Romantic dinners, walking in moonlight, you wrote. Hard liquor, harsh language, angry fucking in front of the television, you should have written.
I’ve fucked many men. Not a single one actually wanted romantic dinners or walks in moonlight more than they wanted whisky and fucking. You lay down with dogs, you get up with alcoholism and court ordered anger management.
What you called poetry was nothing more than sentimentality with line breaks.
What you called critique was barely concealed envy with a dash of I’ve got an MA but haven’t “made it” yet.
Your password was sugarplum: my third guess.
You thought you were so clever, but every single file on there was created just to fool you. None of it was real.
It was as though we’d always known each other. And then to our friends:this is the one I told you about. A contradistinction, a marking out: I place you before all others. This, to two years thence; snubbing one another in a supermarket, frantic that our eyes should avert.
I needed milk and bread. This wasn’t my suburb, it was your suburb. When we separated our CDs and friends again, we also divided up the city. You took one quarter and I took another. I lost my favourite bar, but gained your favourite cafe although their breakfasts didn’t taste the same without you whining at me to hurry up with the lifestyle section. So I shouldn’t have been in your supermarket, but there I was, anyway, passing through, and there you were, and of course, my hair was unwashed, and I was wearing laundry-day clothes. You weren’t supposed to see me like that. You should only have been able to see me smoothly coiffed and sparkling, enchanting another boy with my laughter and general adorableness. So I ducked behind the bread racks. So I avoided you. So what?
They liked your little notes of appreciation: handwritten and folded in half, yellow and blue. I liked the way you smoked your cigarettes, the names you called me, and the way you smacked me around.
When we first met I thought you were an ex-smoker who was looking for another fix. You leaned in whenever I was smoking, watching my hand as I raised the cancer stick to my mouth, breathing in heavily. I thought you wanted the little bit of death I was inhaling, but it turns out you wanted me.
