Pebbles

1.One day my Special lady Friend will write in her diary: "And that’s when I started to hate her", and she won’t be referring to my cooking but to the fact that I forced her to walk all the way to Brighton town centre from the marina along the wind-swept beach.

2.She’ll also add "she wouldn’t even let me take the little kiddie train, the cow". I sadistically ignored the yearning in her eyes. We walked. And walked.

3.We browsed shops full of long, flowing garments but bought nothing since none of us want to start out own religion. So we had pie and mash instead and went home on the train.

4.My mother is coming over tonight for a week, and I can’t even start telling you what it means, people of blogland. Perhaps I’ll try, next time. Until then, be well.

I'll go, if only for the L word action figure

NEW YORK CITY, NY - In an attempt to generate revenue for the struggling New York non-profit organizations, the Lesbian Herstory Archives and Gay Men’s Health Crisis today announced that they have joined forces to open a fast food chain in select cities across the nation.
Natalie Barney’s Beanery© will serve “convenience food with a conscience” and attempt to educate diners about gay and lesbian culture and history in the process.

Breakfast and lunch menu selections include:
• Francis Bacon and Egg combo
• Pancakes with Robert Mapplethorpe syrup
• The Leslie Feinburger
• Vegetarian Phrancfurters
• All-Beef Jumbo Barney Frankfurters
• The Harvey Milk-shake
• Sugar cookies with Annie Sprinkles

The Beanery will offer a special Empowerment Meal for kids, which includes hormone-free milk, a junior Feinburger, and an L Word action figure.

read the rest on fakegaynews.com.. you know you want to.

I got mail, or Just bear with me for two minutes

1. My grandmother’s spelling was never good, because she left school at 12. I suspect she takes her vitamins before writing me a card. When I moved to England she asked for a set of pre-written labels; she wasn’t sure she would be able to replicate my address. It had too many funny words in it, like ‘street’ and ‘London’. Today I received a card and like every time that happens I cried a little. She writes, in substance: "I think of you often. I hope you’re finding the strength to accept life as it is."
I think of her often.

2. My father usually forgets or ignores birthdays, because they call for a display of affection. I got one email, though, one day, three years ago tomorrow. It says something like this:
“On May 21st 19blah, outside the bedroom window I planted something. When your mother and I divorced, I took a cutting with me. I can see it now in my garden, it’s a tree and it’s done really well.”
Every time I think about it, I cry. I can’t help it, people.

3. People of blogland, I’m dehydrated; also I better go wash my face. I put fake tan Sunkissed Skin on this morning and if I don’t wash it off I’ll be all streaky. I can’t be streaky and older.

4. Tomorrow will also be my Special Lady Friend’s birthday, as well as Jeffrey Dahmer’s. I believe that this was the chat-up line I used on her when we first met, and she wasn’t even put off. Happy birthday to all of us! especially to those of us who don’t make a habit of keeping our lovers’ head in the fridge.

Paging Dr Freud

I wonder what it means.
See, blogpeople, it’s like this: my Special Lady Friend reads a lot, and I happen to have a large book collection, which I’m more than happy to share. When she’s done with one book, she brings it back and leaves it on the little table by the sofa.

I wonder why, since she got it from the bookshelf herself. It’s not like my bookshelves are so tidy that one dares not put a book back or anything.

Is there an implicit message?
Does she wish to engage me in some in-depth literary conversation?
Is it an attempt at eliciting approval of some kind?
And what is the best way to respond?

How I enjoy creating small pseudo-psychological enigmas for myself!

Scars

1. The first time my mother packed me off to day camp (because it was good for me) I was 6 and I got mumps. One of the group leaders shouted at me for being a big baby, but wouldn’t you have cried in a corner too if you’d had mumps?

2. It was my mother’s belief that nothing builds up character like camp. Day camp, summer camp, skiing camp, just camp. She herself had been sent to many camps as a child, and look at her! I felt deep inside that if camp had forged her character, I wanted nothing to do with it.

3. To this day she’s still knee-deep in denial about the shoeboxful of pathetic postcards sent to her own parents, dictated by the nazi camp leaders. They all go something like: dear parents, I’m having fun; today we had pasta for lunch. Last night we went for a hike and I hardly got lost in the woods at all. Then she would sneak in a PS : please send money and a file in a loaf of bread.

4. (I’ve kept the shoebox for possible blackmail opportunities.)

5. The second time my mother packed me off to camp, (because it was good for me) history repeated itself; I was forced to take a hike at night and I got lost in the woods. It was written, mother.

6. The third time my mother packed me off to camp, someone stole my brand new copy of the Famous Five and my packet of marshmallows. To this day I can’t think about this incident without clenching my fists. Fuckers.

7. Later came the Language Trips. She didn’t call them camps, because she’d taken a course in slyness by then. So she packed me off to England when I was 11, because she had done the same thing at 13 and she had decided I was precocious. The family I was staying with were great; in order to not embarrass me with language too sophisticated for my level, they ignored me and left my packed lunch on the steps for me to pick up on my way out every morning.

8. Afterwards, things got better, because I learnt enough English to go to McDonald’s and buy myself some food. I went to Dublin many times, decided I hated everything English; then I went to Cambridge and loved England again. I knew many host families; I was robbed of my pocket money and called a frog by the children in the family, and almost adopted in Cork. I had home- made apple pie and strong tea in Ireland, and fish fingers and orange squash in Salisbury.

9. That bit was good for me. Thanks, mum.

10. I’m packing myself off to camp! I’ve turned down the host family option, though.

Verano

1. ‘200 must-have accessories for summer’, it says on the cover of the magazine I found on the bus..
200? Do we really need that many? And do they think summer is going to last that long?

2. That’s just silly; there is no way I’ll be able to afford more than one accessory this summer, and that’ll be a pair of £3.99 plastic flipflops from TkMax. Blogpeople, I’m all booked up! A three-week intensive course in Granada by myself, and two weeks by the sea with my Special lady Friend. I’m all cleaned out, but very excited. A bit scared about Granada, too.

3. -Why can’t you research the place on the internet, then tell people you’ve been there? It’ll save you time and money, and you’ll be able to buy leather flipflops, says J.
- Because that’s what you do.

4. See, J’s parents worry about him working too much; therefore, in order to reassure them, he lies about going on holiday. In the past four years, he’s been to France (Paris, Montpellier, Chambéry) and saw the sights and sampled the local specialities. All that from the comfort of his bedroom, thank you internet!

5. But I can send postcards with real stamps on them.

Guilt

Delivery, yay!
The nice Tesco man is here
Hold on, whose are these?

I never ordered
Two packets of sausage rolls.
Some pensioner’s dinner?

I wait, will he come back?
No. Then the mystery meat
Will be J’s dinner.

I wonder if it’ll work on my Special Lady friend when she gets bored with me (eventually.)

When Pancho the cat gets bored, or sullen in that way that cats have mastered, all I have to do is go out the front door for a minute or two – take out the bin, for instance. Such display of joy when I walk back in! You’d think I’d been away for hours.

Tonight, I took the rubbish bags out one by one. I feel felinely cherished.

Blogfolks, happy May Day.

1.The inhabitants of the House of Y share a garden longitudinally with the upstairs neighbours. It’s either them or us, because of instant overcrowding. They have beaten me to it this morning.
2.Pancho the cat is getting increasingly neurotic at seeing hi garden invaded, no matter how much I try to explain that it’s cold anyway so we’re better off inside, planning holidays and making kedgeree.

3.It’s official: for next August, my SLF and I have found lodgings on a Greek island. Again. We have started making a List of Essentials, and that’s mostly books, and a corkscrew.
She blames me for developing her taste for wine.

4. While she’s away purchasing haddock and browsing the Rioja section of Sainsberries’, I need to get my ass in gear and make a choice of which Colegio de Español I want to attend in Granada. Anyone out there wants to come over and do an intensive course for 3 weeks? The idea is to progress from reasonable to un español de puta madre.

5.I’m having nightmares of staying in a host family, just like I did in England when I was 15. But that’s a whole blogpost of its own, including expletives.