And so the boy with the Caribbean-blue pants ran far, far away into a new land, never to return.
He lived happily ever after.
Or so it was believed.
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The reality was a bit different, however. The boy, whom we will call George, found himself in a strange world. The City. It was not as vast as some, but the City was a foreign land to George. The language spoken around him was his own yet he did not understand its speakers. There, no one smiled. They made the face motions, to be sure, but they were not smiling.
Not even their eyes smiled.
It was a cold place, with its grey skies and unfriendly denizens.
George wanted to make the best for himself there in the City. So he attended university, to expand his mind. George began to smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey in secret. These things his parents didn’t read. Instead, his parents grew so proud as he regaled them of a happier, false life within his myriad letters East.
George also made friends in the City; he tried to surround himself with kind genuine people so as not to be lonely. Yet years would pass and the always drifted apart. It was their way there.
This saddened George.
Lovers were even worse. George felt constantly spurned by their cold manner. He felt alien in his bright clothes, the fabled azure pants he loved so much. George felt used by those who did find him charming and backwards. The sex was never happy.
But George did not complain. He bore the unbearable winters alone in his flat, sipping tea and dreaming of Southern winds. The whiskey had lost its attraction so he lost himself in those blue-tinted dreams of warm sand and spicy food. George had slowly lost his accent and was in danger becoming as cold as the City. It was the end of one such a gloomy wintertime that George met Sam.
Sam. The two met by chance, growing closer and more intimate through weekly letter and phone calls. Their lovemaking was brief yet cherished. George loved him with all his heart. George had never met a person that treated him the way Sam did. He had never felt such a way before. He was alive for the first time since he had come to the City. Their summer together was beautiful. Sam gave George his love and with it George got his will back.
Sadly their story was not to last, in fact it never really started. Sam journeyed away across an ocean with little promise of return…and just like that George was broken again.
The friends that had remained began to fade away, consumed with their own more interesting lives. George’s only companion was Alba at this time. George felt lost despite this.
Alba was afraid that George was disappearing, and it was true. Yet she did not really know how much. George’s heart had been shattered; it was too severe to be repaired. He was like an empty gourd. No sweet pulp left inside, just a hard dry shell. He was like the others in the City now. He was just another empty person.
George tried to find solace in Alba’s love and friendship but he constantly pushed her away, fearing that she too would abandon him…though he was the one abandoning her.
They grew apart, until one day…George was gone. He didn’t die. He didn’t run away, he didn’t disappear…he was just no longer there. No one noticed, not a single soul. That was George’s happily ever after.
Only the City remained.
And so ends the tale of the boy with the blue pants.
