Here and now

People of blogland, just now I took a moment to contemplate the many delights of
dating
seeing
someone who actually lives in the same city as I do.

No more life put on hold for weeks and months.
No more of this incessant waiting, for the next phone call, the next email, the next flight there, and losing sleep over the next argument, the next misunderstanding that arise out of not being able to see each other, the next flight back.

I’m all giddy with being able to live in the present.

People of Blogland, I have some serious questions.

1. Is there a cut off age for making out in cinemas, and if yes, what is it?
2. Have I been suddenly rewired? How else can I explain sudden explosions that happen whenever I put my hand under my lover’s tshirt?
3. Is it so wrong to whisper filth into someone’s ear as the opening credits for ‘Downfall’ appear on the screen and everyone else is bracing themselves for a harrowing war film?
4. In this B&B by the sea we’re eloping to at the end of the week, will the shower fit two people?

Such a hard life.

Curiosity killed…, or Text messaging with my lover.

So, what are you up to tonight? I ask, nonchalant as ever.
I’m in a pub- with a girl from the internet.
Oh.
She’s on a flippin’ date, that’s what she’s doing tonight.
Crap.
Of course I have to play this one down. Nonchalance, nonchalance, where did I put it… .. can’t find it…. quick, say something..
Oh. I hope she’s fugly. And a crap conversationalist. I’ll leave you to it, then.

I lie down on my bed, half sulking, half smiling.
It’s hurting a bit, tugging at me, prickling my skin.

I’m savouring the slight heartache.

I decide to get up, have a beer, and write a blog entry about it.

In a nutshell

Yesterday I melted all day in a non-air-conditioned work environment, then came home bathing in the armpit sweat of a thousand fellow bus passengers. In the park, my neighbours’ kids were playing Frisbee with the au pair, yelling ‘you pathetic idiot’ when she missed and ‘good girl’ when she didn’t. I refrained from playfully kicking their arse and renewed my vows of staying away from children. I came home to find Mother dressed in my clothes again; she talked vehemently at me for an hour or two while I was silently but stubbornly slipping into unconsciousness. And now it’s this morning; I wonder what Mother has in store for me today. Never mind, I’m planning my escape for tomorrow. All day.

It’s almost like that MIWLTF thing, and it’s disturbing.

I’ll take your mother out, so you can have some free time, Jacqui says. I quite like older women, she says, and winks.
Oh, I can just hear that conversation.
Mother, a friend of mine would like to take you out tonight.
I said, a friend of mine would like to take you out. Yes, tonight.
How old? Oh, 30.
So?
His name? Oh.
Jacqui.
Yes, it’s a she.
What do you mean, why does she want to take you out? Because she likes moms.. I mean, because she obviously heard a lot about you.
No you can’t wear that.
Etc.
Oh, it’s so, so wrong.
In the meantime, mother has buggered off to the Chelsea Flower show. If you happen to be there and see a red-haired Frenchwoman in a designer dress and my old converse, do say hi. .

One day down, nine more to go

1. Naturally I come home after work to find my home upside down.
Mother is wearing the old ‘I have issues' T-shirt that Charlie bought me over two years ago, as well as my most treasured pair of jeans to do the gardening. The garden and kitchen have been given a makeover, the fridge’s been filled, so the (freshly, vehemently brushed) cat can’t quite make up his mind between sulking in a corner (no more long grass) or rejoicing (the fridge’s full.)

2. The plants have been re-potted, the books placed in alphabetical order on the shelves, she’s engaged in a lively discussion with the Italian lady next door on the merits of natural fertilizers. Of course they don’t understand each other too well; my neighbour’s English sounds straight out of Naples, and my mother’s is, well, straight out of a phrase book.

3. Blogpeople, I need to plan my escape. I have friends and lover to see. How best to broach the subject? Mother, it’s not that you’re boring, but I need to go have a life. Mother, enough is enough, and anyway I have a hot date on Saturday/Sunday. No you can’t come along to see if she’s suitable, and anyway she’s harder to understand that the Italian neighbour. Yes it’s a she, and I’m not going back. Now can you keep yourself busy for an evening?

4. Still awaiting survival packages of vitamins and booze.

Communication and my mother

1. People of blogland, my flat feels like it has shrunk overnight. My life is about to be suspended for ten (10) days. My mother is visiting, you see.

2. Huh? What did he say? she asks of the train conductor's announcement.
She makes me repeat every word, just to make sure.
How do you spell 'Clapham'?
Now can you do that with a Scottish accent?
I do my best; she's in hysterics.

3. What's that noise? she says as my mobile gives its discreet beep.
I have a text message, I answer sheepishly.
Oh, who from?
I have friends, you know, I offer tentatively, and knowing perfectly well the text is some wonderful filth from my lover.
Not again! she exclaims later and with each beeping noise. What does it say?

I switch the phone onto silent mode and put it in the back pocket of my jeans. I''ll check it in the loo later.

4. Guess what I brought you?
I don't know. Chocolate? Presents? Real cheese?
The entire Project for the European Constitution document.
Yay.
175 pages. It's quite heavy. I would have posted it but then I would have had to pay for a stamp.
Oh, thank you so much. I was so looking forward to reading that.

5. Oh I see, you haven't tidied up although your mother was coming over..
She does the fingertip-on-furniture thing, looks in the fridge and frowns, gets the hoover out. I collapse. It's been a long day, yet it's only starting.

6. So, get me the A to Z; shall we make plans for the next ten days then? Are you sure you don't fancy the Chelsea flower show with me ? When can we go to Fortnum & Mason's?
I sigh and try procrastination.

7. Now, can I have your laptop; I have some communicating to do, you know',, she said.

She settles down to some frantic email typing, peppered with swearing about this weird English keyboard.
Oh.
Maybe she's got a lover.
Ah!
Maybe it'll work out.
Yay!
So that next time she comes over, well, she could bring him along, and they could stay in a B&B, and get really really busy together, and I wouldn't have to put my life on hold for ten (10) days?!

I leave her to her typing and cross my fingers.

8. Send vitamins. Or alcohol. Or both.

Oh yes

So, apart from Jeffrey Dahmer, I share a birthday with my err my lover, and that’s today, people of blogland. I’m not sure how I feel about this shared birthday thing. The Jeffrey Dahmer connection is an interesting chatup line, the lover thing is..I don’t know yet. I’m not the only special person in the room, she’s entitled to wear the same badge and I have to share the cake more equitably that I otherwise would have done. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go back for some double birthday sex birthday party thing . And no it’s not the kind of party where you can join if you turn up with a bottle. Hope you’re all having a good day, I know I am.

Spring breeze, but no U-hauls

1. People of blogland, I know I have been slacking recently. Blame my overbooked agenda as well as the mother of all colds, which have both kept me confined to bed, for altogether very different reasons. But you do know I love you all, don’t you? Right. That’s that out of the way then, just like that time my mother went out clubbing when I was in bed with measles.

2. I believe I left it at the ‘why do women have to be so damn caring’ episode, when I was waiting for an impending visit from my.. my... which leads us smoothly to the subject of..

3. …labels. We had The Conversation, or rather, in our respective breezy, jocular ways, we alluded to having a conversation about The Conversation; the one where two people whose respective trajectories merge/collide long enough to share a bed more than once sit down and discuss the State of Things, present and future. Sometimes.

4. We agreed on the term ‘lovers’ -so much, yet so little- and went our separate ways with a similar, satisfied grin.

5. At this point I’d like to add that, in spite of the mother of all colds, Spring is definitely in my pants. This is possibly why this blog has been suffering a distinct lack of updates recently. Sex is difficult to write about. Good sex is even harder. Overwhelming, all-engulfing sex is nigh impossible. If it turns bad you’ll know all about it.

6. This distinct ‘one day at a time’ stance is suiting me fine. No U-Hauls, no shared felines, no marriage proposals, no monologues starting with ‘your furniture doesn’t match mine’ and ending with ‘storage’. Although, now that she has turned up with strawberries and lurgy-sized tissue boxes, it might well turn into a ‘one week at a time’ thing. Breezy.

7. I wonder what she’s up to today. Maybe last night she had a date with a psycho, maybe she’s been kidnapped, tied up, thrown into the back of a car with no license plate and driven to an abandoned warehouse, and.. and.. oh I’m projecting again. I’ll just send her a text to say: beep me if you need rescuing.

I have a temperature, too

Yesterday she said, the best thing to do with this kind of ‘flu is to sweat it out, so we did. And today I got bored with staying in bed and staring at the flocked wallpaper. That’s all, people of blogland. I’m wiped out, floored, totalled. And I promised work I’d be back tomorrow. What a fool.

No but really, I’m ill.

1. This morning, J reminded me that if I were looking for sympathy, I would find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. After I crossed him off my will I went back to bed and gasped for a little while.

2. A number of noble souls (3) offered to come over and wipe my brow, make me all kinds of soup and watch bad movies with me. I was touched and horrified at the same time.

3. J tried to bully me into following his own strict recovery guidelines: close the door, got to bed, talk to no one for three days.

4. Blogpeople, the land of crumpled paper tissues, lemsip, red nostrils and vitamin C gets infinitely boring after a while. Still, I can’t let a n y b o d y see me like this, oh no. I invoked the dreaded lurgy, and finally put off the Florence Nightingale wannabes. I have to hide, it’s a matter of pride. How long does it take for trust to build up so I can let someone close?

5. And then this morning I gave up and said yes to one potential brow-mopper. She’s coming over with drugs, a lurgy-sized box of tissues and strawberries. I’m being really nervous. Why do women have to be so damn caring?

6. Not just between shit and syphilis, then.

Naked

Naturally, I live in fear.

1. The classic dream of ‘I’m naked in a public place’ (alternative version: I’ve forgotten to put trousers /my wig on) has given way to ‘They have found my blog’.

2. They being the people who employ me, the people I work with, my lover, dates, casual acquaintances, my postman, the lady who rings up my two for the price of one shower gel at Boots. Especially the lady who rings up my shower gel at Boots, because she has that stern and piercing look that says: I know what you’re up to, and from the bottom of my checkout assistant heart, I disapprove of it, and all this shower gel will never wash out the dodgy stain of your morally reprehensible activities. £2.99, do you have a Boots card?

3. And then, yesterday, she said.. that’s my, my what exactly? My lover? she said: How are things in blogland? and I jumped. Blogland? Is she referring to my private playground? How does she know? Who told her? Has she found this place? After the pains in my arm had subsided and I was done with my inhaler I thought of all the things she shouldn’t read. Exes and excesses, rambles and yearnings. I can’t remember the rest of the conversation.

4. Today I’m ill. It’s probably somatic. I’ll see myself through the day one hot toddy at a time, every half an hour.

Let’s focus for a minute

1. Sometimes, often, she looks at me and says: ‘Odd woman. I would never have thought you’d do that.’ I’m oddly pleased, strangely flattered.

2. She’ says ‘muppet’; I say ‘silly bint’. She says ‘shag’; I say ‘fuck’. She says ‘arse’; I say ‘ass’. She says ‘faggot’; I say ‘gay homosexual’. We won’t call the whole thing off.


3 I touch her and listen to her stories. I daydream of her body and laugh trying to imitate her accent. I’m obsessed with the smoothness of her stomach and listen to her scouse consonants.

4 I tease, I play, I threaten, I promise. I make her blush, I make her hot, I make her moan, and when the last wave has subsided, I take her hand and squeeze it. Hard.

5 I don’t think we have a future together. I don’t wish to discuss it with her.

Just to be a little more annoying

Bloglanders, I’m demultiplying, multitasking, multidating, and it’s one hell of a job.
Just as well there’s work tomorrow, so I can finally get some rest.

Perfectly shameless

1. People of blogland, I hope that if it’s not the same thing for you, then it means that you’ve found something even better and I wouldn’t mind paying to know what it is; but to me sex is the most absorbing activity I have discovered in adulthood. I feel about it the same way I used to feel about building a house up in the chestnut tree or trying to get my younger, more vulnerable friends, naked and tie them to a pole then dance around them like a demented, starved cannibal. Or the way I used to feel about Lego, too, but that was more for the winter months. I could forget where I was, who I was and what I would have for dinner, or the fact that there’d be no dinner. And sex is like that; curiously, perhaps a bit disturbingly, it’s the only grown-up thing that can make me feel like an 8 year old. Naturally it wasn’t always like this: ignorance and lack of self-confidence had to be conquered, and that stomach sucked in, you know? Perhaps I had to hit thirty to come to the point where confidence and enthusiasm finally merge, and I realise I don’t have a stomach to suck in..so where’s my point.. where did I leave it.. oh here it is:

2. I finally know what I am doing and can utterly lose myself in it. I have punched the Shopkeeper in the face and while he’s recovering I am surrendering to unmitigated, all-consuming lust.

3. The multi-way, possibly opportunistic dating is still very much on. Each contender has been informed of the competition. Sometimes I feel bad…

4. Last weekend was a perfect example of my newly-acquired juggling skills. Last weekend was perfect. Trendy, grimy Shoreditch and Regent’s park in bloom; sun and murkiness; galleries and picnics, new bus routes and Camden Town beer gardens.

5. There is someone else I really, really would like to meet. This morning I got a message asking me out. Can you see my grin, bloglanders?

A bit of spy drama tonight

Let’s say, people of blogland, that a friend of yours has an email address.
Hypothetically.
Or, perhaps, a username on one of those chat boards stroke messaging places.
With, still purely hypothetically, a password reasonably, stupidly easy to figure out.
Let’s also say, still perfectly hypothetically, that this friend of yours, one day, realises that someone clearly has logged on as her.
Not once, not twice, but on a regular basis; and read her messages for at least the past two weeks.
That’s all purely hypothetical, of course.
Now, let’s say that this friend of yours, half freaked out, half high on an adrenaline rush, has four (hypothetical) suspects in mind.
All of whom are either/or 1) bored enough at work 2) curious enough by nature
3) possibly of a jealous disposition.

What do you think your purely hypothetical friend should do?

I’m going to slaughter the bastard.

Three days, two words: exhilarating, exhausting.
Might be back later, after I’ve slept.
People of blogland, I love you all.

Juggling

Well, if you just spent your time at home in front of the computer like a normal person you wouldn’t have all these problems – J

The man is right; life is starting to be complicated.
I’m juggling. It’s those date things.
Let’s take yesterday’s for instance, when I met a blonde from the internet. I’ll call her Date #3, because, people of blogland, I don’t tell you everything. So, we spent a day trawling round art galleries, drinking beer in Soho square with all the other summery queers, trawling around some more and when the rain started pouring ended up in the cinema. For the first hour she wouldn’t make eye contact, but displayed no sign of wanting to make her excuses and leave; still I couldn’t decide if she a) was finding me too fugly for word b) was just too shy and nervous to hold her own in a conversation c) had a problem with her eyes? As we were parting she blurted out ‘so do I get to see you again?’ and I had to smile. Should I agree to see again an arty, attractive but nervous girl who always keeps a bottle opener in her bag? I did. In fact I’m invited to her birthday party tomorrow.

Which is where things start to be muddled. What happens to Date #1 if I do bring the waterproof ponchos to tomorrow’s Date #3’s birthday picnic as I offered? Will I qualify as a shameless two-timer? What happens when Date #2 comes back from Italy and, full of hope and illusions, claims her slice of Quality time? How do I fit everyone in? Can I not just take what I like out of all three of them and create a fourth, perfect date, one that will make eye contact, like photography galleries, read books, speak with her hands, know how to cook, have a knowing smile and freckles, display glimpses of a sexy stomach and hold her own in a conversation, and carry a bottle opener in her bag?

Today, people of blogland, I shall do the gardening. Alone with the cat.