I look at Art’s arm. His tattoos.

His skin.

WE’D GONE

out for drinks, to talk. It pained me, but I also felt sort of exhilarated by my own proximity to emotional danger. Like I was prodding my own parameters. I was wearing a different perfume to seem altered and unfamiliar. I’d replaced most of my clothes and perfumes anyway, after.

As the night wore on, we moved outside to smoke more thoroughly. We graduated from small to large wines. Whisky chasers. I was shitfaced, spectacularly. Adrenaline held me together, kept me upright, kept me talking. We discussed another exhibition he had been offered. His ideas. His travel plans. Then it came to peeling-off time and neither of us wanted to go. So, one look led to another, we fumbled through the apportioning of suggestion, of potential blame and power, and, subliminally, via an off-licence and a taxi, he ended up back at our old house. He went straight in. I took a deep breath and followed.

I saw him looking around the lounge. There was our plant, ‘Robert’. The record player. The TV. Everything, still existing, without him, so blasé. There was the sofa with the waxy patch on the back where his head sweated when he played video games. I looked at it and felt like I could be forever fond of it, which felt somehow magnanimous. Everything seemed to hum in his direction. Hi hi hi, hi hi. I thought of Nick Cave’s ‘objects and their fields’ – everything with its own shape and potential. Everything with its magnetic history. There were – literal – gaps where he’d been: spaces on the walls that had once held his photos. I saw Art looking at those spaces, and I felt like I understood. This was his dream, and my dream, somehow; our narcissistic ideal: to be adored with zero pressure. To leave a gaping hole in which we could be loved.

Art said, ‘You’ve hardly looked at your phone all night. Impressive.’

I’d wanted to. I’d been dying to get a surreptitious shot of us both together and post it, to prove we were still friends. But it felt too jarring. Too slapdash. I had a point to prove that was bigger than my reputation, even. The point was: my body can still kill you. He’d walked away, I pulled him back. Through fucking him, I could use his body to leave my body. The chastity I had been preserving had been waiting for this moment. I surveyed the size and shape of him and I thought, Why do you get to walk around like a free agent? We’ll see about that. The stage was set.