Waving to the gods

There’s a flat disc moon and smoky clouds racing over the Highway. I lick my lips where cold sores threaten and keep on with this thirst, even after all those plastic cupsful of warm recycled water. My voice is just a shadow now, whispers closely guarded by sore, swollen glands. We went to Europe and came home with new comrades, with email addresses written on beer mats, with newspaper reviews, with precious priceless tickets, usher-torn and pocket-crumpled. I see pirates, when I close my eyes, and pork pie hats and prostitutes, so much skin skimped by negligee and luminous shocking pink bikini accents. Slow motion curls and confusing gestures half beckon half threaten rolling from their elbows to the tip of a long savage painted fingernail. Fond friendships weaved themselves into our dark couple after a chance meeting in the Tiergarten, and on Onion Burger Street and at the bar, over drinks, outside the theatres, at airports. We recognise each other, by hats or red lettered black T Shirts, by breathing, and we smile and ask who-are-you? and then kisses and cuddles and knowing hearts that look right into each other and a big fat surge of elation to be here singing and laughing with kindred souls. I can still recall the first warming taste of Indonesian food on Damrak: galangal, lemon grass, coconut, sambal kacang, nasi goreng. And later jenever and beer kopstoots to thaw us out again. I cried in the Westens, in the Carré, in the Apollo and on Platform 14 of Amsterdam train station. A woman called Susan, who had dyed her hair orange, comforted me with rubs and gentle words. She kissed us when we left. And I cried in the Trout, in a shopping centre in Hammersmith Broadway, when people that I’d never even met before this summer told me that they love us and that this all matters.