Erroneous Supposals

“Mayor Johnson gets trapped in a bathroom on Valentine’s Day”

I laugh to myself at the sight of the title. I’m this Mayor they’re talking about and headlines like this one release a monster inside of me, the one who wills every day to ostracize the Press and other media from the world. They spread rumors, more than they state the facts: the front page is no longer the war in Iraq, or the worldwide economical crisis that can make people informed about what gravitates around them: it’s the personal life of a Mayor, a mere citizen that happens to be famous in town.

That’s the worst part of it, especially the Internet, such a common thing nowadays, which facilitates any global communication and makes shopping centers more ‘walkable’ and breathable because of someone’s invention called shopping online and domiciliary delivers! It allows people to know everything about everyone, from large common congresses they go to the exact hours they peed the day before. More than unbelievable, it’s highly stupid and unnecessary – why do I care about how many times does some guy in California jerk off? Why do I care about where some female in New York changes her son’s diapers? Why should I care?! Apparently it’s important… or maybe it just makes money.

The Internet is getting useless and the press is getting maniac, but perhaps it is my fault because I let my famous self be photographed instead of cloning one hundred versions of myself and make them be at the most embarrassing places so that we are seen at the same time and the rumors get antithetic, inconclusive and finally stopped.

I felt tempted to read that article with such suggestive title; sometimes the things they write make me piss myself laughing. The picture, in this case, showed me and Acidic, our superhero in town, getting out of a public restroom. If I didn’t know what caused the picture, I could agree with the journalist and say that we somewhat looked funny, our bodies were tense because of ‘something’ and our faces low to hide from the cameras. I read its subtitle and it said that someone was sure that the compromising vestige of toilet paper I had next to my left ear was the result of a nasty game I apparently played with the most hateful superhero I know – what a silly guy, everyone knows how much I hate that girl, though cliché movie always teach you that two people who hate each other, probably love each other and just try to hide it… I wasn’t so sure of that.

There’s no love in me or in that picture, but the fact is that the image was taken on Valentine’s Day and it made the press writers go crazy. They even dare to draw theories about the Valentine’s celebration that supposedly happened in that bathroom. I laugh to myself again; people are so stupid sometimes.

First of all, Valentine’s Day is just the result of consumerism: the shops can seize it for their own profit, selling little red shit, lame and silly; I like red, don’t misunderstand that fact, but so many details and so many shop windows full of teddy bears, pillows, cards, chocolate boxes, cups, plates, pens and even breakfast cereals boxes make me sick of looking at that red color. Plus, there are the cheesiest quotes everywhere: “I love you”, “I want you forever”, “I’ll love you always”, “If you live a thousand years, I want to live a thousand years minus a day”, “Wherever you go, I’ll be there”, “I’ll never forget you”… These just turn this day into a product we should avoid every year.

People, get over it. Love is like Bigfoot, it’s a myth and when you’re in love hormones only suffer changes, the so called mutation. Or maybe it’s not like this, but the opposite: you misunderstand your hormones and it unleashes some wicked chemical reaction that, sooner or later, will leave you all depressed and crying in someone’s embrace, or against the blade of some suicidal knife. Yes, because no chemical reaction lasts forever. Actually, the notion of forever is an illusion that people like to invocate to feel more comfortable with the permanently unstable state of life. It’s like God: people need to know that there is someone watching over them, or they’ll never feel safe living on the cruel world that surrounds us nowadays.

The atoms exist in constant mutation (here it is, the keyword) and when they ‘die’, there’s no magic spell to re-invent them. Believe me, there’s nothing better, or tastier, than ignoring those chemicals… Of course, everyone needs to be loved, but let’s not overreact and get all cheesy: human nature is to be virtuous and live with simplicity, but while trying to enjoy that state of bliss, Mankind found the horrors of a conscience and now everyone wants to erase it, or bluntly ignore it to make it all easier. In order to do so, people tend to create ‘natures’ and associate them to Mankind, but nothing of what is called ‘human nature’ today really is so: how? Simple…

Mankind corrupted its own essence, its own concept, by eating the red apple, because Eve was terribly curious, so much curious that she even risked her nature to achieve something more: the High Knowledge. The Snake should have bitten her hand, to make her see how stupid and selfish she was being, but no. The Snake was also really clever and she preferred to simply watch Eve, enjoying the scene, and let the woman throw herself at the hands of the vultures, who today answer to the calling of media.

Adam was the victim in all of this: he lived alone in the Garden of Eden, he sacrificed one rib to get a companion, he had to learn how to control the impulses of his true nature, and many other things in order to survive a life that should be peaceful for him. The most hateful thing he suffered was the fact that he was forced to eat an apple because Eve was too good to do that and she’d always shared everything with her husband, just to be sure that it was safe. Don’t let yourselves be fooled! Eve wanted to poison Adam and she didn’t know how to do it; she wanted the glory to herself, the Paradise for herself, but the Snake was alert and turned her in. So Eve also ended up as guilty and labeled as a sinner as the always obedient Adam. They could have been the first true Valentines, but back in those days, no one had found plush, porcelain, chocolate, breakfast cereals or the alphabet – so the effect could have never been the same.

But today it is possible and if I owned a shop I’d sell such Valentine shit all year to try and get rich before I was sixty years old, because the article which brought me to this discussion got me trapped in a bathroom on Valentine’s Day with someone I wasn’t expecting. And only because we left the place walking side by side and looking ‘messy’, but it didn’t deserve such an uproar.

They weren’t seen getting in, but getting out of an empty public restroom and they sure looked compromising on something they didn’t want to reveal. Everyone knew, though, that when Mayor Johnson twitched his neck a lot, something wrong had happened within the earlier ten minutes. It wasn’t by chance that he was our Mayor: we already know him all too well, him and all his facets, for the whole life he spent criticizing everything and everyone, but also being fair, loved and respected by the population in town.

Mayor Johnson was the pure controversial politics man, he had no fear to speak his mind and confront the ones who dared to face him, especially the media. He did, however, enjoy the fact that all press writers are interested in writing about him. Why wouldn’t he? Mayor Johnson is famous, handsome, well-known and well-seen in town, but he also loses points when he does such things as letting himself get trapped inside some public restroom by the superhero he always claims to hate. He says that super powers make her arrogant, but both left the place side by side, looking messy and compromising together in something, as if Acidic was his pet superhero. Is this so called hatred the veil that disguises their true relationship?

What doesn’t press make up these days? There’s such a living imagination on those inane and pervert minds! They made curiosity their everyday job, and they think they’re never wrong, but when they’re demystified, they try to apologize with some tiny, stupid and ignoble article when they could honestly have ignored the fact in the first place, or ask some questions before creating silly theories underneath their pens. I’d have answered with the truth, and the poor, arrogant girl would have done the same about what happened that afternoon.

Yesterday, I was trying to have a normal day, since I had no important official meeting until 6pm. I never felt the need to hire security guards to lead me through the city that I love and respect so much, and that day I had an emergency and needed to use the nearest restrooms. I did so. I’m just a man, even being the Mayor I feel all human needs – I’m no special one. I entered the bathroom and did my thing, feeling the same relief as all men must feel. I was washing my hands when the thing happened – there were no towels to dry my hands, and the drying machine wore a sign saying ‘out of service’ as all machines usually do when you need to use them. I had to make use of toilet paper to dry my hands and when I was almost ready to leave, right before throwing the toilet paper to the trash can and checking my clothes on the mirror, I heard something weird.

I looked up and there she was, Acidic. The superhero that could fly and control some acid liquid she produced inside of her body, and who was terribly conceited about it. She was coming in from the ceiling and when our eyes met, I could see she wasn’t too happy to see me either… or maybe she just had realized that she had made a mistake and entered the wrong restroom. I waited for her to get to the floor and stand in front of me, as tension covered all my muscles; the same amount of tension I felt whenever she was around. She told me she was trying to escape the crazy media people that kept coming after her, because she had just saved some lady from being robbed.

“Since when is that a superhero job?” I asked her nonchalantly, trying to not sound as tense as I was feeling. She shrugged and frowned at me, clearly not happy with our meeting. However, it had happened and we had to deal with it.

After those two lines, nothing more happened. No more talking, no simple gesturing; just the gazes we shared and the same damn tension of every meeting. I even think she’s sexy in that girly outfit that outlines all her muscles so well, but sure her arrogance was always bigger than any elegance or sensuality.

I threw the amount of toilet paper I had used to dry my hands to the trashcan and I ran my hand though my hair. Now I realize that my hand was not fully dried and probably held vestiges of toilet paper on it; now I can tell that it was an accident, but when you’re on the outside and don’t know the facts, you can call it a compromising vestige of toilet paper… Acidic only watched me, as if she could find in me the enemy to fight, or the ally to seduce, but I’m sure that she didn’t sense the tension I felt around her. Or so I hoped.

She made a move first, still watching me intently, and made her way to the door. She stopped though, her hand on the door jamb, and turned her head around. Her eyes stopped on my figure, the exact moment when I was starting to leave after her, but I guess she felt my sight on her thin, firm and swaying hips of a female superhero. Acidic waited for me to get to her, her blistering gaze meeting mine gradually, and we left the restroom side by side, as if a short string stopped us from being further away from each other. We hated each other, but we needed each other, or the city would miss us very much.

Here comes the best thing about Mankind: no matter how tense you feel about something or someone, you can always keep the appearances whenever you need them. Just by hiding secrets, and trick the intent gaze of those flocks of vultures that only survive around you. They are the kind of flock who chases after famous people, looking for something irrelevant to turn it into something scandalous. It’s such a pity, though, that they do such poor intellectual work, instead of focusing any writing skills they have into something important and relevant to themselves and the world. It’s a pity that they only sketch such horrible conclusions when they could have the truth only by asking, but I guess that the truth does not feed their journalistic stomachs.