Tormenta

There are some men who step into your thoughts like a storm and tear apart every notion of rationality. They own you like cats that enslave the human through something very similar to love. And there are some men who pass through your life like little –and fleeting- miracles. The main difference between those two kinds is that the first never seems to get old. Time passes and they keep impersonating symphonies just with the sound of their laugh. Meainwhile, the second kind is just a one-second-brilliant-idea that flies away your mind by the time you get paper and pencil to write it down.

He was both. People called him Tormenta and I didn’t know why.

The first time I saw him I was just looking for something that forced me to feel alive again: a great love, a great fight, anything violent would help. Maybe you’re wondering why I needed something so life-changing in that point of my short existence and the answer is pretty simple: I was bored of the emptiness that seemed to take over every small-dark-corner of my life. Normal, simple love wasn’t enough anymore. Jogging was too white and traveling wasn’t really an option. A bored person on a budget, that’s funny if you think it through.

Sure, I had heard about him but no one ever warned me about his way to transform his existence into an art piece. His wrists seemed the rounded corners of heaven and his jaw lines looked like the curves in God’s smile. Even if there is no God to take care of us or heaven to keep us comfortable with the whole idea of death, he was made from a small, perfect piece of it, no matter what kind of God or heaven you can think of.

He was not a really big deal. But I met him and the world just shook up. The first time I saw his eyes all I could think of was how he could knock me out in the meaning you choose to give to that expression.

I saw him through a couple of white lines that could be strings or bed sheets, I’m not sure anymore. He looked at me like a jaguar but there was something that told me he would be a worthy opponent. And I tried to smile but I couldn’t because he was so… so… I can’t even think of an adjective that fits him. He was a complete universe by himself. He had the shine of the full moon and the darkness of a hopeless child.

We were face to face, almost close enough to see the molecules in each other’s breath. And then a noise came up out of nowhere. Maybe it was the sound of time’s death passing through the clock or a bell ringing, I’m not sure anymore. At that moment I thought it was a signal to start a play in which I had to be born again.

So he thought about coming closer to me. I say thought because I could notice a subtle move start in his ankle and stop suddenly in the middle of his right foot. We were measuring the distance between what was right and what was wrong in each other’s mind. None of us dared to get closer, everything was oddly confusing.

I can’t really tell why but I urgently wanted to get his scent in the back of my hand. It was like a spell in which I had pronounced the magic words. I was both the sorcerer and the spellbound. He seemed to be a merely viewer through the distance. So I came closer and I moved my left hand violently. It was a cry for getting a piece of his little universe or maybe a raging response to the glare in his eyes. I’m not sure anymore. But he backed up and my hand continued his movement in a straight, hopeless line, just like a ballerina whose couple got distracted while dancing.

But he was not giving up. He tried to catch my heart –or that’s what I choose to think- by throwing his fist to my chest, thankfully I’m fast so he just graze me in the lower rib. My heart was still intact, or so I thought.

Sure, just by looking at him you knew he was tough but not like the hero in action movies but like an innocent person who faces prison with the certainty of the freedom bursting in his heart, but nobody told me he knew the right way to move his feet to corner me or that he knew exactly how to imprison me with his arms leaving me defenseless. Damn, I was losing in a game so similar to love!

After a few time trying to equal his moves I understood that I had lost. I was nothing but the remains of a human who had chosen the wrong battle to fight. Nothing could save me but the clause of finiteness. And then the noise came up again. So alike to the announcement of another minute’s funeral or to the end of wrestling, I’m not sure anymore.

People called him Tormenta because he was the greatest wrestler in town but, to me, he had been the one who taught me how is like to be defeated by the kind of men that step into your thoughts like a storm, and that I’m sure of.