Just don't ask me what it was

Am in bed because Insomnia decided to ask me out last night. Because my Imaginary (Um)friend was off taking pictures of koalas in Sudan, I said yes.

I put on my Chucks, threw a blanket around my shoulders, and off we went on a date. On a date while the MMDA drilled some holes in between the yellow pedestrian lane lines.

I drank a Margarita, he kept to his San Mig Light. We smoked as we watched flea-bitten dogs stumble by, counting how many were missing an ear. He told me I smoked too fast, I told him the butterflies in my lungs demand it. Cigarettes are not peanuts, he said.

He asked me how I was.

I told him I was okay, but he disagreed.

We started to bicker. I cut him off, began with the word no. He laughed and said You argue like a man. I shot back: Well you whine like a girl. And then we fell silent, but we were grinning like mad.

And then he took my cigarettes.

He asked if he could hold my hand. I would have said something schmaltzy like But that would make it harder for me to go, but, well, that was a tad too schmaltzy and it was already 4 AM, too late/early for confessions. (Or probably a conveniently perfect time for them.) So he held my hand.

On the way back home, he asked why I was with him tonight. I told him I had no choice. (I remember the little quiz Margie gave me the other night, the one about the strawberries. I won't fence them in. I'll eat as many as I can get. I couldn't help it, I said to the farmer.)

At the front door, he asked if he could kiss me. I said Not on the first date. He grinned and said, Baby, you know this isn't the first.

Am in bed because Migraine then jumped into bed with me in the wee hours of the morning, just as I waved a feeble goodbye to Insomnia who was then already whistling as he went down the street to visit another girl.

"I've been waiting up for you," he said, smoothing the curls from my face, tucking the blankets higher around my neck.

"Don't call me a whore," I mumbled.