this way. No, we didn’t start out this way.
Years ago, I remember. I see you across a bonfire on New Year’s Eve. All soft and glowing, lit by the light of the flames. I’m rolling a joint and you catch my eye. After that, millions of sideward glances, a small smile or two, laughter. A reshuffling of places as people stand to refill their drinks, use the loo, seek cigarettes and matches. At some point, we find ourselves seated next to each other. I pass you a joint and you take delicate puffs, most of the smoke escaping your mouth. I wish I could say something witty, or smart. That I could quote a line from a book or something, so that whatever we might share after this, however extended or fleeting, would always have this beginning. Instead, when you hand the joint back, I hear myself say, ‘Good stuff, no?’
And in an instant, everything becomes forgettable.
You’re older.
I’ve just begun university and you’re in your final year.
‘Please don’t ask “what next” …’
I was about to, but protest, saying I wasn’t, and comment on the weather instead. Something truly meaningful about it being cold. You make no reply.
Fuck. It’s some terribly banal conversation I’m attempting. But you make me nervous. Even if I’ve just met you, I feel I must appear more than I am, or have ever been. A better version of myself, shinier, somehow more brilliant. Much later, I will put it down to something simple. Awe. Like you’re some rare bird visiting a garden. Stupid as it might sound, at the time it feels like a privilege, that you should choose me. I’ve never been gladder that I left home, a small town in the east of the country, and moved to the capital, the city without a river. I’ve always had a sense that everything beyond is so much larger, that it moves to crazy rhythms, and contains people like you. That night, I sit next to you, joint following joint, expanding my senses into the sky. This is what it was like, I think, for explorers, perched on the brink of an expedition. You an undiscovered continent. A land that hasn’t been charted. And in a way, for me, the world.
That night around the bonfire a discussion breaks out.
We’re an odd group. All of us having headed out for the weekend to this hill station. Cheap. Good weed. Popular with backpackers. The place we’re staying in has a terrace, and there we all congregate. Some foreigners, some locals, a large college bunch from the city. It isn’t yet midnight, but late enough for a friendly buzz rising with the fumes of cheap alcohol. Small talk has been made, travel stories swapped. Time then for drunken philosophizing.
Someone asks, ‘What would you do if it could be seen?’
‘What?’ I ask. I haven’t been paying attention.
‘Grief.’
I say I don’t understand.
Future grief in the face of someone you’ve just met.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Grief that you will cause. Someone you will be with. If you could see it, would it deter you? Or would you be willing to take the risk, test the prophecy?’
I say I would.
A clash of opinions come flooding in. It’s cruel. No, surely now that one is aware, it can be avoided. Yet, isn’t that the thing about prophecies? They are self-fulfilling. The argument continues. I lose interest. You, I notice, remain quiet.
Later, I go back to the room of a French tourist. It isn’t my first time. I’d slept with a girl in my hometown a few months before I left for the city. We had lain naked on the bed of a friend’s ground-floor bedroom, and heard abuses hurled through the darkened window, along with the clatter of stones on the roof.
‘What’s happening?’ she had asked in fright.
‘Someone saw us,’ I said. Probably our friend’s nosy and deeply religious neighbours. ‘Should we stop?’ she asked.
‘No.’ I was almost in her. And when I pushed myself inside, I shuddered and was still in less than a minute. It isn’t that quick with the French girl. She emits tiny, excitable squeals that distract me. It’s cold. The bed a slab of ice. I’m clumsy. She likes biting, and I wince as she almost draws blood from my lip. I like her blonde hair though, and her shapely waist, her long legs that wind around me. Finally, I bury my face in her shoulder, above her small pear-like breasts, thrust hard and quick, and it’s over soon enough. I’m thinking of you at the bonfire.
I don’t meet you again until a month later. At a student party, back in the city without a river. One of those unwieldy gatherings that usually ends in a drunken brawl. I find you on the balcony, looking as though you’re waiting for no one. This time, I think, I’ll say something memorable.
‘Where were you while we were getting high?’
For a moment you look confused, then you smile.
‘I came back with another joint … and you were gone.’
‘It was cold … I was sleepy.’
I light a cigarette and lean on the railing.
‘Did you have a good time … that night?’
I nod, remembering, in a flash, the blonde girl. ‘Would’ve been better if you were there …’
‘I’m here now.’
‘For how long?’
You glance at your almost empty plastic cup. ‘As long as the alcohol lasts.’
‘So that’s ten more minutes, then.’
When you laugh, I want to kiss you.
It turns out you too are from my small town in the east of the country. But from a different, posher, neighbourhood. Also, you’ve lived here for quite a few years now. ‘And maybe at some point, elsewhere,’ you add. I have a feeling you might be more of a drifter than I am. For even though I want to get away, I know my roots. I drop you back to your flat that night on my motorbike. I drive slowly, because I want to reassure you that I’m a safe driver. Also, I want the ride to last. Your hands gripping my sides, the feel of your chest on my back.
When we arrive, I ask, ‘I’ll see you soon?’
You nod. Then, with a wave, you’re gone.
I’m amazed by how we begin with so little, or no, conflict.
It’s not what I have known.
I’m only twenty-two but life has been long.
I started out studying something my parents thought useful. Two semesters in biotechnology though, and I’d failed every exam, spent all the money I’d been given for the year, and switched courses. To the fury of my physician father, of course. But my mother, the gentler of the two, persuaded him to let me be. If it was visual studies I wanted to pursue, so be it.
I never told them that all I really wanted was to be a musician.
‘You play well,’ you tell me.
We are at a house party, sitting in the living room where I’ve
