Tag Archives: couch

Colonial Elitism

I made myself a drink with his expensive scotch and lay on his expensive couch. For some reason, I felt uneasy. “K?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “K?” I asked again, deciding that he, under the influence of too much alcohol, passed out somewhere out of view. I turned on the television and watched a show about winter in upstate New York.

I fell asleep.

When I woke up, my coat had been thrown over me. K was banging around in the kitchen.

I sat up. “What time is it?”

“Five,” he called from behind me.

“What are you doing up?”

“Making waffles. Want some?”

“I guess,” I whined.

He dropped a plate of waffles on my lap, returned to the kitchen.

We hadn’t spoken about what had happened several nights prior, and amidst the lunacy of the waffle conversation, I felt the need to speak up.

“K,” I said from his couch. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Huh,” he replied cooly. “I feel the same way.”

I didn’t get the joke he was trying to make. He continued: “How are the waffles?”

“Fine,” I replied, not yet aware of what had just happened.

Then an uncomfortable silence settled in.

 


He Cannot See Himself as a Young Man

I was walking home that night, paying little attention to my surroundings, when a woman – slight, fashionably dressed, dark eyes – approached me.

“Are you K?”

I said that I was, trying to ignore the incredulity of the moment. It was dark, but I knew her voice.

She looked at me, then punched me in the face, sending me backward. Her punch had knocked her off balance, so the force of the blow was relatively tame. Still, my right eye began to swell.

“Stay the fuck away from me!” she shouted.

Too stunned to reply, I grimaced at her. She took a knife from her back pocket. “And give me your fucking watch.”

I did. Then she flipped me off before tottering off into the shadows.

In a daze, I tripped and had to limp home in the dark.

I woke the next morning on the couch, and you were sitting next to me.  “Sorry,” you said with resignation, handing me my watch. “I’ve always kind of liked it, I guess. We met the day you bought it.”

You were leaving for work.

“At least you didn’t try to run me over this time,” I said, watching the front door close.