I walk to my car at 3 a.m. on February the 14th, and the intoxicated masses of flesh and bones that are supposedly my generational peers walk the streets in zig zag bee-lines of desperation and misguided emotions.
Their slurred street sonnets and serenades spew sordidly onto the cold cement of Beirut city's streets, as some of them find false comfort in the embracing arms made easier to open with every beer top that's popped, every wine glass thats poured, every shot that's downed.
They surround me, the many that are like this.
I walk in a straight line towards my car, imagining the amount of meaning and clarity that could be worth something or anything, imagining the many flushing toilets that will drag the latter into the guts of the city, leaving it to dissipate and thin out in the rivers of waste. Becoming waste.
Those who are alone are finding each other and losing themselves simultaneously, and those who are in pairs are falling over each other and tripping over their dribbling tongues and cackles and those who are in control are slowly hovering away from the madding crowd, the forlorn masses, stumbling into their cars, or their friends' cars to be claimed by the distant vanishing points of the streets.
A guy leans with one arm against the wall, staring at the ground or his converse all star peeping out of his tattered-ended jeans. His head swaying slightly, body following the sway at a variance. I approach him, grab him by his shirt and yell into his inebriated face to go home and stop looking so pathetic, but only in my head.
I walk among these writhing beings. And wonder how such a scene so far from the simplicity of affection and love can unfold on the day chosen to celebrate that very same thing.
But then again, it's Valentine's.
