My girlfriend has the habit of tapping my hand with her bare ring finger; in libraries, in crowded bars, as we walk through galleries, in bed when she discusses my performance, at restaurants where she asks after my unsophisticated palate, whenever she wishes to emphasise her point, she raps a morse code bruise. In another year, I will be identifiable only through the stigmata she causes. I have said this when out with friends, only for her to tap my palm and tell me I’m not that funny. Each tap implies I am shallow, that I need to listen more, or perhaps simply that I’m lucky she has any time for me at all. Her friend Greta once took me aside to say she thought I was a little more than a mere project, (‘A doer-upper you are not,’ is what she mumbled drunkenly), and that I might do worse than speaking up for myself. Greta said even love might feel like a steamroller somedays.
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