you can touch me if you want to

this is entirely unrelated, purely cathartic and not for artful purposes. dig?


Coopers Hotel, 7pm.

Writing in a pen with no ink to appear busy, waiting in groups of five seconds, waiting for the rush of air around me and the fluster of material, of clothes and sighs as asses are plonked in seats. I don't, I can't wait the whole five seconds and I move, I fidget and meet the entering gaze. The conversation around the table which we picked with painstaking precision rises and hums, then buzzes painfully, roars and won't stop. My temples are burning, but I forgot to keep on the lookout and now you're already here, and I've waited with bile in my throat and now will you gone.


The women beside our three chairs stare at your pierced ears and long greasy hair and you snarl. I stare at the streetscape on the wall and remember when the red cake shop was discovered by our innocent tongues years ago and realise that the other stares at us both in turn, expectant.


She speaks in cheery false tones and we not but I want to scoff and I mostly want to stab and cry, infantile. I keep thinking how proud I am that we've never become and evolutionary off-cut and how the most forbidden unspeakable things have already happened but I don't care, I just want to be gone. You're both looking at me and sand has drained from my brain into my sinuses and now coats my tongue. Look away, burn away because I am concerned only with the painting behind her head and only it holds my fierce attention.


When I look up I have tears in my eyes and I'm so completely embarrassed but she's used to the dripping from my chin, but he's outraged and expresses the same frustration and hopelessness in the tearing of his voice, the angry high tones which might trade themselves for tears as free as mine if they could, just to try out how it feels to be able to leak like that. I would trade the blotches for anger if I could. People are scared of anger; tears are pathetic.


When I can see again, his hand is on her knee and she's smiling as me and all I see is love but why is his hand there if it's so clear that she needs me and I'm here but I don't have to be. A ring around my heart burns when our eyes meet because he and I are both really just sitting here alone with her and that smile which has made me crazy for six years.