Monkeys

Have you ever been laid with someone, or sat with someone, and you forget you exist for a few minutes? You could be fucking, or they could be licking your neck, or touching your genitals; or you could be sat at the back of the bus like the end of The Graduate, and for a brief moment you realise that you are entirely alone. Hopelessly alone. The silence is absolutely inexorable.

Sometimes in the dark, while he grunts and pants and is beautifully in his moment, I hold him close but look over his shoulder, my eyes looking deep into the ceiling and finding nothing there, nothing in the air above me and above him, I just close my eyes and pretend I am alone, wishing with all my might that I was alone. I can't bear it. I cannot ask him to stop, because I love him, in some way, in all probability.

Sometimes he will say something, and it will be so empty of meaning that my eyes lock on his, and I smile my empty smile, and I sink within myself. I wander down the steps of my mind into the basement, in my belly, in the very darkest part, and my soul sits there in the comfy chair and plays Simon & Garfunkel records over and over. His words, like silent raindrops, fall all around my ears and I am looking out of the window into the garden next door - the children are playing - and I think about where I went wrong. Was it that I chose this one? No - they all do it.

I have no earthly hiding place from it all, so I step inside myself. I drift off and become increasingly taciturn, licking fingers when offered, and spouting out the slogans. He must think I'm shy - for I have nothing to say to him. I make jokes and they fall flat. I pretend I am someone else, and he doesn't notice. So there it goes. Drifting off into space, while I want so desperately to be engaged, to hold so dear, and to not hate deeply everyone I have cared for ever.

How can I be so cold? Do I hold people to impossibly high standards? I think I hold people to human standards. I don't even know what standards I hold them to. I realise I don't know what I want - I doubt there are very many people who do. All I know is what I don't want.

It's not really that hard to figure out what you don't want.

Sometimes I think I was just born completely out of time. I can't relate to so many people, and so I come across as a snob, or an elitist, or a misanthropist, or a pervert. Maybe I am all of those things. But how can I embrace a culture that encourages mediocrity, and demonises intelligence and free thought? Any stray thought articulated to Mr. Man - and I am lost and out of swing, desperately scratching for some sort of understanding. He doesn't understand, and so I have to explain, and when he doesn't understand the joke, I have to pretend I didn't say anything.

Human beings are strange. I can't explain what I feel like when I drift off into space while he ploughs on regardless. But I feel very close to coming to the ultimate conclusion that we are nothing more than two monkeys in a bed, in a house that we did not build, struggling desperately to find a meaning in that.