ideal life.

it starts in the morning. i am asleep in bed. the room is all white linen and bright white light. the bed is low to the floor and there is a floor to ceiling window on the left hand side. i wake up slowly and stretch. my toes brush against the legs of the man in the bed with me. he lies on his front buried in the sheets, black hair poking out.

i get up quietly and put on some clothes, no shoes. the plain wood floorboards are hot under the sunlight. i make my way down the first flight of stairs. out the front door. its early and it is Sunday , everyone with half a brain is still in bed recovering. on the corner is the tiny shop that smells eternally of curry and parsley.

one Sunday guardian, twenty camel lights and two oranges later i am back at my door. it’s neon blue, something i thought would be cool at the time, but everyone hates. bah.

in my living room, there are bookshelves reaching up the high ceilings. a dark grand piano with more books on it. i haven’t played years, but he insisted it come with him when he moved in. piles and piles of notebooks on the desk next to it, covered in my weird black chicken scratch that no one can read. half a dozen black pens and various ink stains that will never come out of the wood.

i sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the long white couch. there is a ritual to reading the Sunday papers you know. i take every section out and lay them on the right, fanned out like a deck of cards. the ashtray goes on top of them, then the oranges. i have to spread the paper out like a small boy from the 50s with a comic, as i’ve never been able to do that foldy broadsheet professional bollocks.

oranges and cigarettes and current affairs. then i hear him get out of bed up on the third floor. he’ll be standing at the mirror on the dresser right now. convinced he looks like an old man more and more every day. we drank an obscene amount of red wine last night so he probably looks worse than he should.

ive got half an orange in one hand and crush the last of my cigarette out with the other. he gets to the front room. he wears a white shirt, open. the one with the massive collar that i mock him so for. skinny spiders legs that he hates and i love.

he collapses into the couch and stretches his foot out to tickle my exposed back with his toes. i look back at him over my shoulder, orange still in hand.