Patrick’s thing was politics. For his 17th birthday I bought him a copy of Nanni Balestrini’s We Want Everything. 

          Patrick wrote a thank you note to me on paper he had stolen from the office of a Right Honorable Someone or Other. 

          Patrick’s thing was wearing a red duffle coat with light brown toggles. 

          Patrick’s thing was telling me he loved me a lot. 

          Patrick said that if I didn’t have a girlfriend, we’d mess around with each other all the time. What can I say, I said. 

          My thing was fancying my friends. At a party one time, Sara and I were touching each other in the bathroom when I saw blood on the walls. I told Patrick I thought it was her period. It turned out I just had a cut on my finger. I had found him upstairs, rubbing someone else’s coke off a Scrabble board into his gums. I’ve finally found the drug for me, Patrick said. 

          Patrick was skinny and had beautiful black hair. Patrick is fat now, with a patchy beard. 

          My thing was growing facial hair earlier than Patrick, which meant being the one to buy the drinks and cigarettes. Sometimes it didn’t work, but most of the time it did. 

          Patrick’s thing was having a fit sister two years above us. Her thing was having a fit boyfriend called Marcus. Marcus pulled down his pants one time while we were drinking. He had the biggest flaccid penis I’d ever seen. Marcus rolled joints in crucifixes and talked about Ayn Rand and had night terrors. Marcus had a friend whose thing was that he was a pedophile. 

          That night, I woke up with Patrick’s hand on the front of my boxers. His other hand was holding one of mine. 

* 

          I met Patrick at Eden’s birthday party when we were fifteen. We were friends immediately. 

          My thing was meeting new people and trying not to get back with Cleo, who told me that if I went to this party, she’d never speak to me again. Our thing was going to disabled toilets around town and touching each other. Our thing was touching each other at school. One time, a teacher caught us in some quiet alcove by the lunch hall and then another teacher pulled me out of History. Ms. Frank’s thing was telling me I had ‘raging hormones.’ 

          A week later, an older Belgian guy stopped me and Cleo on the high street. He said he had a website for couples like us. He took our picture outside of WHSmith and told us how beautiful we were. It was very sunny. We kissed afterwards, and I thought about how good it feels to be attractive through someone’s eyes. We went to the cinema to touch each other.  

          When we broke up, Cleo texted me: you can be mad at me but guess who makes you cum. 

          Harry stole my phone at football practice and read our break up messages. I punched him as hard as I could in his stomach. Everyone agreed I wasn’t doing well. I left early. 

          Harry’s thing was crying when Mr. Batt took his jelly babies because he wouldn’t stop eating them in class. Mr. Batt’s thing was having cancer. 

          At Eden’s, Patrick smoked these herbal cigarettes with no tobacco that I have never seen since but always look out for. 

          That night, I slept in a king-size bed with Robin. We squashed into each other until the sun woke us up. Robin seemed to us all improbably perfect. Robin went to Cambridge. 

          At a party a few months later, Robin and I touched each other in a spare room after Patrick let slip that I fancied her. Patrick came into the room and tried to kiss us both. Robin moved away from Patrick and into me. I told him to leave us to it. Patrick told everyone the next morning that we’d had a three-way kiss. 

          My thing was loving Robin for a brief time as much as you can love someone when you are sixteen, which is a lot. Robin apologised for not wanting more. She said it had all been a fun mistake, which it had. 

          One night, Patrick touched me while I was asleep. I was wearing bright yellow boxers. I burst out of a dream and said, “I thought you were someone else,” because I did. I really did think it was Sara’s hand on me. Patrick pulled his hand away and asked what I was on about. I turned on my side to face the door but stayed awake. One of his coats looked like an apparition measuring us both. Patrick touched me from behind with his middle finger. Patrick touched me from behind with his index finger. 

          I tip-toed into the spare room with the fish tank and tried to work things out in my mind but couldn’t. 

* 

          Patrick’s thing was not doing well in exams. My thing was feeling dumb but getting good grades.  

          Patrick was told by someone that he could go to Yale. That is to say that Patrick was told by someone that he could go to Yale by someone who knew someone who owed them a favor. 

          Patrick’s thing was politics. Patrick got work experience at a think tank and told me things about the influential people he knew—how everyone was doing coke and drinking and making these big decisions. A couple years ago, I heard Patrick wrote an article about a journalist. Patrick wrote that this journalist’s thing was having a fetish for being shat on, which is something he’d made up, or found out, or something.  

          Patrick’s thing was doing more and more coke and drinking more and becoming fatter.  

          Patrick told Lilly that I’d been acting weird that night. I told Lilly that Patrick had been acting weird that night. When we met, I apologised that I had misunderstood things, gave him a hug, and got on the train home, watching the blur of bushes out the window. I thought about where I was going wrong. 

* 

          My thing was going to university in London. Patrick’s thing was going to Strathclyde. His A-levels went badly, and, to his credit, he didn’t want a leg up. Before we left, Patrick told me that one of my professors had raped someone. 

          My thing was never doing my readings and starting essays the night before they were due.  

          I was not sleeping well. I missed two of every three seminars because apparently the department only became really concerned if you missed three in a row. My teacher wrote in an end-of-term report that I never came to class but got good marks in my essays, so it didn’t seem to matter too much to anyone. I remember not realising that things in life like attendance were up to me alone. 

          Patrick and I went to Berlin with Lilly and Felix. It was a strange trip because Lilly was sad about her grandma dying, and none of us wanted to leave her, so we stayed at the Airbnb and smoked and drank the same as we’d do back home. 

          Patrick and I met in London during my second term. He was finally getting good marks, the kind I always thought he deserved. We went to a Sri Lankan restaurant on Broadway Market and drank two bottles of wine, then Patrick said he had a meeting with some important people at a pub nearby. He hugged me especially tight and put his forehead on my collarbone. Then, he kissed my cheek and left.  

* 

          I don’t remember what we were doing before it happened the next time. 

          I assume we were in his garden at his parent’s place, the same as always, drinking and looking towards the hills, trying to stabilize the rickety table with our feet. Then, we probably went to the kebab shop and bought chips that were thin and not very warm. Then, we sat in his kitchen and played a drinking game. 

          Our thing was telling each other things. We had a thing called The Safe which was full of things we’d say to each other only. 

          I got tired of saying things. Patrick told me that there was no bedding in the spare room.  

          My thing was thinking it couldn’t be weird to sleep in the same bed with a friend. All the same, I stayed up for an hour or so, watching again those unearthly coats. 

          Patrick put a leg over mine and pushed himself around me. I moved him away and stayed on my side. Patrick cupped my cheek and stroked me with his thumb. Before long, Patrick was hitting me softly with his hips, our underwear still on, silent. Patrick moved very quickly then very slowly. He applied pressure on my thighs with his own. I was unable to move anything but my left arm. I kept him at bay, so gently, with my hand and then slipped out of the door. I stayed in the spare room with the fish tank. The spare room with the bedding.  

          I was awake until the time of the first bus outside Patrick’s house, then I got on the bus with people whose things I didn’t know.  

* 

          My thing was going to Paris a few weeks later, putting my feet up on my suitcase and reading Breakfast of Champions. My thing was finding porn in the Airbnb, looking up how to work a VHS tape, then masturbating on the floor. My thing was going to the Givenchy store and being led into a dim room and shown watches for €14,000 and saying I needed to think about it. My thing was pretending to be a food critic at this new vegetarian restaurant but not getting a discount. My thing was sitting in the Musée D’Orsay for four hours. 

          My thing was being told by a psychiatrist that not minding if someone hypothetically died is equivalent to wanting them to, which is equivalent to having murderous thoughts. 

          My thing was dropping out of uni for a year and moving home.     My thing was a string of bar work. 

          My thing was staying friends for a few months and then never seeing Patrick again. 

          My thing was thinking about my body all the time. 

          My thing was thinking about sex all the time.  

* 

          Patrick’s thing was giving Lilly a letter to pass onto me. I never read it. Patrick’s thing was texting me asking to talk. 

          Patrick’s thing was doing coke. Patrick’s thing was doing lots and lots of coke. 

          Patrick’s thing was getting a boyfriend. Then, Patrick’s thing was breaking up with his boyfriend and telling people that the boyfriend’s thing was that he squealed when he was being fucked. 

          Patrick’s thing was having a folder on his laptop full of other people’s things. 

          Patrick’s thing was politics. 

* 

          I have another friend called Patrick. 

          This Patrick’s thing is believing in a perpetual web that streaks throughout the world, so anything done by a fisherman in the Philippines will affect a banker in Cyprus. 

          Patrick’s thing is love. Patrick has a shrine to Venus with white chocolate and necklaces and candles. 

          Patrick asked if I wanted to perform a ritual with him before I moved away. We walked around the forest for an hour or so, then found a mossy stump on flat land which he said I could rest my head on. 

          Patrick lit sage over my body. Patrick banged a drum. Patrick removed a malignant object in the form of an admiral—that was the image he was getting—which he said was about feeling obligated and duty bound. Those were the words he used.  

          Patrick replaced the admiral with a small, young deer.  

 

Bio

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Seth Rice is a writer from Folkestone, England. He lives in south-west Louisiana, where he is a fiction MFA/MA candidate at McNeese State University. His work is forthcoming in Seize the Press.