1 Juice

Of course, I think, for a moment, he didn’t actually say that, I just heard that, I just imagined him saying that, I just made that up, because I think it would be interesting. Or would it?

I realise I need to press pause. But he looks at me with this frankness, still, with this openness. If only I could remember meeting me then, then it might make more sense for him to be saying he imagines himself meeting me now. Or was it a joke? I don’t remember being much given to jokes. I don’t think I was humourless, though I was, undoubtedly, earnest.

I need to press pause, metaphorically, on these ‘proceedings’ (they’re not really going anywhere fast) and allow myself to remember what mattered. And what didn’t. Before I say anything more. But can I leave him just hanging there, here right in front of me? I can’t. Can I just ignore what he’d said as if he hadn’t said it and I had just imagined him saying it? I could, but that might be rude, and rudeness is unacceptable, therefore I can’t. Can I ask him if he really meant that, if he actually knows who I am? Well, I can, but say he doesn’t know who I am, say it was just a throwaway remark, say it was just me being a little bit clever, a tiny tad ‘interesting’, at the age of twenty, twenty-one, then how do I explain to him what I mean, without disturbing his own reality? Is his reality not already disturbed? Mine certainly is. But then I also realise I’m suddenly rather enjoying this. Up until almost this precise moment I had been greatly discomfited, not in a profoundly stressed or let alone panicked manner, just really, really unsure of what on earth was going on, but now, maybe jolted by his answer I feel I’ve just come up for air. I can float in this sea of uncertainty now. Accept it for what it is, even not knowing what it is. That, it strikes me as suddenly obvious, will have to somehow become my new state of being, for quite some time.

I give him a smile that says ‘I do understand’, although clearly I don’t, and enquire just a nudge further: ‘I mean in life, what do you see yourself doing?’

His skin is incredibly smooth. I don’t recall touching my skin when it was that smooth, that soft. I don’t feel like touching it now though I do wish I could hold him, just to make him feel safe. Then again, I have rarely if ever not felt safe at that age and seeing that this is me not some stranger – although for all I know about him or of him, he might as well be an alien – I just look at him, look at me. ‘You’re a writer.’ I say not questioning, stating.

‘I am,’ he says, happy, it seems, that this is so clear; though: ‘how did you guess?’

Ah. That turns everything round once again. He doesn’t know who I am. How could he, in his life I don’t yet exist, other than perhaps in his imagination but then I remember that at his age I was certain – not vaguely inclined to believe, but convinced – that I would never make it to forty. I had said so, to my best friend, Patricia: she was appalled. ‘How can you say a thing like that?’ she’d exclaimed upon my assertion, aged nineteen or twenty, that I would not make it to forty. But I saw no reason to be scandalised: for me, aged nineteen or twenty, the idea alone of ever being as ancient as forty was simply absurd. Surely everything, anything, worthwhile experiencing, doing, saying or, for that matter, writing, would have been experienced, done, said and most certainly written by then.

I have already outlived my early target by some ten years and I know now of course that he can’t know who I am because he doesn’t believe that I will ever exist. Not because he’s being obstreperous or deliberately controversial or simply obtuse, but because he can’t actually imagine it.

This is my chance, this is my opportunity for a pause: if I can make him think then I’ll get the time to think too. There must be, there must be a link between him and me.

‘I saw your notepad and pen,’ I say, playing the I’m an observer card.

He now for the second time does something that moves me, he shows me the pad. I take that, before I can think it through, as a signal of trust. And I read. As I read, I remember well having written those words. I have my pause button. I have a clasp on my heart. I have left the dimensions I was travelling through to get here. I can, at last, reconcile.

.

.

i should point out

that i’m not real

the

juice

that courses through my body

is not

squeezed

by ordinary means

i want to know how things happen.

i want to know how it happens that you see somebody

not even meet them

see somebody

from a distance

enter a room, for example

and think

you don’t

think, you go

yes

that’s him

that’s

the one

(even though

it will turn out

it isn’t)

how does this happen

it’s ludicrous

you don’t even know him:

it is

insane

i

undress him in my mind, imagine him

naked.

i don’t do this immediately

it’s not something i

jump to

like a conclusion

it’s something i resist for a moment

then for another

and for another

until enough moments have passed

an hour or so later, maybe two (sometimes

a whole day or more may pass before i feel it is

acceptable

before i feel ready) to imagine him

naked. i

touch

his body in my mind, his

chest, my

extended fingers spread, gently, run

over the mound of his biceps:

delectable

my

other hand now cups around his waist, just above his

hip

and draws him a little closer, close enough that i can

when i lower my head

just a little

inhale

the scent of his

body

musk with a warm sweet sweat of

excitement

i

zonk out of it

just in time: i don’t want him

there yet

not yet we have not even yet said

hello.