Handshake

When I first met you it was the middle of summer and you were sitting on some stone steps smoking a roll-up cigarette, your eyes concealed behind sunglasses. You shook my hand. It felt very formal and I felt underdressed for the occasion of shaking some one's hand. I felt like handshaking was an occasion to worry about. I felt like perhaps there were rules about such things, like, perhaps you need to wear a suit to shake hands in a formal way. I hoped that my hands weren't clammy. I hoped that my handshake was firm enough to convey a sense of who I am, but not so firm you thought I was too tough or business-like.

I hoped that you didn't see me blush as our hands touched.

I am sure I'd never thought so much about hand shaking etiquette before.

I felt strangely visible and you looked like you'd been made out of a substance I'd never seen before; I felt like you were wearing sunglasses because, without them, everyone you looked at would vapourise. It seemed slightly impossible that we were made of the same stuff; the stuff all humans are made of, like water and arteries and limbs and worry.

A plane flew low overhead and I wondered if it was leaving or coming back. I felt like I had many things in common with the plane. Was I coming or going? And then, to where?

Everything wound around me, tying itself in knots: flight paths, handshakes, the low clouds, time itself. I lost the power of speech and when I regained it I made a bad joke, which you laughed at, and I liked you even more then because it was a relaxed, honest, easy laugh, rather than the laugh of someone humouring another someone who had told a bad joke.

After that you had to leave. I watched you walk away and wondered if I would see you again.

Another plane flew overhead. The clouds curled in a peculiar way, as if to make a clearing for it to fly through. The city felt very quiet and very small in comparison to the loud vastness of everything.

I walked home slowly, wondering at everything.