Adam and Paul, Sex and Aesthetics by Colin O’Sullivan

Adam and Paul were sitting in their local boozer watching their favourite barmaid. The jukebox played something by The Who, though neither of them could remember the track’s title. They never dug in their pockets for coins to summon anything themselves, just complained about the geezers that did and the shite they chose.
            They smoked cheroots.

The barmaid’s name was Marlene, they knew that much. She was thin, with smooth brown skin and long frazzled hair; follicles that were knotty and tired, split-ends, a clump of briars on a head, without the berries. Adam and Paul discussed her, and that hairmess, often, every time she worked. Which was every day. Six to twelve. They couldn’t figure out how hair so frazzled could be on a body so fit and tight. The men were forty, odd, and still keen when it came to women and aesthetics. Adam wore a James Joyce t-shirt picked up in a tourist office in Ireland; Bob Marley smoked on Paul’s.

Habiliments.

“I fd love to just snatch her top off and run my fingers through that long frazzled hair,” said Adam, “though I’m sure my fingers would get all tangled.”

“Mm,” said Paul, “I’d be more inclined to go to table, sweep all the glasses and sticky beer mats away, bend her over, and take her from behind, with her nose stuck in that thick glass ashtray.”

“Ah,” said Adam, “you see that’s the difference between you and me.”

Adam is Paul’s only friend, and Paul Adam’s. Not many in the pub talk to them. Adam and Paul are unmarried. Their t-shirts stained.

Colin O’Sullivan is an Irish writer living in Japan. His debut collection of short stories (Anhedonia) is published by Rain Publishing (Canada). A novel for teenagers, Majo, is due out later this year.