The bartender pours me a pint of Guinness. There is something exciting about him. The fantasy, service, and the desire are charged with a kind of unspoken drama, where connection and expression flourish. 

He stands at the centre of this world: confident, attentive, just out of reach. There’s power in the dynamic where he’s part host, part performer, and part confessor. That mix of emotional availability and physical proximity is incredibly compelling. 

He leaves the Guinness to settle and waits. It’s a subtle performance of masculinity, of beauty, and a flirtatious smirk. There’s a silent dialogue: who’s paying attention to whom? He represents a safe focal point for flirtation and fantasy. He’s someone I want to admire, talk to, maybe even imagine a story with, without needing it to be real. It’s an aesthetic moment as much as an emotional one. 

He’s a kind of canvas – with a quiet understanding, a rescuer, a rebel, a secret crush. Each interaction, no matter how fleeting, is charged with possibility. 

He starts pouring again, and I ask for a four-leaf clover on the top of the Guinness. When he hands me the drink, I see that he’s tried to draw one in the foam. 

I think there’s something haunting and poetic to explore in this distance between us – the observer and the observed where we are both muse and mirror. That space between emotional hunger and aesthetic distance – that quiet pull toward someone who may never cross the line into intimacy. 

I realise that he hasn’t drawn a four-leaf clover after all and can see that it is a penis instead. He leans over and whispers that only wankers draw a four-leaf clover. I take a sip, and he smiles, quietly calling me a cocksucker.