Masquerade

There are some trespasses I can no longer forgive, because―let's face it―I'm old enough to know better. Like getting smashed. Like sneaking errant drags from someone else's fag. Like abashing my heart into a skittish mess with yet another careless valentine.

The problem with getting drunk with someone is that one person will always remember everything the other forgets. The problem with getting involved with an old lover―cigarettes, I mean―is the fallacy that because you've walked away once, and you can always turn your back again, should you choose to. And the problem with my treacherous, thieving heart is the fact that it is both treacherous and thieving, and I'm not sure if it should be offered anywhere within a ten-mile radius of an asylum.

Of course, in my less poetic moments―which I have in abundance these days―I merely shrug: shit happens. I'm only human, with anemic desires and shallow philosophies. I'm young, I have my days. I let loose, so that I don't get lost completely. So assailable is my self-justification that the moment my alcoholic-haze slips, my regimented reality hits faster that the proverbial hang-over.

Over the years I've realised that I enjoy many things―but mostly from a distance, or in retrospect. I've lost count of the number of times I couldn't wait for something to be over so that I could write about it, and make sense of it in my own perspective. For the longest time, nothing is real to me unless I could extirpate its essence and translate it into words―my words.

And so it was, a textbook Saturday evening: there was enough alchohol to drown a small army, and obviously not enough sense to stop our happy hour before it floored us. I watched us from a detached, incurious manner; I recorded our mannerisms, the way we fumbled for a commonplace to make up for our differences, the way we were almost deliberately casual, yet the undertone of intimacy pulsed alongside our heightened heartbeats. They played Duran Duran; you twirled me like the suburban wife I would never be. They cranked up the beats of old songs; we played off each other's youth and monkeyed around with unglamourous abandon. They told us that the night was still young; we grinned slyly and understood each other's wicked wants.

You make it too easy for me. And I make it too easy for me. I was reduced to a contemptible clichéd when we parted with my whisper: you make me break all my rules.

To which you only reward with that sleepy, persistent smile of yours. Noch einmal, bitte―bevor du gehst.