Be Friends

18 August:

We were at a swimming club. The five of us, including the… ‘deliberate’ one. (Hmm… I’ll go with ‘Deliberate’).

I sat on my own, watching (not the ‘deliberate’ one); I wasn’t one of the more ‘outgoing’ types. The ‘Deliberate One’ had vanished; she was probably by the pool. The others were chatting loudly, with smiles that revealed their gums. Three girls and two boys – one of them who knows where he is; ah, and the other, drunk whilst chatting merrily. (Wait, he’s a ‘minor’. I think that went without saying.) The two girls still seem to be ‘sober’, at least for now.

I got up. And went in search of… ‘Deliberada’. After checking the pool, nothing; after checking the changing rooms, nothing. (… !?). I then went to a quiet area, where there were suspended benches (swings?); to be frustrated on my own. So I stayed there.

For better or worse… nobody bothered me. To be honest, I’d have preferred the silence to last longer:

—… why are you here? Sometimes you really do deserve to be […] blimey. — Already sitting down on one of the benches in front of me. Ah, of course: she was wearing a blue bikini adorned with hand-sewn flowers; modest. (Even so… ‘tight’).

— Did you just come here to make fun of me?

— No… maybe. Staying… near those drunks… is almost ‘complicity’ if they get caught.

From then on, we spent quite a while ‘chatting’. The conversation was so engaging that it led her to sit down next to me. ‘You speak too quietly.’ It hadn’t been just a conversation… Her face was slightly flushed with a boldness I’d displayed, which I took care to disguise as a mere ‘accident’.

—… I… — She’d tried.

— YOU TWO OVER HERE, NOW! — shouted a woman (a gor–) of imposing stature, wielding her nominal authority, as false as my polite response from afar. We weren’t that far away. (I reckon just 200 metres). Wouldn’t she have liked some privacy? (…). We went together. Side by side, whilst still trying to keep up our ‘pretences’.

2 November

—… but what about you, Auntie, what’s it like being married for all those 30 years you mentioned? — asked the ‘deliberate’ one sweetly. She was standing, wearing a white shirt with a pattern I can’t recall and a pair of… ‘tight’ trousers.

—… apart from that, the satisfaction of seeing what we’ve carried in our wombs for months grow is greater than anything.

— Ah… But I imagine it would be… tiring, seeing the same person every day, ‘all the time’; I don’t think I’d be able to cope.

(Would there be a need for an analysis… similar to that of ‘September’? No.)

That year came to an end as far as she was concerned, from then on. Not because I distanced myself, but because she stopped attending the institution.

“… My hollow brain rolls round in my head; by any chance, my God, am I going mad!? From now on, I shall write no more verses …”: I added at the end… of the card. Of course, I wrote it in verse, and this one isn’t my own work.

Eu (Augusto dos Anjos, 1912)/Poema Negro

“Tell him I loved what he wrote. I really did.” — Damn this common name of mine! I think it’s too late, I’m sorry — A friend was present when he received the flowers with the card. The nosy one, who’d previously tried to coax a confession out of me, asked who was ‘behind the daring “gift”’ directly to the only person who held this dangerous information. She refused to say. Whispering ‘quietly’ to the recipient of the “gift”.

— “She smiled… which even made me believe it might work out. Not only did she seem genuinely very happy with what you gave her, but I honestly think you got it right!” — It’s a shame that she, straight after… the letter… was the one who came to warn me to stop my advances in this matter.

The only sensible thing here was not to have revealed my identity.

The door remains closed.