Escapist

Wednesday’s dispute still marks my relationship with Lee, and we haven’t been as open or as friendly as usual since it happened. We’ve tolerated each other, living side by side in an uneasy normality. When we do speak there’s a sourness and an abruptness just beneath the surface; I’m sure I over-reacted to a nothing incident and this is perhaps what holds him back.

It’s so farcical.

Lee and Gav are keen on squatting the place we found last night, but I’m not so sure. To begin with it is very old and the electrics might be beyond repair. Plus, I don’t know whether I can face all the hassle, all the uncertainty, all the involvement, which feels like it’s drawing me steadily away from things that are more important. At the moment I feel the need for Order and a place on my own would be ideal.

Lee disappeared with Pete during the latter half of the afternoon returning at teatime, and at seven thirty he came up to my room. “Can I borrow your bag?”

Me (pridefully refusing to do anything other than lie on my bed, feigning indifference): “Where are you going?”

L.: “Downstairs,”—then, sensing my reaction—“an obvious lie.”

As I watched he and Pete saunter down Albany Mount to visit the old building from last night I had to get away, both from this house and from myself, so I went down to the Pembroke and phoned Stu—he and Gareth, Lindsey, Susie and Barry turned up an hour later and I passed the evening playing pool and video games, and afterwards at the all-night café, and being deliberately escapist.