AMKent books

There isn’t a whole lot of distance between us, his suit is immaculate with a piercing black like the darkest parts of the night, accompanied with a brilliant white shirt for contrast. I feel under-dressed, and to think, I thought I may run the risk of being overdressed. He has a great many rings on, symbols for secret fraternities engraved onto the faces of them, gold galore. He taps his clumsy thick fingers twice on the small circular table between us.

“You keep them like cats, that’s your downfall you know? They aren’t pets.”

All the dancing ahead of us makes me feel nauseous, everybody dressed up to the nines with an orchestra of rustling dresses and ironed suit trousers. It is all tiresome, performative, I go from a hermit to a socialite burning the candles at both ends. The restless pendulum, that is what they should write on my gravestone.

“Listen to me, a cat is never loyal. That’s why the women in your life aren’t, because you treat them like cats.”

“How have you reached this conclusion?”

“Take that slip of a thing, the one before the last. Lovely girl, face like a porcelain doll, truly wonderful creature. What did you do about her? You left her to her own devices, you gave her too much freedom, and like a cat, she found a new home.”

“I thought independence and autonomy was a good thing…”

“Not if it’s a woman, that’s cat talk.”

The same old boring orchestral pieces rolled out, Ravel should be hung for the assault he has laid upon my ears throughout my lifetime. Fitting that we are discussing a dead princess, well, dead to me, anyway. He moves his glass and throws that charming poison down without a moment to lament, probably an ego thing.

“You are young enough that beauty finds you a worthy adversary, but that won’t last forever!”

“I will keep them under a tighter leash then?”

“Now you are talking about dogs, get animals out of your head!”

I can tell he is buying time for the girl in the pink dress to finish her dance, then he will storm over there with his new found courage. All this talk about women is nonsense, I don’t care if I am young and its supposedly the most important thing in my life. His wife died merely 7 months ago and he is already attending social events, scouting out future replacements. They call that a shark instinct, I imagine it is desperation from a widower. I doubt I even belong in the ocean, whatever that means. I am lacking urgency, and the sand sifts through the glass. I just can’t get myself to realise this, I know it, I understand it, but I don’t feel it.

“That woman over there, pink dress.” He points egregiously, so much for subtlety.

“I see her, no need to point.”

“Well, I will have her strapped to me like a newborn to a mothers breast. I will take command, bravado only gets you so far, you have to live it. She is a woman, and she needs to have her notions of love expressed in reality. No fluff, like a bolt of lightning, her romantic ideas all come to fruition in the swell of a moment and a physical form, me.”

“Aren’t you deciding what she is, based on your ideas?”

“It is not presumptive, it is tried and tested.”

“If she is not a cat, then why are you taking possession as if she were?”

“She is finishing soon, and I don’t have time to philosophize about animals with you any longer. Remember this, we are all animals, in a suit or not!”

Later she had a dance with him, and abruptly avoided him the rest of the night. He repeated the formula en masse, and I saw him leave with someone by the end of the event. Me on the other hand, I avoided dancing for the most part, I think some of the others felt sorry for me and requested it out of second-hand embarrassment. The real question I ask myself is, how can I expect anyone to be loyal to me when I am not loyal to myself? So, from this moment on, I shall skip these social gatherings. No, no, that is just side-stepping the problem. As for companionship, when I do, and if I do, find someone, will I do it through my ideas of love or hers?