I was thinking about that time when you came home from Lester's and found me all pissed, just destroyed, do you remember?

'I'm gone,' I'd told you.

You snorted and rolled your eyes at me. 'Yeah, on a bender.'

You might not believe it, but in the drunk times, I was on another level, sliding in and out of myself somehow and existing simultaneously in multiple dimensions like Brian Eno. It was cosmic. I sailed away on an ocean of tequila and then shipwrecked in a pile of glitter and sequins and fake fur, propped up in the corner like an art project in progress left off half-way, hot-glue gun oozing plastic lava onto a stack of magazines.

Fussing about fire hazards, your hands were cool like hipster kids and chilling to my skin like a kind of premonition, but willing to unzip my fuck-up boots for me and dis-tangle my jewelry from where it had choked up all about my throat.

I could feel the hard reprimanding you wanted to give me coming on like a big gnarly erection but something held you off, maybe the empty bottle rolling around beneath your feet and the feeling that you'd seen some part of me that maybe you weren't supposed to see. Which is silly.

'Let's put you to bed,' you said. Watch the walls. Easy now, Sonny jim.

My drunk braincell wanted me to kiss you but I didn't as you helped get me out of my Ziggy suit, bravely facing the intoxicated confusion of my nakedness without a second glance, like a soldier to war, you were, guiding my stumbling feet and slamming shoulders.

You got me up and put me down again in your own bed, though you knew I might be sick, suspected it though I wasn't. Wouldn't be. You left a tiny, tidy rubbish bin by the bedside just in case. There was toast that I couldn't eat and tea I couldn't drink and a grown-up sigh waiting for me beneath the fringe of your mustache like a bad, ugly gift that nobody wants.

Don't be mad, I tried to say, but I think it came out wrong, a sloppy mess of syllables slurring around in my mouth. It's just as well, because I only would have told you how much I wished my first sexual experience had been in a bathroom cubicle, but really it was in a closet that had a window. Now that I think on it, a window is actually a really detrimental feature for a closet to have.

The next afternoon I lay alone in your bed in our room with my head pounding itself like a drum and thought about how great it would be to live in a teepee, or an igloo.

Once I knew this lion who told me a story about how he'd fallen in love with an uppity snow leopard. How they met or what he was doing in such a harsh environment I don't recall, but they lived together in an igloo for six months and the Lion said it was all just lovely. They spent their days writing poetry and hunting the frozen wastes, but eventually the snow leopard separated from the lion because of 'general differences'.

'I don't have a problem with you, I have a problem with me,' The snow leopard had told the lion, but the lion got the feeling that the only real problem the snow leopard had with itself was that it was dating the lion. The lion had been a terrible hunter because he was all yellow and bronze with caramel highlights, a coloring meant for a hot, sun-baked landscape and not the sparse and snowy mountains.
The lion suspected that this had been part of the reason the snow leopard was ashamed to be seen with him, and also that the snow leopard had hated his poetry.

The lion had never really gotten over the snow leopard, and ever after, he only wrote sad prose about white, spotty fur and snow flakes and nothing else. It was all very tragic, and a waste of perfectly good talent.

In a haze I drifted with this in mind, watching on the sidelines of myself as a battle between the slow spinning of the room and the stationary stillness of my center of gravity played out.
My body was heavy like a stone sinking in the blanket waters of your bed.

I slept without knowing I was asleep and dreamed the whole meaning of my own life. Then, when I woke up later, I found that all of it had been real the entire time. Can you believe it?

I felt strange; displaced and dehydrated, time-warped from too much sleep, a whole day lost. Fuck. I wanted to ask you why you never came to bed, but I didn't get around to it.

'This might be the worst hangover I've ever had,' I told you when I finally got up, fumbling with my flowery bathrobe, hands caught up around a cold cup of tea, that same one you made for me the night before. I left the soggy toast to it's own by your bed, though, and steadied myself against the wall, ready for the lecture I knew you had prepared.

'Well, we get what we deserve, don't we? The next time you decide to drink a bottle of tequila, Vince, you might want to think about eating some real food before.' So smug, you were!

'Licking the cherry filling out of a Hostess pie and having a packet of crisps doesn't really cut things, does it? And I won't even mention the fact that you left the hot-glue on. You could have started a fire! And after the Nicky Clarke scar, I'd thought you'd learned!'

You looked at me and I looked at you. 'Don't you have anything to say?' You asked me.

'It was all well fun and thanks for putting me to bed?' I offered.

You looked disappointed and I felt stupid because I couldn't understand why.

I think maybe the reason I remember this all so well is because that was the night before I went to That Party with Leroy, and I remember everything about That Party.

That Party was well crazy, complete insanity.

That Party was the kind of party that becomes legend in the minds of all who attended. Lives were changed, destinies were claimed. If you were at That Party, it was because the fates themselves demanded it.

That was the party where I lost my left boot and found it in the garden outside being covetously snuggled by a bearded lady dressed as a nun who was tripping on two tabs. She told me she'd never seen anything as beautiful in her life as my left shoe.
After finally getting the bearded lady sorted I went inside to find Leroy pissed and departing in the company of a transvestite dwarf. Later, a woman climbed up on the table and did a kind demonstration with some ping-pong balls that honestly, I think might have put me off women for awhile.

I always wanted to ask Leroy about his cross-dressing dwarf adventure, but I suspect it might not have gone very well because he's been a bit sensitive about that whole weekend since.

I know you don't like to hear about it, Howard, but really, That Party was magical. Even the bad, horrifying parts were amazing. Not like you've forgotten, you had to drive all the way to Scotland to get me by the end of it.

Tonight there aren't any parties, just you and me and maybe the moon, high and bright and full above us like a miracle of light in the sky.

The flat is quiet and cluttered and comfortable looking with my eyes closed half way, strings of lights and mismatched furniture smashing together in the blurry line of my sight.

I've disappeared in to the sofa with only a pad of paper and a pen to save me from the horrible, long-winded thing about ice mummies that you're watching. Normally, I would never subject myself to something as mind-numbingly boring as this, but you asked me to stay in and for once, I wanted to. The rain outside combined with the lure of Chinese take-away was too much for me.

Lately I've been writing love songs that seem to confuse and upset you- your eyebrows knit together under your lazy hair and your hands flail helplessly, searching for some kind of explanation about where I'm coming up with all of this, and who it might be about.

You think they're about someone else and I don't bother correcting you because I like seeing you all jealous and speculative, but I worry about the artistic corner I've backed myself in to. Eventually, I'll have to tell you that the real truth is that they're all about you in one way or another; A star-chart heart, map of the heavens for you to navigate like an intergalactic cartographer in an alien landscape.

My life with you has always been like a song, but now I want a symphony.

It started when we played that show out of town, when I wore my birdfaced beak-mask and my furry platforms and you drank too much after the set and told me that I looked like a nightmare disco plague doctor gone wrong but that you'd still have a go. I think you thought I was upset, but I thought that was the best thing anyone had said to me in ages.

Everyone kept coming up to me all night, telling me about how my creepy boyfriend had gone and hit on some poor girl, frightening her half to death with his jazz-fusion talk and choking her with the stifling smell of old library books, pot smoke, armpits and shaman incense.

Later, when we were going home drunk on the bus, you slumped over in the seat like a sack of rice and told me that I was the only person that you felt like ever really loved you.

'What about your Mum and Dad? They love you!'

'That, sir, is a terrible example,' You told me. 'My parents don't even like me! And everyone knows, Vince, that parents only really love you because they have to. I'm sure if I'd been someone else they would have taken to me a bit more.'

'I love your Mum,' I told you.

'Yeah, and she loves you, too, but that's exactly what I mean- You're someone else. And beyond that, everyone loves you, so it doesn't count,' you accused. 'Irresistible, you are. Like a puppy. You've got the big eyes.'

I couldn't argue with that one, but I still felt badly for you. 'Don't worry about that girl, Howard. You're letting one incident color your broader perspective. In a week, nobody's going to remember,' I promised, though it wasn't really my place to.

'I should just give up,' you told me. I sat forward and clutched your arm.

'Oh, no, Howard. Not this! You aren't going to try to kill yourself, are you?'

You looked at me sharply with your tiny eyes, pretending to be offended before you sighed and let your shoulders relax.

'No,' you said. 'Not today.' You paused then, and smiled a little smile like your mind was settling distantly on something else. 'I just mean, if there were a perfect woman for me, Vince, it would be you.'

'But I'm not a woman,' I told you.

'My Mum thinks you are.' You said, sighing.

'But I'm not!' I said again.

'Just a detail, sir. S'just a minor detail.'

I looked at you, dismayed. 'Hardly minor! It's a major detail, it is.'

'All right. A well-sized, masculine detail.' You corrected yourself.

'What about a giant, sparkly, intergalactic detail?' I asked hopefully.

You smiled in spite of your bad mood and let yourself lean in to me a little when the bus went round the corner.