I can see it in your face…
The way your lips curl when you talk about being a kid, you don’t have to say the words, all the pain is wrapped up in your expression, every cruel jibe and smack in the face registers clear as day in your sneer.
The light in your eyes when you spot that old Lou Reed record for a fiver, or someone mentions one of those daft old Ealing Comedies you love so much. Somehow they seem to get bluer, the kind of blue that paints the sky on a warm summer’s day.
When you wink at me, sat in the pub after we’ve both clocked a fit bird giving us the eye. Coz no one ever just looked at one of us – we came as a pair. And I know you’re happy sat there with your pint and I should go first, you’ll wait your turn.
The raised eyebrow when I tell you there IS milk in the fridge, yes, I HAVE finally finished those lyrics, and OF COURSE Carl, of course I’ve mastered that fucking chord progression. What d’you mean, you’ve not seen me with the guitar all day? Must have been hard at it when you were sleeping m’boy. Not that we say any of those words. The eyebrow says it all for us…
The way you sniff like you have a cold, even though it’s the middle of June. But I guess I don’t need to be too attuned to know this one. To know it translates as “Pete, go and see whoever-the-fuck-it-is you do, and do whatever-the-fuck-it-is you have to, coz I’ve ran out and the demons are knocking…”
The look you give me in the morning sometimes, after a hard night not sleeping, like the world is simply falling in on you. Misery seems to make your eyes darker, make them lose their sparkle. And I fold you into my arms and hear your grateful sigh as your head sinks into my shoulder.
There’s a look in your eyes I know almost as well as that last one. I see it before the glasses start flying or the punches get thrown. Even before you clench your fists or grit your teeth, and it’s like the demons you want me to help you get rid of make your dark blue eyes sparkle. Not with life, or vitality; excitement; joy…with anger. Bitterness; venom; destruction….
I wish I paid attention to that look more often.
Then there’s that rarity: The look in your eyes when you want me. Your whole face changes, somehow your lips are redder and aching to be bitten, your eyes drink me in, your whole countenance dares me to make a move.
And when you’re about to come I know too, long before you get all vocal about it. For a second you fix me with this ferocious gaze, like your eyes are burning all the way through me. And then you bite your lip, so hard I swear it ought to bleed, like you’re trying to prevent the inevitable scream…
Once, just once mind you, I saw something else in your face. And it wasn’t after sex or anything clichéd like that. It wasn’t even after I bought you fags and booze to apologise for going AWOL for a couple of days. It wasn’t any of the times I told you I’d quit brown, and it wasn’t even when you met me at the prison gates. It was some silly situation, down a back-alley somewhere, well away from the media or any high-profile events people might think of. Wolfe had been hanging about for a while, waiting for me to leave you and go to his flat, score, fuck, whatever…suck him off for a bag cut with brick dust and soap powder most probably. Cept that day withdrawal from my Biggles was worse than the cold turkey: It’d only been a few hours. Wolfe was getting restless, tried to get me to leave. Gave up on me and started on my Arcadian Prince. Asked you whether it was true, whether you really were a hippie’s son, born in a sink. Did your dad leave because your mum was too much of a pothead whore? Did you have tie-dye shorts? I caught the look before it had even had time to take up residence on your face properly, and I told him where to go. That he could stick his shoddy drugs and limp dick, and fuck right off back to whatever hole he happened to have crawled out of that day. I meant it then, even though the next day I was the one crawling, on my skag-hands and knees, right back to him. But as he scampered away just then, muttering to himself, I turned back to you and learnt one last look.
It said, “I love you.”
