Nothing in, nothing out is his own chosen position, nil by mouth. He does understand how that wouldn’t work for me, and he tolerates my eating – which is big of him, I think, I’ve always thought – but he still hates it when I medicate. I guess he’s floating in the stuff himself, he reckons that’s enough for both of us. Besides, I’m all the access he has to the world; he likes me clean and clear, a window, not a distorting lens disturbed by drugs or potions.Self-medication, the same thing. He hates that too, when I’m drunk or doped up.And I was right, he really really wasn’t happy with the piercings. I lay sprawled on my bed while the room spun all around me and I felt adrift, afloat, a bubble of air in the swirl of the world, and his thin narky snarky voice went on and on in all the dizzy hollows of my skull.He’s short on resources, is Small, there’s not much that lies within his ambit; but what he lacks in reach he makes up for entirely in vitriol. Sometimes I think he’s bathed in pure acid.
