bite me.

you're having a good dinner with a good friend.  a medium rare hamburger, blue cheese fries, sharp vinaigrette on the crisp mixed greens, conversation about things and stuff and whatever. 

you bite the burger, chew it and bite the inside of your lower lip.  you bite it once and yelp a little from the pain and the surprise that you'd actually bite your own tender flesh.  you taste a little blood that mixes badly with the blue cheese, but you don't bleed long enough to confuse your taste buds.

you're talking and eating and eating and talking and you intrude upon your own chatter with a forkful of salad and you bite the inside of your lower lip again, in the exact place as the first bite.  fuck.  the vinaigrette burns the bitten skin, you sip ice water and swoosh it. you notice your friend pretending not to notice your lips are leaking liquids.

you engage in an inner dialogue: stop. listen to him. eat and listen. chew and swallow, THEN speak.  but the verbal exchange animates; it cannot be constructed or controlled.

and you bite the inside of your lower lip AGAIN, as if you had been programmed from birth for this precise moment when, during this very meal, your teeth would meet in the wrong place at the wrong time and bite the meat of your mouth with the meat in your mouth in multiples.

you say nothing of this to your friend, but the meal is over for you.  your tongue wants only to run back and forth along the inflamed bump, to soothe the bitten nerves, to protect your inner lower lip from further massacre.  your mind can contain no other thoughts.

you know the drill: the healing will only take a day or so.  saliva is a miracle balm.  you will remember this evening -- the luscious hamburger, the lively intercourse, and the repeated injuries caused by that very combination -- as long as your tongue can find the wound.

but the wound will heal.  there will be another conversation during another meal.

or you can shut up and starve.