With or Without Who...

The fastest thought that takes over you even before you know it, is the thought that seeps into you while you are surrounded by dim lights, blue, red, green , purple ones while you sip your drink and pretend that life will take its own course, putting you and your memories in a less painful place. The thought starts as a trickle in your head, the faucet gingerly being opened on a winter’s night afraid that what will pour will sting your flesh, makes you shudder uncomfortably You fight it, smiling across the table to your buddy, taking another swig of the beer that’s come by ‘four in a pack for the price of three”, you smile away your unsettling thought, you are trying not to open the faucet yet. You like all things risky with a potential to hurt you but so enticing, so seductive. So you open the faucet. This time you take a stronger bitter gulp of your “draft” beer. You flinch, find your buddy sneaking a peek at your face, you smile back reassuring him, “Yes, I’m ok. No I’m not crying within or unhappy. Yes these tears aren’t to be wasted now”. But the faucet has been turned on faster, the music louder and the beer’s high – well you are not drunk, so you think faster. A flat with a view that looks out to the matchbox city, offering you a horizon unmatchable for a suburban accommodation. The flat is a home no longer identifiable by two or three bedrooms, it’s the pair of clothes you always find strewn in the hall when you come home first, it’s the ash tray by the bedside, a watch forgotten to be worn to office today, a goblet of wine that’s been drunk while Murakami’s Norwegian Wood was flipped in silence. I smile. I breathe in small gulps, take another look at my watch. It’s closer to bedtime, there’s no door to be locked open, no clothes strewn about, no ash tray...not even the ashes that would settle on the floor and get into my hair, no wine stained goblet, the only semblance of a watch :the impending doom of an early Monday morning, the clock by my bedside staring at me angrily, and the Norwegian Wood.... a boy is strumming the lyrics on his guitar, his eyes close and open to look at me and then look away. I wait for him to look again. I stare at my watch. It’s time to take the last swig of my lukewarm beer. The wait is over. There’s a passenger, I have been waiting for but now the wait is over. I have to return home alone.