Needless to say, I didn't remember their names. Despite the fact that they studied in the other class and were good people. Two brothers, Two Romani. Two Gypsies. Yes, they had nothing and that bothered us. Rags, stench, constant colds, severe poverty in a word. I won't describe them further because I can't describe the state of their misery. They were different from us. They would stay after school and go collect what was left from the cafeteria. To us, the well fed cattle, such a procedure seemed so lame. And the fact that it was repeated every day.
I know, I know, they collected it for home, so that a few more of their brothers and sisters could have a bite. Now I know. And then, we would meet them outside and do to them what we did. The bread would end up on the ground where they would pick it up again, the slaps, kicks and insults were standard drill, they served us as a punching bag on which we would pour out our fucking frustrations from home, from school, from the toilets, from our brains that were empty even though soaked in testosterone that was not wasted in some women's vagina but in the toilet bowl. Hence the back benches and the sadistic outbursts on those weaker than us.
We were a standard product of the educational and social system. And it was easy on our minds and sweet to our souls.
None of that can compare to the shock. The shock of why didn't they resist, why didn't they fight, why didn't they break one of our heads behind a wall with a steel bar at night. Why didn't they call their numerous brothers, cousins, friends, you know, the Gypsy brothers. I still can't understand it even though I know they were barely standing on their feet. And they probably had some kind of life philosophy of their own or something along those lines. That was incomprehensible to us.
And I know something else...nevermind Mahatma Gandhi and everything I've read since then...through you, what we were hiding came to light...the terrible shit...ours and not yours...you just wanted us to leave you alone. And the tears in your eyes, and the words, mixed gypsy and Macedonian with which you begged us not to leave you... that was engraved in our hard drive... remained... although it will always be avoided when evoking memories of the `happy school days`...
No... the brothers were not the only ones to whom this was arranged. Although there were many others in a different way. Ones who received a regular supply of misery and despair. For other "reasons" of course, the appropriate file downloaded by the system into our skulls was activated for different things, but with a similar results.
Were we children? Didn't we know any different? Well, thank you parents, relatives, neighbors and teachers for making us like that. Thank you for raising us like that, it was our greatest pleasure and it is still our pleasure to see someone in the mud, to console ourselves that we are not the most fucked up and shitty people in the world, that there is someone somewhere beneath us who we can step on.
Thanks for nothing!
This is dedicated to them brothers. I know they probably don't live in the virtual world, that they probably don't even have internet presence, and that they will never read these words. I apologize to you with all my heart and I hope that one day, someday, you will have everything that I don't, and that one day you will look at me with the same contempt that I looked at you with back then.
(Roger Mortis 014)
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