Ch1: (For) Who Cares
Maybe it’s best to start at the beginning. Who am I?
Cesar. Once again, that’s my name.
What am I looking for?
That’s an excellent question.
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Honestly, I don’t even know how to answer that anymore…
At this point, just passing the time and watching life go by.
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It’s not that I didn’t have dreams… it’s more like… I completely gave up on them.
When I was a little kid, I liked racing and cars. I wanted to be a race car driver.
Later I realized I was born into a family without resources.
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After that it seemed like I was especially intelligent… which didn’t lead to anything in the end… More than intelligence, what I was really good at was memorizing things I liked, not actually being smart.
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Then there were my tastes, back in those days… when everything was new… I used to notice how girls’ clothes were more elaborate, prettier, softer than boys’ clothes.
Their TV shows talked about calmer things than the ones for boys. It’s not that I didn’t like action — quite the opposite — but my life was already full of that.
But in girls’ shows, watching them in their pretty dresses, in a quiet place, talking about normal things or how school was going, felt liberating, relaxing… alien.
When I started asking why, when I wanted to change my life into something more beautiful, when I wanted to wear those embroidered outfits, when I wanted a gentle world…
I realized that wasn’t a world I could ever reach. Because of how I was born, I was denied even the right to think such a world existed. To know of a paradise I could never take part in — even mentioning it would be heresy to my parents.
With their hands and their belts, they made sure it was burned into me that my insolence, my “mistake” of liking something that didn’t belong to my body, would be paid for dearly.
Over time, that dream… never went out. The desire stayed… but there’s no will left to ever try… Just looking and longing was what they told me to do.
Now I live in a world where I hate my own face and body enough to avoid mirrors.
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I really wish I could be a woman, be pretty, be soft… but it’s hard when I disgust myself…
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Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. I’m already old. The time to do anything about it passed long ago.
Besides, those things were far too expensive for me to afford. Transition-related things are absurdly expensive if you’re not from the first world or the child of rich people…
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But that wasn’t the only lesson that stuck from that time. Unfortunately, another very important one was carved in too.
I liked being ignored. Going unnoticed…
If nobody looked at me… nobody would hit me…
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Later I realized those were the consequences of growing up afraid of my parents’ anger…
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And that same urge to be ignored, even when I don’t want to but don’t know what else to do, is the curse that will follow me until the end of my days.
What do you want to do for work?
I don’t know… something that isn’t stressful…
Something where I could just do my tasks in peace without feeling like I’m being monitored all the time, with someone looking for a mistake to fire me.
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Sometimes I imagine working at a family restaurant.
But not a successful place — just one that barely manages to stay open, but without urgent needs.
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A place where I could be alone again… see one or two customers and serve them without hurry. Like a jazz and fantasy café… I don’t think a place like that exists in the world.
Don’t you have any friends?
Many times I feel like just my presence is enough to bring down the mood around me.
Like there’s a group of friends having a good time, but once you show up they start talking less and less. Not about you specifically, you didn’t do anything, but the discomfort is there. Then the group splits and starts meeting somewhere else, farther away, where they go back to talking normally.
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And then my curse starts to feel like a blessing, because I’m able to ignore all the hints they give.
If someone indirectly told me I was making everything worse, I was too busy drowning in my own misery to notice other people’s needs.
Do you believe in love?
Yes…
But I completely stopped waiting for it.
I accepted a long time ago that I’d be alone for not being like everyone else.
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It’s not like I really wanted it either.
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I was always more interested in fantasy and impossible possibilities.
An alien girl whose spaceship crashed irreparably at my house, learning to live a quiet life on Earth? Doesn’t that sound better than meeting a half-drunk girl at a bar? Why does the name Urlundur sound cooler than Sharon?
But none of that is real, right?
So why wait for it?
The only thing is that I can’t leave it behind.
I only had one thing left — fantasy, the last place to escape.
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I think I became a good inventor of stories. I loved imagining new worlds, new people, new friends, new loves.
For a moment at least, Tammo and Rory are my love, as close to me as i want to be with them.
Because at least they wouldn’t have the possibility of leaving, or ignoring me, or hating me for being lonely and withdrawn.
But even now I wonder if those characters I created as girlfriends would be capable of loving me, or at least not rejecting me in disgust for being the one who created them.
Sometimes I dream that one of them becomes real in front of me, but then she looks at me and is so disappointed in what I am that she can’t even look me in the eyes.
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That’s one of my greatest horrors…
Anyway, that story wouldn’t go anywhere either.
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I spent years of my life creating, adjusting, engineering, preparing, writing, revising, publishing.
My only work in life, maybe the only thing anyone might ever remember me for, if at all.
My own novel.
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It was just another failure.
I’m not going to look for someone to blame — none of that helps anymore. I just did what I could, the best I could, but it didn’t work. That’s all.
I reviewed the story from top to bottom. I looked for advertising, looked for help, looked for reviews.
But my curse of invisibility was stronger. Everything was ignored. Even when I paid out of my own pocket for someone else to promote it.
I looked a dozen people in the face and said: here is my novel…
Here I am opening up and showing myself for real, showing my lowest weakness, my biggest confession.
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To this day I’m still waiting — not even for an answer anymore, just for any voice at all…
What’s the point of all that?
I don’t know. I just wanted to tell it. I don’t care who hears it anymore…
It’s not like it’s going to make anything better…
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All I hear now is a voice inside me constantly saying…
It doesn’t matter. Nobody will care. Everyone will ignore it.
Everyone has worse problems. Everyone suffers more.
Who would have time for me when they don’t even have time for themselves?
I’m just tired. Of waiting, of fighting, of losing… and at this point even of being invisible and seen at the same time.
It’s like every moment of life burns me for being wasted, every step taken being the wrong one.
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The only times I feel like I rest are in dreams — now rare — I barely have time to rest…
But even those times hurt…
When you wake up in the morning, you have to get up to go to work.
You don’t remember the dream, only that you were happy. But now you cry for having lost it. You don’t know what it was, but your mind knows something that made you happy is missing now, while you eat breakfast alone.
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So with that pathetic way of introducing myself… I come to present another unfortunate attempt to be somewhere else, where maybe I can make more peace and happiness than I will ever find. One more fantasy… weightless… just looking for some happiness to keep from going out… just looking for something to hold on to while passing the time.
Just don’t expect this story to be good or well thought out. I’m just going to write the scenes I want — a place to play with the dolls of the characters I create.
