The November project 2019, part 8

I met you and saw a luxury hotel. I saw marble floors, glass walls, indoor waterfalls and vines, I saw gold, white and black, I saw chandeliers so tall they covered several floor levels. I saw swinging briefcases and heard heels crossing the floor in a rush, I saw staff whose smiles never faded. I saw something exclusive, something granted only to a lucky few. You opened the doors, and I felt honored – but as if I was walking on forbidden ground. I myself felt like a worn-out plastic floor, buzzing light tubes and distant drips from broken pipes. Like concrete painted mustard yellow. Like withered pot plants in windows. Like tired steps from care assistants. You said it wasn’t like that, that it didn’t matter. And I believed you.    I kissed you and it tasted like strawberries in champagne. Sweet, bubbly and tingly, but also tough and sour. The relationship with you was like going on a culinary adventure to places I’d never dared to dream about, so much for me previously hidden that I now got to see. Russian caviar and oysters, lobster and meat from animals I didn’t even know were edible. Truffles and real wasabi. Some of it was good, other was just weird, but no matter what it was, I saw you and your friends agreeing about everything, no one questioned anything – and I felt like the odd one out because I didn’t get it. Like instant noodles among hand made pasta, like a chicken nugget among Kobe steaks.    Months passed and I felt anxious, anxiety, for not fitting in, not being enough, in your reality. Not being able to give back all you had given to me. Again, you said it wasn’t a problem, but time was starting to wear that phrase out and making it harder to believe. Both from my side and yours. I saw how you longed for equality, but not on a universal level, just your own. You wanted someone as refined, as sophisticated, someone with all that capital I was missing. You had first thought that capital was only money, and therefore looked past the fact that I didn’t have it, but capital is more than that. You can always teach me which clothes to wear in which rooms, which cutlery to use to which meal, but you can’t erase where I come from. My background, my culture. It’s too different from yours.    Months passed and you became unfaithful. You were unfaithful but failed to keep it secret, and I saw through everything you were, your whole world. I saw how the vines were just plastic. How the staff’s smiles were glued on top of tormented souls. I saw what your world was built upon; false promises and stolen fates. I had felt like a withered plant in your company, but in reality, you and your world were what was rotting from the inside.    I met you one last time, and let the hotel doors close behind me.marble