A normal Sunday morning in this household…

...starts with the Best Of the Red Army Choir blasting out of J’s bedroom. If I listen carefully, it soon becomes obvious that what they’re singing is actually ‘it’s a long way to Tipperary.’ Well, for them especially, I would say.
Internet, I was going to tell you all about J’s Sunday morning fascinating rituals, but I am now being overwhelmed by the desire to put on some pyjamas and get into bed with a book. So maybe next time. In the meantime, be assured that neither of us is a communist, and sleep well.

More bleakness

Rewind to : February 1994

Is there anything you would like from my house? he asks.
For an infinitesimal amount of time, before the question strikes me as odd, I can feel my mind rush onto the greedy path, ready to covet and request; then it hesitates, and halts.

Reason takes over, and says, now is not the time to be greedy, the question is decidedly odd; why does the ex boyfriend call me up late at night from another country to ask me if there is anything I would like from his house?

“I just wondered” he replies. “Don’t ask; just tell me if there is something you would like to have.”

Again the ugliness steps forward, tentatively; something, some object can be had, something can be mine.

Still, I question him. I’m starting to see the shape of the answer; and when it comes it’s not a surprise, still I turn simultaneously hot and cold.
“I’m leaving. There is nothing for me here”, he says, and the words get caught in his throat, then a blank.

Why is my reaction a wave of pure, searing anger?
“How can you do this to me?” I hear myself yell. I hate him for what he is about to do, for telling me about it, for wanting me to have something of his, a memento of his, after he’s dead. I hate him for wanting me to cry over him. And I despise him, the weak, the unresolved, the undetermined, for wanting to die when life is so good and promising, isn’t life good and promising? It is for me. Why can’t he be more like me? I am hard, and tough, and full of resolve; I am a fighter with a sense of humour. You’ll survive anything, with a sense of humour. Why can’t he do like me and stop being such a crybaby? I am, I have. How can he do that to me?

Eventually the wave subsides and I try to get words through his sobs. An hour, two hours, three, four. I can’t let him get off the phone. I don’t know what arguments I use, perhaps my words are not arguments. In the end, I feel that I have won a battle. I’m so strong, such a great person. I’m the valorous rescuer.

[the recovery mission goes like this: since it is before the advent of cell phones, I scribble his parents’ phone number on a piece of paper and send my mother to the phone box. In halting English she sums up the emergency. They’re there within ten minutes; the rope is cut off the wooden beam in his living room. I hang up. I don’t cry. I apologize to my mother for getting her up in the middle of the night.]

It’s been ten years and I have learned. I have learned to not despise and belittle. I have learned of my own foolishness, and incredible vanity. I have learned that I am not tough and determined, not tough at all. Sometimes I too start to wonder what things of mine my friends would like to own; luckily, I have also learned to only call someone who is able to help, not someone who covets and yells, gets angry and self-righteous, and thinks of her/his own comfort first.

Shortly after that night, he burned his bridges with me. I would have done.

People of blogland, I am sorry this blog is becoming so bleak; probably the most depressing thing on the blogosphere. (Although, I can spell and I won’t use cute little lol-like acronyms; so maybe not the most depressing thing.) But this is the way it is. It’s my catharsis. Better than yell at people, shoot pigeons or kick children on public transportation. I don’t know if it gets worse before it gets better. Well, I know it gets worse, but some days I’m not so sure it can get better. When I know for sure I’ll let you know, or pick a tall bridge. In the meantime, please only visit if you’re not tough and if you don’t despise. Alternatively, ignore the cathartic posts and only read stuff about my trips to the supermarket. Next time, I’ll explain how much cocoa there needs to be in milk chocolate to be worth buying. Good night. Love all 12 of you.

Like a vaccine, only different

When the missing+her gets too much
When I’m on an obsession loop
There is one thing that makes me snap out of it
I get this out:

Take a look;
It’s an ugly picture.

It was taken one afternoon in April
It’s hours long.
The caption reads [selfish / cruel] and [humiliation / loneliness]
as well as all sorts of other self-pitying words I could find.
But most importantly
It’s almost a caricature of her.
All the traits are real
Only magnified.

This picture - it really is ugly.
I look at it some more.

Just looking at it makes me freeze, makes me want to barf.
Some more
There
Still missing her?
Missing the caricature?
Didn’t think so.

This ugly picture is my trump card.
On the back it has a capital R, for Remember, prodigue! esto memor.

Now do us all a favour, go back to bed and shut up.

(Good night. Sorry about the self-indulgent stream of consciousness.)

So sad. Yet so true.

Not just olfactory

Late at night, I lay in some warm limbo of near-sleep when it hits me, unmistakable:

1. her smell. I remember her smell. It’s like getting my face slapped.
2. push it away/inhale as deep as I can?

3. it came out of nowhere, out of nothing, nothing in the room does/should smell of her, yet her smell forced itself upon me, played with me for a few seconds.
4. I inhale as hard as I can, afraid that it will go away, that it will turn out to be something else.

5. Do you know how difficult it is to remember someone’s smell? And how defiantly impossible to describe? I can’t even begin to describe it, I’m not subtle or lyrical enough to not immediately fall into the linguistic trap filled with ‘powerful’ and ‘rich’ and ‘spicy’; and still, should I try, you would never know what her smell is. I can’t even use a synonym or it for the sake of avoiding repetition.
6. Her smell is the thing I can’t rationalise, cut into pieces and put in a box.
7. It’s the smell that would greet me, again and again, on my arrival at the airport, when I would throw myself on her and think – this is where I want to be.

2. push it away/inhale as deep as I can?

8. I think I enjoy getting my face slapped.

D is for diet

As part of his new year’s resolutions, I bought the cat some Reduced Fat Friskies.

· -20% fat for his health (because I can’t lift him with one hand anymore and he won’t fit into shoe boxes.)
· Chicken, turkey and vegetables flavour for his chronic bad breath. (Give him tuna and he’ll burn holes in the furniture.)

I was giggling to myself in the supermarket – after pretend milk, pretend food. Remind me to never have children that aren’t old enough to defend themselves.

Rear-view mirror- objects are larger than they appear

Ok, it’s been lurking at the back of my head for too many days (3), it’s screaming to get out, so, people of blogland I give you: 2004: the retrospective. So sorry.

January started on a high note with the birth of this blog, which I believe was an immediate side effect of watching the Cheeky Girls perform on Top of The tops. In January, I spent a lot of time on the phone and exchanged over a hundred emails with the object of my affection. I also waited for the outcome of the Green Card programme and I worked a lot and pondered over where my life was going. I crossed out every day in my diary.

February was less lumpy than it generally tends to be, since I had enough saving coupons to get a 4" space on a plane and propel myself 6000 miles away, in order to enjoy love, the exhilaration of life plans, amazing sex and quality sushi in the little city by the bay. I watched gay couples come out of City hall with a marriage licence that would later be annulled. I harboured a not-so-secret wish that I could be just as gay. When I came back, besides pondering over where my life was going I wondered how to keep up with it. I started taking extra vitamins, magnesium and Omega 3, and I crossed out every day in my diary.

March was as March usually is, with an idea of Spring hovering, and not much Spring happening. I probably caught a cold and wrote a bad haiku about lemsip. I also spent a lot of time on the phone and exchanged over a hundred emails with the object of my affection. I kept waiting for the Green card. I started panicking about getting one. I started panicking about not getting one. I started panicking about panicking, and about my girlfriend not loving me anymore as a result of my irresponsible panic. I stayed in and paced a lot.

April was an anniversary and a birthday, so with the rest of my coupons I sent myself over there again. I tried to explain the panic. I cried and blubbered and let it all out. She said she'd be there for me; as long as it didn't last too long. She took me to a hot spring retreat in the mountain and we floated in a pool of warm water under the stars, so I calmed down for about half an hour. The panic stayed in and paced a lot. After I came back, I doubled up the vitamins, the magnesium and the omega 3, and crossed my fingers for a green card. Oh, and I spent a lot of time on the phone, too.

May was as May is, full of promise. I most certainly caught another cold. I uncrossed my fingers long enough for the blood to flow, then crossed them again, for the Green card. I bought more vitamins. I worked. I phoned. I emailed. I waited. The fits of panic had by then turned into a constant state.

June happened, I think. I phoned, waited, emailed. My March fear turned out to be true: my girlfriend was getting fed up of me panicking about moving to the other side of the world and leaving everything behind. We argued on the phone. She cried. I cried. I felt that if things couldn’t be simpler it was probably my fault. I wasn’t strong enough, determined enough, daring and clever enough. In spite of the vitamins, which are nothing but superstition.

In July, I went to France and never wanted to leave again. The Green card deadline was past anyway. I wanted to stay in my grandmother’s house and help fix the roof, feed the chickens, do the gardening, far from phones and computers.
I kept looking at the LHR-SFO return ticket I‘d bought, and I doubted a lot. And then I went anyway, because I was in love, and to me that means always trying, not holding back, trying to not reason, and above putting my trust in the one I love. Perhaps that's also superstition.


August was, if not a conflict, a paradox. A. took me to the warm hot pool in the mountains under the stars again. The sex was amazing as always; something gave in me and I felt that it would get even better; I was hit in the face with all the reasons why I had fallen in love with that woman. Simultaneously I realised how much I’d tried to live up to the woman she thought she’d fallen in love with. I realised I was failing. It was probably my fault. I panicked. We fought. For the first time in months, I yelled at someone in anger, and fear.
I went for walks to the park with a yellow epileptic dog and bought second hand books. And I flew back for the last time.

September was bleak. September was the end of the phone calls, the emails, the waiting, the plans and hopes. I slept a lot. No more panic.

In October, November and December, I had dreams of throwing up.
I counted the days since the break up and admonished myself for not recovering sooner. I bought orange clothes. And I applied for a Green card.

Lump

Buy me. I’ll change your life; say the faux-cynical billboards from Selfridges. It’s the sale, I am fairly solvent and susceptible to advertising, so after mass yesterday I tried to be part of the hordes and go shopping. Two budget-saving conclusions:
1. I don’t need anything.
2. I don’t want to buy anything anyway.
What I need is to go away, but I don’t know away from what, besides the obvious constituted by my four walls, the green kitchen, the blue bathroom, the view over the neighbour’s yard, Sid the vicious cat, the plants I haven’t managed to kill off despite years of care. Maybe I need the kind of break where you don’t bother to lock the door on the way out and throw away the key into the trash. I don’t know. I’m envying my mother; as soon as she has completed her painting of camels’ heads on the bathroom wall, she’s off to some Ashram in India for an indefinite period of time. I lead a more structured life, and the thought of letting that structure take over again tomorrow at the ass-crack of dawn is enough for me to want to pull out my nose hair and scream. I hope the pile of detective novels I have bought will carry me through January. January is by far the least fizzy, the lumpiest month in the year, right after February. February is beyond lumpy, it’s nothing but a humongous block of bleakness. Maybe I should run away to India too.
For now, I’m off to pull out my nose hair. And scream.

Have fun with your pets

Saucer from pet shop, £1
Soy milk, 750cl, £1.10
Moggy’s face when he realises that it looks like milk, comes out of a carton like milk, but it isn’t milk: priceless.

Wasteful, though.

It’s retrospective time, people of blogland.

Nye 2003: a mirthful event, spent at home, partly in the bathtub, partly in bed. On my own and pining for a distant girlfriend with whom I had Life Plans and Hopes.

Nye 2002: a joyous event, spent in a girls’ club with my friend Odd, dutifully clubbing and eyeing up girls. It was also a First Date with someone I can only call Superbutch.. Superbutch got riotously drunk, loud, possessive, brash and argumentative. Odd got riotously drunk, loud, flirty with Superbutch’s friends, as well as argumentative. A fisticuff was narrowly avoided. During the cab ride home, Odd puked up half the contents of the bar as Superbutch was sending me drunken text messages. The cab driver chucked us out in indignation. I tried to make myself feel better by thinking I was earning big motherfucking karma points for breaking up fights as well as wiping the puke off Odd’s face. All in all, a fruitful evening.

Nye 2001: a jolly event, in a bar on the other side of the Channel, in the delightfully named Trouville. I got drunk on bad champagne, almost fell into the canal, got into an argument with someone very mean I’d just met, wanted to go back and drown myself in the canal, was talked out of it by my girlfriend. I think I fell in love there and then, as she was holding my hand and a bucket and telling me it would all be fine in the morning. I can’t resist kindness, you see.

Nye 2000: a cheerful event, at home with my mother. We went to bed at 11pm and got up early to go climb a mountain.

Nye 1999: a jovial event, in the middle of the Sahara. I didn’t wash for six days, but Christmas and nye were successfully avoided. *Note to self: why am I not doing that again?*

Tonight I am invited by someone I don’t know very well to go to a house party held by someone I don’t know at all. I might flake pitifully.
Happy 2005, y’all.