TURBINE | KAPOHAU

You said something prosaic from across the charcuterie board. I poked at the quince with the cheese cleaver and curled my toes. You stroked my temple with the back of your hand — brisk and warm — and, for a brief moment, I was taken back to that night we spent together on the coast. We’d stayed in a canvas tent beneath immense skies. You rested your head on my lap, and I peered into your mouth and found the universe floating in there. Its slow technicolour spiral staring back at me from between your teeth. I was deeply troubled, and a pervasive doom swept over me. Not like those profound feelings of oneness you’re supposed to experience beneath the night sky, but a sort of spiritual malaise. I smiled down at you — which seemed satisfactory — so you brushed your hand across my cheek and put a finger in my mouth. 

You asked me if I’d ever been to France, and I returned to you and me and the oppressive atmosphere of the wine bar. You nodded to the Camembert that was melting between us. I knew what was coming next. You were reminded of something a philosopher once said about feeling blue in Paris. Recently, you’d begun a deep dive into the existentialist canon and were now laden with a social pessimism that could only be cured by good wine and good cheese.  

I looked around the bar for something to focus on. It was dimly lit, sparsely decorated, edging on industrial. Shiny people sat in small social groups grazing on cheese platters and chatting at a responsible and self-aware decibel. Their white teeth and jewellery flashed like disorienting little comets that made my eyes slip.  

We used to have fun performing anthropological studies on our nights out: mocking peoples’ choices of drink and imagining the boring things they would be saying to one another. We would watch the women make coalitions by picking fleas from each other’s fur. The men make small aggressive displays to subordinate their competition. It was like foreplay. But over time you developed a conscience and liked to remind me that being judgmental calcifies the heart.  

The problem was that I found the perpetual steaming and ironing and starching of your morals rather dull. What worried me most was that your new bent could actually be in complete earnest. So, while I waited in vain for you to trip up and reveal that you were just as dark and bitter as the rest of us, you were lightyears ahead with Saturn’s rings hovering around your head. 

The shadows grew taller in the corners of the room, and the tough new leather of the settee stuck to my exposed thighs. I made an effort to detach myself, painlessly, hoping it wouldn’t leave a red blotch on the back of my legs — or that the lights would be too dim for anyone to notice when I walked past. Momentarily, I fretted about whether anyone would even bother to look up as I went by — but dismissed this as an unfeminist thing to think about. You perceived that I was looking uncomfortable — or perhaps, restless — so you leaned in and put your hand on mine and asked if I needed some air. I said yes, and then rummaged around in my handbag. Tampons, receipts, lipstick tubes. A packet of cigarettes.  

It was one of those evenings when the alcohol had a sedating effect, and smoke curled at the edges of my vision. We walked to the outdoor area. It was a square, immaculately raked gravel courtyard with a moss-covered rock garden in the centre. I nearly choked when I saw the water feature on the back wall. The perfectly thin sheets cascading down into a narrow pool making a clean, sibilant sound. You must’ve noticed my eyes rolling like billiard balls because you gave me a look that suggested I keep whatever I was thinking to myself. 

Another couple was standing at the end, admiring the water feature. They looked effervescent in their clean and tasteful attire. The kind of couple who look like they could be siblings. You’d quit smoking, but because the two of them had cigarettes between their dainty fingers — and existentialism is so very much tied up with nicotine — you pulled one out for yourself and made a show of lighting mine for me.  

We discussed with them the convenient location of the wine bar and the restraint of the interior designers in creating such a relaxed yet classy ambience. I think you might’ve mentioned that you were ‘dazzled’ by the wine list.  

It was around about then — when you said the word ‘dazzled’ — that I recognised the same spiritual malaise I had experienced that night on the coast. That, actually, it might never have really lifted.  

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the platitudes being swapped between you and the pretty couple. But I realised that there are certain concessions one must make in this world in order to not feel completely abandoned by it. That all that talk about calcified hearts might be you trying to connect with me at a level you thought I might be available on.  

It dawned on me that my perpetual cynicism might’ve caused you to jump into foxholes with a bunch of dead philosophers in the hopes of saving me from my incurable myopia.  

While you accepted that the universe might occasionally land on your tongue, I wandered around with my lips tightly shut. And in that moment, with you and I standing in the zen garden of that insufferably debonaire wine bar, I realised that you might be right. I felt both nauseous and inspired. Both dejected and in some way aroused. What a lovely man you are.