An Alright Evening

In his flat I danced to Little Richard. The Girl Can’t Help It. My bare feet groped across the carpet restlessly and sent my whole body twisting in circles. My mini skirt came and went as it pleased. I couldn’t find my hands. They were all over the place. A cigarette was burning away in one of them.
         David sat on the leather couch with a fag of his own, his eyes chasing me around his living room. He was engrossed in my drunken dancing, and remained leaning into the arm rest, chin nestled in his hand. He was laughing as I tripped over myself and sang she can’t help it, the girl can’t help it every so often. He laughed until I danced myself into the wall, at which point he jumped up to stop me from crashing to the floor and asked if I was alright.
         We’d been in the pub since the early afternoon. I reeked of booze and fags. So did he. He’d been filling me up with pints all afternoon. We were the same age while exchanging comic tales of the time when. He had done some hilarious things in the past. I saw myself in him. The lady at the bar knew him. She had done since school. She drove herself mad trying to work out whether I was his much younger lover, a relative, or the centrepiece for a midlife crisis. She begged for us to fix her craving for gossip – prying eyes burning into us both, her upper body leaning across the bar so that she could get a better listen in. She didn’t have to ask. We didn’t have to tell her. She was left hanging on to the word ‘cheers’.
         Back at his flat I was alright. Off my face, but I was alright. He wouldn’t dance with me. He told me he didn’t dance. I sat myself down on the sofa beside him and asked him what did he do.
         He said he liked to wile away the hours watching late night television - game shows, horror movies, repeats but with sign language, the like - until his eyelids drooped and his eyes watered and itched with fatigue. I didn’t believe he ever closed his eyes.
         That’s what we did though. We watched television. I don’t recall what we watched, but I know I was bored. I know this because I was starting to become aware of the lager lingering on my tongue and shifting about in my guts, refusing to settle. I know I was bored because I remember finding an embroidery needle in my skirt pocket and pushing the point into my arm. It poked into me, only going so far into my flesh, but it sent stabbing pains up the surface. I lifted my arm up and let the needle hang from my skin.
         ‘Look, David, look what I can do.’
         ‘Yeah well. Look at what I can do.’
         He outdid me by stubbing out his cigarette on his arm.
         We were the same age and a pair of misfits. I wasn’t bored after that. I drank more than I should have and woke up the next morning in his bed.
         A regular occurrence for drunken young women, I know, but the other side of his double bed hadn’t been slept in; it remained made, and I remained fully clothed. Suffering from an almighty hangover, nonetheless, but on my way out of the bathroom after retching I caught the reflection of a virgin in the mirror.