April 27, 2005

Despite drowning it in booze on Saturday, one of my wisdom teeth decided to get infected: it swelled, it bled, and it made me droll all over myself. Sunday morning my mouth was alive with pain and twitching. My nerves felt raw and exposed, and not even an overdose of aspirin seemed to do much. When I finally saw my dentist on Monday, he gave me penicillin and promised to crack open my jaw in seven day.

Infections don’t cure easily. To forget about pain, we got into Laura’s car Tuesday morning (me clutching my jaw) and drove towards London. The day was dreary and wonderful — we saw cows in the fields and rain in our windshield. She kissed me in Stratford even though my teeth hurt and we got coffee to spill all over ourselves in the rain.

Roads … Raindrops … Bursts of cum … Angry embraces in car seats while listening to the sound of rain. Whenever things hurt she held on to me, and in return I talked and masturbated wildly next to her while trucks whipped our windows with violent waves of cold rain. The car was beautiful and orgasmic, a wet piece of metal that smelled like lust.

I pulled up my fly when we reached London, my pain forgotten, and we went looking for houses to sublet and places where we could eat. The city was wet and gorgeous, full of muddy alleys, parks and daffodils.

“I’ll like it here,” she said.

“I have a craving for Chinese food,” I said. We wound up in some god-forsaken Chinese buffet where all the animals they served were uncooked and unclean. The pork tasted like ass, and we shoved spoonfuls of meat down our throats. She laughed at the slighted provocation, and I kept provoking her.

Clutching our bellies, we found our way back to the car. She let me drive in the darkness on wet highways that were as sinewy as molten lead. We were afraid and shaking — I never told her that I believe in bicycles, not in cars.

When we reached the outskirts of the city the toothache suddenly returned and convulsed my body. I swallowed a fistful of pills and she held me in her arms in an empty parking lot. Orange rain pelted our windshield and everything flickered with pain and meaning. She drove further into the darkness, where I took her into my arms and emptied my pain and anguish into her. Our bodies throbbed together, and I held on to her as the rain softly stopped. Around us, the night smelled of life and moist earth.