The Hero is blowing smoke rings and I’m playing sad songs at a party, (more of a flying visit). There are only a few people but the room is small. I’m talking to someone and he’s not very interesting. He disappears a lot to be alone. He’s bad with others and he’s bad with himself too. He’s giving me the speech I was forewarned about. He tells anyone who’ll listen. He tells me he hates us, and he loves us, but he loves himself most of all, and he hates God but he wishes He was here. Not to be told what he’s doing wrong or what he’s doing right, but to confirm that he can decide for himself. He says it with his eyes, and hands, and cock. I don’t know what he said with his mouth.

Belgrave Dave is sitting in a corner not talking to anyone; he’s spent too much time thinking. He thought so much he believed he was going to figure it all out, only he drove himself mad in the process and any useful knowledge or worldly secrets he’s learned are locked away with the other things of which he’s unsure. He’s the healthy one, he’s just not yet aware. He had no one and now he has us. We saved him and he knows it, so he smiles, but he doesn’t want to be here. Yet the alternative meant death. A friend sits on an armchair with another draped over him, wishing she was his (s)ex. He didn’t push her away, he pushed himself away and her off a cliff. He talks of someone never coming fast enough and she finds him sweet because she thinks that’s loneliness.

I get a word in and tell him about smoking on the beach with a girl, and how when we climbed to the pier everyone looked at us like we’d been fucking. I told him I wished we had because I’d been happy, yet usually depressed, and maybe I’d have said so. He says they were probably looking at our eyes and I said he missed the point. He insists that he didn’t. The Hero is teaching Belgrave to blow smoke rings. He’s failing but they’re laughing, and I smile. Mr. Insistent thinks I’m smiling at him, so he’s satisfied I agree.

It’s suggested we go out. So we do, and we dance, and I drink too much to hit on anybody. The Curtains smile at Insistent and he follows her home. She doesn’t want him.

Belgrave didn’t come out despite our efforts. He got high and worried about going bald. He’s like me. Everyone knows we’re crazy but they all each only know a part of it, and no one tells the others. If they did they’d be at our doors with fire and sharp metal objects, ready to vasectomise.

-J.C. Grennan