#205

It was the day of the clegs. They’re these black flies that are bigger than they need to be and somewhere along the way I’ve gotten it into my head that they only show up on one day of the year. This is just a theory I made up, but I haven’t seen it disproved yet. On the day of the clegs, the fuckers are everywhere. You walk down the street and they blunder into your face. You look down and they’re crawling on your t-shirt. Gross.

So it was the day of the clegs, a hot day in the summer, and in the evening I assembled people to go to The Golden Hour at the Forest, but when we got there I didn’t feel like it. The prospect of being crammed into a stuffy room didn’t appeal; it gets too crowded when it’s the Golden Hour, and I can’t hack it, much as I’d like to attend. Plus I hadn’t seen some of my friends in a while and I wanted to catch up with them. So we legged it to the off-licence two minutes before closing, bought some alcohol and drank it outside on the pavement. #205 distributed cups so we looked slightly more civilised. Once the event was over, we wound up inside and I drank bramble wine and berry wine and ate chocolate cake.

Few people seem to have a makeout rate to rival mine, but I witnessed #205 doing the rounds. Holy shit. I put on a CD and we danced to Civil Twilight by the Weakerthans. We made out by the staircase. It was a late night; when I woke up I found mystery bruises that were practically black.

A few days later I had a stall at the zine fair that #205 had co-organised. That was how we’d originally met, I think; she’d invited me to take part in it. #196 kindly came along to keep me company, and I wrote some blurb explaining what kind of stuff was in my zine, and endured the usual awkward moments of people flicking through your very personal thoughts and then putting them down again and walking away; but in the end, I sold quite a few.

I was tired. Late in the evening, I returned to the Forest for #205’s genderfuck party. She was leaving town the next day. I had decided to try to be edge, and I had been there all of five seconds, standing against the wall waiting for #196, listening to music, oblivious, when #205 appeared by my side, in drag king mode, and handed me some vodka punch. I was shy around her. I would have probably made out with her later, or certainly made a move in that direction, but it was not to be, because then there was some drama with my friends and we left the party early.

It was a long time before I saw her again: more than a year. She was back in town for a while – for longer than she expected, due to a passport glitch that left her stranded. Out of the blue, I got an invitation to her birthday night out. I happened to be getting drunk with #191 and her girlfriend and #116, so by the time we made it to the pub, I’d forgotten why we were there and was surprised to run into #205. As a result I don’t remember a whole lot of our conversation either. I’d gotten back together with #116 by that point (you know, the undocumented post-blog-entry version) and #205 was possibly interested in her or in me or in both of us, it’s hazy so it’s hard to say. “If you want to get off with her go ahead,” #116 advised, but I knew she wasn’t really okay with it, and I skipped it: we were too drunk to suddenly, finally, have the non-monogamy talk, it would have to wait.

~ by Nine on 22 February 2010.