Skate

I’m crying, I think, it’s not very pretty

these strings of snot and blood

keep shaking my head, like a dog, trying to clear my vision.

It doesn’t work.

But I keep doing it anyway until it pitches me sideways, my fucked up face on the white painted floorboards. I can see these little misshapen bodies of dust beneath the bed; dust mice my grandmother called them.

I don’t know if this is the regular term.

I’m stretching out a tentative finger to stroke one but it doesn’t reach.

Blood from my nose pools in the back of my mouth, it tastes kind of gross so I cough and spit it out then – shit – I remember where I am

“sorry”

try and scoop it up kinda but then I’m just left with this palm full of – ugh
stuff I don’t know what to do with.

It’s not going very well

I look up at him and he’s put some kind of robe on, he says:

“I’ll get some ice” and I say “if it’s not too much trouble” only I don’t think it’s that intelligible, it’s more like:

“uhh fsshnuh ooumuh bluh” or something.

I think probably my nose is broken. It’s really embarrassing.

About fifteen minutes before and he’s trying to give me head. I told him:

“I don’t really do that?”

But he’s all “oh c’mon you’ll like it, I promise.”

I won’t

I can pretty much guarantee it, but whatever.

I’m roller skating downhill. I’m holding hands with my best friend, her name is Aisha. The surface of the road is made of gravel and the roller skates are the cheap metal kind that go over your regular shoes. I’m enjoying how this combination makes my soles buzz, then how that buzz spreads through all the bones in my feet and up my shins until my knees are buzzing too. Aisha is also enjoying it. I can tell. It’s evening in the late summer so the sunlight has this hazy and kind of melancholy quality. If it had a caption it would read:

NOSTALGIA

it would be written in a font particular to your own childhood. It would make you sigh softly and feel a little sad, but in a warm, sentimental way.

He stops whatever he’s doing.

“this isn’t really working”

His eyes have lost that intense but blurry look. He’s probably getting bored.

I wriggle my toes, my feet are still buzzing.

“hello – oh” he waves at my face.

bored and a little irritated.
not that much.

“I need you to be more – “and he’s frowning grasping for the right word or phrase.

“into it?”

I sit up and cross my legs.

“you could try being a bit – umm” I bite my lip, pretending to think for a moment. I hope it looks cute rather than retarded.

“rougher?”

“ok”

He doesn’t sound that sure.

“like this?”

He kind of pushes me backwards, quite slowly and slaps my cheek; only it’s not really a slap more like a regular touch only slightly – firmer.

It wasn’t really what I had in mind.

I’m smiling brightly, scramble up looking around for some – prop?

“no – more like this”

I can’t see anything suitable so I’m improvising –grasping my hair at the crown and – the mechanics of this sound implausible, but it works – sort of – I slam my head down hard face first into the corner of the glass topped bedside table.

Shit

something kind of – gives way - then fades out in orange and dark green and I hit the floorboards. I don’t think I pass out though and I’m pushing myself up on my arms.

I can hear him opening the freezer door through where the kitchen must be.
I’m wondering in an abstract kind of way whether it’s still appropriate to ask him for money, and if so then how much?

I notice a pile of CD’s stacked on the floor by the bed. Some of them are really fucking cool, for some reason this makes me feel about a million times worse.