It was a dry, cold night, perfect for sipping red wine. Jane Jane Edelstein brought me an orange juice and I thought about my lucky stars and all that dead light streaming down on us. Then she said nonchalantly, ‘It’s a dry, cold night, perfect for sipping red wine.’ The word ‘perspicacity’ came slowly to mind, like light from those stars dying their tiny pinprick deaths, but I hadn’t a clue what to do with it. The symmetry was almost perfect, but not nearly as good as Jane Jane’s hips swaying over to the sideboard to get at a bottle of red. For some reason, I started thinking about flakes of sediment at the bottom of an empty glass and drowsy comforts. Jane Jane drew the cork out with a muffled pop, and I could hear the wine sucking in air, anticipating the warmth of our tongues and gullets. As she swayed back, glasses in one hand, bottle in the other, I guess we were both thinking, ‘I’ve waited years for this.’ Me and the wine that is, I’ve no idea what was going on in Jane Jane’s head. Without a second thought, I was picturing droplets of wine splashed over her breasts, and my tongue stupid with them, guzzling every last drop. With the first sip, I briefly pondered the constellations teeming above us, but then she undid the first button of her blouse, and I was glad I didn’t go for the orange juice or worry too much about those little pricks and their endless tinkering with fate.

(originally published by Giramondo : Autoethnographic)