I like the concept of love, I do. But the idea of having to care about someone when I can’t muster the bottle to care about myself is about as attractive as the bloated carcasses of the nobodies who couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that nobody wanted them. And the Torah of rules for falling in love should really face their hard truth that I couldn’t be bothered reading it- god willing, it’ll take itself out back and add itself to the list of people that made up that last sentence. I suppose its odd for me, I don’t struggle to find my footing on the ridges of drunk girls’ hearts, with my dour smile and shadowed haunch- so why am I so lonely? I can blag the intricacies of the novella your wife keeps by the washing machine, I know, I’ve done it countless times before. It always starts with a smile, a fake smile. Sheltering two lurched grey dots from the howitzers of some girl’s earnest connection. I have a constant burn on my chest, like the bacon fat that plasters an office block’s blood pump, but I’m healthy enough- the pain is there nonetheless. I sometimes wonder if the magnet of this woman could fix my problems, bleed the constant sadness, but she’d probably want something like care in return- I’ll wait till the price comes down a bit.

I’d stumble through the front door of our studio crack house, with a welcome mat by the pile of bedding we’re too afraid to open lest the fetid remains of a year of bad luck rot back at us. My eyes are cracking at the seams, stretching to break like the lace of your charity shop lingerie. You were waiting in the kitchen for the huff and sigh of my deluded tie, really you were gagging to inject some love and romance into this sexless living arrangement that drags us to the corner table of countless wedding receptions. It’s our own fault I suppose, It’s dwarfed by the fear of being alone- even if we are paranoid with the “will they? / won’t they?” looks of other’s better halves. We’d never act on it, of course, how could we? Who’s fucking bed would we use? We are at the end now, there is no Byronesque romanticism in blowing each other’s brains out in a Wetherspoons lavatory, let’s just do it here.