How Winning is Done

*Although the incidents of this story are fictional, the premise is from real life.*

It was a humid day, and she wiped the sweat on his forehead with a white and blue napkin. The trains stood tired and stared at each other unable to make basic conversation. She got into one of them and he gave her a goodbye kiss. As the train pulled out of the station, he put the white and blue napkin inside his pocket, and watched her go, unmoved. He dialed a number on his phone and made a quick call.

When he walked into his house it was not empty. “She’s so clingy,” he said to the tall girl who was lying on the bed. She was flipping through an avant garde magazine and listening to psychedelic rock that flowed through his state-of-the-art speakers. She smiled at him. Her white, gorgeous skin illuminated the room, and he always craved it no matter what time of the day. He removed his expensive watch and lay it on the table carelessly, before slipping in beside her. While he undressed her, he kissed her mouth; his passions numerous, unbounded, and all of them legitimate. Their sounds got caught in the crevices of the room, behind the curtains, and even under the bed. Their moaning, ecstatic voices reflected off his mind. His conscience was always clear, no matter what he trespassed. The world was always his playground, he knew how to go about. He always had. When she was tired and exalted by his love-making, she looked into his eyes. He kissed her forehead and uttered those three words. She did not see the unfulfilled desires in his eyes, getting lost in the words he’d uttered, like how most young girls get lost in words said with no sincerity because they masquerade as such.

As their sounds descended on the floor and evaporated like dew, she was convinced of his love for her. She bound herself by the unbreakable promises of their shared secrets and mutual passions that seemed truer than life itself. Life often had death. They had eternity. He always said that they were eternal and that life had brought them back together because life was about circles. Once he drew a circle on the inside of her thigh and showed her how it had infinite points. She was convinced that they were infinite, and entering new realms of life with each other to go through doors that others would never understand. That’s what he had always said, and that’s what she had always loved. He took her higher to planes that she’d never experienced and ones that she readily got lost in. They had an illusion of togetherness, interests that arose prurience and idolatry, and common wounds. She thought of all this and dressed herself unwilling to wash his scent off her white, gorgeous body. They deserved this happiness. It was their time.

The sun was now starting to set and its rays fell oblong on him as he slept. She had gone for the day and as he opened his eyes the world was painted in orange. It was at this time when he looked down upon the Earth with a panoramic view from the pedestal of his rightful place. They would be avenged for forcing him to act like one of the men: to experience fear; be accountable and responsible; fight death on a daily basis; apologise; make compromises; and even seek refuge. He wasn’t made for all this. Gods didn’t make amends, spend time in purgatory, and be just. He was a God and Gods did as they pleased. Everyone else had to comply.

He sat on his table recycling the poems he’d written for the girl in another city and to be used for the girl with gorgeous, white skin. It was ridiculous how they fell for the words as if they were for them. His words were his alone. He wrote them, twisted them, coated them in honey and rolled them on his tongue so that they would want him inside their mouths. And ever so often, he always succeeded. His words were his alone to use and re-use, just like his art, his truths, his charity, his money, and his lies. Always his lies. As he sat on the table, he read the reply he was writing to the letter left behind by the girl in another city. He re-wrote his words in a separate sheet to quote them to the girl with white, gorgeous skin when they made love the next night. The darkness comforted him like it always did. He then tore the hand-made pages and his mind mocked at how badly she had used them. He hadn’t been touched at all.

On one of those nights, around a dinner table, he lamented how much the girl in another city took away from him. How she had tried to take his self-esteem, his freedom, and even his friends. Taking his friends away was a crime he’d never forgive. Just like loving him was a crime he never pardoned. She deserved his indifference, his betrayal, and his happiness without her. He justified over rounds and rounds of fake money laid down on the table that she was just being called out to the jury for what she’d committed. He walked out of such fine-dining restaurants with more friends than before for being the man who punished the people who didn’t love him well and yet have more followers who loved him just as well. Such men were akin to Gods. His act was rarely curtain called. It was a fine one. The Almighty behaved like this too. No one could tell the difference.

And so it went.

For years it had been this way. No one had noticed. One girl after another. More friends than ever. More money. More success. A huge library of people who were convicted and even more added to the inner fold. One night, he watched the girl with the white, gorgeous skin walk inside the airport. It was an unnaturally humid night. He took out the white and blue napkin, wiped the sweat on his forehead, and made a quick phone call.