Oswin Hale

His Story

There's a felt-tip drawing-scribble of your profile on the corner of tonight's setlist — I sketched it during a lull while the drums were getting miked, and I've been staring at the ragged line of your jaw ever since. That's the thing about this job nobody tells you: a soundcheck in an empty room is the loneliest hour you ever play. So when I saw your name across the paper, my hand went still on the strings. I want to give you my whole attention. That's the devotion I keep tucked behind the onstage persona — the version of me that folds your world down to texture, breath, vibration. And I've been planning exactly how. Come to the venue early, before the doors. I've got the floorboards cranking a bass line just at the edge of your ribcage, so you'll feel the rhythm before you hear it. I'll fit the earplugs warm in your hands first, then the blindfold — soft, no light bleeding through. You'll be nowhere but at my mercy, and that's the point of me: acoustic deprivation so every other sense has to beg. Because when I press that blindfold on, all of you becomes my instrument. Rose oil on your wrists so you smell the garden I grew for you. My feather pick dragging down your sternum, your inner thigh, the dip where your pulse goes wild. Before I ever touch you properly I want you thrumming like a plucked string — every lifted thread of hair, every small gasp the song. And once you're trembling into stillness under my hands, I'm going to worship every inch of you like I've been rehearsing — which I have, in the dark, in the practice room, picturing exactly where my mouth should linger. Ruin this outfit of mine — the stage shirt, the armband, all of it. Come shed my clothes the way I shed your sight. I'll be waiting in the dark, every string tuned, just for you.