I could’ve sworn I had some money in Euro lying around the house. I seem to remember exchanging a lot more currency than I ended up needing during my last trip to Germany, but perhaps I’m just misremembering things. Either that, or I’ve lost a bunch of bank notes during the move to my new apartment. Anyway, it’s not like they don’t have ATMs in Paris, which is where I’m spending this week. I reckon it’s going to be interesting—my mom sent me a long list of her favourite places there which she insists I not miss—but more on that later as events warrant it. We now have bigger fish to fry.
As I run around my home tossing things into my trusty campers’ backpack a few hours before my flight, my mind keeps returning to the events of last night. There she was, pressed up to me whispering in my ear even though the obnoxiously loud music in the club had long since given way to much softer and more relaxed background fare. Her slinky cocktail dress which exquisitely accentuated her delicate form did little to sheath the warmth of her body. I remember being transfixed by the way her tongue-piercing glistened under the subdued lights as her mouth moved, and struggling to string coherent sentences together as I drowned in her intoxicating perfume; but her frequent giggles and pouty smiles seemed to suggest I was doing something right.
It took much of the night, but I was finally beginning to feel relaxed and not completely out of my element. Without the blaring music and the smoke, my system wasn’t on constant sensory overload (at least, not the kind that bothered me!) and the setting quickly became a lot more intimate. It stayed that way for a long while—until it eventually evaporated; an inevitability I was bracing myself for the entire time.
I amn’t going to discuss details, but I believe I do need to take up some form of dance lessons. Not for improving the gracefulness of my movements, but to prevent me from getting petrified and retreating into a shell (not to mention arguing to defend my pitiful chickenhood) when being pushed to.
As I sit here amidst this scattering of paper I rummaged through to look for my Euros for the trip, I can’t help but glance at their contents. Much of them are unfinished journal entries over the years, many of which are desperate pleas and pointless grousing, a sizable chunk serving to highlight the complete history of my sexual failures. I seem to be doing the same things over and over expecting dramatic changes in my life. But the events of last evening, this stack of memories strewn about, everything, points to how absurd a notion that is. If I want my situation to change, I need to change too.
First stop, manning up and signing up for dance lessons. For a while now I ain’t had nothin’ twixt my nethers weren’t run on batteries.