Today’s customer is a man in his thirties.
He is tall, stout, with dark shaved hair.
He looks nervous but he’s doing everything to keep it from showing.
I enter the room.
<<Hello.>>
<<Hey.>> he greets me <<Hi.>>
I move towards my seat and sit in front of him.
<<So…>>
<<Yes.>> he speaks <<I’m here because in the end I decided to do this thing, this … “erasing the memory” thing.>>
<<Good.>> I hand him a sheet <<You should already know, but>>
<<Yes, yes, I know. I have to do an interview where I say why I want to do it, right? But is the conversation recorded, or is it private?>>
<<It is private>> I confirm <<but it’s also registered. But nobody can see it.>>
<<Not even the government?>>
<<If it could, I could not tell him anyway.>>
He gives a half smile <<Right. Oh well, um … so, my name is>>
<<You just have to tell me the most important elements.>> I interrupt him, picking up my notebook and a pen <<We need only that for the operation.>>
<<Ah… okay. So … I’ve always been an … active little boy, let’s say. When I was a child I was always messing up something, Mom always scolded me and that assh-, um, and my father was never at home. And when he was there he did nothing but fight with mom. In short, a shitty childhood.>>
<<I understand.>>
<<At school I didn’t suck too much, but I didn’t commit myself to it either. Rather than studying I used my free time to do something else. I remember when I was a kid I used to steal fruit, along with some friends., just to resold it at a market. We did a lot of other things, like… well, the usual things. A bit of theft, selling drugs, we also used drugs … I also remember stealing a motorbike from an asshole, and then threw it in a river. >> a smile escapes from him at that memory. <<He deserved it. Anyway, at some point I started fighting. I signed up for an MMA class and got so good that one day I beat up my dad. I sent him to the hospital, and in response he threw me out of the house. So I went to live with some friends. I had fun with them, we drank, we fucked, we did what we wanted. Everything was perfect.>>
<<So why are you here?>>
He sighs and his face becomes less bright <<Well, I also did some bullshit. And now I have the possibility to rebuild my life and therefore … I am not saying that I would like to forget everything, but there are things that I cannot do because of the feelings of guilt.>>
<<There is no need to “forget everything”.>> I explain to him <<We can inhibit the feelings of guilt if we want, especially those concerning the events that you would like to forget.>>
<<Yes … you told me it was possible … well, it wouldn’t hurt. I don’t want to forget, I just want to stop thinking about it.>>
<<Got it. But exactly what it is that is bothering you?>>
<<A few things.>> he sighs <<In our teen my friends and I had targeted a boy. I remember slapping him once, and he just accepted the slap. So I started doing it every time he did “something I didn’t like”, and my friends started doing it too. At some point he started doing what we wanted. I think he had some mental illness, I don’t know … his parents didn’t help him at all, he was always alone.>> he says <<I remember that we made him go around naked and we made videos of him. One day we fed him raw tomatoes until he threw up. We enjoyed pissing on him and in his mouth. It was fun. We also used him for school weed deliveries at one point. He was so stupid that he didn’t even know what he was carrying.>>
<<What happened to him?>> I ask at this point.
<<I don’t know. I only remember that the last time I saw him on the street he ran away. I don’t know anything else.>> he says<<I’m sorry because I’m sure he had mental illnesses. But in those moments it was too fun to do what we did, so …>>
<<You were not concerned.>>
<<Yeah. And then there is the story of a guy from my school. I didn’t do too well in school, but I had a lot of friends … and there was this guy here. He was always ashamed of everything, he was always quiet, super shy… and this bothered me, for some reason. We teased him often, and he always went to the professors to cry when he could. I hated him for that. I was better than him in everything. He was uglier, shorter, a lot weaker, and even more stupid because he studied and in spite of this he sometimes got the same grades as I did, and I didn’t even buy school books. Yet he thought he was better than us just because he behaved “well”, you know? He thought we would end up in jail or something like that. He thought he was superior when in fact he couldn’t even look people in the face when he talked to them.>> he says <<Yet, he was able to get engaged one day. He bothered me that he was engaged. I didn’t want him to be.>>
<<Were you envious?>> I ask.
<<No … his girl was ugly, I fucked girls a thousand times better … but it bothered me because since I changed girlfriends often, he thought he was better because he was always with the same girl. He said that his was “true love” and that I could never feel it. So I started provoking his girlfriend too. I remember spitting in their head when we caught them outside school. Or the day we screamed at them from the scooter, throwing things at them . And one day, I don’t know why, he had a fight with that girl. I knew who she was, I knew her through other friends, so I had a friend invite her to a party. She came and I managed to fuck her. It wasn’t difficult because I didn’t even have to seduce her, I just told her I wanted to make her boyfriend jealous, and she agreed because she said she had a fight with him and therefore she hated him and other bullshit. So I fucked her, took pictures of it and sent them to him. He immediately called her, and she answered while I was still banging her ass.>> an amused smile escapes him. <<Good times … I felt like I was on top of the world. A God. He kept quiet, he overheard us fucking for a few minutes, and when I started telling him in detail what I was doing to his ex-girlfriend he disconnected the call. At school we all started pissing him a thousand times more, my friends and I would say things like “we fucked your girl” and so on. One day he got so angry that he tried to answer us, and we beat him up. I beat him up actually. Alone. I felt satisfied as hell. I slaughtered him and pissed on him. We haven’t seen him since that day, he has changed schools.>> he says <<I know how he has ended up however, because he committed suicide a little while ago. It seems he was depressed, penniless, and he was taking a course to detox from some weird drug. Before he died he wrote to tell me it was my fault and other bullshit. He probably committed suicide because that asshole went looking for me on social media.>>
<<What makes you think that?>>
<<Well, I lived ten times better than him. My profile is full of photos of friends, girls, vacations … and now I have a house, a wife, a job, a lot of money saved, and I have also cleaned up myself from the legal point of view. And I also finished school, while he didn’t. Having changed it he started it all over again, and from what I understand he was flunked and then he let himself go and became a failed junkie. He probably went to look for me on social media to see where I was, and after seeing how much his life sucked compared to mine, he took it off. Before doing so he wrote to me though. That asshole. He wrote to me and now I can’t do nothing but think about it.>>
<<What did he write to you?>>
He snorts <<He told me that because of me and the others he never managed to socialize, and bullshit like that. I didn’t read all the messages, I had neither time nor desire, so I told him that if he kept bothering me I would also fuck his mother and then I blocked him. I didn’t think he was going to commit suicide though. I mean … I don’t even think I’m sorry, I don’t give a shit about him honestly … but when I look at my wife I think about him.>>
<<And why?>> I ask.
<<She is pregnant. Maybe I’m afraid my son will become a loser like him, who knows. But these are stupid fears, so I’d like to get that guy out of my memory. Maybe not all … just the emotions I feel now. I don’t want to forget him, but I would like to stop thinking about him, understand? I will not be like his parents, I will not raise a loser that’s unable to look people in the eye while talking.>>
<<Got it.>>
<<And speaking of children … there is one thing that I absolutely want to forget. Do you remember I said I lived with some people? Things went well until they got worse. Towards the end, a friend of mine got pregnant with a random guy and she didn’t even have the money for the rent. We wanted to throw her out of the house.>>
<<And did you do it?>>
He shakes his head lowering it <<Worse. She gave birth, and … she sold the baby.>>
<<Sold it?>>
<<Not immediately. We tried to keep it all together, but it cost too much at the time. At the age of three she sold him to some strange guys on the internet for some money. After that moment… well, that group started to fall apart. She started saying that she heard voices when she slept or was alone, other friends of ours had strange nightmares, and in the end I decided to leave that place.>> he says <<Now I know what happened to that child though, because the police reached me and asked questions. He was put in a cage and used as a sex slave until a year ago. When they got him out of there he was … well, he still didn’t know how to read and write, and even walk … and he was ten years old. He barely knew how to speak.>> he said in a slightly weak voice <<He told those who took him that he wanted to see his mother again. That… that he would no longer misbehave, that he would no longer cry. So he asked if he could go back to his mother.>>
<<And…?>>
<<The police reached me to ask questions about the mother. I don’t know how they found me, I have no idea. But I told what I knew, and then I left my past behind. But every time I see my wife … I think of them. To all these people I’ve known who have had a shit life. But I don’t want to do it. I want to be able to enjoy my life in peace, without having to think about others failures.>>
<<Okay.>> I say <<So … you want to remember them, but stop feeling for them. Right?>>
<<Exactly! Yes, I want to remember them all. But I don’t want to think about them too much, I don’t want to waste days or nights on these memories. When I’ll have my child I want to be able to enjoy it in peace. I am working hard for him. I want to give him a great life.>>
<<Okay.>> I nod <<If that’s all, we can proceed with the operation.>>