doubling raze the third last time i was where i'm not now, i guess i woke up screaming in the middle of the night. someone had to tell me about the screaming. i didn't remember it. i still don't. all i remember is waking up wet with sweat. i slept for a few hours after that, but it was bad, broken sleep. i had something like a fever dream. i didn't have a fever. i woke up at one-hour intervals, almost to the minute, and each time i opened my eyes i felt different. a few minutes after nine in the morning i was fried and paranoid and exhausted. a few minutes after ten i was wide awake. a few minutes after eleven i was different again. my half-asleep brain did the math and came up with this: each time i woke up, i was being created anew, a clone of myself hatched from the womb of paper-thin sleep. i was both myself and not myself. by the time i was on my third or fourth self, i started to wonder how all these different selves would interact. i was the only one in the bed. the other selves must have been somewhere else, doing something else. the one thing i got that was close to a dream was an image of three identical versions of myself standing at the foot of the bed, staring at my not-quite-sleeping self with blank expressions. we were all wearing the same long-sleeved t-shirts and boxer pants. when i woke up the next day there was only one of me. i was going to hire a prostitute so i wouldn't die a virgin. i was angry and lonely. i wanted to feel some affection and eroticism from someone, even if i had to pay a stranger to get it. instead, i found myself in bed with someone i'd been friends with for five years, our faces so close i could hear her swallow, so close i could only see part of her face, a splinter of smile and closed eyes. we kissed red wine stains off our lips. it was the first time i'd kissed anyone. i wasn't any good, but she was. she taught me how to dance with my mouth. the second last time i was there, i saw her again, and by then i knew what i was doing with my lips. we kept our clothes on. we held each other. "i need to be closer to you," i said. she climbed on top of me. and when the weight of her fell into me, it was almost like we were the same soft structure. a two-storey house collapsing in on itself in the gentlest way. the best way. the last time i was where i'm not now, two windows looked out on two other hotels not much more than a few long arms away. i spent some time standing and looking into a few empty rooms, wondering who might have been in those beds and what they might have been dreaming or thinking minutes or hours before i thought to stand and look. and i thought, "i'd bet good money none of them woke up with 'ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay' stuck in their heads." 210811 what's it to you? who go blather from