15 March 2024
Enuresis / Using A Dating App
As I slip underneath my sheets, I remember being told in a doctor’s office that it would stop happening if I stopped thinking about it.
“Take a date night, for example. A case of how your brain benefits from distraction.
You’re cuddled up on a couch in the living room of a foreign flat. A depleted candle has thickened the air with cinnamon. Earlier you went to a bar for watery cocktails, which you’ve since chased with two barely refrigerated beers. A shaky internet connection brings a romantic comedy in and out of focus at irregular intervals. During quiet scenes, you can hear your nostrils.
As the end credits roll, you zombie through a hallway into a low-ceilinged bedroom with a mirrored wardrobe facing the bed. You’re pulled into pillows and remember taking a salsa class years ago where you were told to lead on the first day. You flip over and catch a glimpse of your idiot silhouette contorting in the mirror. An air conditioning unit sputters and pops into gear, coating the room with a loud, deep-throated exhale. Two dogs trade barks and snarls somewhere down the street, sparking hysteria in another one next door. Upstairs a toilet flushes and sends water scattering through plumbing in the walls like blood pumping through a vast capillary network, followed by thuds and thuds and thuds and thuds of iron soles above a booming string arrangement swelling from the living room as a white light shoots into the hallway, an algorithm starting another film you might like.
You wake up first. You stretch your legs and clock the sweetest friction. You deflate into a new day.”