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6 Descending, Temporarily, Into the Unrequired Sludge of Unrequited (at Least to Reciprocal Level) Affection, Again
This happens so regularly, so predictably, I should be inured to it.
I am not.
As if he’d read my mind, the man who doesn’t need to shave, on our second meeting, wears the tiniest hint of stubble. He has spent the night in Peckham, but does not volunteer any more details about why or with whom. My impression is that it was a simple case of crashing at a mate’s house, but that impression may just be wrong. I don’t feel I know him well enough to enquire about this, or the number of days he hasn’t shaved, so I can’t tell whether this is just the result of one night’s morning’s not shaving, or whether it is in fact the protrusion of several days. Faint though it is, it nevertheless intrigues me because it comes up so different to the soft light blond tuft that sits off the lower side of his jaw bone and the two or three long hairs that sprout from his little mole near the back of his cheek. The ‘stubble’, such as it is, shows up in short little thick pins, which compared to the rest of his head appear black.
We sit opposite each other, discussing comedy, I believe, though my mind is only half on it. The other half of my mind — my conscious mind, we’re always talking about, I have far less of a hold, if…
