A Drink In The Vale Shames Me A Little.

Met Mystery today for a drink in the Vale, which was surprisingly nice.

I forget that when he's not being overly analytical and needy, he's a pretty sound guy. Plus, he's going to prove very useful in terms of male perspective for the Guide that me and Charolastra No.1 are writing (The Guide To The Misguided: Misinterpreted, Misguided, Or Just Plain Useless..? - a social document about men and women interacting, and all the confusion therein) as, if there's any weird sexual/social situation out there, you can bet your bottom dollar Mystery has been in it. And has analysed it from every possible angle. Twice. And then again for good measure.

Anyway, was sitting at the table, chain smoking and easing into a conversation about the possible existence of the elusive 'Middle Man' (somewhere in between a fuck buddy and a boyfriend - someone you're attracted to and get along with, have good chat/banter with, and who you shag, with no strings, but with whom it's not entirely meaningless. Anyone who successfully fits this bill, please apply here..) when I realise that Mystery is the only man I'm still in contact with who has seen me naked. And it freaks me the fuck out! It's entirely irrelevant, and I'm not even fussed about it - my past with Mystery feels like some school play I was in years ago, so any residual memories are vaguely blurry with nostalgia and nausea. But for a split second, I wondered what it would be like if all the men I'd ever slept with were in one room, looking at me. Then I thought, I would basically be naked. I may as well stand there, naked.

Then I laughed, which was a bit weird as Mystery was mid-sentence talking about some girl or something. And when I laughed, I spat a mouthful of wine onto the table then fell off my chair. Seriously. Mate, I think I'm actually getting more ridiculous by the day. In fact I'm getting so ridiculous, I just called my secret online blog 'mate'.

Anyway, after having spat wine all over myself and fallen off my chair, we chatted about old times and relationship issues and Neil Gaiman (Mystery's managed to blag us both extras parts in a short film Neil Gaiman is filming next week - us both being the most massive nerdlingers when it comes to comic books/graphic novels, and much of our relationship being based on geeking out about The Sandman) - and I'm offhandedly talking about the difference between being attracted to somebody immediately and finding somebody interesting, thus becoming attracted to them. And Mystery throws this one on the table..

"You know, I don't remember if I was attracted to you immediately. I mean, you're gorgeous.. but you got more beautiful to me the more I got to know you."

Blew me away, that one did. Maybe it's because nobody ever calls me beautiful, particularly in such a casual matter-of-fact sort of way (ie. not calling me beautiful to get my pants off), but even so. That may be the nicest thing anyone's said to me this year.

Anyway, it made me feel a bit stupid about having so many guys in my head, as the only one who isn't in my head at all, is in my life, as a real person who just told me he finds me beautiful, because he knows me. So I decided to stop sitting there only half-listening to Mystery, while answering calls from Darcy, thinking about Rocket Boy, and trying not to think about Ash, and instead give Mystery my full attention. So I did, and we chatted about sci-fi and comic books, and love and sex, and music. It's been a while since I've given Mystery my full attention, and it was nice. I'm not sure why I'm so stingy with my time and energy with him, yet hand out all my attention and time to boys who never bother to get to know me, thus never manage to find me beautiful.

Okay, so maybe the offhand comment has gone to my head a little! But I honestly did feel a bit ashamed, and a bit mean for always being so hard on Mystery. So 1st Note-To-Self of September : whatever little time/energy/self you have to give, make sure you're putting it in the right places, to the right people.

Now, so this doesn't get too self-help Bridget Jonesy, here's a picture of a frog wearing a snail as a hat..

Cheap Kicks.

So I went out last night, to meet Mystery for a back-in-town-for-Summer drink at our little local pub. We were meeting for 8:30, so I got to the pub at 7 to have a quiet drink on my own. I ended up flirting with a whole table of guys (relatively cute, if poncey Kensington-esque posh boys) and brazenly picking one of them as my prey for the night. He was attractive, quite tall, dark hair, dressed a bit like he thought he was Hugh Grant, but whatever. I took him out for a smoke and coquetteishly told him I'd accidentally turned up an hour early to meet a friend.. and whatever was I going to do to fill up that spare time..?

So we made out in the garden like schoolkids behind the bike shed. A half hour later, we got a bit carried away so I got up and brushed myself off (damn Summer grass) and Hugh Grant asked if he could see me again. I smiled at him sadly and thanked him for the kisses, which were lovely.

Me and Mystery went for dinner, and he walked me home as the sun was setting. He's seeing someone, for the first time properly since we broke up, and he had that new-relationship glow about him. It was sweet, and nice to see him not miserable for once.

I went home and spent the rest of the night thinking about Darcy, and trying not to cry.

-----------

Put me in the cab, it's raining outside
Had it up to here - this is the last time.
You kissed my on my throat in broad daylight,
And we were like two kittens in a playfight.

It didn't last a week, I could have told you so
You were too much for me, and I didn't let you know
So now you loathe me, you've gone to the dark side
And I'm in somebody's arms to get you off my mind

Cheap kicks are alright.
If you don't know what's good for you tonight.
Cheap kicks are alright,
If you don't know what's good for you sometimes.

A million hearts are broken every hour
It'll be okay, don't let the milk turn sour.
Now there'll be no more going through the motions
And there'll be no more drowning in sweet oceans.

It didn't last a week - I could have told you so
You were too much for me, and I didn't let things grow
And now you've left me, gone to the dark side
And I'm in somebody's arms to keep you off my mind.

Cheap kicks are alright..
If I don't know what's good for me tonight.

Am I bitter? Yes I Fucking Am.

Sometimes I hate my friends for thinking I'm fine, though I spend all my time pretending I'm fine.

Mystery has been calling me for the last couple of weeks, and I've not even tried to hide the fact that I'm ignoring him. Mystery has always been very good at being supportive (when he's not drowning in his own self-indulgence) and he knows me well enough to know when things are really affecting me. Or so I thought.

About half a year ago, Looney Toon, my flatmate and best friend for the most part of 10 years moved out, and we came to be on immensely bad terms. She spent months hurting and dismissing me, and didn't care enough to see it, choosing in the end to, without even a moment of deliberation, believe every word of her cheating racist liar of a boyfriend over her best friend who has taken care of her in every way possible for years. Am I bitter? Yes I fucking am.

Anyway when everything went down the pan with her, I very deliberately proclaimed very loudly to anyone who would care/dare to hear, my immense anger and contempt (which were perfectly legitimate, and let me assure you, perfectly potent) and brushed aside any friendly sympathy in very much an "I don't want your pity, I want you to remember this anger and make sure you never give me reason to direct it your way" sort of manner. Everyone was too busy dodging my warpath to see how absolutely crushed I was. Except Mystery, who after a brief mention of what had happened, booked a train straight down from Bristol to give me a big hug.

He was great actually, and totally understood the heartbreak of losing a best friend in any capacity - and I was so touched at how good he was and dare I say it, a little surprised. Empathy has never been one of Mystery's strong suits. But he kept a little eye out for me, and checked in on how I was doing for the next few weeks - and even though we never really talked about it, and I brushed it aside, he knew to be a bit delicate with me.

But when he found out about the breakup with Darcy, he could not have been more unsympathetic. Sure, he made all the appropriate mmm's and ahhh's, but I got one "Yeah, that's shit, don't worry you'll get over it" and that was it. No checking up to see if I was okay, no little "if you need anything.." text, in fact no acknowledgment of my possible pain in any way. He just literally, forgot about it. And I knew why - because he didn't relate to it. He didn't see his own past or pain in it, so it didn't exist as a problem. And he didn't give enough of a shit to imagine how I must be feeling.

So when he called and I sounded a bit down, or said listen I'm not up for going out at the moment, he wouldn't even push and tell me to cut the bullshit. Christ - sorry, bit of a self revelation moment here, but - is that really what I'm looking for, someone to see through the facade? Hmm. See that makes sense, from a pseudo-psychoanalytical point of view, but personally, that's always been one of my hugest fears. That someone would see through the facade.

Christ.

Well, I suppose that's part of the reason people put up walls - to see who cares enough to push them down. It's just... it's getting a bit lonely, sitting on the shady side of my wall, waiting for someone to break it down.

When I close the fridge door, my food has a party.

Alright, so its midnight and I'm more than a little worse for wear, having spent last night with Mystery and several bottles of wine. He had just gotten back in town and needed a friendly face, having just discovered his fuck buddy of over a year had been seeing someone else. I'm his tell-it-to-you-straight girl, which basically means I have carte blanche to point out in no uncertain terms exactly when and how he's being a cunt. So I found myself dribbling off the side of the bed into a strategically-placed plastic bag laced bucket at 2am, wondering how exactly I was going to explain to Darcy that I had to cancel our breakfast plans as I'd gotten hammered with my screwed up ex boyfriend and spent the night discussing, in great detail, what the sex was like with my current boyfriend. To be fair, I was very complimentary. Darcy is great in bed.

Anyway I managed to drag myself into work (got a great deal on some gorgeous Stella McCartney 'vegetarian' shoes. What the hell are 'vegetarian' shoes?) then met Pickled Lily and The Stig for a coffee and a drink before making my way to Darcy's for dinner. It takes me roughly an hour and a half to get to Darcy's on the bus (bloody London Transport makes getting south of the river near impossible at rush hour) so I usually get some good thinking time in, and get through at least half of my ipod 'Travelling Music' playlist. 10 minutes and several I Am Kloot tracks into the bus journey, my hand shot out and pressed the emergency exit button and I found myself jumping off the bus (ahh for the days of the Routemaster, when one could just flit in and out of buses willy nilly with none of this 'emergency button' nonsense). So I found myself in the arse-end of Kilburn High Rd, wondering why I'd just jumped off a bus - and wondering why I didn't know why I'd just jumped off a bus. And that's when I realised. I actually didn't know why I'd jumped off the bus. Seriously, I paused, I waited, I lit a cigarette, I looked around a little, but nothing. My thoughts didn't catch up with me. Or they ran away without me, or I left them on the damn bus or whatever. The point being, I'd just jumped off a bus for no apparent or emergent reason. It may sound like nothing, but I'm a born and bred London girl - bus and train journeys are more ingrained in everyday autopilot than brushing my teeth, so it shook me to the very bloody core! So I walked home, texted Darcy that I was still hungover and needed some couch time, and spent the rest of the night bemused and puzzled.

Ok so in re-reading that last paragraph, I realise I come off as a drama queen and a bit of a lunatic, but I don't know how to phrase it to correctly portray the Twilight Zone-esque unnervingness of discovering that when I'm not paying attention, my body veers off autopilot and just does its own thing, without consulting me! And now I feel like I'm waiting for that to happen again, like a child who thinks that when you leave the room your toys all come to life, or that when you close the fridge door all your food has a party. I keep trying to trick my body into thinking I'm not paying attention, so I can catch it in the act, you know?

..oh my god, I've gone fucking mental.
(I'm going to slowly back away from the computer, and blame the hangover.)

Fell In Love With A Boy..

..and then fell straight back out again, when it turned out actually he was a bit of a mentalist.

Ahh the modern fairytale in motion. I wanted to post a couple of poems today, but realised that I owe them some context, so I'll do a bit of background on me and Mystery. (Not his real name, obviously, but for good reason Mystery as a pseudonym seemed appropriate, if a little ironic.)

I met Mystery when I was 13. I had dropped in on a friend of mine on a whim - well actually, I was busting for a piss. Leaving the bathroom refreshed and well, relieved, I first saw him. Tall, dark, handsome. What a cliche. It turns out he was my friend's best buddy, and also lived down the road. Im pretty sure it was that first, inconsequential meeting that did it. He was already crawling under my skin. We continued to run into each other at various parties throughout the next couple of years, and each time we met there was a definite vibe in the air. We got along like a house on fire, bonding over our favourite author, Kurt Vonnegut (I never did tell him this, but I'd actually never heard of Kurt Vonnegut until I once overheard Mystery mention him, and spent the next few weeks reading everything he'd ever written. He is now, coincidentally, my favourite author.) Each time we met we found more in common, but these meetings were tantalisingly few and far between. Even so, I was hooked. Fuck it, I was obsessed.

But then Ash. My Irish boy. My first, and only, real love. He came into my life, stayed for 2 years, and changed everything. But thats a different story, for a different time. Suffice to say, I had my first taste of love, and it nearly killed me. It, literally, killed him.

Another party. I was 17, going on 45, and had slept with most of the boys I knew (and most of the ones I didn't). I had moved out of home and was living with my best friend Pickled Lily and her fucked-up Russian family, and was dropping out of school. I was a broken, emotionally-twisted depressive who spent her days smoking in bed watching tv, and her nights dancing in dark corners of dingy rock clubs. Funnily enough, it was one of the happiest, most genuine, times of my life. But I digress - back to Mystery. By this time, Mystery had done some growing up of his own - these days he was tall, dark, handsome. Never trust a cliche. Anyway, another party. I'd gotten used to seeing Mystery at parties, we had a routine of merging the groups of people we'd arrived with, and spending the night flirting. But no pay-off, he never made a move. And I was still too in awe of him, and too unsure of myself to do anything about it, other than spend the rest of the night frustrated and insecure. But this night, this bloody night, I was on a mission. I manoevered myself back to his house, and told myself I wasn't leaving until he kissed me. Which he did. And we fell asleep in each others arms. I will always remember that night with such fondness, as one of those nights that you can only ever have at that age, when you haven't learned to play games. Except that even the memory of that night is a lie, as we were both proficient game-players and emotional manipulators.

That night lead to more nights, more parties, more sleepovers, until a few weeks later we were an established couple in love. I can think of no better phrase than to say it was a whirlwind of emotion. Sudden. Destructive. We spent the first few months learning each other and creating an emotional connection that we both thought would save us. When I think back to those days, I get a blur of darkness, late nights, tears, fist-marks in walls, and endless words - secrets, lies, truths, merging into one another (with a backdrop soundtrack of moody 90s prog rock). Turns out he was a fucked up little boy, with severe emotional issues and secrets that had been eating away into so much of his being that he'd become them. By the time we'd become a proper couple, when I looked at him I didn't see a person, I saw his secrets, and the lie that he'd become because of them. And I couldn't handle it. I'd built him up onto such a pedestal that he could never survive the fall from grace in my eyes. But he loved me. An intense, needing, suffocating love. He bore his soul to me, raw naked pain and anger gushed from him, drowning me. He was looking for help, for redemption, but over the months he gradually sucked up so much out of me that I literally had nothing left to give him, let alone keep for myself. I cared about him, but I couldn't breathe - he was destroying me, and I couldn't help him. And I couldn't live with any more guilt. In fact, I didn't want to. Selfish bastard. It was him or me. And I chose me.

I found several thousand bits of writing and poems (adolescent scribblings) that chronicled our 4-month disaster of a relationship, and have plucked out some snippets that I think represent the transition from obsession to suffocation to anger pretty nicely! Although Ive tossed the really powerful, angry crazy ones as all they did was chronicle his confessions, which frankly, Im happy to send to rot in a landfill somewhere. (Except that I recycle, so they'll be pulped up and remade into brand new blank pieces of paper.. but I don't want to turn that into some analogy on the nature of experience. They've been overanalysed enough already).


.................


Held up against the light,
Your colours leave me wired
Distortion on your breath sharpens my senses
Panicked, I grasp at patterns caught,
Poorly saught, but momentary
Intoxicated, Mesmerised
Dislodged and terrified
I have to know you tonight..
We may never meet again.
I have to know you tonight.
And I hate what I've become - yours for the taking
Consumed by the night and your dizzy words
As I long for the courage to raise the stakes
So strange and appealing you are
What a shame I'm disguised and enthralled
Itching for your touch on mine
I have to know you tonight.
Inspired and drained of colour, I resign.



.................



Tonight I had you on my mind
I don't even wonder where you are, or
What you're doing, who you're with
But mainly what had happened if I'd
Kissed you just that little rougher
Or stayed and let myself go
And looked you in the eye when we talked of..this
Then maybe I wouldn't still be slightly in awe
Of you and yours, and what this means
To you, beyond the words you speak
Which, although glittering and decorated,
And quietly deliberated,
Throw me a little off balance, and leave me
A little silenced.



.................



With you I forget myself
& I don't know why I ever was attracted
To you and I retract my latest statement
A little belated but I
I know exactly why
And didn't the muse just get it right
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
The truth is I never was in control of this

& I know why I ever was affected by you
And the time we spend together I spend looking at the door
I clothed myself in silence
And you gently strip me down
& I re-mould myself in your eyes
My memory faded, a little elated but I
I know I had to lie
And didn't the muse just get it right
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
My image mirrored on your face
Every trace of you erased
& this may be bliss, call it bliss
Tell me I was tricked,
The truth, the truth is I did this.



.................



Resonance takes residence in my mind
Ah, but for the pretty lies
Consorting with the shitty rhymes.
The truth is too painful to speak of in this place
The truth is irrelevant when we're face to face.
But I am one whose reticence is necessary
Imagery draws this night to dawn
Discordia brands me innocent
Possessed and colour blind.
Faces at the window
Oh, they wouldn't scare you
But caution knows its way around me
And fear, to me, is ever-present
Effervescent tonight you shined
As ever, lacking pride or effort
Disguise to you as natural as
Ignorance plays on my mind.
And time, to me, is finite. Another
Friendly thorn in my side
But somehow you are transcendental,
An ever-playing guitar riff
Of minor chords and accidental politics.
So I'll lay down my pen & replace mine with anothers.
Writing in the third person, shame and inhibition worsens.



.................



And I apologise for my sincerity
In all its forms
And I apologise for my insincerity
When we speak of time

My secret agenda - is a crime
Tis for myself I spit and lie
And for that I apologise.

But still I will not venture a promenade
Stagnant air will remain a friend of mine
In my mind, you lie intertwined
Laced in dusty lights
A whisper and a gentle touch - my primal weakness
My accused crime for you is a spit in the eye

I like clarity. I lack clarity. but
For my (lack of) cryptic bullshit, I apologise.



.................



I broke up with Mystery one anonymous night in Winter (all I remember of that day, detail-wise, is that there was a premiere for one of the Harry Potter films, which we were 20 minutes late for because I had to watch the end of a Man United/Chelsea Champions League match. United won 1-0, since you asked). It was out of the blue, and brutal. I pulled no punches - I felt I owed him at least the honesty of telling him I never did love him. He just weakened me so much that I went along with it and stopped questioning anything. I did, begrudgingly, care about him but by that point I couldn't even bear to look at him. We didn't speak for a year after that, in which time he travelled the world, and I found myself with the third in a consecutive trilogy of men who screwed me over. Funnily enough, Mystery is the only one of those men I still see. In fact, we're good friends these days.