Leaving, the morning after, is peculiar. They don't kiss goodbye; something tells her that this is not done on occasions like this. She doesn't know quite what to say; 'thank you' is ridiculous, but it is all she really wants to say. But they part awkwardly on a nondescript street, in the grey hungover morning; and later he doesn't reply to her email, and she wonders if she has offended him. In her mind she keeps returning to the moments of the night before that she can still remember; much of it is a haze of beery smoke, but somewhere in there is the darkness, the hands and the tongues, the meaningless heat of the whole great charade. Nick Cave plays the soundtrack, the music has slowed down to the speed of her thoughts, and the night has no beginning and no end. The inevitable bed soon happens, after a half-hearted pretence at the living-room; into the slow heavy darkness.
She has left marks on his body, she likes to leave marks, she likes to know that part of her has survived into the morning after of his life. He has left no marks on her, he can go his own way. She wants to be beholden, to be branded, but she remains nameless and unowned, a stray, no distinguishing features. Not that he had any distinguishing features; she remembers the slowed-down drugged-up movements of the night before, the concentration as she tried to remember whose name to call out. She remembers every time, but it's meaningless, she is thinking of another, if she is even thinking at all.
This is her first experience of sex that distances. Usually the act brings her closer to people; but this time, she does not feel she knows him any better after the event. All that she has gained is the memory of his face as he comes, the memory of him gasping in pleasure, the knowledge that she has finally somehow touched him. But the morning after all the defences are back up, and all she knows of him is the way he moves and the way his eyes close in agony and ecstasy. This, and a name, and an almost inaudible memory of music. They didn't talk at all; they just reached out in the dark. She still doesn't understand how it happened.
She has no idea what he is thinking. Is he remembering? She knows it wasn't all that good, for either of them. Maybe he is just going on with his life, and forgetting about the whole sordid mess. She puts her diary to one side, determined to do the same.
Just the faint memory of music. All this, and a sigh; no more.