Addicted to the passivity.

So I wasn't at the bar tonight...

... nor last night, nor last week, and nor shall I be, for at least the next week or so. Normal life calls, the daylight shattering through the usual dense fog, mortal commitments beckoning far less seductively, bright and shiny, not quite as attractive as the midnight-wee-hour temptresses of a broken bottle beside the road, or a lingering glance across a bar. The ending of a term signals that I must, for a while, at least, allow my clothes and hair and mind to clear of the smoke.

And when I am deprived of this, my weekly release of endorphins and andrenaline from slipping through dangerously-unlit areas, avoiding the hooded glares of heterosexual, hormonal, unfinessed, self-imagined lovers - when I am deprived of the chance to pretend, for a few hours, that nothing mattered - when, in short, I am deprived of bartime, I realise that my thoughts, when not preoccupied with formulae and assorted trivialities of mundanity, keep attempting to smother themselves, dragging my eyelids shut even when I know I am not tired, forcing me back to the night. After a while, I realise I don't mind quite as much as I might, because if I close my eyes and face away from the sun, and isolate my senses from around me with an appropriately moody track, and slide my fingers along the side seams of my jeans, I can almost find the bar again, wherever the fuck I am forced to be. And tiredness is a wonderful excuse to everyone else, but only one other knows. I am trying to find the bar, trying to return to the passive observing, the silent looks, the conversations carried out in nods because the music is too loud, the vaguely dark undercurrent of fear running through my gut, the ever-present tender ache of alone-ness (not loneliness, I am not lonely, I am only alone), and the cold sweetness of a cocktail that I am addicted to.