Obsession (ii)

Part II

Mazzy Star: Fade into You(link retired)

Waking up with Sam, we’d sneak out for the bathroom, hopefully before his housemates would wake up. And then we would huddle back into his bed, quietly talking as we smoked, tapping the ash into an old ashtray on his bedhead, the smoke curling in the morning light that filtered in through the trees and lattice outside his bedroom window. We had a sense of privacy even though his window faced out onto the street.

Noises of doors opening, water gushing from taps, the kettle boiling, clinking of spoons in cups, the shuffling morning noises of his housemates Gunther and Kevin, and anyone else who had stayed the night, nagged us from our quiet intimacy.

Eventually the knock on the door would come. "Sam, you up?" "Yeah mate." Gunther would then poke his head into the room, cheekily peering around the corner looking for me. "Morning Hooch", he’d say with a laugh in his voice.

One morning though, there was a burst of excited chatter and laughter. Gunther flew into the bedroom. "Sam, you just have to hear this… oh… oh…" and he froze in his tracks.

I looked at him, and then down at Sam, who was beneath my naked straddling body, and then looked back at the door again. The moment had gone beyond embarrassment or coyness for me. He couldn’t unsee what he had seen. So I just looked him square in the eyes and simply, pointedly, said "Good morning Gunther". "Um" he stammered, blushing. A pillow landed next to Gunther’s head as Sam yelled "Get the fuck OUT, man".

This seemed to snap Gunther back into some form of propriety, and he ducked out the doorway, mumbling something about telling Sam later. We just collapsed into each other with laughter.