2nd week of May, 2010
Swaggering a bit with a good two-beer buzz in my system, I try to make my way through the back entrance and up the darkened staircase to the second floor. In the dark I can see the faint outline of the furniture; the chairs have been upturned on the tables, the doors locked. The customers swaggering through their way home as well. On the second floor lies my hole; I had just moved in to the place about a week ago. Turtle's Nest had always been a watering hole for my merry gang of two gay guys and two girls, me included. It seems I've promoted myself from "frequenter" to "resident" a bit too late though – twenty thousand storms after, the place feels run down, has lost its spark, the warm yellow of the lights feels like old piss.
Next door is a room that Russ took and turned into his own studio he calls "Mouth's Cradle." Bjork is among his goddesses, which explains the studio's name. The door is still open, and a few more bodies lie sprawled across the floor in intoxicated sleep. I wonder what dreams they have. I stand by the door staring at the nostalgic mess. My friends and I, we used to do this together. The world used to be ours.
To my right I see Russ wearing a yellow shirt, and in pretty much the same state as the others. He flits between sleep and wakefulness, squinting his eyes to make out my figure perhaps, or maybe figure out why I was there. He manages to lift his head a bit, disheveled hair and all, stretch his hand out to wave hi, squeeze my hand, flops back to sleep on his futon; and in that moment he seems the way he used to before the silence between us stretched so wide that I no longer understood myself, him, nor what was happening. Perhaps friendships that teeter on the edges of insomnia and insanity need sleep too. We all need to sleep. We spend a third of our lives in it. That's a good time to dream, find our own Neverland.
To my left is Vera, asleep on the wooden floor. I bend down to kiss her forehead because she looks happy. I run to my room, grab Russ' thick blanket that I have had with me for ages and force Vera to get up so I can spread out the blue thing for her to sleep on. She rolls out of my way, and rolls back onto the blanket. She mumbles a grateful thank-you, but I don't know if she'll remember the next day. Her boyfriend Thommas, still awake and smoking, might explain to her in the morning when she asks about the sudden appearance of the blanket.