His hands reached out for my face, I did not pull away. I had been taught better than to fight the nature of man. Those that hunger enough will take, that's how the world spins. In his hands, I could be utilized like a pressure gauge- or maybe as he would have said- a tourniquet. To ease the weight, make things just a little bit easier. It's a cruel fate to die not knowing what it even was that you wanted. That's how he had always explained when asked why. Every mark put down was a lesson in endurance, but most of all before that, compassion. Compassion to lower one's head, compassion to let oneself be taken, compassion to be a proxy of all this violence and rage and lust. To most else, I too will be a monster like him; but, to him and those like him, I'd be a savior. I'd take everything they would bleed out from their aching knuckles and ever-more aching hearts. Inhale their smoke till my lungs expanded and swelled my being with nausea. I would be blind with purple ink-spill eye's and come crawling back on all fours, smiling dumbly. Because, I knew why they did what they did, for it was the same reason I do what I do, but what I could do was receive what couldn't be held inside by them. Let this body be turned into a punching bag they could insert any image or archetype over. Become the closest possible thing to the true desire, the true fantasy, and let them chase their dragon until they turn you into the obsession itself. The Idol standing in front of God's light and keeping them shaded from true glory. I sucked up everything they hated about themselves and let my being be altered into whatever I was to be a proxy of. Their eyes became the only place I existed, their gaze, their disdain and hatred, it all shaped me into something at the very least material: seen. I became whatever was needed for the night, from motor oil slicked hands to spit soaked thighs. The only reason I existed was to be of use for that which could find nothing useful anywhere else.
