Student Life

That evening we took a flat-bottomed boat and swam it up the Thames. Douglas the middle-aged ***** served martinis out of a crystal pitcher. Lurching for lips, he kissed me. I was surprised how sweet it felt. Jenny in a canvas chair, pale legs crossed, water-trailing sensitive fingers. I prized the seahorse lilt of her ankles, the tilt of her toes over blue brocaded slippers, I liked her vexed intensity, ideals she wore as bruises behind her eyes. Marguerite was with child, not mine thank God though we had ed that summer. She was learning how to use me the way a nun uses a rich man. I was beguiled by the swell of her; her heavy breasts, newly enticed by the crease of her peach. The ‘new’ girl was tender, she loved a boy with a thick neck; a green bruiser who played a game so muddy it could only be played on rainy Sundays - I forget her name. Back then I was a poet, singing crinkled words into salty tears. I could piss away a week’s salary in one night, songs that years later could only quiver moth-like at the bottom of a glass. We swayed upriver, Freddy — an avant-garde painter at the wheel, and soon to die with a bullet in his eye. Poor Captain Freddy, Belfast painted his uniform. Night latched the sky. Bright words ceased to splash. The moon slipped under us, ripples chewed silver. For a long pause, we were everlasting, free to be carefree, Marguerite, Jenny from the knees down, the soon to be dead, and me.