In fact, I wanted nothing, and that’s precisely what I’d get, most of the time. My will was something I had no memory of, and the mysterious disappearance of which would be certified only later, to my great embarrassment. Yet, that temporary lack of purpose still allowed room for stubbornness, consisting mainly in trusting nobody and pretending I didn’t care.
When the doorbell rang at night I raised my head from my laptop screen and decided whether or not I was in. And when I wasn’t, I thought of that small portion of space between you and the entrance gate, filled by the warmth of your body leaning against it, in a closeness which was almost unattainable when you knew that I was watching.
I heard you climb the steps at an incoherent pace, and met you on the threshold, wrapped in a dark coat, asking for a blowjob the way a child would ask for candy. That made me laugh. It was the part I both liked and disliked the most. But I figured it would fit well into a narrative.
Lying in my single bed, you looked like a giant Saint Sebastian escaped from martyrdom to find some shelter in a hidden place, where nobody could have found you, with somebody no one knew – especially you. You used to expound a whole bunch of reasons for keeping your shirt on. Is this why I can’t remember the touch of your skin? Yet I have a tableau of bright recollections, of myself being lifted like a feather, unexpectedly, while pouring tea, then caught on the sofa, negotiating the ardour of a kiss, in a grey jersey dress apparently too provocative to be worn at the supermarket; and, going backwards, your theatrical pose on the library staircase, a phone conversation you were not supposed to listen to, a short car journey while I kept singing.
I never knew if I could hold you all, contain you all. Should I have tried? There was a lot of everything about you: big, dick, hair, mind, taste, even boredom, for all that shifting from one position to another, that jumping from bed to table, from table to sofa, from Miles Davis to PJ Harvey which constantly cut the tension into small nothings, bringing relief and exhaustion to a hunger feeding on itself. Do affinities unite? I desperately wished this to be true, a contradiction in terms blowing my philosophy and deceiveing my emotions. And I let you drop into a liquid present that I perceived as infinite, for that tricky sense of time of mine, which made me miss you whenever you were there.
