Touch

3:15 am. I raid the fridge, stealing another piece of chicken, and munch in thought. I look at the tortilla rounds, think a bit more, then walk back to my bed, get the plate I'd left there after dinner, grab a handful of them chips, dab in a decent amount of salsa, and walk back to my bed with the plate. Thinking, thinking.

3:21 am. New mail. About work finished earlier in the evening. I want to start something fresh in the morning. No worries about lunch tomorrow!...biryani in the fridge, that's the chicken I snicked.

3:43 am. Now.
This, as usual. A new post tonight. I travel from there thence, beyond and back. I've been doing this all week. I love the reads. A couple of mornings back I mentioned this blog to my girlfriend. I can often tell by her voice when she does not like something, and especially when it's me talking about another girl, which she never likes (and don't I adore that!)---the fact that this girl's name is pretty close to hers does not help. What I did want to tell her about this girl is, well, irrelevant. What she said to that, and what I think of it today, are therefore and otherwise, of course, again, irrelevant.

Alright, so this girl is a mystery. I've been reading about her, her grandmothers, suitors, flatterers, a lot of others she points to. Quite unknown to her, she entertains me everytime I type 'm' on the browser URL box, wait for the autofill to do its thing, and enter. It is funny to imagine I'm writing about this, and it is even funnier that I do not want her to know about it. She writes really well. She's funny. I'm sure I couldn't keep up with in real life. Yet safe behind the bush, I love reading her write and can't help but smile.

...

It rained like crazy all weekend. It never stopped raining. No, mister, when I say it never stopped raining, I mean never, never, yes, that is to say, it rained all the time. Pitter-patter-pitttter-patter, howl howl howl. Oh-and-did-I-mention, I went to see the chimp last night, chimp, ape, pot-a-to, pot/a/to, whatever, was a nice watch. Here's the report: tried the "Before Sunset" shave, dressed in black, microwaved the cappuccino from the night before (oh-and-was-that another story! I could not, could NOT for my life let myself drown into sleep that night, so I went out at six in the dark morning to get that coffee---and stupid me, felt really sleepy before I could finish half of it, so)...now-where-was-I?Ah-so, dressed in black, armed with a huge black umbrella, I set out to see the chimp. Was a twenty minute walk, was feeling cheerfully lonely, I'm always cheerfully lonely when I walk briskly and the air is cold. Not many people were out with umbrellas, and believe me, there were many people that evening, out enjoying the rain, and I thought to myself, fuck it, put this huge black thing away that's giving you the aristocratic-buffoon-in-the-age-of-poverty look, so I apologetically went umbrellaless the few more hundreds of steps to le théâtre. It was crowded, it was fun, the chimp was good entertainment. I walked back whistling, stopping for some hot chocolate at a certain cookie place on the way whose hot chocolate SomebodyIknow raves about, nodding in disapproval after taking a couple of sips, which thence added that accidental tune to my whistling.

(I would like to admit here and now that I cannot whistle anything, that I pretend to whistle but all I can do is the Oh Baby one or that Wow Baby one, both tools of the average streetside Romeo that I never was, and that nodding vigorously is the only way I can get the semblance of a wave riding on the monotonous drone.)

It was then that it happened.