TELL ME ABOUT IT, STUD

A short story for bubblegum zine by me about summer lovin' (had me a blast)
p.s. i feel weird about posting the same picture twice in very small space but this picture is mainly relevant to this.

He squinted at me as he inhaled and passed over a hefty joint, wonky in the middle. I pursed my mouth and looked up from beneath my eyelashes as I accepted it between my expectant finger and thumb. I stretched coyly, and let me make this clear, I am not coy. With an ever paranoid eye on the security guards sat by the paddling pool, I took an indulgent toke and leaned back against the plant pot behind my head, before turning right to study him. Unreal, with perfect shallow green puddles where mere mortals had eyes, set above strong angular cheekbones. I know, soppy as fuck; I promise you I’m not usually like this. His skin was the bronze that comes of travelling and being at a certain type of comfortable understanding with the sun that I knew many coveted, thinking fondly back to some friends at university and their horribly sullied brown tanning mitts. I thought of their hurried haplessly scrubbing, with their legs at the most awkward angles propped over the bathroom sink, polishing for an appearance that’d never be existent.

He outstretched his arm once more, his limbs a toned extension of this impeccable golden flesh. As he grinned, he unveiled sharp canines and teeth set into precision. The rest of him melted into the charming background with its palatial columns and flawless heat. With my mouth agape I tilted upwards to survey the curved red bricks towering over us before lowering my head to eye level, watching all the children and their parents as they paddled in the large fountains. I felt him staring at me with hazy eyes and I didn’t meet his gaze, in favour of the coy persona I’d adopted for reasons I wasn’t quite sure of. We’d finished smoking and he stood up, holding his hand out to mine. We remained wordless as we walked slowly out of the garden and back into the museum. The overwhelming silence sent us into fits of giggles as we traipsed around with fingers locked, pausing several times to kiss briefly with minimal tongue.

You see, a summer love affair was the desired effect, less of the communicational difficulties of Danny and Sandy but not quite as revoltingly saccharine as Noah and Allie. Something do-able, a functional fuck. We got to the children’s area of the museum and I picked up a devastatingly expensive pot of sweets. ‘I reckon you should buy me this,’ I laughed in a tone that couldn’t be read as serious. ‘You,’ he said as he cupped my face in a gesture far too intimate for how little we knew each other, before tugging me over to the till and paying for it. I tied the ribbon from the lid around my wrist in a vague sentimental act and ate some jellybeans from the clear plastic tub. They made me feel sick and I told him so, through cackles and chewed up jellybean.

We clambered up endless flights of stairs until we got to the highest place we could in the museum. There we sat very still and very close, looking out over London and saying nothing much with our fingers still entwined. The area around us was littered with small polystyrene shapes and I tried to count them over and over again, getting distracted by funny thoughts of pilot pigs and ridiculously long slippers. He parted his full lips and spoke in a voice so soft and deep that it was disarming. It was almost poetic to hear, such a smooth and earnest lilt. As he spoke for a while I sat up and pushed aside the aeronautical ham I had darting through my mind, started really listening. I watched his mouth gently tense and expand as he moved through the motions of words. I heard him, I truly heard him. And it was at that very moment, the moment I heard everything, in which I realised; he really was the most boring boy I’d ever encountered in my life.