Lifting me up so we’re standing face to face on a branch as thick as my waist, I peer over her shoulder first at the ground, and then at the horizon as it laps us like waves do the shore. We must be twenty feet in the air. Maybe thirty. It’s hard to say. It doesn’t matter either way. Well, it does, but I pretend it doesn’t. I’m good at pretending. It’s what I do best; the art of make-believe, or, as Meeko puts it so eloquently—chatting shit. She also says my ability to chat shit is outweighed only by my ability to write it. Looking into her eyes as the sound of drums comes to us in fits and starts, I caress her face at the same time as holding my belly. Got a bellyache, you see, and seeing as though we’re stood either twenty or perhaps thirty feet up a tree, the chance to take a shit is out of the question. Well, that’s not strictly true. It’s not beyond me at all. Not if I really wanted to. The thought takes hold immediately, and the idea of squatting out a putrid, runny turd is suddenly the greatest thing ever. Reaching for my fly, Meeko’s eyes follow the train of my hand. Biting her lower lip, I can tell she thinks I’m instigating sex. What a terrible thing that I’m not, but before she has the chance to be let down, Hachikō comes to my rescue. Cocking his leg against the trunk of the tree, a stream of dog piss sprays forth, dousing those below. The guy who’s already been covered in spit and phlegm is livid, so livid he falls to his knees cursing the very nature of God while the golden piss showers him regardless.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US