The quiet Ronnie

Ronnie was white, thin, weak. And he had a giant nose and huge ears. His eyes were normal sized, but they looked like big eyes behind those glasses. He was born like this and would die like this.

Perhaps, that was why he as shy.

Being the only son Ronnie spoke little with his mother and father and nobody else.

At school he had a friend that worked at the cafeteria, a fat cook that spoke like hell. And he spoke a lot, nonstop, spoke all the time, he would sometimes forget to breathe, he was always talking, he would talk to himself whenever possible, he sleep-spoke, all the time, he would repeat himself, repeat himself, repeat himself, repeat himself.

Shut up!

However, Ronnie would never even say these two words. The cook’s never even noticed that Ronnie was shy. One was a talker, the other a listener. They were perfect.

Ronnie’s greatest fear was that people would touch him. Not bumps or eventual hugs, kisses and handshakes, but those that were paid to touch people: a hairdresser cutting his hair, a dentist looking for cavities, a doctor taking his pulse. For some reason touching was not enough for those kind of people, they had to be speaking all the time. His fat friend would never touch Ronnie. And he would not expect an answer either. But the touching-professionals always waited for an answer:

“It rained a lot yesterday, didn’t it?” Ronnie could feel himself his heart beats speeding up in his the neck, beside his quiet throat. He would go home sicker than when he got here. That frustration was probably going to grow a cancer on him.

When he turned 13 years old, however, Ronnie had his body flooded with hormones. And then he spoke. He had now a thin rare moustache franticly moving synchronized with his Adam’s apple.

He dialoged with the hairdresser moving the head all the time and would get a crooked haircut. At the dentist he drooled but did not silence.

Ronnie began to speak and fought with the fat cook. He conquered a pretty girlfriend only to send her to hell. He made a baby during a night of wild sex when he screamed endlessly. He talked seriously to his daughter’s boyfriend. He lied to his lover and to his wife. He said to his ex-partner: “We are ex best-friends from now on”.

Now he was 53 years old and from now on, bending over in front of his proctologist, Ronnie would never speak again. He would not answer about how hot it was yesterday. He would be touched by his doctor and would shut up forever.

Beauty and the Beast

Having lunch at a restaurant the other day, I couldn’t help noticing the couple on the table close by. She was young, thin, tall, had dark hair and Latin features. She was pretty, I mean very pretty. He had Latin features also, and nothing else similar to her. He was a shorty, swollen, chubby Mexican.

A third person arrives and sits down with them. He was certainly an American and probably a lawyer. I always thought that lawyers smelled differently. That one seemed to be on the border between the legal with the not-so-legal. Thus he smelled even worse.

Curious, I moved my seat a little closer to them and heard parts of their conversation.

The chubby Mexican would say: How much is that going to cost? … How much is that going to cost? .... It was the only thing he asked.

The lawyer talking to the girl: Have you ever been married? … Have you ever been convicted of felony? … What is your actual status?

The girl, in the entire time, said only a couple of phrases that I didn’t understand and apparently neither did they. She spoke English very poorly.

Based on what it looked like, the chubby Mexican was a naturalized citizen and was bringing the girl to live here on an arranged marriage. It seemed to be what they call a win-win deal. She would earn a lawful permanent resident status, and he would have that beautiful woman beside him.

The lawyer was the only one that was there for love. Love for the money.