The Woman in Blue

The Woman in Blue

Elaine and I are going to a party and she is bringing a friend that she wants me to meet.

We leave her flat in the Rockhart Estate and walk along the top floor balcony to a urine stained stairwell. And as we step down to the next floor the woman appears. She has long straight black hair, black heels and bare legs despite the cool air. And she wears a deep blue silk dress, flared at the hem.

Elaine says, “Here’s my brother from across the pond.” And the three of us continue down together.

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Late Night Crush on the Tube

Late night crush on the tube

Trying to get the tube home.

A young Chinese woman in a brown plaid jacket and skirt holds a black briefcase and stands with her back to me on the platform. She watches a District Line train passing through, but it is too late for me and has left by the time I get there.

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Chick Corea Tells Me How to Treat a Woman

How to treat a woman

I sit in a large overstuffed armchair, my leg draped over one arm, my hand draped over the other, and I graze my fingertips against the cool glowing dark skin of her shoulders.

She is young, slender, her hair cropped in short shiny Afro curls. I hesitate to touch her.

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Don’t Bring Your Laundry to a Party

Don’t bring your laundry to a party

I am with a platinum blonde, bolt straight hair, almost silver in color, cut in a bob. She is thin and tall, has a soft pouty face. We are having a party in my apartment. A good view of the city. I sense she is a little bored; of the party, or of the guests, or perhaps she is not into me as much as I am into her. Siobhan is there, as well as Nena’s friends. The woman is leaning against a doorway, surveying the room and I look up at her.

You. Are. Gorgeous, I tell her. She instantly brightens up, gives me a wide smile.

Let’s have some Pimms and take a bath, she announces.

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Alice

Alice in Wonderland

I. Pig

When the woman I was making love to turned into a pig I knew that I had become too cynical. I watched her face fill out, her cheeks lose their definition and her nose turn up at me to form a perfectly cylindrical snout. Her skin became rough. It became pockmarked and covered in fine grey hairs and then her mouth widened and opened up to reveal a coarse and unclean set of teeth. Then her ears retreated, grew longer into sharp points that flopped over like a dog’s ears. And her eyes too lost their shine and their beauty. They contracted and sunk into the skin and they became red and as fired as a madman’s. I watched her and I laughed and cried for atop of this perverse metamorphosis was her hair, untouched by the transformation and spread loosely across the pillow: a wig on the head of a pig… It was the one hope for my salvation.

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