Send via SMS

31.8.04

The Best Blog In The Whole Fucking World

"I am an architect, they call me a butcher. I am a pioneer, they call me primitive. I am purity, they call me perverted."

This is a very vague update. In fact, I'm typing just for the hell of it. Not only do I have nothing of note to say, I'm also drunk. But, hey, what's a blog for if not the inane rambling of the inebriated? Fuck, I'm probably still twice as coherent as some.

I'm working pretty much every day at the moment, and obviously this is having an effect on the blog. I know the entries aren't as frequent and lengthy as they have been. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole hell of a lot I can do about that right now. I'm off Wednesday and Thursday this week, so expect something a bit more typical of Notes From A Darkened Room then. In fact, expect TWO things: A lengthy rant about my parents, and an ALL-NEW short story, entitled Lanterns And Shades, which I hope is going to turn out pretty well. You may also see the first scribblings from the novel I'm working on at the moment.

In addition to that FAT pile of goodness, I'll also be updating you on my job, my life, and why it is that my new manager wants to sleep with me. I won't be revealing the identity of The Maybe Girl, but there will be more clues.

Can you afford to miss all that? Fuck you. Of course you can't. And if you're still in doubt, check THESE out:

Praise For ME and Notes From A Darkened Room
"Very classy!" - Heather S.

"That's brilliant, dude!" - Jessica.

"...that sex scene you wrote...would've made Henry Miller proud." - Gregor.

"Go blow yourself, asswipe." - Jammie.

"You crack me up." - Jenn.

"I will stalk you on a BMX bike." - Daisy.

"Clearly, you are worthy of a stalker or two." - Juan.

"WOW! My god, if only all men thought about it like that. I'm an unpublished out of work writer myself, and most of my work resembles that of "Rain", but not nearly as good. Wow. I'm dumbfounded. Now would be a good time to stop, huh? Since I really have nothing to say but... WOW." - Tiffany.

"Beautifully erotic - my kind of story." - Katherine M.

"You have a knack for finding cow pics." - Jammie.

"I think you seriously need to reconsider the size of your sideburns." - Natalia.

"It appears you've broken everyone's heart but mine!" - Susie.

"You're a dude." - Ant.

All the cool kids are at Notes From A Darkened Room. Where the fuck are you?

24.8.04

Staring At Forever And Trying Not To Blink

"Falling apart, you tell yourself you are dreaming only of the ones who never dream of you."

I had a few beers last night. I didn't think I'd drunk anything like as much as I can handle, but I ended up feeling sick and tired. I went to bed around four and slept fitfully until midday, when I was woken up by the sound of the cleaning lady. I didn't feel like facing the world at that point, so I decided to stay in bed until I had to get ready for work at four.

And maybe I was ill, because the state I slipped into was nothing if not a fever dream. I drifted in and out of consciousness for several hours, plagued by strange visions that my mind never seemed to quite grasp before I surfaced in my room again, staring at the gap in the curtains and listening to the rain outside. I'm pretty sure there was a storm, but I couldn't say for definite that it wasn't in my head.

At first I dreamed I was reading. I think the novel was my own, only the words didn't make any sense. It was as if they'd been stuck on the page in some random order, making nonsensical sentences and paragraphs that seemed to stop where they pleased. My dream-self perservered in trying to make sense of the arrangement, becoming ever more frustrated as the words hinted at meanings that were lost as quickly as they were suggested. It was an awful dream, the worst I've had in some time, and it struck very much at the heart of my insecurities. That I know this doesn't help me any. I have no desire to experience that feeling again.

My second dream was altogether more pleasant. I say it was my second dream, but it was nothing so linear. It's just easier to present things for others to read if I make it sequential, instead of a constant interplay between my conscious reality and the two separate dreams I was experiencing in my subconscious. Concepts like time and order are the first to be lost in such a state, and events were happening out of sequence and out of time, much like the words in my dream-novel.

In the second dream, I was meeting The Maybe Girl in California. Nothing of consequence happened; I got off the plane, I made my way through customs, and she met me in a terminal that bore a remarkable resemblance to Gatwick. We smiled, we hugged, we kissed. She took me to her car and we drove away. But the feelings I took from this dream were almost the polar opposite of those I experienced when reading the dream-novel. I felt happy and safe. I was on an adventure perhaps bound for a happy ending. Even if it wasn't, I was glad to be there, to be doing what I was doing. Above and beyond everything else, I felt a sense of contentment.

My alarm dragged me from this reverie shortly before I had to get up. Fully awake, I felt conflicted and somehow sad. The sleep seemed to have exhausted rather than refreshed me. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at myself in the mirror for a while, wondering who I was and what I was doing, wondering about my priorities and about what I want from my life.

That contentment, I've only ever felt it in my dreams. But the insecurity, the fear, the constant sense of not knowing...I feel those all the time. Chances are that I'm a fair bit more than a quarter of the way through my life now. I don't feel happy or even satisfied, and I don't really know what I'm supposed to do about it.

I wouldn't describe myself as an unhappy person. I'm certainly not a whining neurotic. I know I've been lucky in many respects, and I know that there are millions of people whose lives are torture compared to mine. I'm not depressed. I don't sit in my room and cry, wondering where it all went wrong. I just don't know where to go or what to do. I don't know how I can ever not feel so cynical and jaded. I can't see a time where I'll be able to wake up and look at the day ahead, at the life I'm living, and not feel like I can't face it.

I can't tell you how fucking tired I am of that feeling. How far have you fallen when it seems that getting out of bed might break your heart?

I'll remember this summer for the storms and the strange dreams. I'll remember it as a time when I retreated into myself and still didn't find the answers I sought. I hope that one day I'll remember this summer and know that it was worth it. Maybe that's what I'm missing. I've thought a lot and I've written a lot. I appear to be ready to take yet another leap at yet another skyhook, but none of it means anything unless something changes. I can't go on like this, staring at forever and trying not to blink. It scares me, and I'm not sure I can do it by myself anymore.

20.8.04

Hate Fable #2

"I've been sleeping with ghosts. I've been watching stars crawling out of the sky, and I've been hoping I'm close to the spaceman movies I call my life."

The Idealistic Young Writer arrived at the house of The Corporate Film Producer at around ten that morning. He was wearing his best suit (which was the best purely because there was no competition) and carrying a folder beneath his arm. His knock on the door was answered by the maid, who looked vaguely like Paris Hilton and made a point of mentioning the fact that she was an actress as she led him through to the living room, where The Corporate Film Producer was entertaining a group of men who all appeared to be wearing fake tan. For a moment, The Idealistic Young Writer considered simply running away. But it was just a moment.

"Ah, Idealistic Young Writer!" The Corporate Film Producer said. "Come in, come in! Have a seat!"

Everything The Corporate Film Producer said had an exclamation mark at the end of it.

"Thanks," The Idealistic Young Writer said, and fell into a leopard-skin armchair.

The Corporate Film Producer smiled his plastic smile and introduced the other men in the room. "This is The First-Time Director Who Has Only Previously Worked In Advertising, this is The Jaded And Bitter Special Effects Wizard, this is The Executive In Charge Of Product Placement, and this is The Casting Director Who Has Married Sixteen Times And Been Balls-Deep In More Starlets Than Ron Jeremy! Those other six guys are The Writers We Hired To Polish Your Script Because It Was Too Clever For Its Own Good, but don't worry too much about them!"

"Um...nice to meet you all," said The Idealistic Young Writer.

"First of all, I'd just like to congratulate you on a great story! We're all really happy to be involved in this project, and I think you'll find the whole room is in agreement when I say that I think we've got a hit on our hands here! Other than our pending remake of Citizen Kane, this is the most exciting film we've had in our hands for some time!"

"You...you're remaking Citizen Kane?" spluttered The Idealistic Young Writer.

"Absolutely," said The Casting Director Who Had Married Sixteen Times And Been Balls-Deep In More Starlets Than Ron Jeremy. "We've already lined up Will Smith to play Charles Foster Kane, James Van Der Beek as Jed Leland, and Britney Spears as Dorothy. Michael Bay's directing."

The Idealistic Young Writer glanced across at The Writers They'd Hired To Polish His Script Because It Was Too Clever For Its Own Good. They were all engaged in deep examination of their fingernails.

"It's going to be amazing!" said The Corporate Film Producer. "Jessica Simpson's done a song called Rosebud that'll go down a storm on MTV!"

"Jessica Simpson? MTV? What about my film?"

"Ah, well!" said The Corporate Film Producer. "It's actually OUR film now!"

The Executive In Charge Of Product Placement cleared his throat.

"Oh! It's also Pepsi's film! My colleague here has taken apart the screenplay and analysed it for placement opportunities! We worked out a deal whereby a Pepsi product would be featured, on average, every twelve seconds! In return, Pepsi are paying the lion's share of the effects costs!"

"What effects?" asked The Idealistic Young Writer. "There are none."

"We've actually relocated the film to the year 2300," said The Jaded And Bitter Special Effects Wizard. "It was completely unnecessary and stupid, but it meant we could squeeze in even more of those tired bullet-time action sequences and snappy cuts set to strobe lighting. In fact, we're actually hoping to surpass the record for killing epileptics set by Aliens."

"Nobody really wants to see a film set in the present day!" added The Corporate Film Producer. "They want to know about the future, like in Minority Report or I, Robot! Tom insisted on it!"

"Tom?"

"Tom Cruise! He's starring and executive producing!"

"But..."

"And we're hoping to line up that young tennis player to play the love interest!"

"Maria Sharapova," said The Casting Director Who Had Married Sixteen Times And Been Balls-Deep In More Starlets Than Ron Jeremy, rubbing his hands together.

"There isn't a love interest," said The Idealistic Young Writer.

"There is now," chorused The Writers They'd Hired To Polish His Script Because It Was Too Clever For Its Own Good.

"We've also changed the title!" said The Corporate Film Producer. Instead of being called Egomania, it's now called Tom Cruise's Ego! We've already circulated press releases! Take a look!"

"The new action-comedy from Bloat Pictures is called Ego," read The Idealistic Young Writer, "and stars Tom Cruise as Johnny Quarterback, a rebel player in the futuristic sport of LaserBall. When Johnny's heroic-but-doomed best friend, Bill Stereotype (Tom Sizemore), is killed by rival player Alan Bin Laden (Ben Kingsley), he takes it upon himself to avenge the death by scoring the MOST GOALS EVER and talking that tennis babe out of the no-nipple clause in her contract. Spectacular action sequences and moments of high drama and hilarious comedy make this THE film to look forward to this summer. Also starring Ben Affleck, The Rock, Ben Stiller, and James Caan as 'the coach'."

"What do you think?" asked The First Time Director Who Had Only Previously Worked In Commercials.

"I think it's Rollerball, only they already remade that."

"Yes, but we're acknowledging that by having James Caan in it. That's irony."

"No it's not," said The Idealistic Young Writer, throwing the press release to the floor.

"Of course it is!" said The Corporate Film Producer.

"How is that irony? Are you going to put Alanis Morrissette in the film, too? You might be in the right ball park then."

The Corporate Film Producer glanced at The Casting Director Who Had Married Sixteen Times And Been Balls-Deep In More Starlets Than Ron Jeremy, who shrugged.

"She's a bit horse-faced," he said. "Nice tits, though."

"Now!" screamed The Idealistic Young Writer.

The Writers They'd Hired To Polish Up His Script Because It Was Too Clever For Its Own Good, who were actually a terrorist group known as The Secret Society For The Protection And Distribution Of Really Good Films, jumped up from the couch and revealed the firearms they'd been concealing in their attache cases. Without hesitation, they gunned down everybody in the room with the exception of The Idealistic Young Writer, who was actually the leader and founder of the group. Their work done, the seven members of the society left a bloodstained copy of the original screenplay by way of explanation before going their separate ways and disappearing. None of them were ever caught.

The following summer, Cockbuster Pictures released Crossfire!, a thriller based on the events of that day. It starred Seann William Scott as The Idealistic Young Writer, and also featured Chris Klein, Josh Hartnett, and Justin Timberlake. Through the magic of special effects, the late Marlon Brando played The Corporate Film Producer. In a knowing nod to those that had died, Ben Kingsley appeared as Alan Bin Laden, the evil mastermind behind the operation. The film's soundtrack, featuring the hit single Shake Your Booty For Your Art, by Beyonce Knowles and Usher, remained at number one in the album charts for seventeen consecutive weeks. McG directed.

It was the most succesful film released that year, apart from the remake of The Third Man.

The moral of the story? You can kill Freddie Prinze Jr. if you want to, but the bastards will only make a film of his life.

19.8.04

The Maybe Girl

"I wanna be your lover. Lipstick my name across your mirror, blood red with flaked gunshot glitter, and be one with all you disowned."

Once again I find myself considering the size of The Darkened Room. When I started this blog, the name was meant to reflect a period of retreat, to evoke a sense of claustrophobia. What I saw in my mind when I titled the blog was what I see now if I look up from my typing; four walls, no lights, and the scattered nostalgia of my life. It represents a time of reflection and the place where I am, metaphorically as well as literally. I thought it was perfect.

Only it isn't. I didn't understand the world of blogging when I created my own, and I didn't realise that every person that read my words and every page I linked to made The Darkened Room that little bit bigger. I mentioned it early on, when the mass of ideas and information that could be packed into this page first occurred to me. "Like cotton wool into a bottle," I said.

I've interacted with an awful lot of people in the couple of months I've been doing this, and most of them have turned out to be extremely interesting. My little online journal has turned out to be a lot more interactive than I thought it would be.

Which isn't the point of this post, though it makes for a good introduction. The point is that I've been spending a lot of time exchanging letters with somebody who truly fascinates me. The Maybe Girl has gone from somebody I occasionally exchange words with to somebody I chat to all the time, somebody I write lengthy and meaningful letters to, somebody I'm genuinely and sincerely attracted to based almost entirely on the small but sweet connection we've made.

Again I find myself referring to past posts. When I wrote those lengthy screeds on online 'relationships', I wrote them in the belief that it was unlikely I was ever going to end up talking to somebody I really related to again. Not in THAT sense. Sure, I have a lot of online friends, but most of them are people I've actually met, and I've known the majority of them for quite a while.

And now I meet somebody new and find myself back in this whole 'prison letters' scenario. We swap words and ideas, thoughts and feelings. We swap photos. We're getting to know quite a lot about each other, enough to know that...well...maybe. She lives on one side of the world, I live on the other. But I was planning on travelling out that way anyway, and now I have a reason where I had only excuses.

Hey, hey, hey...don't worry. We're not in a relationship. We're just talking and speculating and making tentative plans. Ideas, words, thoughts, and feelings are wonderful things, but they're no substitute for time spent in each other's presence. I know this, and The Maybe Girl knows this.

I'll get out that way, hopefully before the end of the year. If I can't, well, maybe she'll get out this way. It's not easy to plan these things when you have two very separate lives to consider. But at some point we'll get that time together, and then we'll know.

Like I keep saying, you'll never catch your dreams if you don't chase them, and I'd happily chase The Maybe Girl halfway across the planet. Sometimes you've got to trust your instincts, right?

18.8.04

Swings And Roundabouts

"Gave you this I.O.U. today; it said good for one galaxy. Once I build my rocket to the stars, we'll fly away just you and me."

Before I get into what I hope will be my final entry on the subject of job-hunting, I'd like to point this out. It's an interesting dissection of Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves that leads into a discussion of writing and the concept of a 'voice'. Read it, then read The Elements Of Style, a work that really WILL hand you your grammatically incorrect arse.

If I could, I'd also like to pre-empt the flurry of grammar-related e-mail that will undoubtedly result from my referring to Strunk yet again. I'm aware that my grammar is not perfect by any standards but my own. But - and trust me on this - it's better than yours.

Onto business...

I've spent the last few days staying at N's. Not only was he good enough to offer me a refuge from the horrifying shitrain my life has become, but he also loaned me two hundred pounds to get me through the time of the month when all my bills come in. Consider this a salute to the man who will only ever be known in this blog as N, and a reminder that I still have some friends who'll put up with me when I can't do anything but piss and moan about how much it all sucks.

That said, things weren't looking at all good for me until today. The longer I stay here, the more interest my parents take in my well-being and my life. On Saturday, my mum helpfully pointed out that she'd seen a pub in Shenley called The King William that was looking for staff. As I'd just borrowed twenty pounds from her to pay for my fare to N's, I was suddenly obligated to check it out.

To be honest, I actually had a good feeling as I strolled up the hill towards Shenley on Sunday evening. It was a hot day on its last legs, staggering beneath the wonderful onslaught of a warm evening more than happy to turn its face to the breeze once in a while. I was taking a healthy walk through the greener part of the area in which I live, there was a possibility of finding a job on my journey, and I wouldn't be returning home for several days. At that moment, those were all reasons to be cheerful.

So I walked. And walked. And walked. I didn't remember Shenley being so far away. I certainly didn't remember this little road winding through the middle of nowhere. The markings of civilisation were gradually disappearing, and after forty minutes of walking, I realised that I was less than an hour from finding myself on a deserted country road at night. No lights, few cars, increasing possibility of being raped by gypsies and/or gored by a large woodland beast of some description. The fact that such fears might become a nightly occurence were I to find and take a job in Shenley crossed my mind, and suddenly my mum's enthusiasm for what she'd assured me was a 'nice little pub' seemed like something that had happened a long, long time ago.

Fortunately, I reached Shenley before night fell. Unfortunately, The King William was possibly the most awful little hole of a pub I've ever had the misfortune of patronising. Believe me, friends, that's going some.

A nightmare: You walk through the door of what looks - from the outside - like a small, friendly pub. It is poorly-lit and smells of stale beer. It looks unlikely that the tables have been cleared at all today; ashtrays are full, dirty glasses are everywhere, flies crawling nonchalantly up the sides, as if safe in the knowledge that they won't be disturbed anytime soon. Three men sit at the bar. They are undoubtedly locals. They are also undoubtedly alcoholics. An experienced barman can tell on sight. A table to the left of the three is inhabited by what a cruel and cynical bastard might refer to as Borehamwood Slappers. They are drinking the kind of alcohol that comes in bottles with colourful labels, wearing the kind of clothes designed for ladies several sizes smaller than they, and talking in the kind of loud voices designed for expletives, flirting with fat alcoholics in football shirts, and calling any more attractive women 'slags' shortly before hitting them with one of the aforementioned bottles.

You go to the bar because you were already walking in that direction and you know it'll look really weird if you turn around and walk straight back out. Remember, you're a veteran of both pubs and this area, and 'Weird', in a situation like this one, is likely a prelude to physical injury.

There is no-one behind the bar. Everyone is looking at you. Then, like a reminder that even a terminal cynic can be horrified, one of the Slappers gets up, struts around the bar with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice clutched in one meaty fist, and says the four words you're praying are some kind of aural hallucination.

"Can I 'elp ya?"

"If I had a gun," you want to say, "this place would already be a morgue."

Instead: "I'll have a JD and Coke, please."

She serves you your drink. You pay and find a reasonably sanitary table in the corner. They all stare at you while you empty your glass as quickly as you can manage without looking like you want to leg it.

Then you leg it.

I arrived home three days later with my stomach churning. I had applied for all the jobs I could reasonably apply for. Though N had loaned me some money, it wouldn't last much longer than a few weeks. No-one was calling me back. No-one, I surmised, was interested in a twenty-five year old man who didn't want a proper job. My parents were right.

And then my phone rang.

And now I have a job in the very same hotel where I uttered the following line: "Jesus, the incompetence of you people is unbelievable. All I'm asking you for is a fucking job. Considering the idiots you employ, I'd be a godsend."

This is, of course, the very first job I applied for when I came back from Gaddesden Row eight weeks ago. This is the job I wanted because it's practically outside my front door. This is my first choice.

So...I got exactly what I wanted, only I had to pay for it with two months of fear and loathing. For that, I intend to get rather drunk this evening, if only to restore the karmic balance of my world.

14.8.04

The Tishers

"My imagination is the one thing that I really like about myself. It is the longest one night stand I've ever had, and it has never let me down. Yet."

Here's an odd little tale inspired by something that happened to me yesterday. I wrote part of it then and the rest just now. I was gearing up to write something quite lengthy when I suddenly realised it was finished, that there was nothing more to say and a lot that I wanted to leave as I found it. The Tishers is that sort of story, I think, the sort that's best left in first-draft form, with issues unresolved and meanings unexplained.

I'm going to be away from tomorrow until Wednesday, so this will probably be the last update until then.

“It’s the tarmac. Can’t they do anything about the tarmac? It’s all sticky. I could barely walk out there.”

These were the first words I ever heard Nia say, though I was a good ten feet away and she didn’t say them particularly loudly. Silence was her agent in that respect. When she entered stage left, shoving the automatic door open faster than it was prepared to go, beginning her strange little speech over its screech of protest, everybody paid attention.

“The car park is melting,” she said. “How can you just leave it that way?”

I was standing in the horror section, and I’d simply stopped in the act of removing a book from the shelf to stare at this intrusion. I wasn’t alone. There were five or six others in the room with me, including the librarian, and we’d all frozen the moment she’d walked in, like robots. I didn’t really see her in the first few seconds of that surreal freeze-frame. I was reacting to the unexpected, to the sudden realisation that the rules governing this particular institution had been breached. Not such a heinous crime, pushing open a door and talking loudly to nobody in particular, but not the kind of thing you’re ordinarily prepared to confront on a summer afternoon in your local library.

“It’s not right,” she said, and disappeared behind a shelf to my left, walking purposefully into the children’s section.

She had platinum blonde hair. She was wearing an electric blue summer dress and matching shoes. The colours were almost offensively bright, stark against the drab library browns and greens. Those were the obvious details, and they were all I had time to register before she was out of sight.

With the girl gone, the scene she’d paused seemed to take on an even more surreal air. My eyes found the librarian’s. He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips and – like an orchestra at the conductor’s signal – we resumed our browsing.

I’d only gone to the library out of boredom, really. I’d been hoping for some interesting new selections, but by the time I made my way to the counter, I had only a couple of sci-fi novels I’d read before. While the librarian stamped and swiped, I turned and looked into the children’s section, where the girl with the platinum hair was sitting in a plastic chair coloured a garish yellow, her face more or less hidden behind a large book with a footballer on the cover.

“It takes all kinds,” the librarian said, and slid the books back to me.

I let a smile ghost across my lips. I had nothing to say.

I walked slowly across the car park, staring down at the cracked tarmac beneath my feet. It was hot, and I remembered tabloid headlines of summers past; the M25 turning to a boiling, shallow swamp in the sun’s unrelenting glare. Not today, though. We hadn’t even neared those peaks, and now dusk was drawing the heat from the air. The car park was uneven and broken, shoots of green showing nature’s determination here and there, but that was all.

I was lost in my thoughts, and when the hand came down on my shoulder, I almost cried out. I turned, ready to let my anger show, and there she was, much younger than I’d expected, looking surprised at my reaction, eyes wide and curious and the exact same shade as that dress. She held her hand up just a few inches from my face.

“I can’t write,” she said. “The Tishers land on my shoulder and my hand shakes.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right at first. She had an odd way of speaking. The cadence and rhythm of her syllables spoke of an unfamiliarity with the language, yet I could detect no trace of an accent.

“Tissues?” I said.

“Tishers. That’s what I call them. I’m Nia.”

“I’m confused.”

“It suits you. Do you want to see them?”

“You’re not making any sense,” I said.

She looked almost heartbroken at this, and in that moment of sadness I was struck by how pretty she was, how unique and fragile. I dragged my gaze from hers and found myself staring at the tarmac again.

“Can’t you see it?” she asked, and lifted one light blue foot as though it was an effort to do so.

I lifted my own foot in response, demonstrating the ease with which it could be done.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she said.

“It’s not…” I began. But I could see she believed it was. “What’s a Tisher?”

She seemed pleased that I’d asked, and when she turned and walked away, it was with a clear indication that I should fall into step beside her. We moved across the car park and out onto the main road in comfortable silence. I watched her watching the sky, her eyes seeming to scan the darkening void above as though searching for a sign.

“I’m Keiji,” I said. “Nia is an unusual name.”

“Not so unusual,” she replied.

We passed a church, and she slowed to watch a pair of painters packing the tools of their trade into the back of a van. They’d been renewing the colours of the huge double doors, and the job was unfinished, faded pink showing beneath a deep red almost the colour of blood. I thought of the plants growing beneath the parked cars. I thought of sex. Nia laced her fingers through mine as though reading my mind.

“Obscene,” she said, and smiled.

I looked up at the image of Christ on the cross that hung above the doors, an effigy stripped of his clothes and dreadfully thin, head lolling forward, brow creased with bravery in the face of pain. I swallowed.

“Yes,” I said.

She lead me onward, past the gaudy displays of the town centre and out to its extremities, to a place where tower blocks flanked us like chaperones and every available surface was covered with grafitti that read like a thousand fragmented lines from the same desperate poem. Her warm hand guided me inside, up flights of hard, narrow steps, through the smell of urine and cheap hygiene products. She opened the door to a flat and we went inside.

“See, Keiji?” she said.

There were no carpets, no furniture, no wallpaper. Just words. Sentences, poems, paragraphs, essays, stories. They ran into and over each other, elegant streams of prose covering the faded remains of obscenities, meaningless statements that became great and meticulous theories. There were jokes, tales of loss, words strung together with no purpose at all except to fill the space.

“Nia…” I whispered.

She pulled me to the window, and when I looked out I understood the size of her work. In paint, in felt-tip, in biro, in pencil, in crayon. Carved and scrawled and carefully written. In every imaginable colour and size. This was her canvas, her parchment, her blank page.

“Do you see now?”

My eyes fell to the tiny cars parked so far below us, to the bubbling, shifting surface they rested on. Somewhere behind me I heard the skittering of tiny claws, the fluttering of tiny wings. Something small and angry gave a little screech of frustration that sent a shiver up my spine.

“They make your hand shake,” I said.

“Yes,” Nia said, and her stare was that of the obsessive, of the tortured. “And I have so much work to do.”

13.8.04

Alice

"Here comes the fear again. The end is near again."

She was Alice that morning
Through the looking glass
Born from strobelit exertion
to a monochrome sunrise
that glared between city limbs
as a voyeur in defiance
while the sky bled futile grey

Adrenaline memory faded like old film
watched endlessly
A goddess in smeared lipstick
crying mascara tears,
painting grief unsubtle on a child’s face
Worn from so many fantasies
Weary from so much hope.

Maybe I'll Catch Fire

"There's an element of contempt for meanings. You want to write outside the usual framework. You want to dare readers to make a commitment you know they can't make. That's part of it. There's also the sense of drowning in information and in the mass awareness of things. Everybody seems to know everything. Subjects surface and are totally exhausted in a matter of days. The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, dear reader, if you went back to the living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here. This writer is working against the age and so he feels some satisfaction at not being widely read. He is diminished by an audience"

I promised myself that I wouldn't make this page a diary, that it wouldn't ever have to be about what I did today. If I felt I could fictionalise those things and make them funny or interesting or diverting, then yes. But never would I simply sit here and type out detail by detail exactly what I did with my day. Especially not when a life is as static as mine appears to be right now.

It's been a difficult day. That's all you really need to know. Here I am again, forcing all this sunlit frustration into the darkened glyphs of my prose. I feel very alone right now. With the door closed and the curtains drawn this could be my world. I'd be happier with that, I think. I could take all the news on the TV, the radio, and the internet as I take the stories I read and compose. Make it all fiction, make it all just words from somebody else's mind. Absorb what I need and let the rest fall away.

Nights like these I'm not sure I can deal with it anymore; the way they look at me and talk to me, the places I have to go, the pointless humiliations. I feel tired and overwhelmed. Everything is out of reach.

Six years now. I measure my life in sections. Birth to age thirteen, thirteen to nineteen, nineteen to twenty-five. Six years since I packed my things and left Cambridge, so sure that I'd found my way, that I could deal in words and it would be enough. Nineteen years old and so naive. I could do the wage-slave jobs. I could live with the constant insecurity. I could pull off this balancing act and it would eventually bear fruit.

I knew there would be times like this. How could there not be? I have a huge amount of confidence in myself and a healthy ego, but nobody is invulnerable, and everybody occasionally has those terrifying midnight moments where they look down and realise they can no longer see the safety net, that they've locked themselves into something permanent.

I can't do anything but this. I'm not playing favourites. I couldn't face a life chained to a career and settling for second-best, remembering those days when I was young and invulnerable and I shot for the moon without even considering the idea that I'd miss. I'd kill myself. Not out of self-pity and not for attention. I just wouldn't want to live that way. I couldn't cope with it. A year, maybe two, and I'd be one of those people that just started screaming one day and nobody understood why.

This is the way it has to be. If you ever wondered why, then those are my reasons. I don't want to be dead or insane. Seems pretty black-and-white from that perspective, doesn't it?

10.8.04

Zero Tolerance

"I burn from inside all the walls. A dead man can't hear all the calls, who lives like a sheep in the city concrete, never runs deep, and dies from the heat."

I came alarmingly close to writing a serious screed about crime today. My random surfings deposited me on the BBC News page, where I discovered that Michael Howard had taken Middlesbrough by storm with a rambling and largely incoherent speech that seemed to say very little except that we need more prisons to house the millions of offenders we'll be putting behind bars with the zero tolerance policy we can expect under a Conservative government. It was all a little frightening.

"Criminologists and commentators frequently try to down play the problem by saying that the fear of crime is actually greater than crime itself. They appear blind to the fact that disorder and violence have became a fact of daily life in many communities across Britain."

Right. Because they never were before. In fact, before 1997, there was no crime at all. This represents a fairly stunning degree of hypocrisy from Mr. Howard, who attacks 'criminologists and commentators' before going on to make a scaremongering statement about disorder and violence in the very next sentence.

"Government ministers cite the British Crime Survey as evidence that there has been a steady decline in crime over the last nine years. But the BCS excludes lots of crimes from its calculations - such as murder, crimes against children under 16, sexual offences, dealing and taking drugs and shoplifting. It is estimated that around 12 million crimes a year don't even make it onto the BCS radar. The most reliable crime statistics - those crimes actually recorded by the police - show that crime in England and Wales has risen by almost 850,000 in the last five years. While burglary and car crime have fallen: gun crime has doubled; robbery has gone up by more than half; and, most damning of all, violent crime has increased by 83 per cent."

The really frightening thing about this is how many people will take it as gospel. If I were from a rival party, I could quote these exact same statistics to say, just for example, that police were cracking down on crime and that their efficiency in recording and following-up incidences of unlawful behaviour has more than doubled, especially in important cases such as those involving violence, firearms, and robbery. I'm not saying either use of the figures is correct, I'm just pointing out that 96.3% of all statistics are necessarily biased and prove nothing.

"'I've got my rights' is the verbal equivalent of two-fingers to authority."

There's a message for a confused electorate. Michael Howard wants to take away your rights, vote Conservative.

And so it went on. We're victimising victims, tying the police up in paperwork, not allowing teachers and parents to beat the living tar out of their degenerate children, and not giving police the excuses they need to run rampant on the streets, dishing out justice to anyone that wants some.

"ZERO TOLERANCE!" Howard screamed, citing the success of Ray Mallon, who was appointed Head Of Crime Strategy for Middlesbrough in 1996. Crime has been falling in the region ever since, unlike the rest of England, which has fallen into inequity, shame, and random violence.

Howard ended his speech by exorting listeners to move to the North East before accepting a substantial contribution from the Middlesbrough Tourist Board. He then joined spectators in a Mexican wave as a small group of protesters were dragged down a nearby alley and given a good kicking by the local constabulary.

The Liberal Democrats responded to Howard's speech by immediately outlining their own policies as regards crime. They were boring and meant nothing, but home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten was clearly feeling a little kinky this afternoon.

"Michael Howard's Alf Garnett approach to criminal justice policy is more hot air than heavyweight thinking," he said.

For those of you who aren't too familiar with the legacy of shame that is British culture, Mr. Oaten was referring to a fictional character known for holding outdated, right-wing views rife with bigotry and small-mindedness. Jesus...have enough time before to bend over before you took that one, Mr. Leader-Of-The-Opposition?

Tony Blair said nothing, but my correspondent revealed that the Prime Minister was heard to mutter, "I'm the shiznit, yo. Y'all are just playin'."

9.8.04

Victory For Smoke And Mirrors

"Take away the right to say 'fuck', and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government.'"

Lenny Bruce died of a morphine overdose on August 3rd, 1966. For those who struggle with arithmetic, that's nearly forty years ago. I mention Bruce now only because I watched Bob Fosse's interesting but flawed biography of the comedian the other night and found myself back on the same train of thought I'm usually led to by the likes of Bill Hicks.

You see, without Lenny Bruce, there would have been no Bill Hicks. Indeed, without Lenny, it's unlikely we'd ever have been exposed to the likes of Richard Pryor or George Carlin, either. Nor Denis Leary, who gets a dishonourable mention here simply because he's the most recognisably 'mainstream' of the bunch, despite the fact that he's never done an original routine in his life.

I'm not going to claim to know everything there is to know about Lenny Bruce, but what's important in the context of this discussion is that Lenny was a socially-aware satirist who drew audiences and admirers with thoughts and routines that offended the system and resulted in numerous arrests for 'obscenity'. His outrage at what he saw as the system's injustice led him to fight these claims in court until he could no longer afford to do so. In fact, it was the system that eventually ruined Lenny. By the time he was declared a pauper and could no longer get bookings from clubs fearful of the backlash they'd face for promoting Bruce's 'sick' comedy, his act had evolved into an almost freeform monologue that attacked the sacred cows of the time and made him a hero to figures like Norman Mailer and Bob Dylan.

Bruce, like Hicks, was very funny, though he isn't remembered chiefly for his humour. Instead, he is immortalised for his contribution to First Amendment rights and the free speech movement. Performers aren't arrested for the use of words like 'cocksucker' and 'motherfucker' today, and part of the reason for that is Lenny Bruce. Of course, there is a hell of a lot more to it than one man's decision to make a stand, but his influence cannot be denied.

What's interesting to me, and what brings me back to one of the themes of this blog, is that I believe Lenny Bruce's routines would still be controversial today. Bill Hicks gets compared to Bruce so often because he had Lenny's habit of blurring the lines. That was what made them both so controversial. It's easy to go for shock-value when you're being funny. That's old-hat now. Society looks sternly at the perpetrators while laughing behind its hand. Lenny Bruce pushed those boundaries, and that would make a lot of people uncomfortable even today. He was there to entertain, but he was also a social commentator and a moralist.

When I say we have no real voices anymore, no-one to speak to us and for us, to hold a mirror up to the world and say "take a look at this picture", I'm talking about guys like Bruce and Hicks. Because the media has failed us. To some extent, even art has failed us. Everything's so bland and colourless now. There's a total lack of fire, of passion. Lenny Bruce was one man with a microphone. He wasn't a trend. He wasn't product-placement and vested interests and what we're all going to be wearing next summer. He was a guy on a stage talking. Like Bill Hicks was a guy on a stage talking. No smoke and mirrors, no special effects, no hype, no bullshit. In this age of the MTV attention span and the bigger-better-faster-more approach to 'art', we've lost those performers. In doing so, we've lost a little truth.

In a world of lies and spin, that's a crucial element to be missing, don't you think?

A Letter To The Sky

"On some days you wonder what it all means. And on some days you find out."

I'm now convinced I have my own personal raincloud. Every time I leave the house the heavens open. Every single time.

It was hot last night, and I slept fitfully but not badly. There's something almost enjoyable about waking up every few hours. It makes the night seem longer, more satisfying somehow. It's a pause between dreams, an intermission. These are the nights where I remember every thought, subconscious or otherwise.

I awoke for the third or fourth time just after three in the morning. I had the windows open and the curtains drawn as far back as they could go. Earlier, they had been still and lifeless, now they billowed in a wind that was just gathering its strength. It was raining steadily, and I moved to the window to look out, arriving just as a spectacular fork of lightning split the sky. The number of times I've directly witnessed lightning in my life barely reaches double figures, yet that was the second time in a week. I was awed.

The storm never really got going. There were a couple more flashes of lightning and one powerful grumble from the purple sea above, then nothing. The rain went on alone.

The humidity had returned by the time I woke up this morning. My skin was hot and clammy, and I felt dirty and tired. I'd obviously done some thrashing around in the night. The blankets were twisted around my legs, and my neck, shoulders, and back ached steadily. Still, I laughed a little as I forced myself out of bed. I don't often remember my dreams with any clarity, but the visions from this one were as lucid and intense as the day outside my window.

Out, then. Out to the usual pavement-pounding nightmare. To the job centre, to the places I've already applied, to places I will apply. The same conversations with the same people. Hard work, in more ways than one, but at least I'm doing something. At least I'm sleeping at night and dragging myself through each day. Sooner or later, it has to bear fruit.

I found two new vacancies I'll be applying for tomorrow, and I left my CV with the manager at Borehamwood cinema. I worked there several years ago, but it was under different management then. Still, I have a ton of experience. Here's hoping.

And then came the rain. I was in the middle of town, a good twenty-five minutes from home, and by the time I'd walked all the way back, I was soaked to the skin once again. Where last week's storm left me exhilarated, today I felt merely heavy and uncomfortable. The contrast, I suppose, is obvious.

I carried a dream with me today, though, and no amount of rain could wash it away. It played in my mind through every bland conversation and every step I had to take through weather that tried its hardest to break my mood. The sky can cry all it wants today. My smile is unshakeable.

7.8.04

Coming Out Swinging

"Self-disgust is self-obsession, honey, and I do as I please."

Hard to breathe today. The air seems thin and empty, and the lungs overcompensate. It's like being at altitude. God, I'd like to be high right now. I'd like to be drunk. I'd even settle for a simple nicotine rush. I have none of these things, and no money to buy them with. I appear to have officially hit the wall. Relax, friends, it's a good thing. I am lazy and unmotivated when it comes to the world out there. Ultimately, I have no desire to be back outside at all. It'd be nice to go drinking with my friends once in a while, but it's not like I'd die if I had to sit in here with my JD and my cigarettes night after night. The only downside would be that my writing would suffer. I need experience to drive my creativity along sometimes, and there's little to be had staring at the same four walls.

It'll be my addictions that get me out of this rut. I need money now. I didn't before, and that was the key difference. I didn't require a job, so I wasn't trying too hard to get one. Now...man, I'd slay children for a cigarette.

I didn't leave the house today. I couldn't face the sun, the anonymous faces, my shadow. One of those days when you feel borderline hysterical all the time, forever teetering on the edge of laughter or tears. I'm considering adding agorophobia to the list of psychosomatic illnesses I've displayed symptoms of in the past two months.

I've been wanting to write, but I'm lacking in creative energy. I sat on my bed for almost two hours this afternoon, staring blame across the room at the computer. I have come out with some pieces I'm really happy with recently (notably Collect Call To An Unknown Lover), but it's all poetic. I'm doing a lot of vivid imagery, invoking a lot of nostalgia and frustration, communicating on a very visual level. And that's great. But what I really need to be doing at this point is bringing together coherent narratives with multiple characters and plenty of dialogue. I should be limbering up for my next run at Welcome To Forever. Instead, I feel like I'm just playing with words.

I suppose it's not so much a writer's block as a writer's diversion. I think maybe I'm a little intimidated by the size of the project I'm undertaking. I'm not sure I can make it work. I've built it up as a challenge in my mind, and I'm not totally sure I'm equal to it, especially not in my current state.

I guess it's about time I lived up to my own hype. I've been hunkered down in the weeds for too long now, making promise after promise about getting back into the world. In truth, I've been half-arsed and lazy about it. That'll have to stop. It's time to come out swinging on all fronts, whether the world's ready for this nicotine-deficient sociopath or not.

6.8.04

Your Horoscope

"You're going to be sending out some wonderful vibes -- so you don't need to be too obvious about your intentions. No matter how subtle you try to be, your feelings will come through, loud and clear."

That's my Horoscope for today. I'm not big on Astrology, mind you. In fact, I have no time for it whatsoever. Makes me smile to think of people who actually believe in this stuff. Then again, I LAUGH IN THE FACE OF YOUR GOD, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone.

Anyway, it's early afternoon in the dull suburbs, and far too hot for a fair-skinned creature such as myself to even consider leaving the house. So here, for your perusal, are my alternative horoscopes for the day.

Aries: Oh, man. I'm really sorry to have to tell you this, but your day is going to SUCK. I can't watch. Just...don't leave the house, okay?

Taurus: You'll meet a handsome and intriguing stranger today. My advice? Don't get into his car. No-one needs sweets that badly.

Gemini: You'll get a job today. Money will fall from the sky like rain. People will pass out from sheer pleasure whilst reading your writing. You'll be stalked by beautiful and deviant women. Then, unfortunately, you'll wake up.

Cancer: They named an often-fatal disease after you. You're clearly cursed. Every day is an accident waiting to happen, and today is no exception. Sorry.

Leo: You're hot today. But let's face it, you're hot every day. Just don't get carried away. Everybody's inner puppy gets kicked now and then.

Virgo: That special someone will spend a lot of time thinking about you today. You don't want to know the context, though. Hey, this is astrology, take it the fluffy, cuddly way and shut the fuck up.

Libra: If you were planning on staying in and watching a movie tonight, you probably should. Nobody likes you anyway.

Scorpio: The moon is rising in the venus quadrant and the flux capacitators are at full-strength in the Mekong Delta. This means there's a fairly high chance that you'll be in some kind of vehicular accident around dinnertime.

Sagittarius: Quit fucking around. Everybody knows you're gay anyway. Just admit it. No-one's buying into your pathetic soap opera act. Loser.

Capricorn: Don't ask me.

Aquarius: I've seen your destiny, and I know exactly what it is you need to make your life complete. E-mail me your credit card details and all will be revealed.

Pisces: You're going to be attacked by a horde of genetically-enhanced chickens that feel compelled to mate with you. But don't worry, the money you get for selling your story to the press will more than compensate for the total loss of self-esteem and the fact that people will point at you and laugh for the rest of your natural life. Oh, and your son, Chicken Man, will save the world someday.

5.8.04

Collect Call To An Unknown Lover

"You’re stuck between the past and present tense. You said you’ve been waging a war against so many years of lies. With stronger drinks and longer lines it’s not that big a surprise that you're feeling more dead than alive."

High and lost. Skin stretched tight to define bones and cage flesh. Sound climbs the body in subtle reverberation, clinging to the precipice of sensation, demanding catalogue and analysis where the mind has none. Sweat bleeds, stings, inflames. Tomorrow's discomfort is tonight's epiphany, smiling at a world of strobing colour and pinwheeling limbs through salt-blind eyes.

Initiation is trial by violence. Welcome to the pit. Find the rhythm, find abandon. Let it go and lose it. Don't look back. A creature of impact and camraderie, a heaving organism of faces and bodies and liquid flying like shattered glass, catching the light and patterning the skin. Tomorrow's tattoos come in staccato explosions of blood punched and kicked and shoved to the surface. No surrender. Fall only into a safety net of clutching hands and momentary friends, where wide eyes and shining teeth speak of hysterical arousal. Thought made plural, forever.

Memory picks the pocket of time. I remember your mouth framing words, the language of your posture, the clothes you wore. How your tongue darted between my lips like a starving predator, arid and desperate kisses to steal my lust and make it your own. Your body was soft and yielding, screaming submission while your eyes spoke control. Your hands were insecure, clenching and trembling and demanding touch. You were pure white clothed in hate black. I was a junkie to the needle of your desires.

Cold streets and the stares of the stumbling lonely. Each touch a tiny revelation, a preach to the converted. Nicotine dreams and alcohol nightmares. Skyscrapers stoop to stare. My kaleidoscope spirals and centres on your backlit beauty. Words are indistinct murmurs, communicating only in pitch and timbre.

Judged by and compared to the icons on your walls, rendered in the harsh glare of bare bulbs, naked before your want. Unclothed dents and designs carved in your skin, obscene graffiti, evidence of acts yet to be committed. Creep up between your thighs like a criminal. Inhale your secret scent, taste your insides. Watch your mouth find definition around my lust, painting climax in glistening transparency. Invoke Gods, call down curses, beg for sacrifice. Impale yourself. Bring your lips so that I might devour your sighs. Punctuate silence, wish it harm. Silhouette yourself against a background of everything; spine rigid, eyes white, captured in extremity.

Be mine.

3.8.04

With A Knife To Open Up The Sky's Veins

"I'm a riddle so strong, you can't break me. Did she come here to try, try to take me?"

A huge storm just hit sunny Hertfordshire. I was at the job centre, the last stop on what had been a frustrating round-trip to deal with various people regarding jobs and money. When I left the house earlier this afternoon it had been sunny and warm, just another Lynchian day in suburban nowhere. I walked out to the Oaklands motel in no mood to be fucked with. My head was pounding and my sinuses felt as though they were backing up into my brain.

The strange wiring in my head has always been particularly sensitive to the weather, especially rapid changes in temperature and summer storms. I suffer head pains and nosebleeds at certain times of the year, most notably in April and September, and I can usually tell you a storm is on the way long before it shows itself in the sky.

I've been in an ongoing state of negotiation with the Oaklands people for two weeks now. I dropped an application form into their reception a couple of Fridays ago and heard back from them a few days later. They were interested, they said, but my application had been misplaced. Was there any chance I could come in and fill out another? Of course, I said, and duly complied. Last Saturday, a little confused at the lack of contact, I phoned to see what was going on. I was told that they didn't look at applications over the weekend and that somebody would call me on Monday. Nobody did.

Today I walked straight into the bar and grabbed the first member of staff I saw.

"Hi," I said. "Is there a manager around?"

"Can I ask what it's regarding?" she replied, without looking up from the table she was wiping.

"A job," I said. "I was expecting a phonecall yesterday."

"Oh, right."

The girl disappeared into the kitchen and I lit a cigarette. My hands were shaking a little, and for the first time it occurred to me how angry I was. This whole job-hunting trip has become a nightmare of unreturned calls and long, frustrated days of fruitless searching. I know I'm far more employable than the morons I'm spending my time talking to, yet somehow nothing's falling my way this time. I haven't had a single break.

The assistant manageress emerged smiling. She looked open and friendly, nothing like the monobrowed neanderthal I'd dealt with the last time I was at Oaklands.

"What can I help you with?" she asked.

"Hi," I said. "My name's Michael. I dropped an application in here a couple of weeks ago. Darren called me a few days later and said you were interested in employing me but my form had been lost. I filled out another but then didn't hear anything for a week. I phoned on Saturday and the guy I spoke to said someone would call me back yesterday. No-one did."

"Oh." She frowned. "I didn't get that message."

"I was hoping we could sort it out. I'm trying to apply for other jobs as well."

I knew immediately that it had been a stupid thing to say. Her face hardened almost imperceptibly, but it was enough to tell me that I'd shown a little too much of my annoyance.

"Okay. Well, I'll look up your application form and give you a call later."

What the hell, I thought. Let off some steam.

"I'm here now," I replied. "I don't mind waiting."

"Listen, Mr. O..."

"O'Mahony," I said, and offered a truly horrible smile.

"We have a lot of applications to get through and we're a very busy establishment. Now, either myself or one of the other managers will undoubtedly be in touch in the next couple of days."

"What happened to later?"

"I..."

"Jesus, the incompetence of you people is unbelievable. All I'm asking you for is a fucking job. Considering the idiots you employ, I'd be a godsend."

She stared at me, her face devoid of expression. I wasn't shouting. My voice was low and perfectly calm.

"Never mind," I said. "I wanted to work here because it was convenient for where I'm living. I don't need it."

And I turned and walked out.

Despite the fact that it was well past noon and drifting into mid-afternoon, the day appeared to be getting hotter. By the time I made my way down into town, I was sweating freely. I had two bags of ten pence pieces in my pockets. I've been out of hard cash for a few days now, and my collection of change has become my cigarette fund. All I'd intended was to exchange the coins for a ten pound note, but even this was a hassle. First I walked into HSBC, who I bank with, and found a queue that stretched as far as the door. Thinking I could get the money changed elsewhere, I headed back out and a little further up the high street to TSB.

"Good afternoon, sir," The girl behind the counter said.

"Hi," I said, dumping my bags on the counter, "I just need to get these changed for a ten pound note."

"Certainly, sir. If I could just have your account number."

"I don't actually bank with you. I just wanted some change."

"I'm afraid we only give change to customers."

I sighed. "Why?"

"Company policy, sir. Who do you bank with?"

"HSBC."

"I'm sure they'll be more than happy to change it for you."

"I've just been there," I said. "There's around a million people in a very small room and only one person behind the counter. Can't you just..."

"I'm sorry, sir. I can't."

"This is..." I began. "...ah, fuck it."

I snatched up my change and headed back to HSBC, where I queued for almost forty-five minutes for a transaction that took around ten seconds. By the time I began my walk down to the job centre, the sky looked bruised and swollen and a light breeze tugged at my clothes and hair. My head felt swollen and pregnant with pain. I couldn't stop sneezing.

I knew exactly which job I wanted to apply for. All I needed from the job centre was a covering note. Yet the man behind the desk insisted on taking all my details, spelling my name wrong at least six times until I was almost screaming each letter at him.

"What's your race?" he asked.

I blinked. "Are you serious?"

"I need to fill out the equal opportunities section in your file."

"I'm Hawaiian," I said.

He actually started typing.

"What are you doing?" I was aware of my voice rising, of heads turning in our direction. "Look at me. Just stop what you're doing and look at me. My name is Michael O'Mahony. I am without a doubt the whitest person you have ever seen. How in god's name can I be from Hawaii?"

To his credit, he had the decency to look ashamed, and the rest of the interview was conducted in low, tolerant voices.

The storm broke as I crossed the road outside the job centre. Large drops of rain fell here and there. Thunder rolled massively across the sky directly overhead. I caught a glimpse of forked lightning in the distance as the world momentarily took on an electric blue outline. The rain quickly became torrential, and in seconds I was soaked to the skin, my clothes plastered to my body, cold rivulets of water streaming down my face and the back of my neck. I felt a stab of euphoria in my belly. Suddenly I could breathe through my nose again. I inhaled the musty scent of the storm and then held my breath for a few moments. When I let it go, I felt the pain beginning to ease, as if I could exhale it.

I smiled and then laughed, spreading my arms and turning my face up to the sky. The driver of a passing car leaned on the horn and shook his fist at me triumphantly, his face lit by a huge smile. I turned away and began to run towards home, happy for the exertion that stole my breath, for the endless sheets of rain driven into my body. I was elated, alive, and as I ran I heard Layne Staley singing in my mind.

Did she call my name? I think it's gonna rain, when I die.

From a bad day to a good one. Sitting here now, I still feel a little high. The storm is weakening outside my window. I've spent the last hour typing almost frantically, Alice In Chains playing at high volume in the background. I feel like a man with a scream in the back of his throat. I feel like my mind's travelling at a thousand miles an hour through a maelstrom of clouds and rain and light and noise.

I wish it could always be this way.

2.8.04

If You Have To Ask Why...

"Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture, but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals."

Please understand, I'd never wanted to be a writer. It wasn't something that called to me. When I was a child I wanted to be a bus driver like my dad, then a fighter pilot, then a rock star. My primary school English teacher used to make me stand and read my poetry in class, but I was far more proud of the fact that I could recite my seven times table faster than any of my peers. I didn't like to sit and write. I liked running and playing football. I was a physical child back then. I was a happy child.

I couldn't pinpoint the time when all that changed. Not exactly. My parents broke up when I was six, divorced when I was twelve. Neither seemed especially relevant. I rarely saw my father anyway. Nothing really changed.

Again, I come back to his death. I don't like to obsess over that one fact, but everything I've seen and done since that day has been a little different. It was a shift in perception, in the way I catalogue and prioritise, in the way I look at the world around me. On the weekend of 22-23 January 1994, I finished reading 1984, I wrote the first serious poem of my life, and my father died.

In terms of destiny, I guess you could say it was a key couple of days.

I stopped being a physical child. I became very introverted. I started to enjoy my own company more than that of my friends. I buried myself in music and films and literature. As a person, I changed almost totally.

I was still four years away from wanting to write, though. That didn't happen until February of 1998 when - fully involved in the Socialist Party at my university - I took part in a 24-hour occupation of the library to protest the introduction of tuition fees. The occupation itself was an exercise in boredom, but what happened later that night changed my life. Four of us slipped away through a back window to where we'd been told there was a quarry that had long since become a lake and...well...I've fictionalised this before. Let me share that.

I ended up slipping away from the party with an Irish girl, Mary, and a German poet called Thomas. Though it was February, Thomas had suggested we go skinny dipping in a nearby lake that had once been a quarry. Mary and Thomas and me, we staggered through bushes and trees, fell over barbed wire fences, teased each other mercilessly about the possible presence of guard dogs. We found our way to the banks of the lake and Mary sat down, eyes shining and cheeks flushed as she watched Thomas and I undress. I was fearless then. No shame in my nudity. Thomas and me, we waded out until we were knee deep in water that was so black that the light of the moon was repelled, dancing across the rippling surface, throwing wraiths of shimmering luminescence across our naked bodies.

I admired Thomas, though I never knew him well. He did university for the freedom. He played pool and drank all day and invented powerful lyrics that he never wrote down. I saw him perform once, at a poetry evening full of pale young men and women that read from notebooks in quavering voices and smiled nervously when they were finished. Then Thomas, striding onto the stage, dressed without thought for the occasion, stamping back and forth, his voice soaring to screams and falling to whispers, every line a thing of beauty. He lost his voice that night and there was no applause when he finished. When his voice cracked and then trailed off into silence, his monstrous composition unfinished, the only sound was of forty or fifty people trying to get their breath back.

But Thomas didn’t go into the lake that night. As my legs turned numb and my mouth began trembling uncontrollably, I heard him giving up and floundering back to the bank and the warmth of clothes and Mary. I shut them both out, though I could hear laughter from somewhere behind me. This was the top diving board again. This was Malta in 1991. The words that came to me, from something I was reading at the time and can’t remember now, were: "Last time pays for all."

I came so close. Then I jumped.

That was when I seriously decided to be a writer, although I have never found the words to describe what I felt that night. The water stole all sensation from my body. Physically numbed, I had only my thoughts and my feelings. I was swimming in a cliché, the moon and the dark water and the distant horizon beginning to show dawn, shading the sky a subtle mixture of blue and scarlet that bled between the bare branches of the trees. Elation is the only word that describes the emotion that swept through me, though it isn’t strong enough. I stopped swimming. I let myself be held by the freezing water and screamed at the birth of a sunrise. It is still the loudest sound I have ever made.

That's not the best piece of fiction I've ever written, but it's probably the most personal and the most important. Walking home from the quarry that night, I felt incredible. I felt like a different person. It was the stuff of epiphany or revelation, and I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. As time went by, though, I realised that it wasn't something I was going to forget and that talking about it hadn't shaken those sensations. I felt heavy with this experience, sick with it. I needed to get it out somehow.

So I wrote it, first as a screenplay called Good Intentions, then as part of my first full-length story, Scenes From An Unexamined Life. Neither of these projects will probably ever see the light of day, even if I do get published, but a reasonable percentage of my readership has encountered Scenes... in some form or another.

I've heard quite a few creative writers of one kind or another describe the process as being a kind of mental vomiting, and I suppose that's true to an extent. Sometimes an idea just grabs you and refuses to be shaken off until you give it detail, until it becomes a story or a poem or just a loose collection of words. The necessity for me is always definition, the journey from a dream or a feeling to a piece that captures that raw emotion and gives it coherency in such a way that it can be expressed to others.

Honestly, though, that's rare. The vast majority of the time it's a case of thinking, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool/funny/tragic if this happened" and then trying to make something of it. Some days it comes easy, others it doesn't come at all. In a way, it's like blogging, only less selfish.

My current project is called Welcome To Forever. It's going to be a book of short stories linked by a theme, or a novel in which every chapter features different characters and scenarios, depending on your perspective. It's struggling out of the blocks at the moment, what with the current state of my personal life. But once I get settled, I hope to bury myself in it and have some kind of first draft by the end of the year. What I'd like to do, over the weeks and months to come, is share a little of the creative process with the people that read this blog. I usually e-mail drafts and chapters of things I'm working on to friends, and I'd like to take that a step further by posting things as I write them. I don't intend to post the whole novel, but it'll be an interesting experience for me to get thoughts and feelings on a work in progress.

1.8.04

The Elements Of Style

"It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature."

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately, many of them penned by people who consider themselves writers. Now, I'm not the greatest writer in the world, and there are plenty of unpublished folk out there doing it better than I, but some of the elementary mistakes I've seen have been scary. For various problems of grammar and composition, this blog heartily endorses and recommends The Elements Of Style by William Strunk, Jr. Not only does this concise tome cover the basics of writing the English language, it does so in a fashion that is easy to understand and, frankly, hilarious.

It isn't that Strunk intends to be funny, more that the book was published in 1918, and reflects the language and standards of the time. Thus, while Strunk is a magnificent teacher, he also strikes me as being the kind of fellow who would slap one about the face with a glove and demand a duel. His retorts towards those that would descend into bad grammar are wonderfully amusing. They alone make this text a must-read.

Think you can write? Think again. The Elements Of Style will show you the bright and shining path to basic English. And if you still disagree, I daresay Mr. Strunk and a choice of pistols will be waiting for you in the woods behind the manor house tomorrow morning.

It Only Seems Kinky The First Time (Part Three)

"I've been looking for a reject, and you ain't had nothing like me yet. Don't you think it's time for motion? I can take what you've been pushin'"

University is traditionally a place for exploring. I was a little ahead of myself in that respect. While all around me were indulging themselves, I was wallowing in self-pity and thinking constantly about the girl I'd lost. I had a good time at university, but in many respects I returned to my previous uptight persona. I smoked and I drank, but that was about it. I just couldn't bring myself to rub salt into the wounds I already had. When I did go off the deep end, it was into alcohol rather than sex. As every man knows, it's difficult to combine the two.

If I could do it again, though, I'd do it the exact same way. University taught me a lot. Whilst living in Cambridge, I was far more an observer than a participant. I watched a lot of strange and desperate behaviour. I sympathised and I empathised. Sometimes I was disgusted, others heartbroken. In the end, what changed was my perspective. I realised a lot of things about my own sexuality and about the way we tend to put those we desire on a pedestal, overlooking their flaws.

I was writing a lot more by then, and articulating those thoughts on paper made it easier for me keep track of them. I could happily sit there and debate myself for hours, scribbling arguments and counter-arguments in my notebook while Soundgarden or Pearl Jam filled my room with background noise. It was a lonely time, but I enjoyed it. Sometimes we need to step out for a while.

If I believe any one thing that Freud said, it's the idea that we're all born 'polymorphous perverts'. I can't bring myself to even consider the idea of such things as a 'gay gene'. It's convenient for a lot of people to throw homosexuality or bisexuality into the same box as defects like being blind or deaf. It means not having to confront these things, not having to fly in the face of so much tradition and socialisation.

Nobody is born with an in-built instinct towards heterosexuality and nuclear families and rearing our children the way we do. These are things passed down to us, things taught. They are the church and the school and the family and the media. They aren't 'natural', not by any definition of the word.

We live in a very repressed world, sexually speaking. The most powerful nation in this world is seeking to prevent same-sex marriages. It is trying to pass what is, in essence, anti-love legislation. Religious ideas of fidelity are still alarmingly popular. Porn is bad. Healthy, kinky sex between consenting adults (anal sex, for example) is frowned upon. The 'norm' is still one man and one woman coming together in sexual union for the purposes of procreation, preferably within the sacred institution of marriage.

What year is this again?

For the record, I support gay rights. I support straight rights. I support the rights of any consenting adult who is doing something that he or she enjoys that couldn't and doesn't harm or otherwise injure any other living creature. I don't believe it's the business of any government or institution to interfere with those rights. It's called freedom, and it isn't a difficult concept to grasp.

"I've always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food."

That's REM vocalist Michael Stipe talking, and I identify strongly with that opinion. It's all too easy for people to label themselves and others, to fall neatly into easily understandable categories. It's a marketing thing, a corporate thing. I refuse to be party to some demographic simply because of my preferences, and I refuse to let those preferences be dictated by others. I don't believe in God, but I don't like to be called an atheist, because that implies a religion all of its own. Similarly, I don't like to be called heterosexual, because that implies that I am incapable of finding a man attractive and comes with a whole set of attachments I simply don't agree with. I've had sexual contact with members of my own gender. Someday, I may fuck someone of my own gender. These aren't things I make grand decisions about. If they happen, they happen, and anybody who wants to judge me is more than welcome to. I intend to live my life as it comes, and if that includes doing things that take me outside of ethical boundaries that I have never recognised, then so be it.

My further adventures in sex have been, for the most part, disappointing. There have been some pretty serious high points, but the vast majority of it has simply been average. I'm happy with my sexuality and comfortable with what I will and will not do. A lot of the people I meet can't say the same. We're a generation very much defined by our insecurities, and I struggle with partners that need constant reassurance. A big part of my ideal partner would be confidence. Not arrogance or ego, just confidence. Just an understanding of who they are, where they've been, and where they'd like to go.

People like that are hard to find. By categorising myself, I'd be closing the door on potential. Why shouldn't I just get on out there and forget about the labels? By the same token, why shouldn't you?

Think about it.