Hedonism

Such a night! M was her usual vision of vivacity―big curls, big smile, and big eyes filled with that liquid vulnerability. I was all colours and cabana, deviant in my determination to wring every libertine moment out of Saturday―and there's no one better to do it with than M.

Dinner was a sinful hour of pinot and pizza, the news of her newly-single status as much a shock to my system as the red wine was. 'That's how it is―you gave your heart, your mind, your body. The only thing you hope you can keep when all that is over is your own sanity,' M quipped, her expression so set in neutrality that even my perceptiveness drew a quick, quiet blank.

The sudden wash of rain added that certain noir mood; they played Eros Ramazzotti, we topped up our wine and shared a slice of Valrhona torte in homage to hedonism. 'I feel like dancing,' M declared, just as I tipped the bottle and found it dry. I flashed her a wicked smile. 'Flings,' I said in a conspiratorial whisper as we walked out of the pizza bar into the mist of rain, 'are made in, and for, moments like these.'

An hour later, C and his friend were standing dutifully where I said we could meet. C's blue-eyed friend is blonder, stockier, older, but they share the same name and a similar cavalier charm. C's eyes dimmed with casual tenderness as he pulled me into a knowing embrace. 'It's been too long, my dear Jean,' he said, not bothering to whisper, unceremonious with his candor.

'You owe me,' I muttered into his collarbone, a mush of unpolished sentiment against his warmth. We separated long enough to make the necessary introductions, and after the first round of drinks and some rowdy, raucous dancing, there was no better personification of youth's extravagance than the four of us. M, slinking her body around her newfound friend; C, twirling me to the tunes that had been the anthem to our parents' time; M, wrapping her arms around me as the boys smoked; C, quietly kissing me in open discretion.

I say without irony that despite our debauched, decadent behaviour, there was a certain innocence to that sort of uninhibition. There was no dilemma, no need for moral sancity, no thought for consequence, no pretense, no greater authority that could red-tape us into conditioned submission. We were four very young people, each with our own histories and burdens and lusts, each filled with different ambitions and fights and fears, and all teeming with mindless energy, because the sum of all our yesterdays could not yet paint the dawn for a circumscribed tomorrow. Our youth, for the moment, was witless, sightless, and reckless. It made us―clichéd as this sounds in my current sobriety―free.

As I began the feel the first wave of giddiness―from the drinks, from the thumping beats, from the smoke, from C's cologne―he held me firmly in that long-limbed embrace that spoke of our strange familiarity, of his careless intimacy, and of the hedonistic nature I know I've always had, and would never really outgrow of. My smoky, sordid, oblivious self―fitting, then, that she is only known to, and loved by, her callous, self-indulgent Adonis. United by the tempting, tempestuous knowledge of our nameless connection, we were like Bonnie and Clyde, armed with irrationality, and ready to rob the night of any pleasure it could provide.

As I watched the four of us leave the club, M with her C, and I with mine, I was lavishly comforted by the thought of how our heartaches and struggles, like Saturday nights, do not last forever. The elasticity of our emotions, perhaps, is the most rewarding of all the pleasures youth is kind enough to dispense.