Evenings and Weekends

by Oisín McKenna

She wanted love enormously, so much so that she felt demeaned by it. Certainly, she thought it was old-fashioned to need love as much as she did, but the world was hard. She was afraid all the time, and she only sometimes felt beautiful, and yes, to enjoy her own company would be a fine thing, but getting a boyfriend seemed easier, and what was so wrong with the path of least resistance?

London.’ ‘Don’t you love it here?’ ‘I just feel like I’m always waiting for something to happen, like one of these eight million lives is going to collide with mine and knock me off course towards something else. But they never do! Nothing ever happens. People keep their heads down. They mind their own business. People in London are too tired to be colliding with each other all the time.’

surely that’s what a global catastrophe means for anyone: it’s not the loss of the world at large you mourn, it’s the loss of your world, your life, your boyfriend’s gorgeous little smile in the morning, the way he says mwah mwah mwah mwah while planting big slobbery kisses all over your forearm.

He only wanted to stay in the pose that his body and Keith’s body would create when they collapsed on top of each other, and remain in that pose when they both dozed off, and make a whole new pose when they both woke up, and do the same thing again and again on as many evenings, weekends, and mornings as possible, without either of them having to neglect other important commitments, like earning money, having friends, or speaking to their parents on the phone.