‘I love you,’ he says.
And I think, Ivan, you’re amazing. You have the weirdest mind I’ve met. Like, ever.
We have a good time, me and Ivan. He smokes and drinks and tells me of his dreams. Like how energy in water is the captured souls of people. Like how love, peace, harmony and happiness are as good as a duvet day.
Sometimes the swearing is in brackets. He’s said that more than once. He says it again and ends with a repeat of the word Sometimes. Just for definition.
What’s that mean, I ask, for Ivan speaks in riddles and rhymes, and I’m tongue-tied. Hogtied.
He tells me that brackets are like the ones holding up my bedroom shelves. There for a reason, but you don’t really think about them. Without them the whole of everything would fall apart.
So, I say, does that mean that without bad language our world would collapse?
‘Pretty much,’ he says, then falls into a fit of cannabis-induced giggles.