Episode 4 - The Blazing Couch

If Cosmo Farfetch had an archenemy — and he would insist he had several, all of them stylish and formidable— then Tiffany was the undisputed queen of the list.

They had once been inseparable. They borrowed each other’s eyeliner and stole cigarettes for a dare, plaiting each other’s hair behind the school hall, swearing lifelong allegiance sealed with cheap lip gloss and dramatic promises of never becoming “one of those types of friends.”

They had practiced dying dramatically together. They had choreographed fake fainting spells. They had planned futures involving fame, adoration, and never paying for drinks.

Childhood loyalty, however, has the shelf life of a dairy product left in the sun. The rupture came courtesy of Tommy Wood.

Ah yes. Tommy Wood.

Tommy Wood with his stupid grin and his notes written in looping cursive French. He, whose greatest academic achievement was conjugating verbs while shirtless, was also Tiffany’s dream lover and future father of her adopted children. (She just couldn’t handle the stretch marks.) She would be set for life.

And just like an amnesiac daytime diva in time for award season, Cosmo seemed to have forgotten that they were dating. Honest! Simple mistake. They were on again and off again in equal measure. He just could not keep up. And the school camp was dead boring.

Tiffany discovered them behind the cabins — naked, sweating, and very clearly not studying conjugations. Cosmo, ever theatrical, extracted his finger from inside Tommy with deliberate slowness, met Tiffany’s gaze, and smiled. He even licked his lips.

The fallout was biblical.

Cosmo was outed, branded a deviant, and reduced to a cautionary tale whispered by parents who pretended their sons weren’t already worse. Tommy fled the scene with his family...some said in disgrace, others insisted there were other reasons for his sudden departure.

Tiffany vowed revenge and meant it. Their friendship didn’t end. It calcified.

From that day forward, Tiffany made it her life’s work to humiliate Cosmo in increasingly elegant ways. She dated loudly. She succeeded publicly. She married well. His father no less.

She collected symbols of victory — houses, jewellery, handbags — and displayed them just close enough to Cosmo’s face to hurt.

Which brings us neatly to Tiffany’s arrival in the park. By chance? No way! She didn’t do parks unless she was closing them down to make way for a day spa. Mud was a bankable commodity. Greenspace was a hindrance.

Tiffany was the kind of woman who arrived with her own wind machine. Her golden tresses, blowing gently about her face, were confidently kept in perfect order, from copious amounts of hair lacquer that threatened to create another hole in the ozone layer.

She radiated the confidence of a woman who had never been told no and had receipts to prove it. Swinging from her arm was a Hermès Birkin. Not just any Birkin. The Birkin. The one Cosmo had been on a waiting list for three years to even look at.

For most connoisseurs, it would have been a treat. For Tiffany, it was a declaration of war. She had to have it.

Cosmo gasped. He clutched his chest. He called her “a beige napkin of a personality pretending to be couture.”

Miles missed his mouth, dribbling coffee down his front while the coffee cart barista scolded his arm. Another banned establishment.

But the handbag was only the surface insult. The real wound was inheritance. Tiffany hadn’t just beaten Cosmo socially. She had beaten him mentally by marrying his father, slotting herself neatly into the will, and smiled politely at the funeral. Took everything Cosmo had spent a lifetime being denied — approval, security, legitimacy — and wore it like a silk scarf.

Tiffany always won. For now.

Somewhere beneath the martinis and melodrama, Cosmo Farfetch had begun to unravel quicker than Miles had thought. Something needed to be done.

Arriving back at the apartment, Miles broached the subject like a wrecking ball. It was the only way to handle Cosmo.

With his infuriating emotional literacy and posture that suggested a man who knew where his towels were at all times, Miles sat Cosmo down and said the most unforgivable thing imaginable, “You need therapy.” Miles said calmly. “You throw coffee at strangers, you party like it is 1999, and you even cried over a Hermès Birkin.” Cosmo laughed. Long, loud, and obnoxiously, “What is so funny! I am trying to help you!”

“Oh, sweetheart! I thought you said merkin!” Cosmo guffawed. “You know, Tiffany is bald as a baby down there…a nasty waxing accident.” He touched the side of his perfectly straight nose. Thank you, Doctor Bombay. “I swear!” His smile was smug. You just wanted to slap him sideways as he crossed his heart. “I was nowhere near Endota when it happened!”

“You’re trying to distract me!”

“Is it working?”

“No! This must be done if we ever hope to eat out again.”

Cosmo huffed and puffed like a magic dragon. Miles managed to get him around by suggesting he use it as an acting challenge. Psychiatrists were the new oil barons on TV nowadays.

Miles booked the appointment. The first therapist was a disaster. She spoke exclusively in affirmations and asked Cosmo how his “inner child felt about sequins.” Cosmo accused her of emotional gentrification and left after eleven minutes.

• The second suggested breathing exercises. Cosmo hyperventilated deliberately out of spite.

• The third insisted Cosmo’s behaviour stemmed from “a fear of stillness.” Cosmo told him stillness was for people without legs.

• By the fourth, Cosmo had perfected the art of weaponised camp. He wept dramatically. He flirted. He accused them all of being intimidated by his presence.

Cosmo Farfetch had it. He needed someone who understood him. He arrived at Andromeda Fusion’s Arcane Animal Wellness Centre wearing sunglasses large enough to suggest shame. He did not remove them indoors. This was not, as Andromeda immediately clocked, a fashion choice.

“Well, dear husband,” she said, sweeping through the bead curtain like a woman entering her own biopic, “What brings your wondering eye to my humble dwelling?”

“Oh, fuck off, honey! I’m in no mood for animal husbandry today.”

Though he did not object to the air kissing that ensued, before Andromeda felt it was enough and ended the salutations.

“Ahh! You do know that Carrie Fisher is not done…I am still working through crystal therapies…I’m only up to quartz.” Andromeda said, matter-of-factly. Then she looked at Cosmo. Really looked. “She does feel settled, unlike you…your whole balance is off…your usual centre of chaos is…absent.” Andromeda gestured for Cosmo to sit. “Sit,” Andromeda said, voice velvet and iron. Cosmo sat. “You’re positively vibrating like a haunted chandelier after Mardi Gras.”

Cosmo crossed his legs defensively, “I’m not vibrating. I’m shimmering.”

Andromeda rang a small bell.

Cosmo flinched.

“Breathe,” she said.

Cosmo breathed — loudly, theatrically, narrating the experience as though auditioning for an audiobook titled Trauma, But Make It Chic.

She sprayed him lightly with water.

He gasped, “Sweetheart! Is that necessary?”

“Yes,” Andromeda said. “You interrupted.” She instructed Cosmo to match her breath, “This is about mirroring calm. Mirror me!”

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall…” He said, testing the throw rug's fabric composition so he wouldn’t have to look at her. “Is this Damask silk?”

“No! No! We do mock the process. You must give in to it for my magic to work.”

Cosmo tried. He really did. For twelve seconds. Then the silence arrived. Not awkward silence. Dangerous silence. The kind that left room for thoughts to stretch their legs.

The men who left him. Auditions when he never got a callback. His father’s voice, faint but disapproving. Tiffany’s smile.

Cosmo stood abruptly. “Nope,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

Andromeda didn’t flinch. “You don’t like stillness,” she observed.

“Sweetheart! Stillness doesn’t win you a god damn Academy Award. I’ve got no time for it…didn’t have time for it in acting class with infamous Madam Rosetta Stone… and I certainly will not be accepting it from a fluttering kaftan.”

The session ended with Andromeda seething. Cosmo bristled. He reached for his sunglasses, tossed the Damask throw about him like Audrey Hepburn, and stormed out. Another decor item was rescued from someone who would not appreciate it.

Then came Dr Evelyn Hart. She was older. Sharp-eyed. Impossibly composed. She let Cosmo monologue uninterrupted for a full ten minutes before saying, casually, “I saw you in Vengeful School Girls on Acid. You had excellent timing.”

Cosmo froze, “…You’ve seen my work?”

She nodded. “Your scream was genuinely impressive…before the psycho clown got to you.”

And just like that, she had him.

It was in session three that Tiffany emerged. Not as a villain. Not at first. As a wound. He spoke about watching Tiffany succeed effortlessly in spaces that had shut him out. About her proximity to power. To fathers. To legitimacy.

“Sweetheart! That two-bit vaudeville side pieces didn’t just take things from me,” Cosmo said quietly. “She became everything I was told I couldn’t be.”

Dr Hart listened. Then she said, “I think you need to work on forgiveness.”

Cosmo recoiled, “Absolutely not.”

“Not for her,” Dr Hart clarified. “For you.”

She assigned an exercise. Write a letter of forgiveness. Do not send it. Say everything. Release it.

Cosmo nodded solemnly.

He went home and did none of that. Instead, he wrote a thirteen-page manifesto, printed it on embossed paper, sprayed it with perfume, and had it delivered to Tiffany’s office with a bouquet of lilies and a handwritten card that read:

I forgive you. You’re welcome.

The fallout was immediate. Tiffany called before finishing the manifesto. Screamed—threatened legal action.

Miles found Cosmo pacing the apartment, incandescent with rage and vindication. “She didn’t even read it properly,” Cosmo fumed. “She skimmed!”

Miles stared. “You sent it?”

“She deserved closure.”

“That was not the exercise.”

Cosmo collapsed onto the couch, suddenly exhausted. For the first time, the performance slipped, “I don’t know how to stop fighting her,” Cosmo said, small. “If I stop… what’s left?”

Miles sat beside him. Didn’t joke. Didn’t fix. “Then we’ll find out.” That was all he said.

Cosmo leaned back, staring at the ceiling. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t have a comeback.

And somewhere — deep beneath the rhinestones, beneath the rage, beneath Tiffany’s shadow — something fragile stirred.

Not forgiveness.

Not yet.

But the possibility of peace.

Dr Hart did not fire Cosmo. She handballed him onwards, “I’m referring you to someone,” she said carefully, like a bomb technician passing off a wire. “She specialises in high-functioning chaos.”

Cosmo perked up, “Finally. A specialist. I could see myself playing one.”

Her name was Melody Blaze. Cosmo had expected tweed. Perhaps a bun. A cardigan with opinions. What he got was Sharon Stone energy.

Melody Blaze was in her fifties, sharp as glass, silver-blonde hair cut with intention, tailored black trousers, white silk blouse, and a gaze that suggested she had dismantled men like Cosmo professionally and recreationally.

And a pair of pumps that said, I’ll crush you with these if you give me any of your shit.

She didn’t smile. She assessed.

Cosmo clocked the danger immediately, “Well,” he purred, settling into the chair. “Sweetheart, nice pumps!”

“Don’t,” Melody said.

One word. Calm. Final. The temperature in the room dropped.

Cosmo swallowed. Interesting.

“You drink,” she said, studying her notes. “You self-sabotage. You perform distress instead of processing it.” Cosmo opened his mouth. She raised a finger. “You will try to seduce me even though I am a woman and you are a raging homosexual,” she continued. “We will not discuss my life, my body, or my opinions on your career.”

“Honey!” he winked. “I haven’t even started.”

“You just did.”

Something in Cosmo shifted — Respect. He was terrified.

This didn’t stop Cosmo from testing her constantly. He arrived late. She started without him. He cried. Don’t cry for me, Argentina…the truth is…I never left you. She waited. He performed. To be or not to be…that is the question. She asked him to sit still.

“I feel like you don’t like me,” Cosmo accused.

“I’m not here to like you,” Melody said. “I’m here to outlast you.”

Cosmo hated her one minute, adored her next, and at times wanted to be her. For Halloween. He had the perfect pumps for it.

When Tiffany finally came up, Melody did not indulge the melodrama, “This isn’t about her,” she said. “She’s a mirror.”

“Mirror, mirror…” he didn’t finish.

Melody thumped the table between, “No! We’ll have none of that! Put your theatrics away.” She bristled. “She ruined your life! Is that not right?” He went to nod. She hit the table once more, “Wrong! She is a reminder of when you thought everybody would love you no matter what you did.” Cosmo went very quiet. Melody leaned back, “You poke, you prod, and you perform to get away from your own ineptitude.”

Cosmo exhaled, shaken, “Oh,” he whispered. “That sounds much worse than forgiveness.”

Melody Blaze clocked it early. Not the drinking. Not the drugs. Not the sex or the theatrics or the bans. Those were symptoms.

“What you’re doing,” Melody said, fingers steepled, voice calm and precise, “is mourning a life you were quietly denied. It all started with Tommy Wood. A boy who didn’t feel the same way…until you gave him something he couldn’t resist. What sexually engorged teenager wouldn’t go there?”

“That's not fuckin true! You're making me out to be a monster!” He jumped to his feet, “Have you been speaking to Tiffany?”

The woman stared him down, “No. Mr Farfetch! That would be unethical.” She sighed, rising to her feet to face the man, “You told me that... but not in those words. You feel you’re the one who ruined everything...if you had just left Tommy Wood alone.” She poked him in the shoulder, which prompted the man to slump back down into his chair. “And not hunted him down like game...none of what happened after would have transpired. You blame yourself....for everything.”

Cosmo scoffed, launching into a flourish, “Oh, darling! I wouldn't go that far! I only made him question his very existence after that day. I was sure my fingers had magical powers to turn every man queer.”

Melody didn’t react. Her hand twitched once more above the table, yet she did not strike, “You wanted to be a star,” she continued. “Not niche famous. Not cult adored. Big.” Cosmo opened his mouth. She cut him off. “And you were good enough,” she said flatly. “But the industry you came up in had very clear limits on how openly gay men were allowed to succeed. You were tolerated. Amused. Never fully backed.” The performance drained out of him. “That doesn’t mean you failed,” Melody added. “It means you hit a ceiling that you pretended did not exist.”

Cosmo looked down at his hands, “I was always the ‘almost,’” he said quietly. “Almost cast. Almost bankable. Almost palatable.”

“And ‘almost’ leaves a particular kind of scar,” Melody said. “One that demands noise to drown it out.”

Melody never rushed him toward his father. She waited. When Cosmo finally brought him up, it wasn’t dramatic. It slipped out sideways.

“He left,” Cosmo said. “For her.”

Tiffany. Not just as a wife. As a victory.

Melody nodded. “She didn’t just marry him. She won him. It was your games that did it.”

Cosmo’s jaw tightened, “My father believed her,” he said. “Every version of me she fed him. Reckless. Selfish. Embarrassing. He stopped defending me long before he stopped loving me.”

“And then he died,” Melody said gently.

Cosmo swallowed, “No apology,” he said. “No reckoning.”

The room was very still.

“So now,” Melody said, “you punish yourself for not being able to forgive a man who never gave you the chance.”

Cosmo laughed once. Sharp. Broken.

“That’s obscene,” he said.

“It’s accurate,” she replied.

Melody refused to let Tiffany be a cartoon, “This didn’t start with Tommy Wood,” she said. “That was just the ignition.”

Cosmo bristled, “She outed me.”

“She weaponised you,” Melody corrected. “And she kept doing it.”

Tiffany didn’t just want revenge for betrayal. She wanted erasure. To rewrite Cosmo as disposable. To prove he was always the problem.

“She didn’t steal your life,” Melody said. “She positioned herself where you could never confront her without looking unstable.”

Cosmo exhaled, shaking, “She made me look crazy.”

“No,” Melody said. “She made you look reactive.”

That one landed harder. He wanted to distract her. He needed to distract her with anything within his arsenal. He began to perform for her again. Big stories. Bigger emotions. Sharp jokes. Weaponised vulnerability.

Melody waited him out every time, “Sit,” she’d say.

And Cosmo hated how much that word did to him.

She didn’t reward charm. She didn’t scold chaos. She let him exhaust himself until the truth crawled out, shaking.

“You don’t drink because you love excess,” she told him. “You drink because stillness reminds you of what you lost.”

Cosmo stared at the floor, “And you don’t self-destruct because you’re reckless,” she continued. “You self-destruct because the world taught you success was conditional — and revocable.”

He didn’t argue.

Melody Blaze believed in containment. She gave Cosmo rules the way other women gave ultimatums — calmly, cleanly, and with no interest in negotiation.

• Alcohol reduction. Measured. Boring.

• No drugs. Zero negotiation.

• No sex for two weeks.

Cosmo stared at her as if she’d just suggested euthanizing Broadway, “You can’t just remove my coping mechanisms,” he said, clutching his scarf like a fainting duchess.

“I can,” Melody replied. “Watch me.”

At first, Cosmo thrived. This was irritating.

Without alcohol cushioning the world, he became sharper. Quicker. His cheekbones emerged like they’d been waiting for a sober chaperone. He attended events and remembered people’s names. He listened — actually listened — and discovered this made strangers dangerously attached.

He ordered soda water and lime and drank it with the performative pride of a man doing charity work. He announced it loudly.

“I’m being moderate,” he told bartenders, unsolicited.

They did not clap.

He went three full days without drugs and promptly reorganised his apartment by emotional era. The Crystal Queer years were boxed and labelled. The Experimental Phase was quarantined. The Unfortunate Hat Period was given its own drawer and a warning.

Miles watched from the doorway, unsettled. “You seem… functional.”

Cosmo beamed. “I know. I hate it.”

The no-sex rule was where things went sideways. Denied his usual flirtation outlets, Cosmo began redirecting erotic energy into inappropriate places. He flirted with a waiter using eye contact alone and left the man shaken. He complimented a neighbour’s recycling technique and had to flee when it escalated emotionally.

And once he had turned his sexually frustrated eyes onto Miles. The man had dared to shower and change after Hacky Sack. Perfectly proportioned body that usually would be strangulated in polyester linen. The silly fools almost went there until a probing finger seemed to bring Miles back to sensibility. No! He was in therapy! Miles needed to be his true friend right now.

Next, Cosmo attempted containment in public. He went to brunch and did not start a fight. He ran into Tiffany and smiled politely, which rattled her far more than screaming ever had.

This felt powerful. Dangerously so.

By day seven, Cosmo decided to innovate. One drink, he reasoned, wasn’t excess — it was texture. He sipped it reverently, like a man cheating on a diet with God watching.

By the second drink, he was explaining to a stranger why the industry hated him for being gay but loved him just enough to keep him hungry for it.

By the third, he was dancing on a chair, declaring himself “contained but furious.” He woke the next morning with glitter in his hair, a chipped nail, and a familiar hollow feeling.

Progress, it seemed, was not linear.

The drugs were easier to avoid — mostly because Melody’s stare had replaced cocaine as the most intimidating substance in his life.

Still, Cosmo experimented with loopholes. Microdosing, he argued, was wellness. CBD gummies were practically a vegetable. Herbal supplements were drugs with marketing.

Melody shut this down in seconds, “You’re negotiating with yourself,” she said. “That’s not containment. That’s auditioning.”

Cosmo sighed, “I do miss the applause.”

Something strange happened around day ten. Cosmo was alone in the apartment. No music. No substances. No one to perform for.

The silence arrived. He felt the urge — sharp and immediate — to fill it. To drink. To text. To spiral. To light something on fire emotionally. Instead, he sat. It was unbearable. He began to breathe. In and Out. In and out! And it passed. Barely.

Later that night, he broke the no-sex rule in theory by downloading three apps and writing the filthiest bio of his career. He did not meet anyone. This felt… new

By the end of the two weeks, Cosmo was thinner, clearer, and deeply tired. He hadn’t transformed. He hadn’t healed. But he had learned something important. The chaos wasn’t infinite. Neither was the pain.

In Melody’s office, he slumped into the chair, uncharacteristically quiet, “I think I see the edges now,” he admitted.

Melody nodded. “Good.”

“Of what?”

“Of yourself,” she said. “And of what you use to avoid.”

Cosmo considered this, then sighed dramatically, “I don’t like the edges,” he said. “But I suppose they do keep things from… spilling.”

Melody allowed herself the faintest smile. Containment, it turned out, wasn’t a cure. It was about boundaries, moderation of his behaviours, and for Cosmo Farfetch, that was radical enough.

And now we say another goodbye for now:

• Cosmo in therapy.

• Practicing containment.

• Learning to breathe, really breathe.

• And finally getting one up on Tiffany - this version, she couldn’t get a rise.

Yet this was just the beginning of Cosmo’s therapy journey. There is much more to come. One day at a time.

Daz James

Promote published works, interact with readers, share updates.

© 2024. All rights reserved.