The Petrichor Gazette

Though most of our days began and ended at the saloon. Women flocked to us there, promiscuous girls who wore white gowns and doused their armpits in heirloom perfumes. The stench of womanhood clung to us, I felt as if I was choking on it.

I did have a favorite girl, though her name escapes me. She was slight, honey-blonde. Pale blue veins spiderwebbed across her breasts and along her dainty wrists, I liked to drag my nails hard against them, watching her cheeks bloom scarlet in discomfort. She was like a fleshy angel, uncomplaining despite my sadistic dabblings. You liked her too, I think. Sometimes she sat between us, her downy arms draped across your shoulder, her legs tucked behind mine. An extension of us, sort of. In mid-August we went to the theater, the two of us and the girl. Some low-budget rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The acting was dreadful, and for every new character that entered, the girl would pull at my elbow and whisper “I know them!” with her hot, swampy breath. When intermission came, she slid into the crowd and left the two of us alone for the rest of the night. The whole theater smelled of mildew, and dust coated nearly every surface. It was rather full, with foul-smelling locals in the stained velvet seats. You leaned over to me when the curtains were drawn

open, and your breath was hot against my neck. You made a joke about the pimply Theseus who stood before us, and I laughed without understanding it, my hearing fuzzy from our proximity. When you pulled away you lit a cigarette. I watched it burn. I refused to look in your eye. Seven nights ago we sat alone in the saloon. It was late, and the moon hung large and wet in the sky, staining your skin silver through the open window. Whiskey is soporific, I’ve found, and sweat rolled like raindrops from my armpits. I could feel it in the folds of my shirt, knew it must be staining. The whiskey, the moon, the indomitable drowsiness.

I’d never been able to master rolling cigarettes, and I watched you with boyish gaiety as you dumped tobacco into a paper, watched your sly tongue flick out to wet it. You were oddly personal that night, telling me fond tales of your boyhood that seemed lined with fantasy. When we left, the moon was