Young Writers Society

I was born on December twenty fourth, twenty seven years ago today, in a war zone. My father was a freedom fighter. My mother was an adrenaline junkie. This time last year I was in… Makoa? I think. Travelling through Makoa in an old truck made me feel bad for baked potatoes. I remember crossing boarders quite close to Christmas, but without the lights and Santa outfits it’s hard to keep track of the days.

The year before I was in north west of Tevena. They’re not too hot on Christmas there. It’s the kind of place where carol singing means trying to carry a tune while dodging bullets.

This year I made sure I was in the city so that I wouldn’t miss it again.

Now I’m wondering if it was the best idea. A streak of yellow light slices down the alleyway where I stand, just enough to illuminate the two of us. Me, dressed in a rigid, navy blue coat that would have cost more than a month of her wages and a thick scarf around my neck that I picked up from a homeless shelter, and her; wearing a dress that would make my dear old grandmother go wide-eyed in her grave.

I would never judge a woman. Wait. That’s a lie. I would never judge a woman for her profession. It always seems strange that one of the first things people say when getting to know one another is ‘what do you do for a living.’

I always ask ‘what do you want to do for a living,’ you can find out a lot more about a person that way. What they do for a living only tells you of the circumstances life dropped them in.

This woman here, life dropped her in a puddle and peed on her just for good measure. That doesn’t say much for who she is, just what life did to her.

None the less I always figured that a woman who stands around in a short dress and ankle-gnawing heels, selling her body for pittance, would not be embarrassed by anything. Right now she looks as uncomfortable and awkward as I feel, and in the melancholy light of the streetlamp the blush that rises to her pale, hollowed cheeks makes her look almost like a girl again, like the young lady she’s supposed to be.

Her irises are blue. They would be beautiful if meeting her gaze didn’t feel like having sandpaper dragged across my eyeballs.

Being on your own never gets old, you know. I’m not going off topic, there’s a point to this I swear. You never get used to being alone. Anybody who tells you otherwise is a liar. You just get used to distracting yourself. Strangers are wonderful distractions, people are interesting when you break through their prefaces, stab a needle into their heart and see how it really beats. Criminals reveal their deepest dreams and woes and fair maidens turn to monsters when you get past the small talk.

Booze, too. That kills the loneliness. Strangers, and booze.

There is a desperate, primitive desire in us. It’s woven into the fabric of our being, the stitches of our hearts, it makes us twist in the night and writh in the day in a desperate longing for companionship. You can trick yourself into believing that you are happy alone and drown out the side effects behind intoxication, but eventually you figure it out and need to come up with a new act to convince yourself.

Take my life for example. See how great I am. The people I’ve known, the lands I’ve travelled. There are people all across the continents who will tell you the stories I’ve told as if they came from their own lips, but they’d never remember me if they saw me twice.

Maybe she would, this pink cheeked lady. Her voice was like the sound of a child forced to play a church organ- flat, rigid and about as in-tune as a nineteen sixties television set.

When they sing of my stories, they’ll never tell this one. She’s the only one who could, and it took a lot of money to make her sing.

Now her chorus comes to an end and she takes the money more bitterly than she would have done if I actually had just settled with a blow job.

I wish I could pay for the rest of the night. I could take her out on a date to a fancy restaurant and buy her a dress that fits, but I can’t.

It’s Decembertwenty fourthand I’ve just scraped out the last digits of my bank account so I could pay a hooker to sing me happy birthday, so someone would notice I was a whole year older. I didn’t book my hotel first.

Now I still feel alone. And awkward. And really, really stupid.

It doesn‘t take much to speak, I‘ve lost the last of my dignity anyway. ‘Hey. Can I have some of that back? I’ve got nowhere to stay.’

She swears at me.

‘Worth a try.’ I shrug and turn to leave. I try to imagine the sunlight of some exotic location I’ve been to, but the tawny, frail streetlights can’t fool me, and as soon as I reach the main road the wind sweeps away the last thoughts of a warmer climate.

‘Hey. Hey!’

I turn back. She’s hobbling towards me, trying to hold up her dress and do a circus balance act on her needle-point heels.

‘You want to stay at my place? My kids should know who to thank for Christmas dinner.’

‘You take strange guys back to your house where your kids are?’

‘Fine then.’

‘No, I didn‘t mean that. I’d be honoured.’

She laughs. I can hear the rattle of tar in her fragile lungs. ‘Wait till they see what I found skitting around the back alley. We’re gonna be telling this story in twenty years time.’

‘I could tell you more interesting stories, if you want.’

‘Oh aye, I bet you could.’

‘I was in Mikoa this time last year.’

She laughs again. ‘No kidding.’

‘The sun was so hot on the plains that we had to wear these thin white cloaks, because the wind when it came storming across was like a dragons breath…’

‘Hah. You’re a queer one. They’re gonna love you, my kids will. They love all those mad stories.’

I pull my collar up to hide a smile and secretly hope she’s right.

It’d be nice, I think, to be loved.