like me, please

"Of course you're beautiful," I tell him. "You're sixteen and you're drunk."

He shifts his chin higher, hearing sarcasm despite my subordinate sincerity.

I smile at his inebriated grab towards indignation. I  remember being beautiful too, though the peak of mine came around the better parts of 19 and the more jarred parts of 22 - the former when this wrongly-accused pseudo-lover inhabited the room next door, and the latter when the night skies were dancing in spite of my paralysis.

Sixteen's proud of pushing double digits. He thinks he's beyond us. And sure, I was before the starting line at his age. Not that I cared. I was in love with other things: the idea of dancing, paper-thin hymns and words. Though now - contrary to his suggestion - I'm his equal, at least. Knowing is my dancing. Exhaling is about as holy as I get. My poems are spoken in contorted flesh. I don't schedule my trysts as he has to, and I don't need to steal phones for an excuse to run into the darker corners of Aotea Square.

He's got it all back to front. Including my intentions. I don't fuck everyone I share ice cream with. The pseudo-lover shifts along the seat and is accused of doing what we've denied. Sixteen laughs when I suggest it's him who's being looked at. Wrong, of course, but closer to the truth than my own skin.

"Is it because I'm beautiful?" he says smugly.

'Yes,' I say. I'm not taking the piss. "You're sixteen and you're drunk. Of course you're beautiful."

I envy him his tangled little head. I've a vicious wave of nostalgia. And yet I know there are reasons I have chosen to ground my own atoms. Perhaps I have grounded them too much.

So, on Saturday night, I go back. Not very successfully, but I'm there. I encourage others to do the same. Forcefully. I miss the first hour of sleep waiting for the future to repeat itself. Then I miss the first hour of the day recovering from the wine I didn't drink. I manage to steep myself in some short history in the afternoon. I visit the supermarket as per tradition, former lover in hand but not held.

Then I write about it.