He slunk in, past the Bruce Willis-sized
picture of Bruce Willis and its neon-bulb satellites
on his wardrobe door
and poured me a large white.
I glugged it down and then
glugged another one down and then,
straddling me, he mused, “You know,
something tells me your heart’s
not really in this.” His sharp-chiselled visage
chirruped, “The only thing you want to
push is a few boundaries.”
I’d met Ben through a plump hamster-bearded
Punjabi robot-programmer with
sensible shoes and a mephedrone habit
who’d played me at badminton for three hours
after I’d dropped acid for the first time
and who claimed to dislike reggae but
possibly be in denial. “Like an
Egyptian who’s fallen out of his boat,”
I quipped, at which Ben actually laughed
and ruffled my hair as we lounged
around the sensible-trousered Sikh’s room
subsiding from various powders
and filling in a crossword book.
“Four down, Edith Cavell,” I stated
as certain as the reforestation of Chernobyl High Street
just because her face
had once appeared on a Smiths record cover,
but it was enough
to impress the sharp-chiselled gentleman.
So there I lay, with Bruce Willis
peering at me over Ben’s shoulder.
“Not in my face,” I ordered.
He promised.
“You bastard!” I roared,
rubbing an apologetic man’s
pillow into my left eye.
