[...] Some months ago I touched the side of a man’s face. A man I’ve never touched in any way at all. It’s not at all warranted or appropriate for me to touch this particular man, we aren’t friends, our relationship is professional. We were talking about his origins, where his parents came from and so on, he said something about his features. I happen to like his mouth a great deal, it’s very beautiful. I didn’t say that, but my hand went to his face, there it was on the side of his face, turning his face slightly away from me so that it was now in profile, ‘You’ve a lovely profile,’ I said, something like that, I can’t remember exactly, and just as quickly my hand was no longer on his face, but it had been. It had been on his face and that’s a strange thing to know, and I’d be surprised if I ever forgot that. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret things like that. I might do the following day, and for a few days after that, that’s to say I’ll likely feel absolutely mortified and green about the gills, but then time passes soon enough and so too does my nausea and mortification. In the end I don’t care too much about getting carried away and making a fool of myself. The alternative is to die of boredom, the alternative is to be genial and pass the time, the alternative is to take a spoon to my brain and scoop it out, the alternative is to drink too much and become taciturn and twisted, the alternative is to not show up at all, and I’ve done all those things and getting carried away and making a fool of myself from time to time is, in the end, so much easier to bear.