(Thieves like us)

I.
We are caught in-between the bursting of the strobe and the flickering of the purple and pink haze of the neon lighting above the dancefloor. There are two guys kissing each other to our right, two girls kissing each other to our left, and this huge, broad-shouldered guy crossdressed as Tinkerbell waving a baton like a cheerleader amidst everyone else: We are all multiplied by a million, dancing as we watch our own reflections repeating themselves after one another on the mirrored walls, afterimage upon afterimage, superimposed to forever and kowtowing to the beat of the DJ.
This nightclub used to be a catholic church, many years ago. This is so cool.

Human League starts playing after an endless parade of modern techno-whatever, really. I pull F. closer to me and whisper (shout?) in her ear that ____ should be popping up any time now. She nods as I pretend not to notice the smell of her hair: She´d just had her visa to Canada revoked due to some technicality or another, but she´s due leaving the country for good come next Monday this time around. I bite my lower lip, close my eyes and make peace with all the gods I´ve never had.

As predicted, and not missing his own beat, ____ appears from out of thin air; crawls back from wherever he´d crawled forth I think ever since we´d arrived a couple of hours earlier, only now a little tipsy, with a glass of champagne in his hand. F. says she bets he´d been on the prowl. I tell her, yeah, on the prowl for liquor.

A few hours later we repeat the exact same routine, with Talking Heads instead.


II.
It´s past six A.M. and I´m sitting on the couch of my living room in my underwear only despite the cold morning outside: The first rays of the morning break across the sky and filter through the half-opened blinds. I´m holding my shirt in my hands, thinking twice against actually showering before going to bed: She is leaving for Canada next Monday and all I have left of her, for good now, is the Emporio Armani She lingering in my clothes, on my skin.

I bite my lower lip and close my eyes, trying to dismiss the somewhat annoying fact that regardless of all the holding hands and the cuddling and embracing on the throwpillows back at the club, she actually turned her face away and pulled me back when I tried to kiss her. She´s got this French boyfriend-slash-fiancé now. I should have known better – if I really cared.

But it´s past six A.M., see, and all´s been said and done.
F.s boarding her plane within a day and leaving the country for good: By the time I open the faucet and the hot water starts pouring down on me and washing her perfume away, she´s definitely gone for good: A scar gained, a medal missed, a drop in the ocean.

In the back of my head, New Order starts playing Thieves Like Us.


III.
Way earlier that day, B. asked me during lunch if I still thought of you: I don´t know, I told him, just a little, sometimes a little more than just that.

It was a pretty honest answer.

He said that´s what´s probably holding me back from taking some next step as far as relationships are concerned. I told him naww, that if he ever got his hands on a time machine, he might as well go back in time and tell the nine-year-old me that I´d grow up to become exactly the kind of person I wanted to be when I was a kid.

It was a pretty honest answer, too.