THE BATTLEGROUND

I've seen the men that emerge from the battleground. The bleary-eyed, beleaguered men. They haven't bathed for days, unshaved, but not unscathed, they emerge from the battleground called Love. Men that wake up in the middle of the night traumatized by the ferocity of the battle. Men who touch their necks gingerly, reminiscing hickies they received in battle.

I saw a man once whose entire neck was choc-a-bloc with blue and purple patches. The scars of battle.

Mosquito bites, he told his mother.

Bullshit, said his mother.

Son, we weren't born yesterday, said his father.

He has a girlfrie*SMACK*, said his brother.

The battleground is strewn with burnt love letters and broken hearts and Little Hearts and flowers in dustbins and smiling-couple polaroids that are torn in two and sometimes look like someone tried burning them. It's a grim war.

Men with six packs less than those hairless wonders from 300 "This is Sparta," forced into battle. Many a young man, in the prime of life forced into war.

This post is for them. Those courageous men, who braved the battle and got burnt. Some of them twice bitten and twice shy. How many men can say they've come out of that alive. This post is for you.

This is NOT for those men who were hurt at The Battleground of One Night Stands I Don't Think She's Coming Back For More. That battleground is 2 blocks down the road, take a left at I'mgonnagetlaid, a right at WooHoo, then walk 100 yards north of a primate dressed in a purple velvet suit called The Pimp Chimp, and stop where Sex marks the spot.