#drinking

C h i l l

A different type of being high XD

Philly’s finest

at some point in the lost years. I think remus here is allosexual aromantic, though ofc I don’t claim to be representative of a complex identity.

cw: probably unhealthy coping mechanisms, mild alcoholism, and potentially painful flashbacks to undergraduate philosophy

oh, also, remind me to never try and write sexual content as an hopeless ace again?

Alcohol, sex, philosophy. It is at once so entirely unoriginal and unfathomably strange. All three are something to drown in for a fragment in time, when the days drag on and on and Remus simply feels disinclined to the idea of people, company. Affection. All that baggage. 

Analytic philosophers said history of philosophy isn’t relevant to modern debates. So Remus thinks, maybe his history might be erased in view of his present living.

So he’d sit at a muggle bar with a drink and a book full of strange words and stranger arguments, waiting for a stranger to come up, leading him from one distraction to another. With his drink-addled mind, the so called “philosophy” becomes both much easier and much harder, and certainly more amusing. All those words, trying to reach at something more abstract than the words themselves— it’s all nonsense, really. But it’s almost nice, he thinks, the cold rationality, detachedness, so completely devoid of warmth or sentimentality. And for now, it is enough.

Sometimes someone would come up and ask what he’s doing. 

“Aren’t you a smart one?”

“One would think you’re one of those pretentious art majors, only you haven’t got the turtleneck and glasses to go with.”

“Think you’re better than the rest of us?” — which is so alien a sentiment to Remus that it sends a ridiculous round of bitter laughs right through him. 

And once they’d had their fill of an appropriate amount of banter, they would follow each other out, Remus with the book under his arms, stumbling back to either of their dingy London flat for the night. Usually they don’t stay, and Remus would sit on his fire escape, reading into the long sunrise as his head slowly cleared. Just before the inevitability of the past sinks in, with an underwater rush of dizzying flashes through his head— hair, black, blazing red, wide smiles, bright eyes, green, grey— he heads to bed.

-

“I too find Nietzsche one of my biggest inspirations.” — says a girl with bright short hair, and more piercings than he could clearly count with his vision blurred by squinting at tiny writings in the dim light. Remus thought Nietzsche was one of the more entertaining ones, but he couldn’t remember what he said. Unfortunately, it was all a bit of a blur these days.

“Come back to mine,” she says, throwing back a shot and baring her neck. Remus followed, he wasn’t really picky.

-

“So what does—” the turtleneck and round glasses leans over to read the author, “David Lewis— tell you?”

Remus looks up, blinks.

“That in some possible world,” he started, snapping shut a tomb on the actual existence of possible alternate realities that, really, read more like an elaborate sci-fi fantasy, “I have your dick down my throat right now.”

-

“What in the name of hell is a synthetic a priori?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Remus says, then wrinkles his nose, “actually no. I hope I never understand what he’s on about.”

“Well I suppose one simply Kantunderstand.”

Remus looked to the man with despair in his eyes. He must be well on the way to becoming a dad. Though with his pale unwrinkled face, colourless hair, and gentle awkward bland amiability he gave the impression of a large teddy bear. He turns out to be a surprisingly good shag, both pliant and insistent in bed. 

Remus accidentally fell asleep at his flat that night, and woke up in the small hours to the unmistakable understanding that a woman frequently inhabited this room.

“Come back,” Noel says drowsily. His name was Noel.

“Sorry Noel, I’ve got to go.”

“How will I see you again?”

“We probably won’t. Goodbye, Noel.”

Noel let his head fall back to the bed, as Remus picked up Kant and stole into the streets. 

-

“Isn’t it funny,” Remus says distractedly, not looking at the stranger who is sitting down next to him, “we’re not brains in vats because we can’t talk about the idea of being brains in vats without there being a contradiction.”

It was a paper published in 1981, the year striking a cord in his chest that made him wince. How absurd, that at the same time of everything else— some righteous old man was cooking up all this in an armchair with a cup of tea. 

The stranger laughed, for apparently no reason at all, “how so?”

“Because when we talk about brain and vat, it would have to be some brains and vats that are in our world, so the vat-brain can only talk about brains and vats in the vat, and not the vat itself.”

“Buddy. that makes no sense.”

“I know. It’s probably not supposed to.”

-

It’s just his luck to be accosted by a philosopher professor type the day he reads Camus. 

“Hmm. French Existentialism,” he says, waving over the bartender, “quite the unserious, popularised and sentimental sort, don’t you think?”

Javier the barman winks at him amusedly as he comes over.

Remus decides to play along today. “Oh you know. I think Camus captures human reality perfectly.” He waves a hand dramatically, “nothing has meaning in this absurd soulless world, romance is a contrivance, and so on.”

“Hmm,” The man huffed haughtily, “if you’re truly interested, I could recommend you a couple of real philosophers to take seriously.”

“Sure, who are you thinking of? Marx? Lenin?” Remus says half-flippantly, “Stalin?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, these are only public figures whose philosophy has been diluted and sensationalised to the point of a joke.” He prattled on, “But consider who they draw upon the ideal of— Hegel, Husserl, and the like. Respectable Germans, they are.”

“Ah.”

“Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Now there’s a man of genius.”

He didn’t complain so much though, when he later had his dick down Remus’ throat, at the back of the bar’s toilets. 

“Oh Friedrich!” He exclaimed as he came, “what phenomenological finesse! Oh Friedrich—”

Remus wiped his mouth, shook his head incredulously and stood up.

“Well. It was interesting meeting you, professor. Have a good evening.” He says, and walks back out. 

That night he wanders around the streets of London a long, long time, wondering about the way people get ridiculously stuck in their tiny corner of the world. Then he thinks of himself, dragging his feet through the remnants of life. Day in, day out, too tired to live, and can’t be bothered to die.

In a burst of anger, he kicks the tree in front of him, hard enough for there to be a rustle of leaves, and protests from some birds that ring out for a couple of seconds through the empty Hyde park, before all goes to silence again. Night is just draining away from the east end of the sky. Another day.

-

Remus was just getting supremely tired of philosophers trying to talk about identity as if it’s some mathematical equation, when David comes to sit down next to him.

“You’re a strange one, aren’t you?” He says, eyeing pointedly at the book in his hands.

He ignored the comment and asked, “do you consider yourself gay?”

David laughed a bit incredulously, “well I’d hope so, since I’m trying to chat you up.”

“No I meant, in terms of identity. The whole, possibly flamboyant, affectionate, effeminate, and when you see an ever-after it’s with another man.”

David looks at him thoughtfully, then says “yes. I do. The whole package, quite proudly.”

“So it’s not just about wanting to have sex with men?”

“It’s not just about wanting to have sex with men.”

“Hmm.”

After a beat, “but it’s alright. If it’s just about sex. There doesn’t have to be someone in particular.”

“Hmm.”

They share a pregnant stare, before David smirks, “well I’m free. If you want to test out a theory or two.”

-

“Did you ever have someone? That one person in particular?” David says, as they lay side by side on their backs.

Remus snorted hard, “David. We’ve just had sex. Is this your idea of pillow talk?”

“What? It’s a genuine question.”

Remus sighs, and quietens. There was a boy alright. “There was— a friend.” He says, because it’s okay to separate the boy from the man. They aren’t the same person by any account. If to be the same person you need the same mind, same thoughts, same beliefs, the same memories— then no. Sirius the boy was not the same person as Sirius Black the man. But instead of divulging, Remus tries to divert, “Well, what about yourself?” he asks David.

“Ah, I mean, no, I’ve not had any special someone. Ever. The whole gay thing took me a while,” he chuckles lightly, “I want there to be though.”

“Mmh. Some day, for sure. You’re a good man.”

Remus sees David’s smile from the corner of his eye. “So, tell me more about your friend.”

For long moments Remus weighs words in his head. “We lived together for eight years. He was— the most brilliant boy I’ve known. We grew up together. We were more than brothers. But—” Remus desperately tries to will close the can of worms in his head that blamed himself for everything— “he wanted things I— couldn’t give to him. I guess he wanted to be normal at least in this way. I— He was the most important person in my life, but it just never occurred that we should have, should have been—”

“You keep saying he was.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

Remus doesn’t say ‘it’s okay’. Neither does he waver and let the tears break the gate. He doesn’t want David to reach over and hold his hand, or, or put an arm around his waist while he kisses the back of his neck. Which he doesn’t. For which Remus is glad.

He wants a drink. “There are probably too many things wrong with me. For this thing called love.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.” David says into the honest night. 

Remus simply shakes his head as they continue lying in silence. 

-

Remus starts to see more of David after that. Their constancy is as inexplicable as Remus’ otherwise long string of one night stands. Things work out as they do, he supposes.

But somehow, Remus thinks David understands. He offers touch when Remus needs them, but otherwise stands solid and welcoming as a much better friend than Remus dares ask for. They share banter and drinks and cigarettes, each of their loneliness colouring the sun-golden smoke that hangs between them out on the balcony.

-

“Have I ever told you about the professor who thought complaining about French existentialists was foreplay?”

David snorts. “So who did he have a raging boner for? Wittgenstein or Marx?”

“Hegel, it seemed.”

“Oh of course.” David nods seriously, “Such a catch, that one, you know how they play hard to get hiding behind desks years on end.”

-

“So what kind of books do you really like?”

“Oh, well.” Remus shrugged, “I had a couple of phases… magical realism, the Russians… Can’t quite stand romances these days though.” 

David laughed, short and chirpy, “they’re quite a bore, aren’t they? Well, so we all say until we’re living in one.”

Remus snorted, “better you than me then.”

“What, you don’t?” David mocked an indignant gasp, “I myself feel like I’m living a romance right now.”

At Remus’ slightly squeamish uncomfortable look, David burst out laughing, “I’m just taking the piss, don’t worry, Mr. Allergic-to-Emotions.”

-

One day, however, David tells him that he’s found someone. Someone else. 

“I’m sorry, Remus.” 

“No, David. You shouldn’t be saying sorry to me. It was never part of the equation. You’re not obliged, at all, alright?”

He smiled weakly, “hey. I know. It’s fine. Can’t I be sympathetic to a friend?”

Remus smiles. He is grateful for all that they shared. No one stays on the train called loneliness for too long, David is bound to get off home some time. Only Remus, the obstinate traveller, would persevere till the very end.

-

Remus goes to the pub, he reads about the Buddhists, who thought that the self didn’t exist. All our suffering and pain and loneliness and desperate graspings, therefore, are but illusory. I don’t exist, Remus thinks, I’m a mere illusion. It’s strange, and he doesn’t understand. But for now, it is enough.