Michael Perfect

As I wake up and begin, through the burn of the headache and morning light blindness, to weigh up the evidence, it would seem that as far as sticking one’s cock into complete strangers goes this has been something of a relative success. I feel certain that contraception was used. A sufficient quantity of alcohol was consumed as to significantly delay but not prevent orgasm. You did not orgasm, I recall, but you seemed to enjoy yourself before you fell asleep and you did not vomit on me, which must be counted as a bonus. Having experienced such a mishap on one unhappy occasion, I have, it is true, come to think of all vomitless fucks as relative successes – there is nothing quite like having the putrid contents of a girl’s stomach deposited on your chest to take your mind off the gentle bouncing of her breasts.

You seem, over the course of the last few hours, to have mercilessly claimed every last inch of your duvet for yourself. Entombed now in a kind of cocoon of bedding from which only an elbow and an unpleasant smell protrude, you appear to have ingeniously created for yourself a single small aperture to facilitate breathing. Peering tentatively into it, I note that, as well as being something of a snorer, you are also rather prolific in the unconscious production of saliva. Your matted hair covers what’s discernible of your face so I cannot be entirely sure, but you are not, I think, wholly unattractive.

Your room is a warm, welcoming colour, but gives few clues as to who you are: either you are something of a minimalist or you have only recently moved in. Bed, sink, wardrobe, mirror, numerous large cardboard boxes, piles of clothing and stereo with small stack of CDs. No photos, no ornaments, no art, no books. No books. I refuse to believe that I have put my penis inside somebody who does not read books – I prefer, instead, to think that at least one of the boxes is full of loved novels, pages browned and spines broken.

Pile of clothing one of two: located adjacent to the full-length mirror, pile number one of two appears to be formed of garments that you removed from the wardrobe, tried, and systematically rejected (in some cases rather wisely). Pile of clothing two of two: located in close proximity to the bed, pile of clothing two of two is variously formed of the clothes that you finally settled on and those that I found myself in, and was formed in a somewhat less methodical fashion. On the floor next to pile of clothing two, your keys, attached to a memory-stick keyring. What do you store on this – the holiday photos that you keep meaning to show to friends, a powerpoint presentation that you grope for in your handbag, the novel that you have been working on that dangles from your steering column as you turn left at the lights?

Stack of CDs (one of one): for all I know you might have an impressively extensive collection (who knows how many of the boxes are filled with piano sonatas and obscure world music), but the selection that is currently on display is, it must be said, a little heavy on recent, middle-of-the-road pop-rock shit. But the case that is open on top of the stereo is Miles. Miles fucking Davis. It makes me smile to think of you putting on your makeup while listening to Miles far too loudly, annoying your new neighbours. I almost want to wake you up just to congratulate you, but waking you might, I think, be unwise, if not perhaps impossible.

I met a man some months ago, a drunk friend of a drunk friend, who claimed to have awoken in the beds of at least twenty women and to have placed a fifty pound note on the pillow next to each of them before leaving them there sleeping. He said he carried a fifty around with him wherever he went, in case of success in the pursuit of coitus. He even opened his wallet to show me – true to his word, he removed a folded up fifty from a small compartment separate from the rest of his cash, a compartment in which I think I also glimpsed the serrated edge of a condom packet. When I laughed and asked him why, he looked at me stonily over his drink and said, because women need to be reminded that they are whores. I believe him to be something of a misogynist.

I am not going to leave money on your pillow, nor will I leave you some enigmatic clue as to who I might be. I will leave as I arrived, willfully anonymous. Rest assured, I will not even piss in your sink.

I don’t remember your name and I don’t remember your face. If I saw you in a club next week I probably wouldn’t recognize you – maybe I’d fuck you again and not even realize until I woke up in this room. Or maybe I’ll meet you again in a year, or in ten years, at a concert or in a bookshop or wherever it is that people meet when they don’t just want to fuck each other. In another city, or even another country. You might be beautiful, and I might fall in love with you. Maybe there would be just the quietist pang of recognition that would make me think that I had somehow known you forever. We would marry, and we would buy a house. After agreeing on a genderless but warm, welcoming colour, we would take a lazy Sunday to slowly, carefully paint the walls of our first child’s bedroom, all the while listening to Miles far too loudly and so annoying the new neighbours. I would continue to paint as you put your brush down onto newspaper and crouch there for a moment, smiling red-faced at me as you hold your swollen belly with your hand.

Waking next to you each morning, I will gently kiss the nape of your neck and tell you that I love you, savouring the smell of your skin as you sleep. We will never know that I came here and fucked you, fucked you coldly and calmly, with something close to contempt. We will never know that I rose from next to you and dressed; that I left you here snoring and farting, stinking of vodka and sweat. That I walked out of your room, down your stairs and slipped out through your front door into the world, simply wanting to breathe.