Cheap objects as receptacles of feelings.

So I was at the bar tonight...

... and organised, Valentine's Day evening, was a bout of speed dating, hasty, barely-developed, awkwardly-opened, gently-explored conversations, like a virgin's first kiss, which I gaily took part in. Different faces, eight minutes each, what-do-you-do, do-you-come-here-often, with-friends-or-alone repetitions of questions and answers, and yet I managed five different conversations in the first hour alone, the harsh crack of a fork against a beer bottle announcing the next partner.

I spoke of my history, tittered politely, and inquired after curiously, and laughed my way through the inevitable loneliness of a Valentine's without a partner - and I'd hoped for this one to be different. And yet it swooped in, wings spread, black tendons snapping, as soon as it was over, and I had won, through obsessive memory, a stainless steel bracelet, which rapidly became the shell bracelet from Mexico to my attempted, female, fake, painfully wide-eyed Brian Kinney (but he would never be wide-eyed instead of jaded, and so I lift my brow in gentle contempt and disbelief instead of dropping my jaw and staring). And it rests now, warmed from smoky bar and lit candles and skin (mine, unfortunately) on my wrist, and I confess I am attached.

For those who listen to Ragan Fox's Fox In The City podcast, or have heard of his fucking fabulous poetry, I share a case of heterophobia. Tonight, a straight couple wandered in, perhaps unknowingly. The bar is hardly a den of homosexual, pornographic, out-and-out sex, but eyebrows lifted and murmurs of "I think they're straights" were seen and heard. I was both amused at the reactions and interestingly contemptuous of the couple - how could they not notice the women kissing, softly tugging at lips and skin, just inside the door? At least they did not stop and stare, one supposes.