THE FIRST TIME shania twain starts playing it’s 11:47 p.m. and you’ve just handed me around a gram of mushrooms to shove in my mouth and i’m chewing them and we’re singing (shouting) going low on perogative and high on fun and there’s bodies everywhere – of course there is – and you’re wearing a sheer red body suit and i’d like to drag you to the bathroom and fuck you in a toilet cubicle that probably has vomit on the floor but you’re not a sex object so i pack that urge away only to take it out again because queer desire is subversive or whatever, right?

THE SECOND TIME shania twain starts playing it’s 2:02 a.m. and it almost escapes my notice but you’re groaning in my ear that the fucking djs didn’t compare song lists and you’re so right for that so i take your hand and part a crowd to the smoker’s area and it takes me three turns to roll a ciggie and you keep laughing saying mushroom brain and i’m not looking i promise! and then you ask me to call you my boyfriend and i stumble past shooting but you’re not a man from the hip and into kissing you, yes of course, uneven breath, lips feeling bruised, yes

THE THIRD TIME shania twain starts playing (there was no third time that night but the power of threes is difficult to ignore so let me make something up, except this actually happened okay) it’s 3:59 a.m. and we’re cuddled on a couch outside a crumbling marrickville mansion and there’s a table next to us with a cowboy hat and a lighter and three 1.25L bottles of sprite and a blue bubble blower wand that you grab and start blowing out iridescent worlds and in every single one of them you show me something different, in every single one of them you are becoming–