Short extract from a Tube conversation

It looks like the Office Junior Party, out of Croydon and on a bender on a Saturday night
Girls, long blond highlighted hair, manicured hands, impossibly high heels; Blokes on the seats opposite, matching outfits from Next.

Girl
-………..she’s engaged, you know.
Bloke
- what’s his name?
Girl
- Bob
Bloke
- Bob. What’s his surname?
Girl
- His real name’s Robert. But, you know, she’s got a 2.4 carat diamond on her finger!!


The train pulls into Leicester Square where bigger and tackier things await.

I have been…

…awaiting the imminent arrival of L, whom I haven’t seen in too whole years. She and I go back a long way, to that pretentious secondary school we attended in some conservative little town somewhere French and remote. She moved to Italy about the time I moved to England. Over those ten years I haven’t met anyone with more grace, integrity and determination, all rolled into 5’5 of blondeness. And she’s coming to see me!!!! For a whole week!!!

….working. Finding stability and recognition in work, which is worrying me. Will I turn into those middle-aged women who become their job when nothing else is left?

….neglecting the housework. I could stuff cushions with the amount of fluff shed by that feline creature I have. I was going to type ‘own’, but we all know who owns whom.

….resorting to lashings of fake tan lotion to try forget the fact that I’m feeling white and flabby and not in any state to go do something more long-lasting or grown-up about it.
I went swimming on Monday, though.

….unable to start reading a book not by Poppy Z Brite.

….thinking that three whole months away from my girlfriend is really too much to bear.

….deciding that I am unable to move to San Francisco as I am useless at making myself stand out in the job market, don’t have white enough teeth or California-developed social and networking skills, and generally little hubris.

…..awaiting that green card with bated breath so that I can plan my move to San Francisco.

….trying to decide if it was ‘baited’ or bated’. Well, it’s ‘bated’, but why does everyone spell it with an ‘i’?

…..having dreams of building houses, moving into houses ; these dreams always involve J – my housemate and friend, my mother, my girlfriend. In the dreams, I always end up living with my mother, and this worries me.

….eating large quantities of chocolate.

Bubble

Today I would like to be unbearably smug and brag about my job performance review. (It's got another name in my line of work, but nevermind.It's the same idea.)

To be honest, I was relieved to not be told that I had delusions of adequacy or that I would be out of my depth in a parking lot puddle.
A part of me always doubts. A part of me always sneers inside, secure in the knowledge that I am nothing but a fraud. An impostor. Some day the truth will be revealed - yes I do have all those degrees and professional qualifications and years of experience - but, really, I'm not very good at all. I just look the part and wear the clothes, I'm only just pretending. Yes, the work gets done, but that's mainly luck, really.

So today I got a healthy dose of the fuel that is unmitigated, glowing praise. Well. I sat there, uncomfortable, flattered, even blushing, I believe.
I'm trying to get the sneering, doubting part of me to just shut the fuck up and enjoy it.
That's all.

A whiff of rebellion?

Following a deeply enlightening telephone conversation with my girlfriend, I am on a quest for a pair of chones that :

- will change her (and me) from her habitual Yfronts.
- Won’t ride up her arse.

Naturally, where to go but the emporium of tasteful lace that is Marks and Spencer. M&S, first port of call for granny knickers in packs of five matching shades. Poor people. They’re trying so, so hard to revamp their style and ditch the oversize diarrhoea-coloured cardigans and the puke-coloured nylon trousers. So they have those new hip and trendy designers do some stuff for them – I loved the vaguely punk theme on one of the dummies: white and lime green mesh, with a slogan that goes: ‘leave me alone’. I guess ‘fuck you’ was a little to much for the place.
If I leave England, I’ll miss Marks and Sparks.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tonight's achievement:

Locate swimsuit.
Locate towel.
Check unsightly features of self in front of mirror in said swimsuit, in harsh lighting.
Decide that if nothing is done soon, all this will get even worse.
Take deep breath, propel myself towards pool, go into building with head down.


Inspection tour:
Number of kids : nought. Perfect.
Number of goggled up backswimmers who think they’re so hot and just drown everybody else in their lane : tolerable.
Number of old ladies with armbands who hold everyone up in the slow lane: acceptable.

Pay my £2.70

(£2 bloody 70!)

Swim.
Float on back.
Swim some more.
Go home aching and happier.

Well, well.I'm one year older today.

I got (in chronological order):

-lemon cake, 1
- biro scribble on my hand to inform people of the wondrous occurrence, 1 (2 words)
- cards, 3
- hand-made card on folded A4 paper, written in biro , 13
- 'Happy birthday' shouted at maximum volume, about 150 (from different people.)
- developing arthritis in right hip, 1. A long slippery slope from here onwards, then.
- text messages with good wishes, 5
- text messages about entirely different things, 2
- emails from friends, 4
- email from dad that made me cry, 1

And the latest Poppy Z Brite from my girlfriend, whom I'd very much like to hug in gratitude. I didn't even know Poppy had a new one out! And it's signed and everything!

I wonder when I'll be able to perform that grateful hug.
- wistful thoughts, millions.

Things that my mother does

She talks. A lot. She leaves the room we’re both in, and carries on talking to me, even though I can’t hear her. Invariably.
When she talks, both her hands flutter constantly.
She turns into a whirlwind and sorts out the garden single-handed in one afternoon.
She brings me a bottle of wine, opens it on the first night; I’m ill, I can’t drink; by the third night, the wine is gone and she says: if I’d known you wouldn’t have any, I wouldn’t have bothered.
She has great plans of flying over to Colorado. Or California. Then we can all go backpacking to the Grand Canyon – ‘we’ would be she, and I, and my girlfriend, whom she hasn’t met. She doesn’t understand my lack of enthusiasm.
She has discovered the joys of unlimited Internet connection and ASDL. Apparently, right this minute it’s 42°C in New Delhi and in Laos it’s raining again.
She talks to my neighbours more in one afternoon than I do in a year. Mainly because she thinks they need gardening advice.
She questions my sartorial purchases: don’t you have ten just like it? I hope you didn’t pay too much for this. Do you really like it? She wants to go shopping and buy me some clothes.
She gets angry at car drivers who won’t stop to let her cross the street.
Most things she says are accompanied with a slight laugh, as if distancing herself from what she is saying.
She talks to the plants.
She laughs at the things I have to wear for work.
When relating a past incident that made her mad, she gets mad.
She wants to take pictures of me with the cat.
She wears expensive, designer labels that look cheaper than they are.
She thinks that if I had ‘a husband with a good job, who could teach [me] things, a nice house and two kids, [I] wouldn’t ask so many questions.’
I can tell she, just like the rest of the world, wonders what lesbians do in bed, but she won’t ask.
She loves me.

Reminiscing

Today, with my brain on stand-by, Michel Foucault and the birth of queer theory proved too much for me; so I lolled about in my pyjamas, talked to the cat, daydreamed, reminisced.
Last year at this time, I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my girlfriend. It would have been five more days to go, and counting. Yes, I am the type who counts hours; I lay the line at minutes.
I don’t really know if she was my girlfriend yet, we’d only shared a drunken kiss at that point. But there was no doubt in our minds that girlfriendom was looming large, though.
Well, it was exciting. I am reminiscing with little nostalgia, since bigger and better things have happened since then, bigger than just waiting for a plane to land, even though our relationship has so far been relying on planes to do just that. Land. My own mythology is full of travelling and arriving, of the build-up to seeing my lover’s face in the crowd of anonymous passengers.
I think I was nervous, I must have been. I flew out of work, danced onto the first bus home, attended to last minute details. I pretended to myself I was just throwing on any old clothes. I left for the airport far too early and, on the tube, grinned at fellow passengers. I wanted to whisk her off in my own car, but I do not own a car.
The look on her face when she, finally! walked out of the terminal : eyes downcast, find me! I took her home, nervous and intent. I waited in the living room while she was bathing, pretending to listen to music; she emerged in a red tshirt. My bedroom is white and close, a setting for things to come. Who kissed whom first, I don’t remember, but all took off that evening. All seemed to make sense.
It isn’t really nostalgia; I am just missing her, that’s all. It’s time that this relationship was made of something other than a succession of airport moments, arriving, leaving, especially leaving; I’ve had enough of all the leaving, it doesn’t get any easier. This segmenting of living can only last so long, really. Counting weeks is exhausting.

Today's menu so far

- Lemsip: one
- soluble vitamin C: two tablets
- lemon juice: as much as can be sqeezed out that old lemon that's been in the fridge for 4 days.
- honey: two spoonfuls
- whiskey: a wee dram (officially), 100ml (officiously)
- Otrivine decongestant: two squirts up each nostril every so often.
- sympathy from friends (1) and family (1): occasional
- sympathy from feline (1) : non-existant
- self-pity and general whining: liberal amounts.

Advertise yourself - get your own slogan.

Type in your name and sloganize:

'Have you had your Ysengrin today?'
'Does the hard Ysengrin, so you don't have to.'
'Four out of five dentists recommend Ysengrin'
'Ysengrin: it does a body good.'
'Do you remember what Ysengrin tastes like?'
but my favourite has to be : 'There's more than one way to eat an Ysengrin'

Strangely, very strangely indeed, it did something for my ego.

'Ysengrin with the less fattening centres' did not, though.

It's a wonder I managed to pull myself away from that site.

Low levels of melatonin, then

A Pacs is France's answer to the decline of marriage — a legally binding partnership between couples of any sexual orientation. It may soon be here for the emotionally untethered. Our Correspondent finds it alarming.
Once again, The Times chooses to miss the point.

I have no other event to report. From the outside, my life is starting to look like the dullest blog in the world. From where I sit, it feels more like this mixed with this. It's all too common, I know. Often I find myself wondering which of my shoes are the heaviest, cos once you jump off the bridge you really don't want to come back up. Then I shake myself up and have a chocolate soufflé. I'm aware that none of those two things are very reasonable.