Sinkful - Chapter One

Boney Shoulders and a Black Bra

The bathroom tiles are moist with condensation. I lay my naked self down, on my back, and enjoy the cool air that exists below the steam. It is not unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all. Though pleasantries are soon cut short as the room begins to spin into a graceless pirouette. Did I lock the door? This is a sobering thought.
Some people find the notion of being seen in their birthday suit as thrilling. Exhibitionists, they're called, and you never know who they are. Postmen, taxi drivers, well-renown chat show hosts, Tesco employees, classial pianists - what they do in front of opened doors is their own business.
I guess it would be the demise in mysticism but I often wish that people carried lists, stating every defining characteristic about them. Lists simplify things, not that I'm simple, but this can only be advantageous. That's why countdown shows are so plebian. Multitudes of people take so much delectation in the format that the substance takes a back seat. That's the case with most television these days, I suppose.
If we were obliged to carry lists containing personal information my list would mention that I am a cruciverbalist, drink Yorkshire tea, think breakfast is overrated, had my first kiss on a set of swings, listen to BBC Radio 6 and adore Morrissey... more of these things later, though.
I emerge from my steamless, subordinate vantage point and wade through the dank atmosphere being expelled by the trouncing power shower I'm so hesitant to stand beneath. I check the lock. It is failing as a key member of this operation. Click. There'll be no exhibitionism today. The thought of standing under the shower-head for an elongated period of time sends my stomach into spins that one can only experience in the space programme or at Alton Towers, instantly followed by an encore of 'spinny-room' as I've heard it so bluntly refered to. I play it safe and sit, with my knees hitched to my chest and my chin resting on top, nesstled inwardly on the floor of the shower, with my back to the water flux, and pull the screen five centimetres short of closure. The water is alarmingly hot on the back of my neck but I used the last ounce of energy I had checking the lock. I'll have to adjust my comfort to the temperature. I'm nothing if not adaptable.
It goes without saying but, like most sentiments of this nature, I'll say it anyway: this is the single most hideous and rigid hangover I've ever had, and I'm no stranger to a triturating headache and detrimented self-respect. I rudimentarally delved into alcohol last year, the very first time any of my cronys had a house party. It was Charlie Addison's sixteenth birthday and his dad allowed him to have a shindig of sorts. It was a tense affair with so many new-comers to the drinking game all under one roof, not to mention the over-zealousness of many having gone insane with a freedom overload. I spent most of that night cleaning four different, and plentiful, examples of vomit, mine included, from Charlie's bedroom carpet. I awoke the next morning in his bed, shivering all over, and lying next to Aaron Cooper, a baby-faced boy, with blond hair and no chin. I don't want to make the situation sound worse than it was but spooning is what the groovy kids call it.
It was a vulnerable hangover, to say the least, as is this one. Physically, mentally, emotionally and chemically, I feel delicate. I almost cried when I was snapped away from unconciousness by the bin lorry doing it's rounds this morning, collecting all the household and garden waste of Brighton and making young, hungover boys weep at their own patheticness in the process. I'm seventeen-years-old, for Christ's sake! All my friends are learning to drive and losing their virginity, usually in that order. Cars equal cunt, as Allen Starkey once put it so plainly. He's my best friend, and a revolting human being, in many senses, but even he's had sex. It usually makes me feel juvenile to dwell on these things, like I'm fourteen again, but I still do. I say it usually makes me feel this way but this morning is an exception. I touched a bra last night. There were breasts under that bra. I touched them too! And above that ample bosom were two sets of lips, exchanging saliva as a sign of affection and sexual desire. One of those sets of lips belonged to me, Miles Lovett, of course, and the other to Megan Squire.
I wonder how Claudia will react when she hears about this fortuitous encounter? To explain, Claudia Young is a dear chum of mine, although we did try to be more not too long ago. Needless to say, it didn't work, as these things simply don't. I'm stil haunted by severe bouts of sorrowful jealousy and poignant incredulety though, and I'm sure she is too. Claudia is just a less ill actor than me; she always was. Her name still tastes bittersweet on my tongue, though her tongue only tasted nectareous. It's antagonising to talk about her, but I will, of course I will.
Back to last nights contingency. I'm not even certain of how Megan came to be an aquiantance of mine. She just began turning up at parties with her friend Claire, a girl who changes her hair colour more often than her socks, I'm sure. Who could've known, after the maladroit hellos and clumbsy goodbyes, not to mention the agonisingly stagnant conversations in between, that four weeks on I would be with her, that is to say, with Megan tantalizing all of my senses - every single one and probably others that have yet to be named - like they never had been, in Charlie's dad's bedroom!
Unconciously, I drift back to that moment: the lapping tongues, the animal pants, the accidental clattering of teeth against teeth. I could feel the intracacy of the black lace of Magan's bra and then the moment my heart palpated so vigorously it could have been heard in South Wales as she removed it with both hands and frightful speed. The feel of her normally veiled pale flesh hiding half-heartedly behind her unbuttoned red blouse, until she removed that too, against my skin, even paler, but warm. I felt more anxious than I ever had before. Anxious? Or was it naceous?
I can hear a screeching alarm going off somewhere outside. Or in my head? Or in my chest? Before I can locate it's origin though, I feel that surging sensation, with whom I have been brutally aquianted, of panic and loss of control as I regurgatate a thin, red-tinted, mellifluous soup that explodes as it clashes with the yellow tiles on the wall. I'm instantaneously awash with fear as I wonder why there is blood in my vomit and how long I have left to live before the realisation hits me that it's more than likely what happens when one drinks a bottle and a half of cherry flavoured MadDog 20/20 and four cans of Strongbow cider. I angle myself under the shower to clean the backlash from my left shoulder and cheek. It's time to get out of the shower, I think. In a thunderous fulmination of unsteady limbs and feeble moans I hoist myself up using the five centimetre gap, where the shower screen hasn't been shut properly, as a grip. With the consideration and deliberation of the gentleman I clearly am, I rinse my sickly residue off the wall tiles on the inside of the shower using the showerhead itself. Showers are very self-sufficient in this sense.
After turning off the shower and taking the most illuminous piss, I wrap myself in a towel at the waist and unlock the door, I leave my steamy chamber and step into the hall like an extra-terrestrial leaving his atmospheric craft and entering a new world for the first time. Regretfully, there is a large mirror to the immediate left of my bathroom door and I catch a fleeting glimpse of a tired looking seventeen-year-old boy with a pale, boney excuse for a body and a face gaunt and colourless with the exception of pink bags manifesting beneath both of his green eyes. I look and feel more unclean than I did before that shower. I think I'll go back to bed, this day's going nowhere.