Going to the chapel….

Yup. How did I know it? All those good intentions……

Had been thinking that perhaps going part time at work wasn’t such a good idea – all economy beans and no oomph. Oh how wrong I was. It means there ain’t no bounds, every week is easter, your sleep pattern gets fucked, and so do you. Shitting hell, this could be fun…….

I had an aimless Monday waiting for the fucking moody delivery man to hand over my hoover, and after a feebly unconvincing writer’s hot chocolate in the bitter wind, flailed about waiting for seven o’clock, when I was to meet the coke dealer at the church.

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Yesssssssss, did I mention the strange sequence of events leading to this fucked-up pseudo date?:

In one of my mid-year, mid-life crisis pushes, I googled ‘dance’, as that’s what I do, innit. Usually various adult education sites spring up full of women who piss themselves much better than they move, or anything else for that matter.

But what’s this? A dance agency is arranging dance events all across the south! Excellent (but shitely advertised). So off I samba, then dive into a flashmob, then in the rehearsal space bump into an old stinking techie dude I went to college with. He gives me free tickets to the BBC Big Band. Awesome, old Derek from the Bond films on the screaming trumpet, a gaggle of misshapen misfits who know how to honk. I was there with my wife, so I asked her on a date for Monday. It’s a gospel concert advertised in the local rag – yes, I really have been truffling through the pamphlets as a substitute for cock.

She can’t come with me cos she’s committed to spending the evening watching Ferris Bueller with a bunch of Chinese kids, but suggests this guy we know, who isn't exactly ideal material for the house of God. I refuse refutedly.

Hmmmm. This is a guy who shared a maisonette with me in 2006. Me upstairs, him down. My monkey of a flatmate screaming abuse at him to keep the music down, me scoring the odd opportune bit of green from him.

And he’s cute, but by no stretch sane. So no, I should not invite him to a gospel concert, even though he’s an avid fan of the stuff, and a right old chrisso to boot.

But clip-clopping it back from the big band we scuttle past an old haunt we both avoid due to varying ill behaviour. And who should rush out yelling my wife’s fair name? yup, mr gospel himself. So the wife forces me to ask him out and he accepts. Fucking brilliant.

-----------------------------------------------------

“There was I, waiting at the church
Waiting at the church, waiting at the church
When I found he'd left me in the lurch
Lor, how it did upset me!”

(sorry, for war widows everywhere)

Anyway, yes I had to wait and he honed up with a minute to go in a cab – he lives down the road. Been up for 48 hours apparently. Jolly good.

We enter the chapel, the lord does not strike me down. I wince at the vicar and gulp guiltily. We find a shitty seat at the side. And there’s the choir……sorry for the slander guys (they’re from Atlanta, they’ll probably sue after they’ve claimed for all the other accidents in their lives).

The choir do not look good. Well, one of them does. She’s a purty blonde. The drug dealer says he’ll try and chat her up later. I spot her silver ring thing and glum expression and say it ain’t likely. And apparently it’s her birthday. Cheer up love, there’s a few maccie Ds in this town. When the ringleader, with a curiously British accent, addressed the audience to ask if anyone knew whose birthday it was today I got my line in.

‘Jesus’.

My date is horrified, I feel that beautiful warmth oozing through me. Blasphemy. Yum.

So this is a bunch of outsiders. Plump shining women with protruding fringes beam and shuffle. The gayest man alive perches at the front like a wounded chipmunk waiting for some nuts. A big, glorious fat man in the middle is the best attraction. He loves his church, yes m’aam, and though the joy is deluded, I focus on him.

They all wear ill-fitting black polyester trousers that sag at the crotch, and matching red polo shirts; sponsored by Nike of course. Fresh from KFC.

The backing track strikes up. I’d say thunders in, but it was a limp and puny sound. An overhead projector splays clipart graphics out of sync with the vanilla synth.

And they start up. Good god, THIS IS NOT GOSPEL! This is fricking torture! Apparently, however much we welcome in the lord there will not be room for him?! What? This is the whitest music I’ve ever heard, and I can’t stand it. My date pretends to be kinder, but when they sing a song about salvation I can’t restrain myself from yelling ‘masturbation’ to complete the rhyme….

At which point a tight-lipped young oppressor decides to eyeball me till it burns. I look at her, laughing. This is not funny, it seems. I pretend to behave for another godawful number reminiscent of a failed audition for atlanta’s got talent.

The girl is still screwing me up. Do not mess. It’s time to show her the glory of the lord. I turn to her and stare. And stare. And she shrivels into a flushed mess. Feel the power of the lord, feel it.

And with that it was time to exit. My poor date had full-on coke paranoia and didn’t fancy the trek across the pews, but I wasn’t waiting for my mellow birds at break time.

He’d already casually slipped in that we could go back to his flat and he could play me some REAL gospel. I remember trying to make a face that said ‘yes, that sounds normal’, not ‘yes, that sounds dangerously close to fucking to me’.

So off we scroddled. I shoving in an egg mayo sandwich for the ride, him politely shifting through the streets avoiding various punters.

So we get to his, and we have an innocent glass of wine and a bifta, and he puts on some hideous clonky ‘gospel’ music. I spot a drum kit in the corner. An expensive electronic one. He spots me spotting it and offers me a smash. I gladly accept, at which point a customer pops in.

Now, this is weird, I haven’t spent too much time in the lairs of dealers, luckily, I usually steal drugs, but this girl seemed really nice – is it a friend? Is it a random person looking to score? No, it’s that third category, the random trying to score pretending to be a friend. That classic way you have to be. Y’know, you can’t just USE these people, they have feelings as well as a stash.

Anyway, the geetar comes out, so does the lesbian stand up comic, and so do the drums.

It’s also only 9pm. I supposed to be in a church politely watching some saints singing. It’s a Monday. It’s my first week of going part time. I no longer am waiting for the hoover delivery man, I’m getting a bit trashed in a flat with a man I used to have ASB matches with.

But hey ho, must this virtuous girl always feel guilty, even before she’s done anything wrong?

We slope off to the pub so he can dine. He wants the beans and chorizo. The Polish no-nonsense straightened-hair barmaid does her best to humour us, but it ain’t funny. It’s his hood. I just drink wine, and tell him about my long lost lover overseas. He says it’s a bit odd that he’s chosen to go to war-torn countries. But then, it could be worse – he could join the army.

He did try and join the army. His mum wouldn’t sign the form……

So me and this kid are getting on well! Somehow, against my better judgement, we move on to a pub with freestyle jazz playing. I bump into the most introverted man you’ve ever met that I spent some time in India with. Then I bump into an ex-employee. And all the time telling my dealer date ‘I’m not allowed out, especially on a Monday’.

And he gets me. He tells me I’m not allowed out…ever. Because if I go out I’ll realise I’m mad, and I’m not letting myself be. Lord, I needed those vodkas after that. We hook up with a random pretty thing and a scary beardy monster, who facades as a lovely chap, then pounces in with the rape lines. And I’ve given him this blog address. Hi. How did the triple heart bypass go?

It’s back to the flat. Now I know I’m living on borrowed time. Everyone I meet eyes me suspiciously, then I gabble at them so they can’t make head nor tail of the threat I pose to them, and they love me. I spot a double bass player I’d been stalking on the internet and forced him to give me his set list, as I was going to steal it anyway. He obliges, the dealer typing the song names into his drugmobile begrudgingly.

Back at the den it’s more wine, spliff, speaking French with a bunch of randoms, avoiding the rancid perv who tries to force my fricking address out of me, and chatting up a ‘man’ that I later found out was born in 1987. This grooming has got to stop.

The drum kit interests me, it’s got carious buttons that play different styles, but in my state I think I’m playing along to itunes. An hour later I turn, exhausted but satisfied. And I meet rapturous applause. Apparently I’d been controlling the music and drums in an idiot savant fashion. Marvellous.

Now I know it’s time to go, or the legs won’t go where the face is heading. But before I do, the dealer whisks me into his bedroom and slams the door. Oh shit. There’s a beautiful bed, various gadgets, and I just can’t cope.

‘whatever it is you’re about to do, don’t!’ I squeal/dribble.

And he laughs, turns around and shows me a line of the good stuff. Oh no, no fucking way, I’m off. At the door he yells after me,

‘In three months I’ll read your blog about me, and we’ll take our relationship from there!’

Is it October yet? If so, where the fuck am I? Tha-a-ank you lord for this fine day…..just another manic Monday x

dicker with cocker…..glastonbury special

Been sprawled out in the healing fields all morning. Not sure why I paid nigh on £200 to sit in a field, but it’s working…..

Having procrastinated for at last a decade over whether to remain faithful, it seems I have compensated by demanding deep tissue massages off shirtless men.

So I strayed to the healing fields, and even managed to blow a didgeree doo or two on the way. I did a reckie on the first day. Telling my compatriots I had an eye for charlatans after an indian man stuck his buttocks in my face, I skulk around the fields looking for some eager prey.

‘Holistic palm reading’. Said one sign.

WTF? You either wear a dickie bow and hang out on the palace pier or you ain’t seeing my lines.

‘Joy’. Said another. ‘tarot’. I peak into the warped yurt that was her cavern. A fat, sweaty confused grizzler sat there. Frick! It’s a client from work who has, shall we say, an ‘adjusted’ state of mind! And there to show the kids the future………..

So now I know the ging-gang-gooleys from the ethereals. And I wanna get me some o that. I see a nice looking woman called Claire offering Indian Head Massage for a donation. She’d do for Samson, I thought. A few crows feet round the edges, but a nice face and a no-nonsense approach. Now who for me?...............

Well, I thought I’d better take two. Just in case. Opted for both with massage chairs; yeah, they’re for real, they’ll grind me into oblivion with a bit of luck. The first, Ben, was a cute kiwi with piercing eyes. I told him of my ailments and he touched me intensely for half an hour, holding my hands whilst caring for my arms, telling me how he gets to make inappropriate comments with his corporate clients, putting pressure on my mid-back and releasing some tears there. Samson looks on and approves of the heavy involvement. That was a bit better. Now for the second. A curly man with his top off. I watch him absent-mindedly kneading a fat girl in her bra and have second thoughts. I want his full attention, or nothing. So up I march.

‘Hi, I need to feel your pressure’. He is good. He gets so far into my back Samson says his hand disappeared into it at one point. Wowzers. He comments that I had ‘don’t fuck with me’ written on my forehead. That’s right. Don’t fuck with me, but give me some cheap thrills matey.

Then I did a portion of poo, like a goat some might say. In the wateraid toilet, a marvellous invention. All composte, (said in US accent), didn’t stink of shit at all, could sit and have a little rest if one wanted to. And just while I was expelling my droppings, a film crew decided to crowd into the next cubicle. Could they hear me pelloting? I wondered. No, it seems - instead the hippy on the bog decided to recite a world peace poem on the wall of the crapper. So there I was, on a toilet, letting out a spicy beanburger, being read poetry. Classic.

Shit is a topic of discussion when I travel. I was going to launch ‘pootube’, but wasn’t sure if it would attract the right kind of audience.

Met a couple the day before in shit chai Bob’s tea shop, they invite us to their tent as it seems shit is all they talk about too….for me, it’s just a conversation. Everyone shits. Everybody loves to shit.

Which leads me onto my first story,

1. The girl with the shitty legs
We were laying around like crocodiles on some stained cushions in a chai den, and Samson spots a couple in the queue looking slightly perturbed.

‘she’s got a tissue and she’s wiping it up her skirt………..?’ he says.

They walk past us briskly, diagonally, outta that hell hole. And I see her legs, she’s wearing a minidress. And there’s brown/red stuff smeared all over them. I start to splutter,

‘there’s stuff smeared all over her legs! It could be blood, but it’s…’ and before I can finish a wave of drug and cider-fuelled stench washes over us.

‘IT’S SHIT’ we cry together! Oh my God, she truly has tried for a pizza, looked at the food and shat her ecstacy-riddled guts out. And she’s probably nowhere near her tent. And she’s off her fucking tree. What are they gonna do?

It was her and her boyfriend. They stood outside the chai den trying to wipe her off. It’s a nightmare. The man uses cider to swab her, but where’s this gonna end?

In a drum n bass field in Arcadia somewhere no doubt. And the sex will be massive. And they will wake up in the morning and realise that her rose really smells like poo poo poo.


2. Things people say in tents with no walls

My abode for the occasion has been nicknamed ‘the crisp packet’. This lends itself to the fact it cost £20 in the year 1999, and is a one-piece with six pegs, not waterproof, and if you move about, the groundsheet sounds like you’re inside a crisp packet. The neighbours named me ‘cheese and onion’.

And we all know, but we all forget. Tents ain’t got no walls, and we don’t need no education.

Had to bloody sing that in a pantomime once. You can take the girl out of the panto….

A schoolgirl dressed as a slightly sluttier schoolgirl, doing some irrelevant ridiculous dance whilst shouting Floyd over a bad big band. Them was the days…..

But tents, yes. My complex relationship with Samson means that play fighting replaces sex. But as we’re both testosterone-fuelled animals, we end up crossing lines it turns out humans aren’t meant to cross…

The neighbours heard too much. And the best thing was, they didn’t clock that it was our late night ramblings they were perving on. Turns out they went round the whole of Glastonbury telling people that they overheard a girl telling the story of how she once decided to ride her boyfriend in a tent in 35 degree heat in Spain, only to find that she completely ran out of air, and to surpass suffixation had to poke herself out of the tent, naked and bejizzed, in the broad daylight of a public campsite.

They recounted this story to us in the late afternoon, over a plastic wine spritzer and a doobie. And Samson and I looked at each other, and I said,

‘that sounds like something that happened to me…’

At which point, the whole cacophony of Luton-based randoms turned.

‘It WAS you’.


3. If you can’t be with the one you love…..

I wash my hands in the standpipe. I see Samson in the distance. But what’s this in the foreground? A sexy man standing on a flower bed with a watering can, cooling people off in the hot sun. I mouth at Samson ‘shall I?’

‘yes’, he approves.

I turn to the man,

‘shower my tits’. And we stand there for about a minute, him spraying my tits with cold water whilst the queue looks on. Cheap thrills eh? Free, actually. It was only later that day when I suddenly freaked out that my tits were soaked that I remembered. And of course, went back for more.


4. Love the one you’re with

I was a bit concerned that I’d need a bunk up for the occasion. I persuaded myself that two can play while my love’s away, but now I was here I wasn’t so sure.

So I compensated with massages, tit showers, and a few other things…..

Puppy love

My phone is half-heartedly on. I can’t really be arsed with it all when I realised the amount of people I knew who’d be there. Impossible. I have learnt by experience that whether in Thailand or at home, honing around to meet someone in a completely different mental state for twenty minutes before somebody MIGHT need a shit, or before they rush to another stage to see a MOR lose their sound in the wind, is more than a waste of time - it’s a fucking waste of essential resources.

So I didn’t reply to any of my texts or voicemail.

I was on a hill, I was relaxing, I needed time to rest my weary legs on that hill, and I had it. But all this,

‘where are you now?’ that I’d look at two hours later, and ‘so and so told me you’re here! Let’s meet up, we’re going to see Gomez on Sunday not Stevie Wonder’. Erm?

So I ignore it all, then send a mass text back a day later to say,

‘not doing plans, just hoping I bump into you in some hideously ridiculous moment’.

But this one guy, friend of a friend, is insistent, and manages to call me during a Thom Yorke secret gig cos he knows somehow I’d be there. And I was, me and Samson had been arguing about the fact I’d been dancing to the irish choir in my moo moo so we’d missed the showers. Suddenly the stage nearby announced a special guest. Samson heard the first two chords and knew....

‘Go!’ I shriek.

I wank about for a bit at the crisp packet and make my way to my hillock. I sit on my own, knowing that somewhere in the crowd Samson is crying.

Then they play Karma Police. And that means a lot to me. And a Scottish clan adopt me on the hill and I tell them Samson will be crying and they stare at me, all high, and say,

‘I know what you mean. I know what you mean.’

And I can’t work out if it’s empty drug-speak, or if somewhere beneath the beanburgers she has a deep connection with my soul. Nah. She’s high.

But Samson rounds the corner, and then I get the call. The guy who’s been texting me is here, and knows I am. He turns the corner. What’s this then?

And he says he’s been told of the boy. And I tell him of the boy, in a way old friends can summarise. And he looks deep inside of me throughout. And I kiss him. And Samson informs me he’s in love with me.

Hm. We’ve kissed, it ain’t that great, and he was a bit of a virgin till a few years ago when he started stringing along vulnerable females for far too long before breaking their necks like battered swans.

So he can probably fuck okay now, and once I woke up with my hand on his cock by mistake so I have felt his sausage. But still, let’s not just let someone need me because I’m unavailable….

I decide in the end it was more of a lament for the love we never had and never will. Which sounds romantic, somehow, but in fact is a load of old tosh.

Up up and away in my beautiful balloon

We’d been adopted by a bunch of losers from Luton. Such is our way. My dad’s yielded from that manor and wherever I go in the world people from that side of town adopt me. Sometimes they fuck me. They never fully understand me, but hey ho.

So this lot have got a gazebo, chairs, and everything inbetween, and me and Samson get well in there.

I remember emerging from my crisp packet in my moo moo and kissing them all a sweet morning. One guy couldn’t stop leering at my arse, and Samson fancied him, so we started a bit of a triangle thing. He had a girlfriend, of course, they always do…..

But little B, ah he was my favourite. Not only did they have cheap rose wine and 7up and cracked plastic glasses, they had gas…………………….rank. No class As, just shit loads of booze and some fucking brainkiller. But my little B, my fave, loved it.

So these normal people, these caged animals waiting for us to unleash them (which, of course we did), got off on hops and gas.

My little boy danced like an accordion chameleon, and it was for this reason I loved him. So I ask him about why he does this ‘gas’. And he and the Neanderthal gently cajole me to do a balloon. Which I decline.

So instead, I sit him down on my knee, and he takes the biggest lungful of this stuff in history. People are worrying about the amount he’s doing, and I’m holding him tight, feeling every vibe coming out of him. And there’s a beautiful picture of me on a canvas, him top off, shorts on, on my lap, us looking intently at each other and smiling serenely.

I would highly recommend passive gassing. Only of the chemical type, of course….

Peeping into a parallel k-hole

Getting high and drinking chai, we were. My two compatriots disappeared into the oblivion of the rank bogs, and I was left on my own to ponder about the girl with the shitty legs. But in walks a tall young man, with beautiful black hair and an interesting stance. In fact, a very interesting stance. He looks like my boy. I want to reach out to him, but he’s so far away in his own mind that no one can reach him.

He had stopped moving. His face had frozen. He fears the can of lager in his right hand as if it were a volcano about to erupt. Everyone else is dancing, he stands rooted to the spot, swaying slightly. Frightening.

So this is a K-hole, my friends. How lovely to have a passive K-hole, fully appreciating the moment when he leaps back into life and becomes the spunky young thing he is.


5. Dicker with cocker

I’ve choreographed a northern irish choir singing ‘sweet dreams’, I’ve performed the riverdance in a cyber-pseudo burnt-out basement, what more can there be to do?

It’s near the end, and eating options are running low. We’ve made few mistakes, the ‘fishfinger fucker’ I ordered on the first day being the worst. But I’ve found a new little contraption that sells jacket potatoes and not much else. It’s near the shortcut we’ve made, and we’ve got little B and the Neanderthal in tow. Let’s do this.

So we head to the public school boys who sweat over the stove, with hippy mum and dad making chapatis and gruel.

‘four potatoes please’.

Apparently they could be up to an hour, the little dish serving us making no promises, but proving willing by prodding the motherfuckers to see if they’re ripe.

The boys we’re on a fake date with look like they’re heading to undercooked jerk chicken land, but me and Samson are standing our ground. And we’re the only ones in there. Apart from, it appears, Jarvis freaking cocker and his bird. Who also opt to stay for an hour.

‘best potatoes in glastonbury’, he quips. Yes, I know, it ain’t no headline joke, but IT’S JARVIS. And I’ve been drinking neat vodka from a cycling bottle and smoking spliffs for four days.

So we all sit on benches. Samson makes polite, entertaining conversation about music and stuff, and then I launch in. what’s he doing here, I want to know. I came in 95, didn’t think he was playing. Whoops. They headlined. Appears I was sucking off drug dealers in tents at the time.

He’s DJing at a place called the rabbit hole, where you go underground in a pit with the unwashed. Cool. What’s his set, I want to know? He says he hasn’t thought. He was up till six in the morning, and isn’t a young snapper any more. So we have a little think about it. He asks if I know an old track called Glastonbury. I don’t, so he tries to sing it. Hilarious. I ask him if he’ll do a creedence. Turns out Suzie Q is his bird’s favourite. We sing it together. Moment. Then I remember there’s an amazing tap dance called the Suzie Q. he has no choice. I get up. There I am, in a shack, waiting on a potato, tap dancing my damaged arse off for cocker. Fantastic.

The potatoes come. We greedily gobble them, Jarvis with simple beans, the rest of us with slatherings of chilli and cheese, a right dicker of a feast. Hence the photo.

Later that night, after a lot of carnage, we end up at the rabbit hole, after seeing the last song of Midlake and me nearly miscarrying due the injustice of a passive crowd not demanding an encore.

Then we hear it, those first few sexy little bars of the credence riff. It’s Suzie Q. it’s time to tap dance…..

Footnotes:

Costumes

Seeing as I didn’t officially take any costume, I did pretty well. Somehow the clothes I had turn into a myriad of personality disorders:

• Cloud moo moo land. No underwear, wet hair, Malaysian flower print moo moo (ref Simpsons), flip flops. Dazed look on face.
• Nora Batty. Pashmina wrapped like shawl, woolly hat, headtorch on top.
• Hindi cowgirl. Wet sarong done up like Indian lunghi ad tucked in. Vest. Standing on the corner I call the lost highway, waiting for no one.
• Whore of Babylon. Short hand-painted stretch dress, thai sparkly vest on top, mod jacket, bare legs, visible panties, diamante trainers. Stetson. One man in each hand.
• Cancer patient. Covering head entirely to avoid sun stroke. Not allowed on camera so as not to upset the masses.
• Mexican. Sarong round head, Stetson on. Jeans, strange Indian poncho garb.
• Middle aged mother – after going in the sea today I ended up with no knickers, a stripy skirt, wet tits and a cable knit cardigan.


Ideas for an act
Wash n blow job: Alternative to hair salon whereupon I wash yer widget, give it a quick suck, deposit the remnants into shot glasses or the fridge for todger jelly, then charge for the gobber and the shot, thus making money and keeping several people happy.

Afterthought

My lonely moments there had been dark. Thinking about my boy. Wondering when I’d stop obsessing about detail and face what is actually lurking beneath this small sailing vessel we’re floating in.

And actually, there are many thoughts, but thank god some thoughts for me and me alone are returning. The filthy masseuse’s hands have grounded me and I’m coming back to my shore. These six weeks are going to be useful.

And so now when I miss him, I miss him as he is now, where he is now, wherever that is. Not as we were, not the sentimentality and nostalgia. That’s not for summer…

The late, great, Kurt Vonnegut for you to finish:

1. Find a subject you care about.
2. Do not ramble, though.
3. Keep it simple.
4. Have the guts to cut.
5. Sound like yourself.
6. Say what you mean to say.
7. Pity the readers.

Mummy’s on father’s day….

Well blow me down, readers, it was alright! Woke up slightly foggy headed and constructed an unconvincing costume for the occasion.

Got the midday train. Father’s day. Rang father. Father hung up on me. Joke, apparently! Brilliant.

‘where are you off to?’ says he.

‘haywards heath to see a boy’

‘ooooooooooo’

At which point we entered the tunnel of doom and lost reception. I texted him and asked him for advice for the meeting of mummy. My mummy answered back,

‘just be yourself and listen when appropriate and be chatty like you normally do.’

Unconvinced. I text back that I want dad to give me some advice.

‘what problem?’ was what came back. Oh yes, retire and you drift through life like you’ve got no knickers on. Which, incidentally, I haven’t.

I get to the station, he will meet me. Car or foot, I ask, he doesn’t reply. Then honing round the corner comes a clapped out old mobile and he steps out of it, fur coat at the ready. Marvellous.

And mummy is in the front, (he failed his test). And she smiles at me and is sweet but a bit nervous…….almost excited……

So it turns out that I was some sort of welcome visitor to their ramshackle beautiful affair of a residence. Wooden panels had fallen off the side of the house, and the garden was free and beautiful.

There had I, images of sitting down to lunch. No chance. It was all ornaments and piles of paper. Wicked.

So the boy and I spent the day spray painting his van, playing with kittens and getting on. But unfortunately, not getting off. La la la la la, sure there’s no problem there…..it’s all good though, it’s not awkward, and mum comes and smoke rollies with us and tells us about mad relatives and how much she hates cleaning. And I just hope the fact we’ve hit it off like a fart to a flame is because she sees me as the daughter she never had, not the co-parent…

And now it’s time for dinner. We cook together, it’s late, and we decide the only option is sausage dicker…..have I mentioned the dish dicker? Samson and I invented it. It’s basically any food that is smeared with delight and baked in an oven. For example, chicken dicker, the original. Get some good breast, cover it in peppers, onions, capers, tomato and top it with torn mozzarella. Dribble over a dob of pesto. Shove it in the oven. Watch it bubble and dick. Serve with roasted sweet potato and olive salad. Shove in mouth. You too, can make dicker, spread the word.

The sausage dick we cooked was great. It had mashed potato topping – mummy’s idea, and we greedily feast upon it till it’s done. And mummy gets out her poetry and we read together, as a demented family. I use my snakey wiles and she lets me read some that the boy isn’t allowed to. It’s about groping, as far as I can muster.

Mum, (as I affectionately refer to her), tells me about this awful horsey woman who owes her money. I encourage her, she relents. As she describes the hag, I mouth ‘bitch’ in her face. She loves it, I’m saying what she’s thinking, and at least it wasn’t me, it was some other bitch she was talking about….

At one point during this exchange, as I stared intently at her, loverboy decides to toy with me and drops in a comment about schoolboys, in a voice that riddles me luscious, and I flash him a smile and some eyes as a Shakespearian soliloquy.

And then it’s youtube, harsh kisses and ‘see you when I get back’. And I get back, and we text. I love mummy, she loves me. He’ll miss me and dicker.

I’ll miss him……

fight of the wrongchords

Is it just me, or does anyone else love a comedown? A creative low, a blur low? No?...

I’d be a manic depressive if I could only get the hang of this depression.

It’s good to be sad sometimes…….

Anyway, it’s been quite a week. Last Friday I took my honourable wife to Worthing for a dirty weekend. It was weird and dark, tinged with relationship breakups. She bought my mum flowers to take. They were dead…..

Which brings me swiftly forward to tomorrow. (linear time is for wimps). The young man leaveth to travel far and wide and stray from the good path. The lady doth not vanish……

How do I feel about him being away for six weeks? Gawd knows. I found this bit of paper I had to write to myself following a course on diversity and inclusion, and on it I’d written ‘hahahaha remember what you did on April 10’.

Remember, yes I do sir, I pulled the boy! So I’d written to myself trying to cheer my future barren self up with the fact I had squeezed the lovejuice from a near-minor.

Well I did, and I have been ever since, the poor fucker. I just thought one of us would have died by now, or something. But instead, he’s leaving me on the longest day, the shortest night, midsummer.

And in fact, tomorrow is daddy’s day. And he has a ‘complex’ relationship with his Mafioso sperm donor. And I will be with him and his mum, eating some kind of traditional food. Help.

I know I shouldn’t be a twat, I know it’s just his mum. I know it’s the only way I’ll see him anyway, and he isn’t bothered. But I don’t think mothers are my thing, that’s all.

Boyfriend number:
1. mother thought I was a slut. Used to smoke post-coital fags with his father in the kitchen in dressing gowns.
2. irish mother. Thought I was a slut. Once remarked she’d like daniel o’donnell’s shoes under her bed. Nothing in common. Banned me from the house.
3. horrible psycho mother. Lasagne and quiche. Volatile and sinister relationship with son. Goodbye.
4. dead mother.
5. dead mother.
6. dead mother. That one was a good one, he’d carried her to sleep paralytic at Christmas and the next thing she was dead. Broken boy. Good for sex and writing songs.
7. can’t remember many others

the point being that I really haven’t had that much practise at it, most look appalled, and this one has been described to me as ‘fragile’. Jeremy beadle, where are you now?

Sitting at a table (I sit on the floor), eating her food (I scavenge from bins), wanting to squeeze her son (11 years my junior). It’s going to be a breeze.

‘don’t worry about it’, he tells me. Oh, for a young-man brain transplant.

I told him I’d prepare my costume. I may as well annoy him as much as I can before he leaves. It’ll take longer to forget that way……………….

Anyway, for the rest of my strange and hectic week; Monday, pop video in the arches of london bridge. Indian trousers, fluorescent balloon, pissed stain doorway. Tuesday, dinner with the boy. Spat my food on the table and talked about bum sex and puking. Wednesday, open mic night with my wife – terrified the crowd into fear as I unleashed my untamed country powers on them. The rest is a blur.

So tomorrow comes, eh Ronan? I want to enjoy him, I want to enjoy me, but I fear that ejection from finishing school may make number 8 on the mother list

‘mother found clubbing cougar to death on the lawn’

You’d be crippled if it wasn’t for my constant kneading…….

So I told my Mum. 21. I told her I couldn’t talk to her cos I was in a van the other week, and her response was,

‘oo, that sounds exciting!’

Oo, that sounds exciting does it, being in a van? Does it? She must have smelt it; she knows I’m trouble, and she loves it.

When including her on my pentathlon of hour-long decision-making telephone calls, she told me that I, in fact, make better decisions than her. I do, do I? Dating a child with OCD and other animals……

She’s only ever fucked my Dad, you see. And they’re three years apart. No wonder I’m a bit odd, telling your daughter she should go with a man who was six when I was sucking off various drug dealers at Glastonbury.

Hilarious. She’s often commented that she’s only ever slept with my Dad. But they never came that close to divorce, I think that was just the menopause. Sorry, the man stop.

Perhaps she purposefully raised me as a slut. That’s what the boy calls me, dirty bird, slut.

I allowed myself the other night to lie on my rug when I was high on teenage weed, and let the love shower forth. I don’t let myself usually, you see. Hold that pain inside, sister.

What actually ended up happening is that I felt sexual energy surging from beneath me. The other night was starting to ‘cum’ back to me.

We’d scored some drugs with popping candy and glitter in, from a fat lesbian on a toilet. Which was a new one for him.

It was my little plan. What shall we do on Friday night? Dinner. Boring. Film. Boring. Pub. Stupid. Drugs and fucking. BRILLIANT!

I cajoled him back to mine with promises of music, guitars and as much neighbour nuisance as we could muster. I played him his fucking song I wrote, ‘I ain’t your Yoko’. He smiled and laughed a lot. And then he said

‘Right, let’s go to bed. Or not….’

At which point I recall……absolutely fucking nothing.

But the other night, lying on that rug, I felt sensations returning to me. Which was a bit inconvenient as it happens, because my mate was round for a feast of smashed meat dicker (it’s a bit like Bolognese). So getting the terrible horn off my rug was most inappropriate.

I wasn’t brought up right, y’know. I don’t say please, thank you or sorry. I confront my mum about it regularly, and the old fishwife just laughs. I told her I had delusions of grandeur recently, and she shrieked

‘you DO NOT’.

Classic, a girl with an inflated sense of self-worth, and my mother being appalled at the suggestion that she could have created such a monster. Unconditional love, eh? Can’t beat it……

I’ve renamed the teenage weed, by the way, to love weed……….

‘may you never lay your head down, without a hand to hold
may you never make your bed out in the cold’

a gush of blood to the bed

‘I keep bleedin, keep keep bleedin’
Leona Lewis (well, some other out of work songwriter), 2007

The thing is, I’d like to say I’m a liberal-minded free-loving uber-modern girl who doesn’t mind her bloke fucking anything that moves, but that’s simply not the case.

He is so fucking fit: women, men, children and beasts throw themselves at his massive, flat feet. Yes, he has no soul, sorry, I meant insole, no, bridge. Anyway.

He has flat feet in common with my little brother. The one I brought up from birth. The one that was in the year above him in school. Yup. Changed his nappies.

So I don’t blame him for fucking other people, as long as that’s all it is. As long as I’m in his pecker order somewhere. It was the text methadone that got me going all schizy. Talking to all and sundry about absolute proliferations, and having no conclusion other than pain.

So I had to ‘talk’ to him. By text. I asked him straight.

‘My mind’s been all over the place, juts tell me if you’ve been screwing other people.’

‘I may have. Didn’t think it was a problem.’

What a beautiful reply. And it went on……I just had to let him know I was not the fun-loving cougar he had in mind. Or had pushed to the back of his mind. And there’s only a month till he drives a bulletproof truck through Chechyna and I move to London. So there’s a natural end……………..ooooooo that old trap, the ‘I’ll carry on cos it’ll end then anyway’, only to fucking find you’ve sold up and are living in Slough with nothing but a weight problem for company.

However, in all honesty, I don’t think his mind is wide enough to actually give a shit. He aims to please, and by god he achieves it, but he’s 21. And a man. Things are straight or bent, yes or no, there’s none of this moon-induced hippy shit that I’m full of in his world.

So we met for a ‘talking drink’. He’s done this before. Poor sod had prepared all of his ‘choose your own adventure’ endings (though he’s too young to have read them, he’d have been frigging off his tamagotchi). What if I say he can’t sleep with other people? What then?

But of course I didn’t make any demands on the poor lamb. Just spouted hungover ramblings at him till he was really confused. Which was far more enjoyable than giving him an ultimatum after which I’d surely lose.

‘I don’t get it. You need to translate it into man or something’.

Oh shit. That’s the best I’ve done in years. The last one hung himself. So that was easy.

So I try again to explain. My life is on an even plane, I’m a very happy person, I’m not used to there being someone else there, and my brain just went a bit mental.

There, now I’ve written it down it doesn’t really have much of an instruction.

‘what do you want me to do?’ He asks.

‘Nothing’, I answer. How sweet and pathetic is that?

But actually, what he can do, is behave himself slightly or I’ll get fucked off, and fuck me incredibly beautifully for as long as possible. I have mentioned whips, and he isn’t afraid to use them.

To god be the glory, great things he hath done.

Is there a cure for this paedophilia? Honestly, I thought I’d done them all, but this is a new category, and I’ve got a horrible feeling the next may swing the other way. Sugar daddy o.

Busloads of groaning hormone-fuelled college boys hoon past me and I elate, mixed race chavs call me sugar in the street. My ex boyfriend sent me a brilliant teenage blog containing the lithe, vulnerable fuckers. Ah! Whatever this is, cure me!

Love, said one friend. Oh get fucked, I have to zone out when he’s talking just to wait till he’s naked. He offered to meet me in the day on Saturday. Nice gesture, freak, but it ain’t near enough bed time. Which more or less sums up my text reply to him.

And the only thing that seems to have made me act like a teenager is the fact that in the six weeks I’ve known him, I’ve bled on him twice and narrowly escaped a third. Yup. Met him at the ‘end’ of my period, fucked him on day two three weeks later and ruined my bed, at which point he confessed I’d ruined his the first time. Then yesterday I imagined the talks could end up in forgiveness sex which is always nice.

Thank fuck for the bottle of wine, half of vodka and five sambuca shots I’d put away the day before with my best friend. And the three hours of mod dancing. Which had basically made me able to only dance and cycle, but not stand. I actually started walking backwards at one point on my way to meeting him. Was I walking back to happiness?

Woop by oh way-hay-hay.

He, on the other hand, had outdone me and been doing the good stuff till nine in the morning, then spent the day roaming the marina with an old tramp. Marvellous.

So neither of us was in a state to go to each others abodes, and now I’ve pinned him down on free dates for the next week when I shall have stopped menstruating. Hopefully.

Oh how we love Leona….x

cock rock

I’ve had all sorts of lovely dick -
Small ones that have done the trick
Big cocks that have started to drop
Tradesmens dicks that have finished me off
Two in the hand and one in the face
All fours in the garden of a stately place

My friend had sex and it made her cry
She got fisted while being lifted and it gave her piles
I stopped breathing once but he carried on
but at least he had a condom on

Cut cocks in Israel on the banks of the dead sea
Army boys cocks coming all over me
Old men’s cocks and young boys shanks
Joyless cocks - should have said no thanks

Pilots and painters and dealers and hicks
Licked Kiwis balls while they called me bitch
Transvestites and gays and women and strays
Pump and squirters never cease to amaze

French boys and models and men with no names
Been shat on by birds doing the walk of shame
Sucked off a bouncer in the front of his motor
Worn their string of pearls like a Gucci choker

Got my knickers ripped and found out through my mum
Got fucked up on a barge then got fucked up the bum
Had sex on my friend in the koh tao sea
It served him right for pissing on me

All these things are true, and all these things I like
You could say I was the world’s best bike
But I like your cock, and you know why?
Cos it’s on the end of you, but I know it’s mine.

I beg your pardon…..Go Cougars!

He’s sooooooooo mental. But he’s soooooooooooo cute.

Now there’s a new dilemma (or is it just an old one I’ve forgotten?)

The last one was pig ugly but spiritually vast. Wouldn’t commit – not even to texting me, but showed me a secure loving place where I could exist.

Boring.

So now, let’s see what the remedy is for that poison…..

Beautiful boy. Beautiful. The kind of beautiful that made me remark to my colleague:

“ Well he’s obviously a bit mental – well I know he’s a bit mental – cos it’s always either that or serial fucking monogamists that like me.”

To which she gave me a small teaching on self esteem.

“Yeah, but that’s what I always say – they must be mental if they like me……..”

Etc. Not realising how literal and grounded I was being. Sad when you know it’s not necessarily you they like, it’s just that they need someone. Back off sunshine.

He commits like a boy scout giving a blowie for a mars bar – oh sorry, was that consents? He texts me every waking minute – chirpy, youthful (ahem) delightful little quips that warm just more than the cockles. Yet he does not show me a secure loving place where I can exist.

No, I thought we were living in parallel – that’s as far as I’d got, and decided to call him my squeeze. What a lovely fucking squeeze he has….

And how funny when you let yourself start to believe in that other side – maybe this is something, maybe there are no rules - maybe I’ll never frickin eat again, that’s when it comes crashing down.

Well I’ve been on the flakes tonight, guys and gals, that’s for sure.

This blog entry was intended to be called any or all of the following:

• My boy lollipop
• I am a child
• You’re only as old as the boy you feel
• 21 again…..
• Age before beauty
• All the young dudes

It started a year ago. I met a young lad in a bar in town when I’d taken a married man to see an old flame’s band. Said young lad was working behind the bar. And fit. And young, again. Twenty years old.

So miss doley pants squeezed a few more red wines out of her tight purse (wink), and chatted his fucking face off all night.

Musician. Tick. Wanted me to see his band. Yes.

And for the next year we myspaced each other and he invited me to various gigs, all of which I couldn’t make cos of boxing, or Michael Jackson dancing at love box, or laying in a darkened room masturbating.

Then, eureka, he’s playing at my charity event. Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon. Let the boy cometh unto me.

And cometh he has being, sometimes a bit sporadically, every which way and loose. We’ve been gallivanting through London town with rock equipment in tow, gracing the seediest corners of Southwark I know.

I even let him into my spaceship, which is an honour. And by the way, he’s twenty one now and his voice has broken.

But at six this morning I get a text. He says he’s done something ‘silly’, might have ‘harmed’ himself and didn’t know who else to tell. I say what harm. He’s frigging OD’d on happy pills. Christ. What am I? Childline?

He calls me. I’m not impressed. He calls an ambulance, he has tests, he sees a psych nurse. Let’s hope there isn’t a knock at the door…..

So I spent the morning ripping up carpet with my dad. Hurting a bit. Then trying to work out why. Is it the emotional manipulation of involving me, is it that I’m hurt he wants to hurt himself, when he blatantly has got a good catch (this one isn’t so convincing), or is it cos I’ve bagged yet another freakin nutter?

You do the math.

When I texted my faithful John in London to tell him I was thinking of opening my own mental hospital, he pointed out that you’re not meant to sleep with your own patients. So that’s where I’ve been going wrong………………..

So today maybe I’m thinking I’m going back to being one of Beyonce’s single women. Hurrah, throw your fucking hands right at me.

And of course, when in the throes of love everything is poignant, let’s do that bipolar twist and have the falling out of love poignancy. Four emails in my inbox from dating websites saying they hadn’t seen me for a while. Cunts.

With pride I delete them, knowing soon my fate awaits……..

And old mister agoraphobic-pants texts me for some morning sex, and I tell him ‘I’m kind of seeing someone’. He tells me to get in touch when I’m not. I hope, with disbelief, that’s not now.

So, dear readers, now I go to bed, to have a massive fat great orgasm on my own. Look on the bright side, he timed his going moonie with my period.

And like the squirrel-woman I am, I leave you with a lyric by Doolittle:

“Never more shall we find you bright in the snow and wind.
The snow is melted, the snow is gone, and you are flown:
Like a bird out of our hand, like a light out of our heart, you are gone.”

Well it must be over – I’m writing about it……………….

bring me my bow of burning gold….

So after sifting through me blog dashboard, I was correct when I feared you can’t edit the order of your blogs……..so my confession now is that I write this blog in retrospect, in glorious shimmering colours – my trip to Israel (copied from a three shekel Kohinoor notepad from the aeroplane):

Is it a delusion, or does serendipity come knocking as soon as you’re near an airport?

Is it the synthesised calm that amplifies the poignancy of happenings?

I had lazed around so much that morning that I was tired again by the time it got to three.

All dressed down with somewhere to go, I locked the apartment I had come fondly to know. The strange grill-oven and the tired and sweaty sepia tiled floor. The grates on the windows where popmusik wannabes bashed out their woes nightly at the studio behind.

My own keys. Not to be returned. The ultimate souvenir. Down the steps and into the street, where dust and stray cats and people went about their non-business impatiently.

The familiar uncertainty of Tel Aviv streetlife.

My last supper a bureka and some fish eggs, my via de la rosa a memorised google map.

A soft pride fills my beshawled chest as I make my way past the broken warehouses and caryards. Shoken. Herstel Levinsky. Look for the bus station. Get to a bridge. Find the train station.

And I did.

Without my local guides I can’t get away with being Jewish. Possible a Russian. Prostitute. The guards are always nice enough, but no messing. The girl in front of me in the queue asks for a single to Ben Gurian. Handy. The train leaves at 3.33. I ask for the same and my OCD kicks in as I hear it’s Stein – platform 2, the same as my envisionment of the journey before I set out.

The girl in front turns out to be Polish. She has my middle name, and took the same flight as me to get here. She stayed in a hostel around the corner from my dwelling. She possibly passed me in the street.

She has a crusty face. I wouldn’t have looked at her. I understand why our paths never crossed.

So, is this a help or a hinderance? She is happy enough, but has that Polish bluntness about her, with large, sudden movements contradicted by muttered, semi-shy ramblings.

We both do kickboxing. She is a white belt, I am green. You do the math.

But it’s good to be interrogated together. She dismisses my intuition at the terminal and we wander into an entirely deserted departure hall. Sometimes reading the sign is not equal to being given a sign.

Anyway, the bogs are empty so I happily pontificate with my luxury tampons (four times the price of anglo equivalents), whilst she doesn’t interfere with my luggage.

We get severely frisked. I by a young hormonal guy. She by an alien. And the valium-inspired airport feeling starts to kick in.

At the duty free lounge I want to shake free, and eventually I do, weaving between teenage skull-capped school trippers and exchanging wise looks with older Jewish women. It’s all gone a bit Mossad.

My nicotine cravings start to outweigh any sense of Anglit politeness, and I start to eliminate people in the queue. An american couple twang away in front of me:

“ Oh my gwod, I’ve been searching all week for some decent hamburger”, as he tucks into a flat McDeathburger.

Look pal, if you want some meat in your mouth, go home and get stuffed.

Talking of meat in the mouth………

Tourism versus friend-dossing; yes, I never saw Haifa, but I saw an old man hurling abuse at a worker, then telling me a bad joke with a lisp, and asking me to translate the word ‘furry’. As in ‘I am covered in fur’. Trivial, one might say. Bizarre another. But lying on a crate next to a portaloo reading Bukowski beats dinner with ten other tourists followed by bed bugs in a bunk bed.

No, I’ve never been to Galilee, but I came somewhere near me.

And I sucked someone off on the banks of the Dead Sea.

By the way, there are no fish in this dead sea, giving a refreshing twist to the old saying…….

I kissed the wailing wall and a riot broke out, stoning, tear gas and all.

I touched Jesus’ grave with a crucifix, then spat semen over the quicksand, like a proper Magdalene to my false prophet.

I can say ‘okey dokey’ in Hebrew and enjoyed philosophical debate on the subject of foreskins.

I drank double-kosher ritual wine and took a toddler to the park to hang out with the other suburban nannies.

I cooked burnt soggy pancakes with my estranged lover and shot arak down my neck like the messiah had arrived.

I stuffed my face fuller than ever in an Arabic fish restaurant in the old city, then smoked fags in a shady bar whilst listening to Balkan Beatbox.

And the bloody rest.

Action points:

• Change my voice message to a faux-holy greeting
• Visit Sinai to slum it in a shack with sweet FA to do all day
• Learn some Hebrew
• Let my floods blow
• Embrace ritual
• Remember I am not a womble, but a sacred, rare animal
• Love and follow my dreams
• Throw that pinch of salt over my shoulder, and remember there ain’t no fish in the dead sea.

Too late for new years resolutions I hear you say?!....

040410 WE ARE NOT YOUR PETS

A phrase coined by a good writer friend of mine, of whom Muriel Sparks’ Loitering With Intent would describe perfectly.

The guy I so triumphantly ditched into the gutter of my mind performed a somewhat miraculous resurrection in the form of an email. In which he dumped me.

NO FAIR! NO FAIR! I dumped you! But without even bothering to dump you! Nay, these things, apparently, must be concluded properly. In one of those tired-old, bile-inducing soliloquies made apparently less formal by their delivery over electronic mail.

A lethargic, shallow, inoffensive offering to make things okay.

An insult in the form of a compliment.

I saw him in my inbox and recoiled at the first sentence. By the time my adrenalin had excelled my reading speed to whole email in one second, I had to eject myself from my desk. But not before I automatically banged out a reply and pressed send.

Gawd, what had I done? Was my pride really so dominating that the fact someone had offered an explanation was fundamentally unacceptable to me?

Bile.

Anyway, poor bugger, although I am a ‘great lover’ (hurl), apparently I left him feeling empty and confused. DEAL WITH IT SUCKER! Some of us have been on that shelf for yaaaaaaaaaars.

I got over it. I had to; my childish, knee-jerk reaction even making me question whether it was time for a visit to the hypnotherapist. Erase me, for everyone’s sake. Erase me.

But don’t you know it, karma, or fate, or cause and effect, often takes a strange turn, and last night I was unfortunate enough to be put in his shoes.

A long-standing friend from work was having a birthday do at a bar with a terribly pretentious name, on the bitterly cold and wind-torn seafront, and to make it even less appealing, kick-off was at 10pm.

Having stayed up till 3am the night before putting the world to wrongs with a fellow kick-boxer, a cup of cocoa and the Doctor Who rerun was a far more appealing option. But I’m being careful at the moment not to look the social gifthorse in the mouth – moaning about a god-awful night is better than moaning that you never go out….

So off I popped, slightly delirious, for a pre-freakshow bevy with my wife, before blustering down to the seafront to a soulless bar to meet my destiny…..

And what was this destiny that confronted me? I could have drawn it before I saw it. Oh how stereotypes reinforce themselves. A plethora of fag-haggery, fake amphetamine-induced smiles and hideous fancy-dressers wriggled about before me. A girl in a bear suit with the most morose face trudged past me before I realised it was a man. A transsexual with a very peculiar accent conversed with me weakly about tattoos. Very Jane McDonald.

Too many grins, not enough light shone out of these people. And I’m sorry to say it, but I could definitely smell shit at certain intervals. As I bopped to some lame latin dance music, several rotten-toothed gays who had obviously been through the mill a few times tried to join me.

I am not your master. You are not my pet. Now get!

A middle-aged chrisso radio-dj type stood by the door in a sci-fi t-shirt, misplaced but grimacing along.

And as karma would have it, like my ex-lover, this circus makes me feel empty and confused. Although sometimes when he was in me I felt the same…..

I decided to track down the shit smell for want of anything more tasteful to do, and it belonged to a man wearing shaggy animal trousers. Now I do remember a monkey suit smelling of shit a bit after one-too many parties, but what if…..what if…..

My saving grace was my friends. The gays who choose to define themselves not by their shitty animal-pants, but by their glorious personalities. More Hitler youth and surfer boy, we ensued several dancing competitions from the artful dodger to the riverdance, a few rounds of the splitz and it was off. Thank Gawd.

Could have been worse. Somehow, could have been worse, and I was still standing. Miraculously I hail a cab and jump in. It’s a warm-looking curly-haired Pole at the wheel and instantly I love the way about him. I bet he gets some abuse for his thick accent, but I love it. Right now, I could be anywhere, going anywhere, and it is sweet refuge for me. We narrowly miss running over several hen parties and laugh along the way.

And it occurred to me – such is life: some of us are just driving along, some of us are just staring out the window, and some of us are trying to run the fuckers over……

260310 Fuck. That. Shit.

I always remember my own words of advice ‘work do, don’t do’.

Yes, but each time I have an eternal optimism, until someone seems to slip into my drink the opposite of Prozac. Some fucking hideous depressant, some horrible incubated infectious mental condition.

This Friday, all went well to start with. Various people stared at me wide-eyed saying, ’I don’t know what you’re talking about’. But that’s normal for us higher beings without opposable thumbs.

Work to live. Live to work. Or do what I do – deny you work at all. Some semi-posh girl approaches me and my dandy gang to tell us about the list of top totty the men have leched upon.

And these men are not nice men. Some, frankly, make fascists seem like florists.

Poor little Rach is top of the list, and the pervs are named and shamed. She seems oblivious, which is good. When I ask where I appear on this rancid list, it’s ‘maybe near to the bottom ten , but we’re old’. This girl is nigh on forty and I’ve just started my ‘ascent’ into my thirties.

Then she expands upon the detail:

‘You need to put some conditioner on your hair and get a new wardrobe’.

What?! WHAT?! Who has ever said that to another woman? Yes, it’s true my hair has been likened to straw and hay on several occasions, but keep it to yourself, I’m doing all I can! And the wardrobe – do I want to look nice for work? Or more specifically, the men at work? I purposefully deter; tonight alone a married man with children has told me he can no longer hug me due to his sexual feelings, and another remarked on my facebook pic in a pair of pants (dressed as Micky Jackson you understand). And they are the hottest of the bunch.

Why do people care about what people think of them? Why do people care about what the pondlife of drudging ordinaries think of them? Where does their sphere extend to? I’m all for a cup of Horlicks, but Horlicks with a hit list is another matter…..

I go off in a huff. Oh dear. What’s wrong? Am I premenstrual? NO, I’m at a frigging work do, and it always turns……….for every season.

When I regain my position at the purgatorial table, I grimace and look to my partner in crime Ivan for some support. The support comes in the guise that we will leave in approximately three and a half minutes.

But I don’t want to burn bridges with this girl – she keeps me in marmalade year-round. We have also conversed in the kitchen about men a lot. She is the one who, after two weeks with a new man, says it’s great if you know where you stand, then you aren’t wondering if you should move in together……………can’t say THAT thought ever crossed my mind.

Anyway, now she lezzes onto me, saying she wants to know what makes me TICK, what makes me go LOOPY. I realise now more than ever that she is clinically unstable, and wonder how to best explain my way ‘tactfully’ out of this one.

I tell her I hate work dos. I tell her the only reason I attend is to get to know the people OUTSIDE of work. I tell her nothing makes me tick, or loopy, that I am completely sound.

She tells me she admires me and wants to ‘cross-pollinate’. She can get me laid. I tell her I can get me laid. She says she doesn’t know what she can offer me. I tell her she can offer me herself.

She goes outside for a rollie.

Thank fuck. I leave……………………………….

180310 shalom, farewell, auf wiedersehen - goodbye

So I mentioned my friend’s dealer. Yes, that’s how I like to refer to him. The South African that was sourced for me to fuck.

You have escaped a convoluted pondering on spiritual connection, and a lecture on time and space being abstractly relative.

It’s been nearly two months. And Five occasions. And yes, I do count.

That’s the point. I do count.

I can cope with ‘I’m not emotionally available’.

But as my good friend Johnny puts it, ‘I’m not emotional’.

We had good times. Really deep fucking. The kind that’s good. Books, film, alternative culture, that sort of thing.

But he never texted me. And so tonight was the unbeknown grand finale. Or maybe he knows it, shallow in his waters…………

He cooked for me, which is sweet. He drank my chai. I wrote him a poem that ended:

Some

Bitch

Some

Shit.

I like to leave something behind. And it’s him.

And ironically, I think he’s the only man to walk me home, ever, in my life. As in, purposefully make the decision to walk me home. Mainly to get me out of his flat. And I was going to decline the offer, being the well-travelled hardened bitch that I am. Then I remembered that thing they refer to as ‘self esteem’.

And now I feel great. The queen of premature endings. Don’t wait till the light’s burnt out. Don’t wait till you’ve inflicted so much pain on each other you can’t turn over in bed at night. Just end it. Beautiful endings.

Or worship me. Or fuck off.

Fin