I sit in this crowded, smoky room, listening to the sound of my own breathing. Is it too heavy? For some unexplainable reason I imagine I heave for breath every time I inhale, that a deep, loathsome rasping sound escapes from me. I imagine the noise as I breathe and can no longer tell if it's really me or just my mind. No one else seems to have noticed it. I watch the girl and guy on the floor before me, below me, for I am sitting on the sofa against the wall. I watch as he leans his body into her, he accepts her manufactured cigarette, grinning childishly, intoxicated by her presence rather than the smoke. I look down at the water bottle on my lap, and play with the woolly covering that encases it. I zone back into the conversation I am a part of. the girl I have just met sits beside me on the sofa, her eyes fixated as she tells me about a special type of algae on plants, and how it forms shells that are used on animals like tortoises, and how she is studying the effect pollution has on this algae and, in effect, the consequences that will inevitably fall on the tortoise population. I soak up this knowledge, hoping that it creeps its way through my brain, past the layers of weed and beer that cloud my mind, and settles within the recesses, in hiding, so that I may remember this fact and therefore feel pleased that I know something of Marine Biology. As her subject inevitably comes to an end, for she has not yet concluded her theory, and therefore has nothing else to say, I hand back her water bottle, a gesture, my only contribution to this in depth conversation.
I see her boyfriend's arm wrap her towards him and sense this is my cue to mingle. I turn away to the conversation on the right, by my feet; sit two other girls I do not know. One of them is making a clawing motion at me; “this is my Ketamin walk” she says to no one inparticular, and laughs. I go back to staring at the girl and boy at the floor directly in front of me, he whispers to her, she holds herself in the manner she knows is expected of her; playing along but giving nothing away. His eyes glaze over her body, and continue upwards till he sees me watching him. His eyes flicker away, he is embarrassed by his own behaviour. We both know this is below him.
"So Amanda" I follow this distant voice round, gratefully diverted from the scene before me. There are many people scattered over the room, but the voice is from the body furthest from mine, a male voice, one I had not heard for nearing 11 years up until this night "What you up to these days?"
"Working with this lot" I say, gesturing to the embarrassed male in front of me and another to my right, who has been lying down on the bed for a while now, his eyes closed.
"Do you like it?"
I shrug nonchalantly. Do I like it? I get injured all the time, the pay is poor, the work is hard and stressful and half the time I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. It's the best job I've ever had. I love it. I don’t know how to do anything else, how to make anything else seem as important. But these are all words he doesn’t need to hear. I shrug nonchalantly "Yeah it's alright, get a lot of strange experiences" He is smiling at me, genuinely interested, intrigued even.
"What about you? What you up to?" I ask him, the characteristics of the young boy I once knew, was once friends with, now so apparent in his adult features.
"Oh I'm in a band, y'know"
"Ah cool"
"No I'm not really" He informs me, stroking the black beanie on his head as he looks away "I'm not at all talented, I dropped out of uni, now I'm working as an apprentice for an energy company. Realised you got to do something sometime" He shrugged, no longer looking at me.
"You’ve got a nice hat though" I tell him
He chuckles at me, looking up again, touching his beanie at the sentiment "Yeah I guess so" he sighs, although he continues to smile.
For the first time that evening, I see a familiar face in the crowd. It's not the intelligent, funny, shy, geeky guy I work with everyday who was earlier discussing postmodernism with me, now trying his luck shamelessly with the pretty brunette on the carpet. Nor is it the studious graduate beside me, whose academic traits I share, whose thirst for knowledge matches my own. And its not the guy sprawled on the bed, no longer aware of present company. It's the boy from my hometown, the one I haven't seen in 11 years, the only other person in this room who can see right through me down to the child I once was, he's the one whose soul is so similar to mine. Whose greatest fears and obvious failures are raw and fleshed out for all to see. He's the only one speaking sense to me, and I'm thrown back to that classroom over a decade ago, when those girls were taunting me and no one else wanted to associate themselves with the geeky girl in her dream world who the bullies didn't like, and he came over, his hair a mighty quiff above his head, a big grin on his face, and he said hello.
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relaxed
contemplative