Lifestyles: Boy's Room

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Only love can make a messy room • Michelle Cochrane I step into the familiar surroundings that a year ago I regarded as home. Just looking at the floor makes me realize how unfamiliar it actually is. Has this boy hoovered in the last year at all? Good lord.

Okay so I am talking about my ex. We are still friends and this is the first time that I have been back to the room in a year. At first glance, it hasn’t changed. However, I could be easily misguided by what is in the room to thinking that he is something he isn’t. On the floor lie pieces of ripped receipts that are from the weeks shopping at Tescos. I can see that he stills buys the same sort of burgers that he did back then. Maybe I could regard him as constant then. I suppose he still is, as I can also see that he has kept the empty miniature bottle that I gave him a year ago.

I can tell now why we will always be close. He doesn’t change and I know more about him than anyone will for a long time. I spot the object to back this up sitting on the bookshelves. It is a picture of his family. It’s amazing how anywhere he goes, that is always the first thing to be placed.

However, there is something surprising that I never used to notice about him. There is a strange eeriness in the room. The curtains are semi-open and a dark glare covers from the bed to the door. What could this mean? Is there is a dark side to his character or perhaps something is going wrong in his life that I don’t know about? All of a sudden I feel uneasy.
One thing that upsets me more than anything is feeling that I don’t know somebody in the way that I thought I did, completely. Shit! I thought that I heard a door go downstairs. I quickly close the drawer that I was sneaking through. Call me naughty but I am determined to know more.

I find a letter that I had written to him a long time ago. You know one of those mushy ones that you write because you think that you are in a completely safe and perfect place. Then when you break up…you believe that all men are bastards and that love really is a chemical reaction in the brain.

Whoops….another creak and I stumble from my crouched position to the floor. Enough is enough…I know that I am about to get caught if I don’t go down soon after my so called, 'pay a visit'.

I walk out not knowing whether or not there really is more to my ex than I thought. It’s disturbing and I will probably never know. I look into my bag and see the object that I have knicked. His stick of hair wax. At least I can take something away from here that I recognize. Now I can go home to my hoovered floor.

© Michelle Cochrane November 2003
Michelle is a Creative Arts student at Portsmouth University

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