No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get over a man known by many as Aramax.
A peculiar Arab and South American mix, standing almost 6 feet 2, he has very distinctive features with soft short hair, dark eyes, a chiseled face with a mostly unkempt beard... That is, until his royal presence is required at a formal event, then he would spend a whole day at a Barber's, making sure he looks his 100% in front of a public audience. I once asked him how much he spends on a monthly basis for his "personal up-keeping" - the amount is, truth be told, quite embarrassingly enormous.
Like a lot of considerably well-off men, Aramax is known for his "Risk Taking Behaviors" or rather, "Risk Appetite": most people around him are simple "Subjects", and women are mere "Objects" to be toyed with, thrown around, exchanged for other "Goods And Services". Unlike a lot of considerably well-off men of his statue, Aramax is particularly brutal. When I say he's brutal, I do mean he is brutal, literally and figuratively - in this regard, his principle of equality applies to both genders. I'm unable to explain why I'm still alive, being in relative close proximity to his "secretive lifestyle". For obvious reasons, he prefers to pay for his "women", or rather, "female entertainers" and/or "associates"... This in fact comes as little or no surprise to anyone. His currency will guarantee his privacy and anonymity, and he is free to exercise "discretion" while certain "Objects" are at his disposal, meaning, they could be "disposed of" without a trace and with very little to no questions asked, if necessary.
Fortunately (or rather Unfortunately, depends on who's asking), Aramax has never "paid" me in any sort of way that is considered consequential or substantial, and that is the probable reason why he is unable to dispose of me as of yet - in writing this, I'm of course pushing my luck a bit. Either way, I have his picture on my phone, a picture of him where he is posing in his study and smiles at the camera. His face is warm, confidently full of himself yet his smile unwelcoming. Already his picture tells you that he is NOT a "Good Man" by any conventional definition. Still, I find him irresistibly charming, not necessarily because of his looks nor the interesting tattoos on his body, but mostly for his sarcasm and wit that apparently pleases nobody in his vicinity.
I lost count of those intimate moments when I stare at his face blankly, quietly gauging a mostly non-existent state of him being remotely affectionate. One day, finally, out of impatience I would guess, he half jokingly asked if he was the love of my life. I replied, sadly - it was still Cody Wilson. In a hysterical laughter, he referred to him as "some guy who wrote a book about guns" and said that I couldn't tell one Wilson from the other, which is to a certain extent a verifiable fact. Since the diagnosis, I'm constantly shamed by my condition of prosopagnosia, though it is no secret anymore, few people understand how it affects me in a deeply unsettling way - especially in this country, where everyone, everything, even the climate seems hostile to the maximum.
Aramax, 我只願記得你的好, the rest - you know what you have done. Those long nights when you couldn't sleep unless drugged, those tough moments where PTSD hit you hard, those flashbacks of Afghanistan, Iran, and Yemen. Yes, I love you, but it means as much as I said I love you to someone who is incapacitated to love me back, and you know who I'm talking about. This December, I sang "Santa Baby" to someone else instead of him, but the images of these people are beginning to merge in my mind. Who is to say I haven't lost my head, having strung all these men together and trying to be their favorite little thing?
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