Nostalgia

I watched Ellen lying beside me; my sweat drying on her skin. Lying amid the small flowers of Kleenex dotted around my broken bed. I’m never in my best at such moments. Her eyes were lightly closed and I thought she’d dropped off until she said “Do I remind you of someone?”

My eyes drifted across her slim stomach, her small stretch marked breasts and the wart like dark pink nipples that stood out so much that they looked like a light tug might pull them free. Then I met her newly opened eyes.

“Do I Turk?”

“No.”

She smiled a sad kind of a smile. I hate when women smile a sad kind of a smile; especially when you’re in that post apocalyptic state of the long-fuck come-down. “When I first saw you,” she started. “You looked like this man… boy I used to know. I thought you might be him. You looked lost. You looked like you didn’t know anyone and had no-one. It’s a good look for you. I’ll bet all the chicks love it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“See… You’re still in character. Got to admire a man who stays in character. Thing is I probably wouldn’t be here with you if you didn’t remind me of this other guy. I thought it better to tell you than let you think there was anything personal going on. I know how much men hate to think there’s anything personal in their conquests.” She hitched herself up on to a single elbow and looked me in the eye. Her small breasts tried to obey gravity but they couldn’t pull too far. “I mean I do like you. But the one you reminded me of… Him I loved.”

“That’s great.”

She laughed. “I hope I haven’t spoiled a wonderful evening.”

“No. No. I mean. No.”

“The way I look at it is that by the time you get to our age you’ve had all your great loves. Stupid to pretend otherwise right?”

“Right.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah… Look… Once you’ve been hurt a few times you build a wall.”

“A wall built on the corpses of a million days of hurt and pain.”

“Exactly.”

“So who do I remind you of?”

“No-one.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s a shame. I thought we could play some sick sad nostalgic games.”

“What happened to the man I reminded you of? Married the wrong woman? Moved to Prague telling you he’d always write?”

“See… Now you’ll make the truth seem all melodramatic.”

“Why? What happened to him?”

“He went travelling with two friends. The friends came back and he kept travelling. Ended up catching some stupid unpronounceable disease in Africa and died in a shithole hospital.” A few dramatic seconds passed, then she laughed again and said “None of that’s true. In real life he just got boring and married the wrong woman; a pretty blonde with big tits. The type of woman who can’t wait to make a home and drop sprogs.”

“Yeah… If you’re going to lose the love of your life it’s much better for them to die some terrible death.”

“Who said he was the love of my life? He was just one of many.”

Ellen kissed me on the nose and climbed on top of me. She felt wonderful. She felt like life. But she also made me feel like I was some corpse in her memory, someone who should have died of some terrible tropical disease rather than lived a comfortably boring life and she made me feel like as she wrapped her body around me that she was actually wrapping herself around death.

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