She asks me when I lost my Vs.
It wasn’t long before the start
of first year uni, I say.
Does that count me as latecomer
or not? Lame pun, but
roughly, yeah, I guess. Go on.
We’d spent the night half-mindedly
playing Trivial Pursuit
at my friend’s parent’s house
(the house was very big,
and the lounge room where we played
made us feel like grown-ups;
ancestral portraits slightly blank
and flabby at the brush edges,
medical periodical drop-leaf
with ancient book inlay,
nautical clock in a bottle)
You’re stalling. How’d you both
get home. She drove;
she only drank Red Bulls
and had a fount of uncynical
innocence I couldn’t compete with,
I mean she sang the radio
the whole way back
while commenting I was
the only drunk in existence
who wouldn’t sing or dance
to stuff. I’ve got my own
stuff going on,
I wanted to exclaim,
puncturing for door handle foam
with the nail of my thumb.
When we pulled up,
my bedroom window loomed
down at the street,
lower-intestine dark,
soon to be filled, I supposed,
with moon of skin,
archipelagoes of clothes,
a general stumbling.
Excuse me, I said, there’s
something I quickly need to do:
literally, I sprinted around the
entire block like Superman,
battening down my brain.
Ok. I’m fine to go in now.