Look at me.
Give me your attention and look at me.
On the metro, the businessman in the sharp suit keeps his eyes glued to the papers and hurriedly sips away at his spiced, hand whisked, fair-trade latte. He is running late again. Down the train cabin, a seemingly crippled panhandler starts to plea and nobody spares a single decibel.
Listen to me.
Stop what you’re doing and listen to me.
A distraught widower tries to dry her tears as she hangs up the phone. Her son had just been an accident. She knows she can’t afford to skip more work shifts to go visit him at the hospital. A meter away from the phone, a stack of unpaid bills crumble and fall off the plywood tabletop. Outside a car alarm sounds. It is midnight.
Praise me.
Show me you care and pat my head.
A scrawny young man screams at the little red box of first aid equipment. In the core of Las Vegas, his friend lies unconscious in a pool of blood running out from his nostrils on the exotic carpet of an upscale hotel suite. What should’ve been a good fucking weekend was cut short on a Saturday after rounds of questionable drugs and drinks. The acid kicks in during the heat of the moment. He sees fractals stained with panic and distress in the bloated pupils of his dying friend. With every passing second, his friend’s breaths become more shallow and infrequent. The room is unbearably hot now. It has been a full minute and he still can’t open the box no matter how much he cried and shouted. He is helpless. Before his thoughts are completely carried away by his distorted mind, he kneels over the body, defeated and broken. In the room next door an off-duty paramedic watches a cheap western with his fiancé. He turns up the volume as the sirens outside grow louder. The movie is a drab and the couch is too plushy.
Love me.
Talk to me, come home, and love me.
Your most stereotypical GI Joe loads another clip into his mud-caked rifle. Amidst the confusion and the sounds of bullets twirling and dancing in the air, another raspy voice lets out a command. He tunes out and thinks about the girl he left at home. It was so brief and sweet and perfect in every way. They’ll get married as soon as he gets home, he’ll make sure of it. Across his tiny foxhole, a sleep-deprived radioman transmitted the wrong coordinates for the bombing mission. Overhead, a war plane with pin-up girls painted all over circles their location closer and closer. The pilot wipes the sweat off his tense neck and twirls his hard, gloved digits over the red button, waiting for that most opportune and delicate moment to release his 2-tonne loving embrace of fiery explosions and hot shrapnel. Unaware, the solider below rips open a chocolate bar. He’s been saving that one since they had their lunch rations. It’s his favorite kind; the one with peanuts sprinkled all over and a creamy caramel center.