The Lizard and the Man child.

1.

Being a Manchild is no easy job.You have to wake up every morning and meticulously plan for the three meals of the day and deal with the rest of the day with your unyielding virtue of procrastination.All this to be done while avoiding grown up decisions ,renouncing your dreams and responsibilities and maintaining a low self esteem and a state of denial.As I said, no easy job.It is a choice;and I gladly let it take me .

Now that I have set the tone of self-deprecation,let me start with the story.

It was the time when I decided to stop being a manchild at home and move out , so that I could start being a manchild in a wretched one bedroom apartment.Apart from my preferred means of wasting time there was a peculiar habit I picked up ,staring at a wall lizard.

Of all the creatures that lived in that dingy,claustrophobic dungeon the wall lizard scared and fascinated me the most.A single resident of the upper right cupboard built into the wall he would crawl out with his creamy ,translucent skin ,lizardy claws(duh) and conspicuous round eyes just to stare at me ,stare at what ever stupidity I was involved in.

The first time I caught him staring at me with his dark,exaggeratedly creepy eyes was when he came crawling on to the arm rest of the couch I was sleeping on. I flinched in horror and threw the remote at him. Fun fact, lizards detach themselves from their tails when threatned by enemies to throw them off their trail.So I had a wiggling lizard tail on my couch as a result and I had to pick it up and throw it away with my own hands and later wash them a million times .

The next time we met we were wiser ,I decided not to hurl anything at him and he never came too close but he still stared at me with intent. I ignored, I had a pokemon anime marathon to complete. You've gotta catch em all,don't you.

He continued to show up and stare no matter what and his persistence started bothering me. 'who would be jobless enough to have a staring contest with a lizard' I chuckled to myself. In a few days and a few staredowns later I came to the conclusion ,'he's trying to communicate '.His dark globular eyes hanging upsidedown from the wall would meditate on me ,staring through my eyes looking into my soul, trying to relay messages.The more I looked back the more clearer it became,he spoke to me not verbally but through his eyes .After a few conversations, I started to realise he was not a pleasant guy .

He dint like me ,at all .Infact he despised me and my existence,he disapproved everything I stood for.It was obvious though, I had invaded his territory which he had been ruling for around a year unchallenged and made changes to it ,well not many but still changed it up.He was not able to digest the fact that it was "my" place now. He would look down upon me from the roof physically and also literally like a disapproving father.as if I were a waste of space. He hated me and more importantly my solitude ,both the highs and lows of it.

'Don't you have anything else to do?' he questioned me in irritation, when I was binging on youtube , lying on the couch semi nude ,playing with my belly button, wondering how I ended up watching "weird masked Japanese guy dancing and cooking wild mushrooms" from "how to to lose 10 kgs in a month".

The other day when I was taking a break from washing clothes and reading a mens lifestyle article on the phone "10 tips on how to talk dirty to your girlfriend" ,he came to stare at me, 'yeah!,you wish' he chuckled 'try and get out of the house for a change ' he said walking away.I was sure he laughed his ass off with his friends that night . I knew he was that kind of a guy.

I had one of those super awesome high intensity LED torch lights which I sometimes used during the power cuts but mostly used it as a light sabre.Out of boredom or for the rush of it I challenged myself to know how long I could stare at the torch from close range .It was a painful ordeal but I made myself proud.I went blind for an hour and was visually compromised to look at bright screens for the rest of the day.It was a dull day .Then there he was on the wall by the bed ,he stared at me in pity for quite sometime and asked with a genuine curiosity "how did you even survive 24 years without killing yourself". 'what a mean bastard' I thought. I dint reply,I just turned around and rested