31. MONSTER

/Charles/

“Everything was frosted, I couldn't see a damn thing. From the moment I stepped onto the circuit this morning, my eyes stopped working and my body stopped responding to my commands; it was rigid, hard. I felt like a statue moving miraculously and my eyes were like looking through cloudy glass. I tried to focus and see, but I couldn't.
There were no clear shapes; I knew who was around me and what we were doing, but I couldn't see anything.
Anthoine's mother's face was the most distinct thing I saw, but it was only a moment. When she took my face in her hands, I knew her hands were on my cheeks and that her eyes were filled with tears, but I felt nothing. Touch didn't respond to what my brain was telling me I needed to feel.
Warmth, perhaps? Fingers on skin? The agony of grief of a woman who lost a child too young to be acceptable?
But I was standing there in front of her, returning her powerful embrace and thinking that if I'd stayed there a second longer, she'd realize I was a statue, that I wasn't really me. I'd been taken over by something else.
That monster Max had told me I wasn't. But he was wrong. He was very wrong indeed.
I felt Max's presence around me, I knew where he was. I knew all the time, but I tried to avoid his gaze because he would have realized he was wrong last night. That I actually am that monster.
We fool ourselves into thinking we're not monsters so we can live with ourselves, but in reality we are and if he'd looked at me, he would have noticed immediately.
Mattia's hand goes around my shoulders pulling me powerfully to him, squeezing my neck. He's trying to act like a father.
I immediately think that if my father were alive, he'd do this, but he's not here and I miss him terribly because if he held me like this now, it would make me feel good. I would cry and know I was human and not a monster.
My father was my humanity and by dying he took that away, I remained an empty shell with a beautiful shape, but still monstrous.
I don't lean on Mattia and make no sign of accepting his hold and support. Don't hug me, don't touch me, don't hold me, you're not my father.
No one is my father and he was the only one who could touch me, hold me, hug me.
He always knew what to say to me, how to talk to me, how to handle me.
No one can do that, no one is him.
Don't touch me.
I stare at the ground thanking the peaked cap that covers my face.
I can't show how annoyed I am by everything, how much I just want to get away from here.
Car, where's my car? If I get in there, I can escape.
Finally Mattia moves away. I don't even know what part of the circuit we're in or what we're doing, but I sense another presence. I tense up, for a moment, I fear it's someone else who wants to hug and support me or worse, that Max has come to tell me 'You know, I was wrong last night, you're actually that monster.'
But he doesn't touch me or hug me and I'm surprised that this is happening. How is it possible that someone who approaches me doesn't feel the duty or the need to touch and comfort me?
Because it's so damn public knowledge that I've had losses too heavy for not to be a weight on my heart.
When I look up, I see that it's Seb and he's acting as a barrier between me and the others. He's not facing me, but I see his back no bigger than mine. Seb isn't very tall, even shorter than me, but right now he feels like a giant and while I realize we're at the edge of the pit lane waiting to see how we'll proceed after the tributes to Anthoine—whether we'll have a parade or something—it feels like he's my guardian.
Relief overwhelms me; he's currently one of the few have figured out how to deal with me, who doesn't try to console me in any way and doesn't say anything at all, but rather tries to keep anyone else from reaching me.
When Pierre approaches, he pauses for a moment looking at Seb. He turns to me to see what I want and I nod. We haven't spoken and he wasn't obliged to, but I just felt understood and somehow, incredibly, it didn't bother me.
In just a few months together, Seb seems to have figured out exactly how to deal with me: he doesn't force me into something he realizes I don't like. The contact, the advice, the hugs.
I nod thanking him and when Esteban arrives, I nod again.
While we're here together, we chat about Anthoine. We both knew him very well, all three of us were his friends. Seb slowly slips away and I see him reach Lewis who was waiting. The two of them walk away together for this brief moment that remains between us drivers. Usually at this point there's a parade, but It seems it won't happen so we're staying here for a while, there are still a multitude of people offering their condolences to Anthoine’s family and I assume they're waiting for everyone to finish, but the feeling is that it will never end.
Pierre is still exhausted, but he seems better than yesterday and last night.
Before we say goodbye, he looks at me without touching me. He's serious and solemn, his eyes, briefly uncovered by the dark glasses he's been wearing the whole time, reveal a blush filled with tears inevitably shed during the vigil just a moment ago.
- Win for Anthoine. - he repeats as he told me this morning.
I nod and then the call to our seats lets us know there won't be a parade, so I head to my garage like everyone else.
The car. I need that car. I have to get in it and run. I have to. Or I won't survive.

The monster just jumped out of me. At the start, I felt him pull me as if he were trying to block me, but I went anyway and he stayed behind.
From that moment on, for the entire race, it was just this for me.
Running, escaping to prevent him from catching me and getting back in.
As I run I don't think about anything, the world fades into a blur, I don't even have any rivals around me. I know they're there but I don't even perceive them. I run my race, I follow team orders and I run on instinct, totally on instinct. I don't think, I don't reflect, I just run with the only thought of not being caught, but not by Seb, Lewis, or Bottas.
I don't know what's happening around me, but I know that no one can catch me.
Nothing can catch me.
Only when I cross the finish line first, realizing it's finally my first victory, do I feel as if the weight I'd freed myself from, that I was running from, comes back to take me again.
Just enough time to run, because I'm faster than that weight, that monster which catches up with me again, but as soon as it does, it's as if a shred of humanity returns with it.
My eyes burn.
I won my first race the day after Anthoine died. How grotesque am I?
But maybe it was right like this, isn’t it?
It happened exactly that way with Jules and my father and maybe Max was right in the end, right?
They're all inside me, I love them, I'll never forget them. They're with me at every turn, they're always here with me and they'll never leave me.
So no, I'm not a monster. Maybe the monster is inside me and it's this difficulty experiencing painful emotions, the fear of being crushed by them if I do, of never being able to get up again, but it's not true that I'm the monster.
Are you right, Max?
I stop the car in the first-place spot and the first thing I do is raise my visor and close my eyes to contain this thought that burns beneficially. I raise my finger to the sky pointing to my friend who ran with me today and helped me.
I wasn't running away from my inhumanity, but from my humanity. Yet I actually want to be human, I desperately want to be human too. I'm just afraid of it.

When I get out of the car, I feel like there’s an extra strength that helps me, because my legs had become heavy and something was pressing down on my chest preventing me from lifting properly. I couldn't breathe, but in the end I manage.
I'm not celebrating, I can't do it, I just want to cry and I'm about to do it.
Before I just wanted to scream and while I was running like that it seemed like I was doing it, but now the tears want to flow and I'm holding them back a little longer.
Help me a little more, Anthoine. There are things to do, I've won my first race in F1, one of my dreams has come true. It couldn't have been any other way. I couldn't do it alone, but if someone helps me, I can.
So let me do the rest too.
Lewis is extremely sweet, he holds my shoulder like he's a dear friend and comforts me, even though before I didn't even want to be touched and everything bothered me. But after this escape, I feel like I'm a better human.
Still here in the parc fermé, among the drivers weighing themselves, Pierre approaches almost timidly and mortified; he does a smile of apology and gratitude at the same time. His porcupine hair, his thin and tired look, worn out, like someone who can't take it anymore. But he smiles, apologizes and thanks me.
- Thank you for keeping your promise. - he says finally. I immediately put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze, finding in this moment the strength to straighten up, move forward and continue doing what needs to be done.
I nod and then hug him without hesitation.
He needs me, this suddenly helps me, gives me the energy I needed as I felt my legs growing weaker and weaker.
The drivers around me come and go, weigh themselves, talk among themselves for a moment, comment on the commemoration during the race, the long applause on lap nineteen that erupted everywhere, but I immediately notice a presence in particular that I've felt almost the entire time, since this morning.
That presence, whose identity I knew perfectly well, but from which I cowardly ran away so as not to let him see what I didn't want him to see.
Again he stands there silently not coming forward, as if he knew I just wanted to be left alone, but as I glimpse him turning and walking away without saying anything, a part of me rebels.
No, don't stop understanding me as well as you have until now.
Now it's different, now I need a hand. Now I crave that contact.
You've always understood me, up until now, keep doing so.
I hastily say goodbye to Pierre and then run after him knowing that in about four seconds I'll be called back for the usual things. The post-race interview here on the track, the back of the podium, the podium, the press, the interviews.
But before I'm kidnapped and overwhelmed with duties and lose him until the next race weekend, I have to do something because now I'm better and I need it.
Even the urge to cry is less intense thanks to Anthoine and the invisible hand holding my shoulder.
Go, you're doing well, he's telling me.
I grab Max as he's ducking into a corridor to reach his box, I pull him by the arm moving us behind one of the enormous crates here and without thinking for a second—because if I did, it would be the end—I hug him.
My heart is pounding so hard, it feels like it's about to fall out of my mouth, but I keep my teeth clenched so it doesn't escape. I can't say a single word; the heat and overwhelming emotions are overflowing like never before. I can't contain them anymore, so I don't speak, I don't dare say anything. I don't know what would come out of me; from the way my eyes are burning, I think I'd cry and I don't want to yet.
I have to be strong and with the strength I hope to have, that I seek, that I desire, I hold him in my arms while burying my face in his neck. He's less sweaty than me because he finished first than us, but we both smell of racing, of the car, of fatigue. But it's a smell that represents us.
Max, caught completely off guard, returns the hug dazed, perhaps without even realizing it. His arms wrap around my waist, my body leans completely against his and we both lean against each other in this hidden corner, behind a providential crate full of racing equipment, in this corridor where a little further on there are drivers weighing themselves and people talking about the race and Anthoine.
Someone calls my name loudly, electricity floods my skin and my bones, I can't control myself anymore and I think it's even happiness, but luckily I find the strength to slip out of his arms and without looking at him, without daring to meet his eyes for a second, I run towards my duties.
I feel like both cheering and crying and I don't know why I hugged him, but I needed it; I'm a fucking mess. A fucking mess.
But I really think Max is no different and maybe that's what attract me to him so much. Because at this point I think it's clear that in some way I am. I don't know exactly how, but it's true.
I smile embarrassedly as I walk toward the microphones of the top three, where Lewis and Bottas are waiting. Part of it I think is that I'm really realizing I've had my first F1 win, one that I can't really celebrate; partly because of this hug and these emotions and this strange thing with Max. I could have stayed there much longer, even though in reality it was damned short. Not even a full minute. A few seconds. Too few to be enough for me.
I'll have to do something.”

/Max/

"He's like a crazy lunatic, one of those with multiple personalities.
Charles goes from ignoring me and running away from me, to grabbing me and even hugging me... and without even the excuse of alcohol!
He's completely crazy.
Then, of course, he still doesn't look at me and without saying a word, he quickly walks away as if he were running away from who knows what. From me, I suppose. Again!
But I remain stunned here in this corner, seduced and abandoned.
It's the same hug I gave him that night in Monte Carlo, at that club. I needed to be held by someone, but not just anyone. I thought anyone would be fine and in fact I fucked the first asshole who rubbed his dick against me, but in reality that wasn't the case. But it's okay, I never think before I act. I just act. Then maybe I realize it wasn't what I wanted, but I don't make a big deal out of it.
When I found him in front of me with a shocking coincidence, I realized what I wanted from him: a hug. His.
I don't know why, maybe it had something to do with the urge I felt to leave Daniel. I'd been dragging myself along for months, but I'd never had the courage to do it. He somehow made me understand that it was time, he gave me the strength to do it and just as he'd given it to me for that, he had to give it to me to move on.
Somehow Charles is becoming a sort of gravitational center responsible for many of my stupid actions, but this time he did everything, I did nothing.
I don't know if I should demand an explanation, but the truth is I know perfectly well why he did it and, above all, why he did it this way.
He feels the same way I do, but knowing how stubborn and fixated he’s on certain things, he hasn't admitted it to himself yet. He knows there's something going on with me, but he just doesn't want to see it and I think it'll take a while.
I smile like an idiot as I head back down the corridor I'd taken before.
It seems to me of having won instead of being dropped out in the middle of the race. It's absurd, almost as if I were touching the sky with my finger.
He doesn't know what he feels, but he knows he feels it and sometimes it's so great and powerful that he can't control himself. Maybe it was a thank you for not looking at him like a monster, even though he must have felt like one. From the way he was racing today, he certainly believed it.
But you're not, I hope you understood that.
You and I have that monster inside us, but we aren't.
You'll understand it as I did and if you don't get it because you're actually an idiot, I'll tell you again, but today is definitely not the right time or place.
Knowing you, you won't celebrate your first win in F1, but I know you'll have many and next time you'll do it and there will be the opportunity to create something, to grasp what I am now free to take.
Our track is ahead of us, it has many turns and pitfalls and there’re other drivers trying to fucking us, it's no easy, but I'm increasingly convinced that our life, from now on, will be a conversation between the two of us.
One way or another.
So I'll leave you alone now and enjoy this moment. Get back on track, get your shit together, then I'll come and ask for the rest.

During the interviews, I absentmindedly glance at the awards ceremony screens scattered around, occasionally showing highlights of the race. When I see Charles pointing to the sky, his eyes closed, his face turned upward, the cup clutched in his other hand, I smile softly.
Not everyone expresses their humanity by crying. Just because you don't cry doesn't mean you're not human and therefore a monster.
There’re also those like us who express humanity in other ways.
I don't know which, but I'm sure I'm not a monster. Daniel made me understand this, so I’ll always be grateful to him and will always love him in some way, even if not as him loves me. Without him, I would never have reached this important conclusion.
Thinking of him, I look among the others who are here to answer the journalists. I glimpse him in his yellow and black tracksuit, smiling as he speaks, even though there's a hint of bitterness in his eyes. Another unsatisfactory race. A truly difficult year, not to say obscene, but I couldn't have expected anything else. Unlike me, he expresses his feelings and emotions in the most classic and normal way and that's wonderful.
But my affinity and attraction, unfortunately, is for Charles and there's no point in continuing along tracks that seem more suitable to me. I actually don't like easy tracks and Charles is a damned infested and hellish track, but if I cross the finish line in first place, it’ll be fucking beautiful.

Seeing them together a few days later is fucking stinging. Damn, I could have done without it, but thinking of never seeing them together again is a pipe dream, given that we're always in the same fucking hotels and even on the same floors, because the division is always specific. The drivers are all put on the top floor because it's always the best floor, with the best views and access to those spacious and evocative terraces that often exist.
The rest of the teams are either on the lower floors or in other hotels.
So it's almost a given that they're always on the same floor.
As soon as they arrive in the lobby they immediately meet, then as soon as they settle into their rooms, you see them wandering around the hotel shortly after, always strictly together.
On the one hand, I'm happy to see Pierre feeling better; as I imagined the first weekend was the tough one, but what stings me is this different way they have of being close and looking at each other.
Fuck, before it was obvious there was a close relationship and I had serious doubts about their nature. I mean, I thought they were fucking and were a damn couple, but I wasn't sure.
Now it's clear from a mile away, there's no doubt about it. These guys are fucking and they're together!
Shit! Shit! Shit!
I left Daniel so I could be free to do whatever the fuck I want with others, but it's a shame I want Charles and he decided to fuck Pierre instead!
Is he doing this on purpose?
He left his girlfriend without batting an eyelid and I wasn't surprised. Of course, my dear, I thought. You're gay! You like cock! What were you doing with a girl?
But why, when I ask you about Pierre, you always say you're not together?
What would you say now? If I asked you now, what would you answer?
Suddenly this question is stuck in my head and becomes a real obsession, so much so that this damned Wednesday in Italy is a kind of torture.
It's his first hime race with Ferrari and it'll be special because the Italian fans are crazy and second to none. Besides, he won last week and will be carried higher than ever. I mean, they call him the Predestined One, right?
I wanted to ask him how he's doing, it seems fair and I'm interested, but right now if I asked him anything, I know full well that out of my mouth would come something like, 'Will you tell me once and for all if you're fucking Pierre and if you're together?'
But the point is, now I'm damn sure.
Holy shit!
I'm a tormented soul and all the fucking Wednesdays I have free to do my own thing, I'm on my own, locked in my room racing Sim Races without even talking to others online as I usually like to do.
I don't want to know or see anything or anyone. Fuck everyone. EVERYONE!

The next day I have one of the usual things with my teammate, Alex, who replaced Pierre this summer, luckily for me!
Alex is very cheerful and friendly and like it or not, he ends up involving me in these things we're always forced to do for sponsors Red Bull every damn race week, usually on Thursdays, and I end up relaxing and laughing with him shaking off this sulk I've had the whole time.
It's while I spend a few hours with him carrying out our duties as Red Bull drivers, that the epiphany of the century comes to me.
He and Charles are friends, they're part of the same group, they've been racing together since their go-kart days and they were always together. Plus, all of Charles's acquaintances from those days are practically mine; we separated when we moved to single-seaters, but before that we always raced in the same races. It's just that they bonded really well, they were a great group and they were all cheerful, while I was always on my own, even though they had nothing against me, nor I against them.
If anyone can tell me something about Charles and Pierre once and for all, it's Alex.
I know I'm a masochist and that knowing this is pointless torture, but I have to!
I have to get this fucking answer and as soon as all our scheduled commitments are over, at least the morning ones, I'll suggest we grab a bite together for lunch.
He won't refuse, he can't! Also because he's not a grumpy, world-hating guy; he's happy to hang out with anyone, so he won't refuse me and as soon as we're at the same table, with a bite in our mouths, I'll attack directly, mercilessly!
He'll have to answer me!
Yes, I will! Of course I will, damn it!”

NOTES: There are many metaphorical parts alternating with concrete events; both imagine their relationship as a race on a track, then there's this concept of a monster, which obviously represents a personal perception of a problem or discomfort they have. Often, especially those who are overly reflective and self-critical, like I imagine Charles, tend to exaggerate certain aspects of themselves and dramatize any flaws, but it's clearly just a way of seeing themselves, not reality. None of them are psychopaths, it's just part of their exploration, their journey and their maturation. Sorry if I'm sometimes late with the publication, but it depends on my work shift. Until next time. Kisses, Akane