skeeter mattress

I just sold my air mattress, late on a Saturday night, to a small, muscular, warm dude whose name is Ramon. He rang me an hour ago from my online classifieds ad and asked, how much longer are you up? He described what he wants to do with it – lie under the stars among the mosquitoes (“And the moon,” I reminded, insufferably helpful), at his garden house in its green garden.

I told him why I can’t stand the sight of the thing and must sell. I bought it brand new for a terrible houseguest who tarnished my last birthday, 2017. She was mean and I had not guessed it. Now I want rid. “Ahh,” he said, breathing out very understandingly.

So when he rang to say, “Ich bin da,” I am there, I snatched up the mattress deflated in its box with the sales docket sticky-taped to the side and said to my current, far nicer houseguest, “Omigod. Now I hafta run downstairs in bare foots and my father’s pyjamas, to meet this guy, unless I change.” He was flicking Tinder prospects on his phone and I had been dancing round the living room like a wild thing that is not a thing. Who is not a thing. We had got into a game of what songs do you truly really love only you wish you didn’t, they are embarrassing? I playde him Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon, whoever they are, dancing a hole in the floor and The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics. “If anyone can, you can,” said my houseguest and friend, and when I came back upstairs at a run laughing with joy he introduced me to Feu! Chatterton, just as earlier we had been listening at his behest to the very weird and cluey New Zealander Aldous Harding.

My mattress bequeathee held out a handful of coins and notes. I brought you your original price, trotzdem, despite everything, he said, and: Oh! you are in your pyjamas, you must be having a good Saturday night. Fireworks exploded above our heads and he said, shrugging, Maifest: the festival of May. The black Europe night was alight with sound. I described to him what kind of an evening my houseguest friend and I are having. Then we hugged.