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Previously on two foreskins walk into a bar. This man, who I know I'll never see again, whispered in my ear, I love you. But I knew I did not love him. Two foreskins walk into a bar. Written and performed by Chris Thompson season two, episode nine only integrate no dairy, no red meat, and no peanuts. It was the girls dietary restrictions, but nevertheless, I had to find Blake. If poetry and metaphor dictated life rather than the other way round, then Blake would have been on the compass on the edge of the pier, being licked and lashed by the Atlantic winds. But I knew he wouldn't be there. I tried the karaoke bar. No one had seen him. Key west resort was a stretch, but I had a quick check. He wasnt in the hot tub or the darkroom or the sauna. He didnt answer his phone. So I wandered the streets of Key west, peering into each bar, past the bachelorette parties and the cruise ship passengers. I found him on my porch. He was reading my copy of the glass menagerie that had slipped from my hand during an afternoon snooze. Are you okay? I asked. Ive been so worried. Where did you go? Well, I I. Its okay. I get it, said Blake. Today was awful, and im so sorry you got caught up in it. I felt deeply ashamed for having left Blake. Its fine, I promise you. It just fucks me off, you know? Like, I feel these things for you and then this happens. I just want one thing to go my way. Just one fucking thing. I was on my way to tell you that I think I'm falling in love with you, I said. I think I'm still at that point where I could not do that. Like, I'm at the junction. I could probably still turn left instead of right. But I don't think I'll be at this junction very long, and I'm due to leave next week, so do you have to leave? Blake said. What was I returning to in New York? In all honesty, I'd moved to make a life there, to be an artist. But that wasn't happening. So what? Do I go back into the ring for another round with a city that doesn't want me? I was stubborn, and I didn't want to be beaten. And this had been my dream for 20 fucking years. But at the same time, there were other things in my life I wanted, too. Every area of my life felt lacking. Work, love, money. The paucity of these things was growing intolerable. In his introduction to the glass menagerie, Tennessee Williams wrote, success required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers. But it was a good life for. It's the kind of life for which the human organism is created. But it wasn't a good life. After coming out the other side of cancer, I thought I'd be carefree, seizing every day, living life to the full. But what I'd actually done was move from one struggle to the next without recovering from the first. In New York, I was fighting for my life after literally having just fought for my life against cancer, screaming into the void of an industry who did not want my writing, all the while trying to find a new sublet every month and not having the money for rent or food. All because I was too stubborn to give up on a dream. And there's a naivety that I must admit to. I just thought I was due some luck, that it would be my turn. But seeing the unjustness of other people having what I desired grew a resentment that ate away at my insides as much as any cancer, I calculated I'd spent four years in fight or flight mode and standing in front of Blake, I accepted that my nervous system was wrecked. I was a shell. I honestly don't know how I was still going. And I'm just not good with the grey areas. I'm either a writer or I'm not. But I had become addicted to that struggle. The wound had become my identity. Could I just walk away from it and admit defeat? Say that it just didn't happen for me? I hadn't been home to see my family and friends in London in two years because I couldn't afford the flight. Was this really worth the sacrifice I was making? Emotionally, physically, financially? I'd been given a second chance at life and I was spending it at war. And there's another thing that I wasn't admitting to. Cancer was gone for now, but I knew deep down it would be back. This second chance could be five years, maybe more, maybe less. Is this how I wanted to spend my life? I said to Blake, no, I don't have to leave. Blake picked me up in his car and we transported my belongings from my Airbnb to his apartment. My host had given me one of his paintings and I rested that gently on my knees as we drove off in the blue jeep. I wasnt moving in with Blake for good. We both had a measured and balanced attitude. No one was turning up in their wedding dress. But we figured id stay another month just to see what happens, just to see how we both feel on a monthly basis. No pressure, easy breezy and hey, maybe just enjoy life for a bit. I spent time with Blake figuring out a plan with his daughters. Hed been giving them some space, allowing them to make the first move, which hadnt yielded much. Although I could see that Blake had good intentions. I mean to say he wasn't being petty, he genuinely wanted to give them time. But I encouraged Blake to make regular contact without any expectations from them in return to give it freely, not to subconsciously engage in deal culture and just let them know you're there unconditionally. It was his youngest who came round first. She saw a therapist once a week and she invited Blake to one of her sessions. He was so nervous that he didn't sleep for two nights. Blake was determined not to be exiled from his children's lives so slowly but surely, Blake and his daughters began to rebuild their relationship. One of the many things I admired about Blake is he never threw his ex wife under the bus and nor did she him. Oh, they'd fight on the phone and both could send stinging, passive aggressive text messages which were sometimes so artful and precise they could have been haikus. Blake tried to write one in the iambic pentameter, once using AI, but then decided his time would be better spent picking his favourite underwear for him and me and then us giving each other a fashion show. Blake chose my speedos, which had been intercepted by the police. Two jockstraps and a pair of briefs. Blake had the worst underwear collection I'd seen, so I lent him some of mine. He sat on the couch whilst I stripped down in the bedroom and put the first pair on. Before I turned the corner into the lounge, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My body hadn't changed. I was still scrawny and droopy and scarred and I still felt disgusted at what I saw in the mirror. Blake turned up the music and I strutted into the lounge, down the catwalk we'd made and I modelled him my briefs. Blake whooped and cheered and I got more and more disinhibited until finally I was full out dancing, totally free. I straddled Blake and he wrapped his arms around me and hungrily kissed my body. Then it was his turn. Blake was entirely uninhibited and strutted to Tina Turner. Better be good to me. He crawled on the floor towards me, pole danced with a swiffer and a smile broke out over his face like a sunrise. I got some work behind a bar and started cleaning for my Airbnb host. And we settled into a routine of work and tropical domesticity. Slowly I felt myself unclenching, and a feeling of peace and easiness coloured my days. I'd been thinking of getting a new tattoo, and after weeks of looking at poetry books, I finally found the text I wanted. I chose the last two lines of the poem happy the man by John Dryden. When she was finishing up on my arm, my tattoo artist reminded me that a tattoo is an open wound and talked me through the aftercare instructions. It occurred to me how much I had been wounded and how much of an impact these wounds had had on my identity. The scars on my stomach brought me such shame. The emotional scars of going through cancer, though not visible, felt easy to see. And here I was deliberately wounding myself in the name of identity. The wounds we choose and the wounds we don't, I thought to myself as the blood dried and the needle skin prickled and raised into a bumpy, braille like pattern on my arm. My tattoo artist looked at the lines of poetry on my arm, proud of her work. Words to live by, she said. One night when Blake was doing the late tours, I sat at my computer and looked at the play. I'd started writing conversations with men I've loved. I'd written two scenes and they were funny and painful and raw. But so what? What is this for? Who was this for? I told myself that laying myself bare was performing a public duty. The artist's job is to make conscious the unconscious. But what good was it doing me? What good comes from returning to live in one's wounds? Or is writing them down, in fact the final step in healing from them? Impulsively, I deleted the script. I opened a new document and I tried to write something new, but no words came. For the first time in years, I had nothing to say. I feared the blank page and it felt good. Blake and I had been living together blissfully for three months and two weeks when one Monday lunchtime, I got a call from my agent in London. I'd been invited to join the writer's room of a new tv show that had been greenlit and was guaranteed to go into production. So all in all, it would be a six months engagement. Well, when does it start? I asked. Next week. The writer theyd wanted originally had got sick and I was the backup. I didnt mind that at all. This was everything id been waiting for. I sat on the sofa and I didnt move until Blake came home. I know what I should say, Blake said when I told him. I know I should say. Go take it. He went into the bedroom and closed the door. When I woke up next to him the following morning, he was wide awake. Go take it, he said. But I wasnt sure. Yeah, it was an incredible opportunity and amazing money, but I was happy and safe and a little bit in love. Everything with being a writer was so hard. Everyone was in my way, and I was so used to fighting that I think id become addicted to that fight, locked into a battle I could actually quite easily walk away from. Or to put it another way, we spend so long building a house, we forget to ask ourselves if we still want to live in it. And of course, there was Blake to consider not just my feelings towards him, but his towards me. I seethed with a quiet rage that it would just be my luck that the two things I wanted more than anything, love and success, would come, but one at the expense of the other. I was allowed one, but not both. I railed at every person in the world who had found both love and success, and I was furious with the unfairness I was being made to choose. After a morning's deliberation, I called my agent and I asked him to thank them for the opportunity and that I would be there in London on Monday, as requested. I'd fly to New York, sort my things out there, and then I'd come back to London. Blake overheard the conversation before I told him of my decision, and I heard the car pull away. He came back 15 minutes later with a bottle of champagne. I feel very angry with you, Blake said as he popped the cork and poured the champagne. I know, I said. Take it. And I know its not about me giving you permission, but I kind of wish youd chosen me, I said. Well, I'll come back as soon as I'm done. Blake looked at the floor. If that's okay with you, I said. He swished his drink around his glass till droplets spilled over. You can't just come into people's lives and use them to feel better about yourself and then leave. I think there's a code that says you don't do that. You feel used? I asked. Yes, Blake said. You're more confident in your body. You're in a better place emotionally. I've given you stability and you're strong again. And now someone else gets to enjoy that while I did all the work to get it. Work. Well, you know what I mean. Oh, come on, I said. Why haven't you said I can come to London and visit you? This floored me. I grasped. Well, you've got work the girls, they're not obstacles. Well, I'll be working, I said. Oh, so you'll have zero days off in six months. What am I gonna say to people back home? Here's my trump voting boyfriend from Florida. I knew it. I fucking knew it. I'm fine for you as long as I'm locked away down here. I'm just a vacation for you, aren't I? You fucking snob. He slammed down the glass and stormed out to the porch. His words hung in the air. I loved him. I didn't doubt that. But had I allowed myself to fall in love with him? Because deep down I knew I would leave? Was there safety in my unavailability? I tried to imagine being in New York, successful and with money, and then meeting Blake. Would we have fallen in love there? I immediately chastised myself, ashamed that I was even capable of thinking it in my mind. I cut Blake out with a pair of scissors. Gently around his baseball cap, his long shorts, his toned arms, his beautiful belly and radiant face. In the negative space around him remained, all that contextualized him. His porch and Key west, his work, his daughters, his bright blue jeep. What had I fallen in love with? The shape of him or the context in which he lived? Can you even separate them? I sat close to him on the porch. Our bare legs were touching. Lizards fretted about us. I put my arm around him. He let me keep it there, but he didn't look at me. You take one thing about me, one part of my life, and you take it and decide what kind of person I am. But you dont know. You dont know, I said. Youre right. Im really sorry. It would be amazing if you came to visit me in London. He looked at me and sighed. Then he said, ok. Blake came to see me off at the airport after wed agreed hed come to visit. Neither of us mentioned it again. Not to set a date, not to get the time off work. Everything suddenly became unspoken. I was standing at security. The flight to New York already boarding. See you in London, I said. He didnt answer. Blake, ill see you in London, he said. You promise? I meant what I was saying. But why did it feel like we were saying goodbye? Tears suddenly poured from his eyes. I held him in my arms and his body was shaking. And now I was crying too, a sudden sharp twinge of agony. I walked through security and I had a strange feeling of dreadland, that I was crossing the rubicon. I waved uncertainly to Blake as I went through. The airport is so small I could see him from the departure gate. I told him he didn't have to wait, but he prided himself on a strong goodbye and wanted to see me onto the plane. He stood with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, shifting his weight from 1ft to the other. I looked at Blake through the glass and briefly in the reflection I saw you, the men I have loved. Would I bring you with me or could I leave you here with Blake? Could I imagine you standing behind him and me waving you all goodbye as the plane climbed into the skies? But Blake wasnt one of you. Not yet, you said. Blake is the man I love. And I blinked you away. Well, see, you said. All remaining passengers please board. I picked up my hand luggage and I was about to give Blake one final wave when my phone range it was my agent. The writer I was replacing had recovered and asked for his spot in the writers room. Back. My agent was furious and exploring all the contractual implications. But in any case, I was no longer needed on Monday, so I shouldnt go. I slumped down to the floor with the airfield behind me. My head started ringing. Everything I wanted snatched away again. Nothing good happens to me, I thought. I looked up at Blake and I was overwhelmed by the urge to run into his arms, get my luggage off the plane and return to my life with him. But you spoke again, the serpent in my ear. Save him from yourself. Spare him what we have suffered. I tried to shut you from my mind. Blake could tell something was up. He rang my phone, his confused but hopeful face straining through the glass. What's going on? He mouthed. Fuck my luggage. Fuck New York. Do we find love that often that we should turn our backs on it when it comes? What right do I have to do that? But your words save him from yourself. My breath began to quicken and my heart was pounding. Blake banged on the glass. Are you okay? I looked at the tattoo on my arm. The bumpy, bloody wound had now integrated with my skin, and I ran my fingers over the smooth lines of poetry. Final call, you said. Final call. I looked at Blake. I looked at the plane outside, and I read the words tattooed on my skin. Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Suddenly a perfect, terrible clarity. I stood up and walked towards tomorrow. Two, four skins walk into a bar is written and narrated by Chris Thompson directed by Andrew Falaise edited and post production by Christopher Huthez.