[The River Knows Best]
by Mohamad Mohamad-Sharin

{This is an excerpt from the ever confidential and personal piece of YB Lalat’s Babble Journal}

[Babble of Aug 25, 2000][Sigh]
I wish...I could be who I wanted...all the time.

[Babble of Aug 26, 2000][The river knows best]
Who was it that told me the river knows best?
Who was it that told me the river would relieve me of my pain?
Who was it that told me the river would do all the work and let my Saturday be fun?
It was the current that did all the work and that bothered a whole lot of me. Being so helpless and so dependent was no fun.
The current was very slow that day and every stinking inch that it moved me was so irritating and so painful.
Slow it may be but yet...you could do nothing to steer yourself or your emotions.
Goddamnit!
Fucking river!
My pubic hair grows faster than thou!
I hated myself for letting it take control of my tube.
I hated myself for letting it take control of my decision.
I had to do something else than struggling like a weakling.
I had to do something else than screaming at the deaf water.
I had to.
I was a jerk.

**********

"Where was it again?"
"Somewhere near the border, you dork. The leader said that we would not be getting wet until an hour's worth of traveling"
Great...just what I wanted to spice my miserable life with.
One hour of sitting around, amongst those who calls you a 'weirdo' and a 'brick wall with genitalia' was not what I had planned for a Saturday.
A day of laze is what people from my place calls Saturday...and where exactly is 'my place'? Nowhere near those who invited me.
I went berserk looking for my dirty, black bag. I was not sure what my answer would be towards that last minute invitation.
I strongly sensed I was not myself at that moment of decision. It was just a matter of time before I realized about it.
"....."
"....."
"OK"
"Great!"
Yes, I was not myself.

*********

I still don't believe what I did.
I grabbed the other blunt end of the tube and tried painstakingly to turn around. My bottom was way too soaked with relaxation.
At that crucial moment of turning, it was not under the supervision of the brain. Consequently, I flipped big time.
My stomach was on the verge of throwing up when a foul-smelling substance entered it. The cold water froze the puke.
Ugh...the river water was worse than I thought it would taste. My tongue was ephemerally numb from it.
Splashes of icy cold water landed onto the lap of others and they started laughing like mad at the scene of me flipping over my tube.
What were they thinking?
What was so exhilarating to be splashed on?
What was the fun part of being happy at the sad instance of the other?
Oh such enigmatic fools!
The river had had them.
The river had swept their sanity away.
The song from the failed movie "Loser" echoed in a psychedelic way deep inside my empty hall of consciousness.
I was strange.
Therefore, I was a stranger to them.
Conclusively, I was not a celebrity to any of them until that moment of humiliation.
How humiliated and degraded was I?
How glaringly red was the smiling mask I donned?
How idiotically and superficially portrayed was I as I pathetically paced myself towards the tube that held my pride?
Very.

*********

Traveling on a rental van was not that bad. At least, that's what I think of it now.
I was too occupied with myself all along the journey that it took me a few hours to realize that we had arrived. Everybody was excited and anxious to hit the shivering water.
I wasn't.
At that time, I was still hearing the chants of angst and narcissism of Brandon Boyd (as exciting as ever).
"This place rocks! Just look at all the boobs around here!"
"Can you hear that? People are here to enjoy and you could hear them scream from this far. I can't wait!"
"The rapids here must be nasty. I have waited so long for this, I wish we could spend the whole day here!"
"Haha, this will be the best diary entry of my teen life! Water tubing in Mississippi, yeah!"
"I’m coming, baby, I’m coming! The last one dry is a sick, crippled goat-bastard!"
"Whoa, people. Don’t forget to get your tube. Keep your ass safe"
Thanks.
Thanks a lot, leader guy.
It was time somebody put the 'sense' into 'nonsense'. They were talking crap as soon as they put their existence onto the grass and what crap!
I couldn't wait a minute more to drown myself to safety from the others. The crap they threw around me was amazing. Amazing I say.
I was suffocating even before the water hit me.
It nearly drowned me on-shore.
Amazing.

[Continued below]