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The Jukebox

by Matt Jones

Respect is the absence of competition and as neither man was envious of

the other, that is how it began; as a deep and mutual respect. No direct

comparison could be drawn between the two, one was long where the

other was dense, each beard was magnificent in its own right.

Mutual respect is the starting point for a lot of things, and at that

jukebox, for those two men, it was the starting point for something that

could not be stopped.

‘That’s the thing though,’ Jon was saying. ‘They’ve got their heads so far

up their colons they can taste their own vitamin pills, or whatever other

fake snip they’ve been stuffing themselves with...’

‘Totally, man,’ Bob went on. ‘Totally. They look like rockstar action

figures, man. It’s all a phoney ride.’

Most people lie to get the attention they need. Or to feel accepted. But

Jon and Bob didn’t need to do that. They almost didn’t need to speak.

They understood each other perfectly, right down to the marrow. And the

great force rose in them like a tide. Swelling. Filling them with urges.

Virgin urges. Making them more relaxed, more confident, more prone to

bold statements. The great force seeped into the space around them,

and got ready to meet itself outside itself.

When the time came to select the final song, each man unconsciously

moved his hand towards the same point on the jukebox. As the fingers

drew closer, the great force peaked and pulled them together, fusing the

digits in the electricity of two charged points. Sparks flew. The jukebox

shorted. And the only way Bob could extinguish the single strand of

smouldering beard hair on his friends face was with a kiss. Just a soft

kiss. The heat of the singed follicle spiking his lip like a scorpion.

Jon was paralysed by the electricity but his basic motor neurons knew

how to respond to those lips. Positively. The great force, through the

insanity of passion that confuses everything except the instant it feels

most powerful, had found an outlet.

A hand moved behind an ear. Fingers probed the pearl buttons on a

pounding chest. Moustaches touched, hairs linked and groped, like a

thousand spiders reaching out from a crowd for a passionate embrace.

And across the bar a girl wished for a picture of that scene; to fold and

keep in her knickers forever.

T H E E N D