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When You Minus Me
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Monday. 10 08 2009. 20:36pm
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What follows is a piece of prose entitled A List Of Things You Are When You Are Not With Me. It is not a list of any description.
1. You are not so much unhappy.
2. As you are aware, the way you are aware you are alive, that there is an outer boundary to your happiness. It's out there.
3. Somewhere.
4. And even if you never so much as float out far enough to see it.
5. You have more friends when you are not with me and it's not something you relish.
6. You love them all dearly but.
7. Like tools in a toolbox.
8. The fact of having them won't fix anything.
9. I don't make you a better person but you don't need to be a better person. You don't need to be anything other than exactly what you are. That is. You don't need to be anything other than exactly what you are and.
10. We both know it.
11. Pluralism.
12. It's a collective knowledge of fact, one of a small number of important things we unassailably know. Without me it is something of which you are sure. You are sure you are sure.
13. Together, it is a fact that requires no further question or thought.
14. You don't like pizza. Cooking on Wednesday. Spending time with your father.
15. You'll never be alone, without me. You'll never go without, without me.
16. With me you won't always be happy. You'll be more regularly.
17. Unhappy.
18. When you are with me than you would be otherwise.
19. With me, however, there is always, always the possibility that.
20. You will be, once, maybe, for some as yet unknowable duration and with some incalculable frequency, infinitely happy.
21. It was always about that choice.
22.
23. Divisible.
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Mood. Seferat
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Comments.
000.
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This Tale Ever After
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Friday. 12 06 2009. 10:28am
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The difference between stories and reality is that when someone tells you a story you think you have a handle on all the relevant details and allow yourself to feel that everything you need to know has been made known to you. Stories make you complacent. They offer you a small capsule of information with the premise that all you need do is take two of these with water and you'll be fine.
Real life is different. When you discover something in real life you have no idea how much of it you have discovered. When you overhear a conversation in a film you know there may be more to it but you are content that everything you need to know about the conversation you have either heard or will understand from the way the film plays out. When, from your own front room, you hear L say that he has to get off the line now, he thinks he can hear you coming upstairs, there may never be a denouement. When I tell you that I heard A say to someone on the phone last night that she has to get off the phone now, she'll talk to them later, neither you nor I have any idea what that means. Who it was, why they'll talk later, what they'll talk about and what it means for her and I. We don't know now and we don't know if we ever will. Maybe we'll forget and, unlike Chekhov's Gun, it'll remain an irrelevant moment in our lives. Maybe it'll play on my mind for weeks and while its details are never known it'll go off by mistake in a handbag and kill us both. Indeed, you don't even know who A is or why some girl being on the phone to somebody but not being able to talk to them now is of any consequence to me. You don't know where we were when she said it or where it fits in the timeline.
The difference between this entry as a story and this entry as a snapshot of my life is that, if it was a story, those extra questions wouldn't be that important. Either they're resolved, their absence is of its own merit or I'm just no good at telling stories.
If this is my life, then maybe everything else I'm saying here - and anything I say to you outside the confines of this small square of text - hinge on it and my inferences from any absences. The difference between stories and reality is that in life, anything that doesn't exist on paper does exist, really exist and is happening right now and anything you're not told might be more important than anything you are in ways you might never know.
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Mood. Conscrift
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Comments.
000.
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Non-Revisionist History's The Worst
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Tuesday. 14 04 2009. 15:15pm
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[record]
Uh, so, is.. is this thing on? Boo-pi-do. Right. Okay. So. This'll be the first and maybe last entry of my video journal. I always fancied myself as a telejournalist but, as it happens, I don't know that I've got the heart. Not that this is, like, a suicide note or anything but, y'know, I just feel pretty weighed down right now like. Heavy, y'know. Guh. Yeah.
[pause] [play]
- I don't understand. Do you- are you tell- the thing is, I don't- okay, so, where do you want me?
- Do you ever, like, finish the same sentence you started?
- Where do you want me.
- Are those the shoes you're gonna wear?
- I can'- I- Don't mention it. I had nothing better to do today than stand around in your pokey four by four room wearing clothes my mother, if she knew anyone other than you would see me in them, would die just to turn in her grave about all so you could gawp for twenty ice cold minutes through the lens of an under-par camera taking artlessly abstract snaps of my naked thigh.
- Anywhere over in the corner is good. The whiter the background the better.
- You're welcome.
[stop] [fast forward]
[record]
Ignore that. Okay. So. There was this girl, yeah yeah, always there was this girl is how 'first and maybe last' journal entries start, right? There was. Can't help that. Uh. If people like me really were the literists we make ourselves out to be we'd be writing regardless of whether or not there was this girl, yeah. But there is and I kinda had a thing for her and, y'know, y'know what's fucking stupid, the real heartbreaker of this situation? It's not that we didn't end up together, it's not that I didn't grab her hand as she was leaving like they do in the movies, it's not that I lost her. Don't get me wrong, that is heartbreaking but it's not the real crux of this story. The thing is, right, with this one, is that I fucking thought it was in the bag the whole fucking way.
[pause] [rewind]
[record]
So, we met about a year go, uh, in, uh, fuck I dunno, so we met anyway. My friend, my best friend then and now - in The Colder, yeah , that was it - rolled her eyes when we started talking at the bar. Obviously my type, she later said. Too obvious. She was a bit taller than I was used to, bit closer to my age than usual, still blonde, still quirky and a fucking maniac. She talked at me like she'd known me a hundred years. Should've tipped me off that, right?
[stop]
[play]
- WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW LAYOUT THEN?
- WHAT?
- THE NEW LAYOUT? CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'VE SECTIONED OFF THE DANCE ROOM RIGHT?
- I'VE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE. WHAT? WHAT USED TO BE HERE?
- HANG ON, SHIT MY FRIEND'S CALLING ME. YOU GONNA BE OVER ON THE STAGE BY THE MAYOR LATER?
- I'VE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE. SORRY. WHAT?
[stop]
[fast forward]
I swear I didn't catch her name until the third time we met. I figured out where the mayor was the next week and on our third meeting, the following Tuesday, she said I had to go with her to see some band play. No band I knew, not even a band she particularly cared about but she was like, you coming then? Like,
[play]
- I dunno 'em- I saw th- There's a band playing at the Blu on Friday, they look alright, you wanna come? What are you doing Friday night anyway, are you going to Crasht? We could go to the Blu before check out the band then go on to Crasht, yeah?
[stop] [record]
She starts three or four sentences before deciding on one and then she sees that one through to the end. Maybe I was one of the earlier sentences. Fuck. Cod-poetic bollocks. Thing is, point is, (now she's got me doing it), two years later and she was the one, right? It felt like we could and should be together forever. Right.
[play]
- Have you got another boyfriend? Are you running them concurrently now?
- A little overlap maybe.
- I don't understand why it's never my turn.
- It's always your turn. They all overlap with you, silly.
[stop]
[record]
Have you ever felt like that? Something hasn't started yet or maybe has but you don't have to push it or rush it or even really worry about it because it's solid. It's a done deal. It's not like I made it up off the top of my head. She always sounded like the events of her life that didn't include me were just happening now because there would be a time when nothing that happened to her wouldn't include me. She didn't say it explicitly..
[rewind]
- Yeah but they're just boys, aren't they.
[record]
It was just something that existed somewhere in the dialogue, somewhere in the house we shared. I think I put it in that cupboard in the kitchen. Y'know. We definitely had it, definitely had it, didn't have to think about it or worry about it. I definitely bought light bulbs, they're in that top cupboard over in the corner, next to the boiler. No need to check until.
[pause] [play]
- The bulb's gone in the back room. I'm gonna pop to the shop to get another, I need to do some work. Do you need anything?
- Don't we have any bulbs? They're in that top cupboard aren't they? By the-
- By the boiler? No, that cupboard's empty. I thought they were there too.
[fast forward]
No fucking way. Actually genuinely. I thought we had bulbs. I thought somewhere indefinable in our relationship we were always gonna be together, nobody was gonna steal her away, that there was no option to own her, her separations from me were only ever by lease. Nope. There were no fucking bulbs and I didn't fuck check sooner and now the light had gone and I was in total fucking darkness. The wilderness of the fucking soul, man y'know? She met some guy in fucking Tesco, that fucking day, getting Chekhov's fucking gun from the front fucking room. And that was it. I overlapped with him for a while then that was it.
[rewind]
- I don't want her to come anywhere near you, you're not allowed to go near her. You're mine, you realise that, right?
- Yeah, I realise.
- Good. So she can just go get her own boy, nobody's taking you away from me.
[play]
I always asked her if she had any idea how different she was about us when she was drunk. You can be honest when you're drunk. Can you bollocks. I get a little touchy-feely when I'm drunk. Doesn't mean I mean it. It's not legally binding. It might let you say what you want but not necessarily to the right people or at the right time. Heaven knows, I do stupid fucking things when I'm drunk. Heaven knows, whatever it was it wasn't true enough.
[pause]
[play]
- I'll come and find you, when you hit thirty, I'll steal you off whoever you're with and we'll get married and run away to Surbiton.
- Do you even know where Surbiton is?
- Do I need to? We've got a bit of time yet.
[stop]
[record]
No, actually, y'know what the tragedy is? I still, I fucking well still think we've got a chance. Haven't seen head nor hide of the girl for two years and I'm barely on her Christmas list but I still reckon she'll come find me or I'll go find her or, or, and let's face it this is what I really think, fate will intervene and we'll end up in the same place at the same time and she'll be looking for just such a coincidence and I'm always looking for her anyway so it'll work out nicely. Looking for her in whatever form I can find her (since I can't have her) and there she'll be. Actually she. And we'll move to Surbiton and we'll find it on a map. Maybe I've been lied to for too long by an unforgiving Hollywood narrative, maybe I'm gullible, maybe I'm a romantic; thing is, you figure, when you feel that right, when it's so obviously the result of something outside your control, who is circumstance to tell you otherwise.
[pause]
- Hey, long time no hear. Thought I'd drop you a text. Uh. I know we don't talk so much these days but I really kinda need that CD I lent you back. Oh, also, I love you. Probably neglected to mention that while we were actually around each other. Text me back about the CD. Safe.
[record]
Yeah, my first and very possibly my last. Although maybe I'll drop you another quick line when I find her again.
[stop]
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Mood. Clammpy
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Comments.
000.
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Without Any Further Ado
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Sunday. 22 02 2009. 10:14am
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I wasn't invited to the funeral. I don't know where it was; where, when or if. Maybe I'm being premature - melodramatic. It's easy to know the first time something happens but you may never know the last. The axiom stalks me at night. Especially as I toss and turn in the throes of the same old dream. There is a funeral, all your friends and favourites are at it and, somehow, in the same dream, I sit in my room, on my bed, oblivious. A dream about me being completely unaware of what's happening in it.
Your texts are a double-edged sword. Anything to do with you is bittersweet these days. The quietly exuberant peace that being in your orbit always brought remains but it's laced with the malignant knowledge that it's fleeting, mortal. Your texts are almost merciful in their infrequency. Few and far between but few and far between enough that any one of them could be the last. Dear you. This is the last text I will ever send. Maybe that would be easier. Probably not.
I wasn't invited, though. You went and left and I wasn't one of those allowed to know. Instead, now, a year later, I sit outside your old house and reflect on the loss. I'm inexplicably juggling, a bizarre but therapeutic act of solemnity in the face of a surprisingly chasmic hollow. It feels rude, impermissible, to tell you I miss you but, well, really, I do. I really do.
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Mood. Holesome
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Comments.
002.
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Unbeknownst As A Cancer
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Sunday. 22 02 2009. 09:43am
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We were drunk. That'll be the excuse. That'll be what we tell ourselves tomorrow. Tell ourselves but not each other - we'll never speak of this again. The second close encounter, the third time of asking, it's practically tangible now. How many more times can we do this? The question has me in its sights, red dots hovering around my head and my heart, ready to pepper me with bullets where I stand. How often can we do this before we have to fucking face it. Something happened here. There's something between us. When do we stop acting on it and acknowledge it?
Hands and lips and fingertips, quick soft slow, tempting and tempted, resistance and other futilities. This is the flashpoint. This is a different universe. Here it can happen, it can and is with no need for justification. This is how we feel, everything else is just a pretence, everything else is polite conversation, an imitation of the truth. Every single word I say to you as the sun stares down and the crowd blink sober in the daylight is my way of caging this. So conspicuous, our baby elephant, so quietly sitting there, leaving us to it. So barely able to bite my lip, even by text (our only other communication), so difficult to edit out the bit where I blurt it all out, all over the so silent so often. Our platitudes, our open channel of communication, a sustenance by itself, makes my every fibre want to scream. This time I almost don't stop before the line that pins my sails to the mast. The line that grabs you by the shoulders and looks you in the eye and cuts through everything else, to the quick. I almost don't stick to the nice safe subjects. Almost.
I do though. You do too?
I wanted it to be you, you tell me, in coy tones as a prelude to the act. We were drunk, right? The next day, up and out of bed at eight in the morning, bright and alert to the new dangers of recession hit Binge Britain and knifecrime, I'll text you to say, groo, I'm so hung over, I may never escape this quilt. You'll text me at eleven to say you've only just woken up. We lay the seeds of a denial we know we'll never be asked for. So. Last night. Did it mean anything? Will it happen again?
Instead, last night remains an unanswered question. A frustrating, swirling ambush of indecision and paralysis. A moment we share that only exists as an action, unobservable. A cat, alive and dead, in a box, in a messy, quantum universe. A sin of the past bound to be repeated. At least, I can only hope so.
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Mood. Incontestible
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Comments.
000.
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Bikinis And A Mac
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Thursday. 26 06 2008. 11:49am
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Hottest summer since records began. That's all we've been having for I don't know how long. Hottest May fucking ever! Holy shit, I got sunstroke and it's January! Well friends, associates, countrymen, I've got news for you. You live in ENGLAND. Drab, dreary, wet, miserable, grey, dour, rain-soaked ENGLAND. You get a few hot summers and you suddenly think you're entitled to day after day of solar bliss. Since when has Britain been a country of three month long summers? Who circulated that rumour? I know, I know, I'm biased; I hated the interminable, flesh-scorching heat of the summer of zero five but still. Wimbledon gets rain. Glastonbury gets rain. Reading gets rain. Summer, in this country; weather, in this nation; The Climate of Britain, is a wanton, independent, feline thing. It bows to no man. It satisfies no-one's whims but its own. Long may it rain! Pack a brolly!
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Mood. Scold
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Comments.
003.
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Still The Same Shape
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Thursday. 26 06 2008. 08:12am
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"We love the drama of summer, that's what it is." You are holding court. We're in the park that your house overlooks, entirely failing to have a picnic by even the most tenuous of definitions. Like an advert for a staying in touch with friends this summer, now with unlimited text messages and a free phone; the grass is green, the sky is blue, a frisbee whirls motionless overhead and, in the background, by the perfectly cast shadow of a tree, a child is caught in the convulsions of an exaggerated laugh.
There's something about swaying, isn't there. Something about events like this, with their chandeliers and wooden floors, with the music light in the air but viscous and tangible, that makes everyone trustworthy. A stranger stands opposite and tells us to move in, closer. You look at the floor in front of my feet and I roll my eyes. The stranger smiles at us and walks away. There's something about running for a bus when it's cold outside that feels like the only option. Especially as it drives away, leaving us laughing like public transport part-timers.
You're looking up. A glance at the heavens to the uninitiated, an attempt to look over your own head in fact. Trying to look behind you, at the house you are now leaving behind, at This Chapter Of Your Life. You have been talking to me as the motion blur dissipated. Listening to you talk is one of my favourite things in the world. Your body language is a mixture of timidity and anger, an unnecessary apology wrapped in frustrations and fury, at a need for things to be corrected all over the world, the entire world but mostly, right here, in your life, right now. The window above you catches the sun and the resulting glare renders the scene almost allegoric.
That's how I used to see them. Now. A photograph of a ghost and I, in a cold looking park. A snapshot of a shadow and its shadow looking awkward, in a room I can't place. The last captured image of another's farewell. Pictures of events and activities, all of them starring the silhouette of a lost friend. The outline, recognisable, but only from a certain distance. Get up close and you can tell something's now missing.
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Mood. Curvette.
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It Can Take You
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Thursday. 26 06 2008. 07:58am
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I will never, ever, find love until I find someone else who can't help but get up when Dearth by Foals kicks in. Then, maybe we can just talk about the weather. Then, someday we can come home and cut the phone lines. Until then. The odd held hand. A misunderstanding. The look of mild annoyance. And, more than anything else, the iteration; see, meet, come together, misalign, drift apart, stay civil. Fun like pic 'n' mix. Fun like it rots the teeth.
i have three hundred bombs all in my head
i have three hundred bombs, all, in, my, head
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Mood. Cavitate.
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Comments.
000.
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Woe Betidings Of Yore
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Sunday. 22 06 2008. 12:01pm
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This is the entry in which I say, as we all do de temps en temps, I wish I still sounded like I did when I was younger. Anyone remember Ouix? Two thousand three four. Little Jenni eyeschild. Poor little disenfranchised Jenni Fletcher. Her with the swords, her with the tangled web of crushed velvet, choking on another coiled spring of lost and losing, of I'm too, oh, oh, always oh, too, much more, breaks and fractures. Remember her plight. Every week. Every day again. I am too sad for you. I am too unhappy for this. I am the noose and I am the gallows and I will hug you and hang around your neck then I will fall and you will snap. And always oh. And always hey but it's alright and always but it's okay right. And always not ever. Always not ever anyone ever again anywhere near. Silly little eyeschild big and bold wished she could see through the blinds now closed. Sunlight basked and burning up, glowing skin and anger and rage (and the fuck and the fuck fuck fuck fuck this frustration and everyone else. And the rid of you all who screams at walls. Think about her blank face and her self reference; all that I am I offer up and all that I can is rejected; here I stand as the tide rises, as the heartbeats melt to a standstill; this I know, silent, senseless, stupid sealed synapses and my entire world of want. I want and I want and I never get unless. Unless as accomplice. I get the boy if only I stay miserable. I get the strong shoulders and broad chest if, come on Jenni, if only you keep on crying. A single tear less, a smirk or a smile and this could all disappear. Make your choice.
participate!
every single day that passes is a mistake for which you will never be able to atone.
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Mood. Antiquite
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Comments.
000.
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Snap Me Not Unaware
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Tuesday. 17 06 2008. 13:51pm
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Life is one big game to me. One big game to which I don't even know the rules. So, I've created a Facebook which you can find if you search for me using My Real Name. Those of you who know it, can add me. Anyway, to this end, I am officially available for photographs in the month of June. Probably. The rarity that is me knowing there is a camera pointing at me and not disappearing into the thicket or donning a gas mask, presently. The idea makes me cringe so it may be short lived but, hey. Life's a game, right.
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Mood. Regreable
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Comments.
002.
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We Will Reduce Them
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Tuesday. 17 06 2008. 09:03am
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Saturday night. Middlesbrough. The usual Saturday night from yore. I remembered - after a sustained and substantial period of abstention from the memory - exactly how it feels to be in the type of night I wanted to recreate. The reason I now have a regular Friday night of any description is to come some way to this reconstruction. Everywhere you went there was someone you knew. You were never alone to the point you could barely escape. My mission is to make London a small, small place. Yesterday I was in Hyde Park and bumped into someone I'd met at a gig a month before. Tuesday I bumped into someone I'd met a month prior at a different club. Small steps.
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Mood. Depopule
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Comments.
003.
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Talk About Not Talking
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Tuesday. 17 06 2008. 08:54am
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Friday Night. In London. At the now regular Friday night. A girl comes up to me and says. Verbatim. "My big fat ginger mate fancies you." Obligation then forces me into a conversation. This girl is older than me (by three years) and taller than me. She's not fat. She is ginger. She's not My Type, though. The conversation is not one I would have in a perfect world. As such, it comes around to, what do you do for a living.
At this point, non-regulars should skim the entry before last. I said to her, I was talking, yesterday, to a friend, and had decided I was no longer going to have that conversation. This wasn't enough. It's never. Fucking. Enough. For some people. I said, I come out of a night to not think about work. This. Wasn't. Enough. Does everyone in this fucking city think everyone in this fucking city is in a job they want to be in? Is everyone so on track with their aspirations that it's an anathema to think there are still people left of any pensionable age that just, fucking, hate their jobs. Y'know. In the classic, Al Bundy kinda way. Like we did when we were kids. Apparently so. This wasn't enough. So I told her. I'm in a dead end slave wage job down the road. Is that enough? Apparently not. She said, surely you can't want to do that for the rest of your life.
- Are you joking? Is this a joke? Seriously, you're asking me, here, in this club, at this time on a Friday night, if the job I am doing now is the one I want to do for the rest of my life? This is the conversation you are trying to have with me?
- Have I put my foot in it?
- I think it's best we change the subject.
Half a changed subject later I made my excuses and left. Still. As if on cue, eh? You just can't make this shit up. At least. I didn't just make this shit up.
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Mood. Lendead
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Comments.
002.
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Before I'm Thirty Four
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Friday. 13 06 2008. 11:48am
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I'm sitting on an expensive chaise lounge in an artfully minimal store on Tottenham Court Road. I've never been to a BoConcept before. Always wanted to. Always walked past and thought, this'll be me one day. I want modular wall solutions and pitch black furniture which punctuates the room's negative space. I actually tend to find girls who like clutter and quaintness but in my head I'm already thinking of ways to synergise the two. I see a table I really like. I am tired, though. She whispers in my ear, do you think they'll mind if I lie down a little bit. We chuckle.
I mean, we chuckle but the laughter is that of a couple who are up a lot earlier than their bodies were hoping they'd be. We've been in town for about an hour now, arms linked almost inseparably. It's all very sedate and grown up. We've decided we're going to pick out our living room today, this morning. We had a Pret for breakfast. I have a Frescato and she finished up her Mr Whippy ice cream before we came in. We didn't think they'd appreciate us walking a Flake 99 through their urban boho living quarters.
- what's your name?
- pardon?
- your name, what's your name, what do people call you?
- oh, damon
- malcom?
- DAMON.
- oh! that's a nice name. i'm faye.
- pleased to meet you. i like your eye liner.
- thank you. it took me ages. like. almost seven minutes.
- wow. you're a true artist.
She kisses my sleeve. It's pretty rare, admittedly, this whole set up. The breakfast, chatting about Hussein Chalayan on a bench by Starbucks, Habitat. It's different. It's what I'd want, I guess. I want to be a grown up. Even just for a bit, maybe emigrate there, perhaps just live there half the year. I want to be an adult amongst adults. I have a friend on Facebook who has six other friends, only one of whom I know by name. None of the sprawling cacophany, playground register friends lists of others. Just eight of us. All my age. Your Mid Twenties. I like how it feels to sit in that company. Not all the time but. Sometimes. Regularly.
She drags herself off the chair and stands in front of me, pulling me reluctantly to my feet. She wraps her arms 'round my waist, she's tired poor thing. Then we link arms and make our way out. She points to a vase we could put on the table we saw in Heals. I'm not sure. What colour flowers I ask; she laughs and pushes me, weakly. I want to be my own age. She, however, isn't. She's seventeen, in three inch heels, short skirt and belt, vest top and neon make up. I have the words FUCK YEAH painted by a friend in neon across my t-shirt. We're tired because we slept on her friend's floor. We're in town because she can't go home until her parents have gone out. We met because her fake ID said she was 21. I found out this morning. Bouncers aren't so stringent at dirty little indie clubs, hidden away on side streets. We didn't even kiss but she adopted me, last night. I was to keep her company. We were drunk, it was fun.
I'm despondent. I am. I mean. She's nice. This is nice. I'm not even discontent. It's just that, well, we look like a pair of delinquent teenagers playing at adulthood. If I was five years younger that's what we'd be. It's school games isn't it. School games with school children on a school day.
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Mood. Barlea
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Comments.
002.
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There's Older To Be
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Friday. 13 06 2008. 09:17am
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I don't like to leave the house so much. There are so many conversations out there in the world I just don't want to have. Crawl into the soft embrace of a duvet of lies and fiction. Giving fake names and affecting an accent. I'm so decadent, look at this eyeliner, the world weary look of someone who's seen so much, I'm all transcendent glamour, it's a wonder you speak to me at all. Impudent youth. You can't then complain about the tapestry of falsehoods I spin when I respond.
I have a stack of things to do in the office tomorrow. Stacks of things to do but not to question. Things to do but not understand. A stack of things that I have been given to do and told to do but that have no impact on me or my life. Type, sort, calculate, enter, process but not really think. Not really care. This is my life today; all hand-me-down work and abdication of responsibility. I am going to buy a camera next week, I think that will help. Get me out of this rut. I still have time to get my life on track. It's okay. I'm only twenty nine. Need to be somewhere by the end of this year, though. Gosh. Thirty. Fuck.
I never thought I'd be the one doing the ending but sometimes you have to take your life into your own hands and make a stand. Start to make a difference. He was a wanker and I can do better. Do better than all of it, really. Temping is a shit way to earn a wage. The difference between a temp and a contractor is that temping is a really shit way to earn a pretty shit wage. When you're a contractor its like they want you. When you're a temp it's like they just got anyone - you were who was dumped on them, well done. My friend just turned twenty seven. They were a year into the job my aspirations won't allow me to believe I can get in the next three years when they were my age. Two years ago. Fucking hell. That's so depressing.
I hate answering the questions, that's why I don't talk to them. It makes me look shy and timid. Which makes me look like an easy target. I scrub up well and, let's face, any girl in a short skirt and a push up bra can get free drinks all night if she holds herself right. The fact I clearly don't, the fact I'm never surrounded by all the boys being bought drinks by all the boys dancing with all the boys just means the boys that shouldn't stand a chance with me think I'm worth a shot. I am an easy target. It's just, at least they know they're lucky. At least they don't push it. I'm not answering your fucking questions. Buy my drink and fuck off. It's dark in here, the music is loud and the girl next to us has a boy's hand in her knickers. This is not the fucking place to interrogate me about my fucking job. I'm twenty fucking three, what the fuck does it matter.
We have our birthdays in strict order of rank. Mine is last, in February. Charlie, with her first class degree, her prospects and already impressive living wage, with her slinky new dress, has her birthday in August. We were in the same year at school. Same year at our various universities. They were all born before me but I dumped myself unceremoniously out of academia and into the real world a good year premature of them. Which is why I'm buried under the rubble of this call centre, hoping I don't get an invite to her party, hoping we don't catch up on old times. Ah fuck though, still. Twenty one is young as, right?
He asks me for my ID. He knows I'm not eighteen but you gotta rate the laminate, mate. Haha. I can't believe Charlie is spending this summer doing work experience with her dad. Her doing some plush office shit for a printer and me scanning boxes of cornflakes in a stripy shirt. Although dun know I make it look good, yeah. 2008; my last summer without a care in the world, right? My summer of cheap love, cheap wine and teenage kicks. I overhear some fit boy I pulled last week talking to his mate. "Fuck man, she was only sixteen". Damn right, baby. Sweet sixteen and the world is all mine!
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Mood. Callatse.
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Comments.
002.
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Early Mornings All Day
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Thursday. 12 06 2008. 22:09pm
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If you looked at me, properly, you'd see that my eyes were actually tiny windows, curtains half drawn, through which the last two ogres on a planet of warlike beings were wearily hitting each other with clubs. Thud. Thud. Pause. Pause. Thud. Pause. Pause. Thud. Thud. They can't call it quits - they're ogres on a planet of warlike beings - but they don't care any more and they're tired and the whole stupid pointless war is completely redundant and neither of them has the energy to kill the other. Thud. Pause. Hello, you're through to seven eight nine, how can I help.
If you looked at me properly, you'd see. You won't look at me properly though. Who can be bothered. We address each other by name but, the greeter doesn't care if it's the right name they're calling and the greeted doesn't much care if it's the right name they're answering to. Alright Sarah. Alright Jane. Good afternoon, you're through to seven eight nine, how can I help?
I don't know if you can tell across the room. There's so much sweat. She's looking at you so maybe you're looking too. He comes over, offers to buy you a drink. Two hours later in the cold, fresh air he's asking where abouts you live and how you're getting home. Do you know the difference between imply and infer, you ask him. Well, either you're implying I share a cab with you and we end up at your place. Or I'm inferring it. I have to be up in four hours. My bus takes forty five minutes to put me a fifteen minute walk from my house. Does he even get your number?
Who doesn't have your number? Seven eight nine, technical support, how can I help you? You roll your head back in your neck. Some days it doesn't bother you - other, better days you find a way to beat it. The same thing never seems to work twice in a row, though. Can of coke? Massive baguette first thing? Running to the bus stop? Undressing the receptionist with your eyes? Flirting with the girl who sits opposite usually helps but she's in Tenerife for a week. Selfish bitch, she knows this week will be the worst. Certainly sir, do you mind if I put you on hold for no more than two minutes? I'll be as quick as I can.
Yeah, yesterday was Kosha, tomorrow's my mate's ugly-faced friend is DJing that new Nettle night. She never saw me at Kosha yesterday. Didn't you? Funny. I saw you. You were with a different group of girls but I definitely saw ya. I'm hurt now. She hits me on the arm. She asks me, so, are you student or wot? I wish, hun. Then I wouldn't be staring down the barrel of no sleep 'til five pm. I've got a cold shower and Lucozade-Cornflakes breakfast lined up when I get home - which would you prefer to share with me? Ew! Lucozade-Cornflakes?
Thanks for holding. I'm afraid there's no response at the moment - would you like to continue holding or would you like me to arrange a callback for you? The callback would be within the next two hours. Yeah? Certainly, I'll be as quick as I can, thanks for continuing to hold. If you looked at me, really looked at me, you'd see I wasn't that different from you. Seven hours less sleep perhaps but neither one of us can be fucked with this shit any more than the other. I just want to sleep slightly more than you. Hi there, thanks for holding. I'm through now so I'm going to transfer you straight across. You'll be speaking to a very handsome sounding gentleman called Chris. Thanks for calling seven eight nine, have a wonderful weekend. Ha, yes, what's left of it.
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Mood. Petepackage.
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Comments.
007.
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Semi Circle Crayola Loops
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Thursday. 12 06 2008. 14:37pm
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I'm wearing a jacket. Not a thick one, it doesn't come down to my knees and it's very pretty and colourful but it's on and I don't want to have to carry it. I don't wanna. Just my luck, then, that it looks like it's gonna be a main menu » file » new document day. The cameras are all charged and there's xenon everywhere. I wouldn't mind but the weather report yesterday said we'd be lucky to get the mildest new pound coin. In fact, I woke up under seven or eight inches of pollen, having left my window open. I'm just hoping that all the scattered stardust didn't get into my computer.
Which is all moot here and now, of course. Standing, for all the world like an unfunny clown, under an umbrella. Expecting paper shredders are you, love, a jovial man in a t-shirt says to me. He is beaming. Twenty minutes ago the up above was sullen like a broken child and the fast forward was like the circular thumb pad of a Nano. Expecting the odd ripped up receipt? I thought the hood was down and there would be conkers everywhere. I thought I'd leave the office to scenes of children scarpering for their life screaming LEMMINGS, OH NO MORE LEMMINGS!
Apparently not. Apparently every appliance in the house is on standby. Apparently Debbie Ford from 3J English just winked at all the boys. Apparently there's a slight swoon, 'some chance of spilt milk' but otherwise miles and miles of big expanses of blue screen and impressive post production.
I swear. Global bloody warming. It'll be the death of me.
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Mood. Winain.
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Comments.
001.
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In Life We're Motionless
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Tuesday. 10 06 2008. 10:02am
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Drifting you think of maybe hills and dales, a valley you saw in a book once. You've never been to the Lake District in your life but you're there now. You've your hand in mine and we're padding soft tracks in the long grass, a breeze kisses the back of your neck. My fingers walk a slow canter across the sharp incline of your hips as your rapid eyes watch on from beyond. I trace a line from your ear to your shoulder, the blades of your back petite and narrow.
You smile. The train is half an hour late and the llamas on the platform make it dusty. You don't know how long you've been waiting. It feels like only a second ago you were looking through the wall of your bedroom at a group of children fighting in your kitchen. My arrival's no non-sequitur, though, you've been looking at the various clocks that float by, expecting me. Quarter To, they cuckoo, Ten To, they chime. You thought you were going to be late.
"It's okay," you tell me. I have a feeling you don't know you're saying it but I respond anyway. It's a painfully quiet night and the street lamp outside is no respecter of curtains. I'm tired but not about to sleep. "Are you sure," I reply. "I'm not so sure." Which is a shame, really. I kiss my thumb and press it lightly to your forehead. It's meant as affection but might just be apology. You shift your weight, form a tighter ball, pull the cover off you (and off me, too). "No." You sound adamant. I glance round.
I'm chasing you up the stairs, you're giggling (actually giggling) but also a little scared. You want to look around at me properly but you can't seem to so. Instead occasionally, in the light, it's just a shadow of me chasing you and a shadow is just a shadow. You look back and can't make out my face. You panic a little, the quilt is ruffled further, so I stroke your arm, place my hand on the rump of your hip. As you turn around to face me, not sure of your escape, I offer you a small bone china cup of tea. The room feels warm and full of light. You fall into my arms and I hold you. The tension eases on your face. I let my hand go limp and kiss you where it lay. You seem peaceful again. I close my eyes and breathe, like a cool breeze through the sunkissed room, swinging back the big french doors overlooking the acres of green grass. I roll off the bed and walk to the door, easing it open, sliding my frame through it. I glance round. Rêves doux, fille jolie. Bonne nuit.
Your head is on my chest as our embrace continues. Somewhere, out through those big windows, a latch clicks.
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Mood. Dozache.
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Comments.
005.
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Make A Difference Today
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Friday. 31 08 2007. 23:11pm
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I know this journal seems to be exclusively about the spam I receive recently but, but, this surely is the most poignant, geniune bit of junk mail ever. Not least since it's written in coherent sentences and doesn't talk about whizgiggling or being significantly larger than national.
Why should you try Viagra?
Why Viagra? ...because that look she gives is only meant for you...
because an empty nest is the chance to fall in love all over again...
because reading the Sunday paper doesn’t take all day.
If you have ED, you’ve already got plenty of reasons to choose Viagra,
but here are some more that you should know about.
You can almost hear the twinkling music in the background. Tears are welling, non.
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Mood. Compellant Music. Boards Of Canada. Driving Station.
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Comments.
001.
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He Really, Really Does
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Monday. 27 08 2007. 11:30am
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"I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui." - Charlie Brooker
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Mood. Repliate. Music. TMWRNJ. Lazy Comedy Slags.
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Comments.
005.
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More Useless Selling Tactics
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Thursday. 26 07 2007. 02:26am
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It's been a while since anyone, let alone me, wrote in this journal. That's not especially set to change although I do consider it from time to time. As a sort of placeholder, though, allow me to introduce my favourite piece of junk mail probably ever. In its entirity, to wit:
Hello my friend! I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (http://raisechoose.cn) are bad. Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong.. My dog and I are still alive :)
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Mood. Restroke. Music. GoodBooks. Walk With Me.
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Comments.
003.
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Delete My Phone Number
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Sunday. 01 10 2006. 00:55am
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New relationships are a prickly plant for me. Take the phonecall I've just had. Five minutes it lasted. A girl I hardly know from work sat next to me a week ago. A week ago yesterday, effectively. We talked for a few hours then I went home. Then we talked regularly for a week. Then today, she told me she couldn't talk to me any more. Not, not ever, just, not really. It was a bit of a blitz on me because, well, we seemed to be getting on okay. We seemed friendly enough.
Take my night tonight. Supposed to go out. I've been cancelled on and that's fair enough. I was cancelled on by a longstanding friend who no doubt thought I had other options for tonight. I didn't. Another friend said they might possibly perhaps maybe come out but in the end decided against it, again, assuming my plans were more all encompassing. However, a further friend of mine, a friend with whom it was once all but indoctrinated that we would go out together, hasn't even queried my presence. A text earlier, are you still going out tonight, I'll come find you. Since then, nothing. We were the type that were signposts for each other. If someone was looking for her and they saw me, they would know she couldn't be far. Then, impromptu, it was never the same again. We still go to the same places but one won't know the other's whereabouts. Being bizarrely still somewhat an outsider to these groups I find myself wandering around and leaving early to be asked, the next day, oh, what happened to you. Like it didn't really come up at the time.
In a way I'm slightly scared. There's a point in my friendships where any move could be fatal. I give up a lot of time to people that I'd quite like to keep for myself. Going out, daytrips, meetings for coffees, pool, meeting downstairs to watch TV and talk. I sounds like an exciting and action packed social calendar and, in a way, it is. I mean. If you know enough people one of them is always bound to not have their first choices available. The problem I have is that to become someone's first choice there's a fine line. Some people think if you send each other more than four texts a day you should be contemplating your joint future. I'm sorry love, I. I don't understand how we got to this point. Being available at the drop of a hat, being receptive to your company, replying to your texts when your bored. That's all just filling a void. The problem I have is that the people I know have voids that need filling.
Nature abhors a vacuum. It creates a need and what more is an emotional commitment than the romantic way of fulfilling a need. As a species we seem geared against called a spaid a spaid. I like you because you get me out of the house when I don't want to be in it any more. That's all this is. Your company is better than repeats of Fraser and you laugh at my jokes and like the colour of my hair. It's a nice diversion and a pleasant way to kill an hour. I wouldn't want to be told that perhaps but I wouldn't like the other person to be kidding themselves their intentions were anything else.
I don't know how to earn myself promotion from shiny new friend to rusty and reliable best mate. Maybe my friendship is lowest common denominator. If I catch someone's attention, either it fades fast or it spirals horribly in the wrong direction. Four people now, two in the last couple of months, have told me They Aren't Able To Be Friends With Me Any More. To one extent or another that they can't talk to me Ever again. (I still think about that one, I wonder if the reverse is ever true, I'll never, ever know). That they just can't and they're sorry. I receive these texts and calls and my eyes open a little wider. Oh. Oh okay. Okay if that's how it has to be I'll deffer to your judgement. Sorry. I didn't realise. Which puts me back at square one. The bottom of everybody's guestlist. Which means, sure, I'm on everyone's guestlist but, only providing there's enough space or a whole lot of people cancel.
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Mood. Reclest. Music. Amusement Parks On Fire. [Hidden Track].
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Comments.
001.
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All My Favourite Things
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Tuesday. 12 09 2006. 10:19am
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David was a lovely boy. I mean, I wasn't in love don't get me wrong but we got on really well. We went out for, like, five months which, back when I was seventeen and still new to the concept of not flirting with every guy who I caught looking at my knees, was a significant period of time. We went to the cinema together a lot and we enjoyed the same type of food. That was nice. It got a bit awkward, though, as I started to go out more. Even if it wasn't for the fact I started to realise more attractive boys were now looking at my knees (and the section of lower thigh which was now on constant display on nights out), he hated loud music and strobe lighting. If I wanted to not be able to see or hear you properly, I'd wear virtual reality gear, he'd say. He was a funny boy - the VR reference was funnier in the nineties - but he had to go.
I think I actually met Justin in a club. That got over that barrier at least. We went out all the time, we loved the same types of music back then, it was all Balearic house and Euphoria compilations. He was totally into me and I'd be lying if I said I didn't love that. He was hot and he was mine. In your face, girls. Still, if ever I wanted a Chinese I had to see if any of my other friends were available and they never were. My friends were rubbish, that's why I got a boyfriend in the first place. He came to the cinema now and then but only if he knew he'd be able to 'distract me' as he called it. Which really ruined Fight Club for me. Bye Justin, sorry.
I was totally in love with Ash, though. He had a better bum than me and I have a cut out on my wall of this page in Cosmo which tells you exactly how to bend your knees to keep your buttocks firm. My taste in music was changing then, I was more into hip hop and stuff, but then so was he. He also liked similar movies to me and his mum cooked the best curry you've ever tasted. Like. Ever. He used to bring it round in Tupperware tubs. Conversation was stilted, though. I was no photography buff but I do love photography. I do now but back then, just getting into it, it was all I could talk about. Our phonecalls would drift off and I'd hang up only to rush online and talk to this chubby boy in America for hours. I was starting to fancy him actually. I had visions of inviting him over, getting myself a fat American internet boyfriend. It was all so horribly wrong. Ash and I are still friends though, if only for that food (and the view of him walking away after he's delivered it)...
Which brings us to Brandon. He loved the cinema and we know exactly which films we're going to actually sit and watch and which we'll probably only catch the more exciting looking bits of. He is a photographer. Only on the side perhaps but people pay him to put stuff from his website in their press adverts and stuff, it's really hot. He knows ISO from APS and can sit there and talk me through the golden spiral in the park. I'm a bit of a techno girl at the moment but he loves all the same music I do. We argue the finer points of Underworld's albums while discussing the intricacies of Tomato's artwork, it's like some sort of heaven. We like the same food and were already regulars of the same Chinese buffet place - Dim Sun, Mondays, before Ladder Club at The Fokus, regular as clockwork - I'm surprised it took us so long to meet. I've never had so much in common with anyone. I've always had to struggle to find people to go places with, I've always lacked a hand to hold at music events, always missed playing footsie under the table in restaurants, resting my head on a warm chest during the weepy parts of a good movie. Plus he's a stud and he dresses well. He's got it all.
So. It doesn't matter, then, that I don't particularly like him, does it? I mean, he's boring, a bit absent minded and pretty selfish. He only thinks about me when I'm there and he sometimes forgets to include me in his plans. That's not so important, really, is it? He's nice to me when I'm around him and we're always doing something I genuinely enjoy. I've never had that before. You go your whole life looking for someone who ticks all the boxes, you'd be a fool to overlook that person because of something as trivial as their personality. Right?
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Mood. Genrefied. Music. Goldfrapp. Felt Mountain.
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Comments.
0012.
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What I Always Want
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Sunday. 13 08 2006. 10:03am
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We'd been sitting there for quarter of an hour and she hadn't said a word. I wasn't bored but there wasn't a huge amount there to occupy my thoughts. She looked over at me counting leaves on a nearby bonzai tree and smirked. I looked back, eyebrow raised.
- Normally by now I would've done the dance.
- Normally? By now? Come come my dear, why no dance? Do the dance? Why haven't I had the dance?
- Well, I only really do it for boys I fancy. You should be honoured, I don't want to humiliate myself in front of you.
- You are not doing something you normally do for boys you are attracted to and I should be honoured you're not for me?
- Er, yeah. Of course. It means we're friends. It's more important than infatuation.
- Yes yes yes. Of course.
I continued. Of course friendship is More Important but that doesn't mean I don't want you to fancy me. I'm a boy. I'm a human being. Of course I want my friends to fancy me. I want them to look at me with lust burning in their eyes but be forced to bottle it up deep inside them. My friends are beautiful people, I would do the same for them. What am I saying? I want everyone to fancy me. Friends and strangers alike. It just makes life easier for me and, hey, I'm who matters here. I want you to fancy me, 'course I do. I want your friends to fancy me. It doesn't make it awkward, it's like a safety blanket. I want my boss to fancy me, oh my word yes. Everyone I'm not related to; my neighbours, people who serve me in shops, people who used to know me at school but haven't seen me for years, I want to lie back and think of them curious with amore du moi however many miles away however many times removed. It's not vanity, I don't think I deserve the adulation, it's not solipsism, I don't think I'm the only person who should be loved. It's not even that important, I don't care that Samantha Keiran from third year French doesn't love me (although I did love her). It's just something I want. I want pepperoni on my pizza, ice in my coke and everyone in the entire world to be all full of love for me all the time. Is that so wrong?
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Mood. Screath. Music. The View. Wasted Little DJs.
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Comments.
000.
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