’s life. It begins, it goes somewhere and it ends. They have this thing called an ending.
Biographers are smart creatures – they pick aspects of a life that have a story curve, an arc that goes somewhere.
I am the master of beginnings. The characters populating my tale are winsome, arrogant, loving, bitter, straight, hard, restless, crushing, baffling, intimidating, dull, enigmatic, schizophrenic, suffering, cheerful, alone, lonely, lost, hopeful, cynical, pretending to be cynical, fake, dreaming, irish, apart, focused, content, forgiving, resentful, scared, bored, sad, free, ahead of their time, behind, hurt, strong, busy, living. My story is not mine without them but it goes nowhere even with them. They have their own arc to build. I have the nails and hammer but don't seem to have the wood. I have the dialogues but not the screenplay.
So I hug the pole and think of the lines I’ll never forget. Some of those lines were stories that I thought would end and some are stories that can never end.
And there’s just a little twinge while thinking of both.

You know I love you right? I love you. I always have and I always will.
- boy to girl

What will I do without you?
- brother to sister

is there a manual that comes with you?
- guy to girl

You’re a mountain you know. Only it’s lost in mist.
- friend to friend

Will you marry me?
- man to girl.

Maasi! chiya.
- niece to aunt