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As the new day rose, from dawn till dusk on a November night. I met my star-crossed companion in a lonely bar, and with the utterance of a single sentence, I felt my heart tear again.
"You're pretty much hippie with a mix of gypsy to me, free and untethered by the chains of this world like a gypsy", he said with a chuckle as he took a long drag of his cigarette.
He said I reminded him of a forgotten race, possessing an unpolished beauty, and desirable caricatured stature.
Hippy cause I prefer anklets to bracelets,
Horror to comedy,
Drugs to alcohol,
Personal preference to morals,
Independence to dependency,
A night of passion to relationships,
Music to conversations,
Piercings and tattoos to unmarked skins.
Quietly, the hippy claim left me astounded and wistful, if only I was as I seemed, for a hippy's aesthetics contrasted my true forlorn apathetic visage.
I'm an ostentatious display of intellects and wildness, but I'm feeling decadent. Left often feeling empty whenever I'm required to state my next of kin, because I'm next to none.
To be hippy I'd have to seem like the wild bohemian princess, travelling across foreign lands, clothed in exotic and beautiful costumes, with near bare feet's, jeweled headdress, and most of all, armed with a carefreeness towards public sentiments and life.
But I'm seated, in a rundown bar, with an empty purse, and solace as my only currency.
I'm not hippy, my ways has been washed by the storm that keeps brewing in my head, and it's crashing down on me tonight. But tonight, just tonight, let me let down this mask, for once let me be human, and take a day off from my joker ways.
With the swallow of a mouthful of whiskey, I whisper to my companion,
"I'm not hippy, I may look it, but I'm just decadent. A woman who knows not who she is, a vague being lost in between memories of who I was, and too empty to pick myself back up".
Caught in a minute of vulnerability, I mistook my companion's confusion, as a go ahead, and continued, in a rushed sentence.
"You see, I'm just the joker, life kept me in place, but when it dealt it's hand, it placed me in the back, shuffled me around like meaningless nothing, and broke me in pieces. I'm left to just take it as it is, and just survive, one day at a time."
"Pardon? Come again, slowly this time", my companion requested, as he gave me a look of bewilderment and confusion.
With a slight shake of my head, and a quiet sigh, I mentally put my mask back on, and repeated, but this time, the words he wanted to hear,
"Of cause I'm hippy, where's the fun in life to be otherwise?", I questioned jokingly, as I gave him a gentle jab in the shoulders to prove my point.
As his cherry attitude sprang back up, and the reverberated sound of his laughter echoed, in the empty bar, I knew for sure, this was the response he preferred.
For the rest of the night, we smoked and drank, and I never failed to keep my mask intact. People don't want to know what they can't understand, and I'm never going to try.
