Low life | 2 July 2011

Our relationship lasted a week. This is how we met. She was standing outside the pub at kicking-out time. Could I do her a favour? Would I go back inside, into the gents, and buy her a packet of condoms from the machine. They weren’t for her. They were for her teenage son, who has recently become sexually active. In the gents, at the machine, I pulled out the wrong drawer and obtained by mistake a capsule of herbal aphrodisiac, the last thing he needed probably, and had to return armed with more pound coins. Before we parted I put my mobile number in hers.

We met the next evening. She gave me a Reiki massage. She gives them for a living. She gave it at her place of work, on the floor. Before starting, she said did I have any current health concerns. Mucus, I said, clearing my throat to demonstrate.