gypsy

Pink Glove by Pulp

You'd better watch what you're wearing, if you want him to come round and see you tonight. He doesn't care what it looks like just as long as it's pink and it's tight. Oooh, so what should you do? Should you stop being you? Just to be how he wants you? Oooh, say you'll visit your mum, then tell me that you'll come, and meet me in the afternoon. He's got your heart, he's got control. You might as well know. I know you're never going to be with me, but if you try sometimes then maybe, you could get it right first time. I realise that you'll never leave him, but every now and then in the evening. You could get it right first time. I know you think I've got to be joking, but if you touch him again then I'm going. You got it right first time. Get it right first time. Now you've done it once now he wants you, to wear your pink glove all the time. Oh you'll always be together, cos he gets you up in leather. So you know what to wear at the end of the day, and I'd laugh if I saw, but I'm out of the way. Yeah it's too long ago, shouldn't care anymore but I wanted to know; is it as good as before? Yeah it's hard to believe that you'd go for that stuff, all those baby-doll nighties with synthetic fluff. Yeah it looks pretty good and it fits you OK, wear your pink glove babe, he put it on the wrong way.

Fritz knew something was different about this particular morning as soon as he lifted heavy eyelids, trying to shake off the hangover. Nervous, bloated, ready for the day to end before it had even begun, he shuffled to the icebox. The vodka bottle clanged against the ice tray, making him wince as he clawed at it with numb fingers. His head pounded while he tried unsuccessfully to open the bottle. "Stupid, stupid," he muttered to himself.

"Glass," he added, hoping to make some headway with the bottle.

Fritz placed the bottle firmly on the table top, trying once again to open it - to no avail. Growing desperate, he twisted and twisted and twisted. Hot tears stung his cheeks as he realized that the bottle was a single piece of glass, without a cap.

The knowledge made his knees buckle, and as he sank to the floor, he noticed the note on the table. It was drafted on heavy stock paper, in a script quite like his own, only crisper, more assured.

"Dear Fritz," it began, "I am writing to you for the last time, for your own good. After some deliberation, I have decided I can't allow us to be associated any longer. You're simply too much of a milquetoast when sober. A few slugs and you become tolerable. Yet no matter how much you drink, you always return, sooner or later, to being sober. I can't bear it any longer, waking up, in my own bed, knowing who I am. Being you. Therefore - as you will have probably discovered - I am severing ties. I have arranged for alcohol to be inaccessible to you. Please, do not try to follow me; I won't be crawling inside you ever again; I am moving on to better things. Yours, less or more, Fritz."

He dropped the note and began to cry. Through his tears, Fritz looked again at the bottle. He thought he made out a blurry face reflected in it.

"Don't look at me," growled the bottle, startling Fritz, as the image in the glass shifted, then dissolved. "I'm with him. Stupid, stupid, man."