These streets I’ve known my entire life. I’m a stranger to them, and they’re strange to me. The same buildings from my childhood look back at me as I pass them by, and yet no words are exchanged. They knocked down my old school some years ago. And my old college, too. Their latest incarnations treat my presence with utter indifference. On the news, it said some guy was stabbed near where my grandparents used to live, so I decided to leave that area alone. Not long after, I find myself lost. Could check my phone to see where I’m at but prefer to stay lost. Plus, if I take my phone out I’m likely to be attacked for it. And then stabbed. In the face. I can feel my skin burning. Can feel it getting tight. Never put any lotion on before I came out. And now I’m boiling like a lobster. Frying on the pavement like a rasher of bacon in the pan. Lighting a cigarette, I look around for some shade to retreat to, but there’s nothing. Just miles and miles of roads and dreary houses that speak of the lives of people I have nothing in common with at all.
Some kid passes me. Some weird ginger kid with his head facing the ground. He looks downbeat. Standing there watching him as he skulks along the street aimlessly dragging his feet until he disappears, it feels like I’m seeing a younger version of myself. The perpetual outsider. The loser with nowhere to go. Part of me wants to run after the kid and tell him things will be okay. That if he keeps believing in himself, it doesn’t matter if he’s freak. In fact, I want to grab him by the shoulders and make him promise me he’ll never be anything else. But I don’t, because such behaviour would likely get me in trouble, so I let the kid be wishing him all the best. Not long before, I passed an old club I used to frequent back in my younger days. You’d pay a tenner on the door and drinks were free all night. Mooching around outside, I could see that younger version of myself dancing to The Smiths well into the morning hours without a care in the world. Pulled a couple of girls in that place, too. It looked the same, and I felt the same, and yet something wasn’t right, so I left without looking back.
Made my way to a place I used to live. By chance, it was a few years ago to this very day that X and I fucked in the room overlooking the street outside. It had been a Bank Holiday. Not sure why I remember, but for some reason, the date has always stuck in my mind. So yeah, we’d both had the day off and were in that room watching TV, and I’d been giving her a massage. My hands gradually worked their way up her legs before playing with her pussy. We stripped and jerked each other off, and then she’d bitten me on the chest hard enough to draw blood. I sucked on her tits, told her to push her tits together, and when she did, she flowered before my very eyes until I shot my stuff. Shortly after, she’d been stood by the window with my seed trickling down the inside of her thighs. I’m looking up at that same window now. In my mind, I can picture her in that room looking down at this version of me while the me of four years ago is lying on the bed behind her, eyeing up her body licking his lips still tasting her breast upon his tongue. Staring at that window, I feel immensely sad. And yet there’s beauty at play, and beauty is what I seek above all else. If it makes me feel sad, then it’s doing what it should be doing. It must be.
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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