I cup his hands in mine, and I feel a spark that electrifies our senses.  I fake a shiver to mask the voltage travelling down my spine.  Just a pair of heterosexual lads, skin on skin, the hairs on our hands transmitting signals like the crackling charge between pylons.

He takes a deep suck from the freshly lit joint and turns his head to blow the smoke away from my face.  Passing it to me, I clamp my lips around the damp end and suddenly feel self-conscious.  In school, you never drank from the bottom of someone else’s pop bottle because, in the words of the wise oracles, it’s just backwash….just spit and phlegm.  And now I don’t want to have a puff because it feels too much like a kiss.  And that is too much to ask from a stranger.

He leans against a wall, and I hand it back.  I’m mashed after one…. it’s my first time, but of course I’m bluffing.  Badly.  If this is a poker game I’ve got a pair of aces and I’ve punched the air; he’s got a two and a seven and he’s said absolutely nothing, except Raise. 

I try to lean against the wall, but the bricks are too soft.  Like a bouncy castle, I don’t know if I’m going to sink and fall or rebound and fall.  So I settle for a stumble, arms flailing, trying to balance.  He smiles, and doesn’t offer me another go.  He just watches.