I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 06: sometimes I think I'm the problem but at least I'm laughing

               Shoulders sagging, I retrace my steps with a scuff of my shoes against the asphalt. Guess I'll get my bike to Ronny's now since I've got nothing better to do. I've barely had the thought before I stop and turn around to stride in the opposite direction, past Video Bliss and along Kingston Road until I'm in front of Under the Dryer, one of the two dozen hair salons Sufsdale hosts. Beside it is the door to the apartments of 28B.

Though the buttons on the keypad and buzzer are worn entirely, my thumb finds the correct ones on muscle memory alone. I rap the bell as rapidly as possible until the device hums and the door unlocks.

Dal's glare latches onto me the moment my head emerges from the stairwell. As expected, he opened the door and stepped one foot over the threshold to watch me approach, unable, in his enthusiasm to see me, to wait the fifteen seconds it'll take for me to reach flat 11... That, or he doesn't want to give me any opportunities for annoying knocking.

His skin is light enough for his tattoos to be decipherable from the distance and the eyes of the spitting cobra at his throat nail-gun into me as quickly as his own black ones. 'Wallahi, have you got to ring the bell like that every fuckin time?'

Unlike me, Dal never lets emotions slip by accident. As if his durag is a helmet of some alien metal that keeps his mind above matter, he retains tyrannical authority over every twitch of the neck and inflexion in speech: the irritation in his voice now is a privilege he intentionally bestows upon me.

I'm not professional in this practice no matter how hard I try to learn and a grin instantly splits my face. 'How else would you know it's me?'

Not slightly amused, his glare follows me from the landing and over his threshold, which I cross without formal invitation. 'Cause the buzzer has a speaker, you can tell me.'

'But that wouldn't be half as funny.'

'Aggravating, you mean.'

'Sure.'

I shrug off my jacket too and drop it on one of the three hooks on the wall and kick my trainers off, letting them somersault until they fall still a metre apart. Dal's entrance is as barren as the rest of his flat. Before my interference, one bomber jacket and an Adidas hoodie were pinned to the wall and the only shoes on display were a pair of Air Jordans tucked neatly beneath the coats, not counting the sliders on his feet. It's good for him to have me mess things up sometimes, I think.

Judging by his slitted eyes, he disagrees.

I give him something else to be impatient about. 'I got sacked.'

I'm at his kitchenette with my mind already bogged down by boredom before he has processed my recitation. I'm a paradox of being effortlessly manipulated by a sense of novelty whilst simultaneously treasuring the comfort found in the familiar. But lectures about how I need to learn to take things seriously, and make some friends, and stop losing myself in anticipation and incessant oscillation to extremes have the appeal of neither because I can predict the gist but never enough of the specific words to make a game out of it.

When his sigh jabs the back of my head, I can't help but roll my eyes. 'Again?'

Despite my understimulation by the subject, I turn to him, crack my knuckles then flap my fingers as if shaking them dry. 'It's not my fault. They slashed my tires.'

'You gotta stop lettin those white kids pick on you every damn day, blud.'

'I can't exactly go bangin people up with my criminal record.'

Though he walks without dragging his feet, another thing that sets us apart, Dal fills the silence by sucking his teeth and mumbling something about showing me a criminal record. I skate over both responses by pressing my palms over my chest and bowing my head. 'Besides, Islam is a religion of peace.'