eighteen

Do you remember the first night we met? We had actually met a few times before, but I mean the first night we hung out, without any mutual friends as buffers. I came to your work after close with my workmates and must have been there until at least 4am, it can't have been too much later because it was still dark when we got to your apartment. Your friend Jase was there – he became my friend after that night – and someone else maybe but that I'm not sure of. I'm not sure of very much, considering the circumstances and all the years that have passed since, but there are things that have stayed with me. I tripped on the stairs, I remember protesting that I had not eaten that night, it's something you say when you are embarassed at showing how drunk you are, isn't it? I remember you, I think it was you – there was something there I thought, I hoped, eyes had been made earlier – putting a pill in my mouth. Actually I might not remember that, maybe it was handed to me and I swallowed it on my own. It was not my first but still new enough. I remember only a few minutes passing before I was throwing up all over the bathroom. Had you been showering, did I burst in? Maybe you came in and found me there. I imagine any glimmer of that something faded away while you cleaned up my puke, I don't really know now. I remember you found a hair tie somewhere, to tie my hair up. I remember that I fell asleep and you went out with the others, there were early morning 'hospo nights' then, surely there still are, and I remember when I woke up the next day I thought someone had come into my room and painted the wall while I was sleeping, before I remembered that I was in your bed. You were next to me then, and I remember that you kissed me when we were both only just awake, I remember you had been wearing blue underwear, not shorts but tight, y fronts, no boys I knew wore that sort of underwear then.

Though your blue underwear may have been another time, later on.

I heard a few years ago that you were living here, and we have talked once, on a bizarre trip out of town we both happened to be on. But I didn't think about that night then, I just thought of it today, when we passed each other on the street, without recognition. I remember we joked about the wastefulness of my purge, I remember being both flattered and repulsed that you had kissed me after the events of only a few hours earlier. I remember that I went to your apartment for a while after that, always so late at night that it was already the next morning, a few times staying until it was the next night again. You were tall, tall and skinny with a baby's face and curls. You wore underwear that was different from the boys' whose underwear I had seen before.