Spinning Sheesha / like a Dervish

The lizard's alright.

I've been hitting up him for sheesha every other month. Feels good to relax with someone not part of my regular circle. Those cats are cool, fun and unpretentious. I still have to watch my words, though. Still have to filter, still have to wear a mask: there's trigger words I just can't let slip past my tongue.

Partly for their sake. Mostly for mine. I'm a coward that way. I don't like sharing pieces of my yesterdays. And it hurts to pick at scabs.

~

He doesn't pry, doesn't push. I can talk at my own pace. Or not at all. I don't always get what he's on about. Good vibes, regardless.

Honestly, wouldn't even have met him again if it weren't for Maya. She mentioned him being "around" last year and I ignored her like I always do when she starts reminiscing about our merry gang of suicidal fucking morons. So she did the sensible thing and lured me to his shack.

He calls it his back-alley ashram. Fits in with his hipster/ hermit/ sufi / mystic shtick, I guess.

~   

He didn't always use to be like this. Straightest arrow, dean's list shoo-in, cruise missile on the soccer field. Fucking superman, he was. Bit too literal minded about the rules, but one of those all round good blokes. Even Maya warmed to him.

And then we caught the tail end of our first year. All six of us. Or was it seven? I don't remember sometimes.

Bad winter. Bad, bad winter.

~

We don't talk about not remembering the details. We don't talk about that jagged hole in our heads, seven days deep. At least, the lizard and I don't. Maya has her own...issues...to figure out. Poking at the abyss is her coping mechanism.

Hence the book. Hence her "friend", the goon. Bait, she'd said of him before slinking off into one of those back-alleys on queen st. She said some other things too...but that's for later. Have to sort through it in my head before I put down to plaintext.

Cooling down with cigarettes didn't help. I was still jittery. So I came to see the lizard. What Maya said...I didn't want to talk about it. But when it comes to Maya, I'd rather not talk about things with the lizard than not talk about things by myself.

Good vibes, yeah? He gets it. He's calm about it. And when he's calm, I can calm down too.

~

Funny. Once upon a time, before our bad winter, I used to be the slacker. The lizard used to be neurotic OCD type.

Through the looking glass now, huh?