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30.11.04

Trip Diary - Two: Tomorrow Is A Four-Letter Word

“My head was spinning a million miles an hour, the chance I was taking I get anxious around her. She put her head on my shoulder, I started to hold her…”

The first person I meet in this brave new world is a short, middle-aged Asian guy with a wolfish smile, a pencil-thin moustache, and a gun. He looks me up and down, his eyes paying special attention to my T-shirt, which carries a spoof Coca-Cola slogan that reads Enjoy Ketamine. Beneath this, the words young, dumb, wanna be numb. Amongst my many worries about the trip and the contents of my bags, I hadn’t once considered the idea that my clothes might draw attention to me. Now I pull my coat together and offer a tight smile he seems to accept.

“Over there,” he says, pointing towards a row of cubicles where newly arrived passengers are being processed.

I join the queue and wait my turn, trying in vain to clear my head and wake myself up. I feel groggy, vaguely nauseous. It had been okay when I’d been moving, but now I'm stuck, all I want is to drop where I stand. This isn’t helped by the fact that the queue keeps changing configuration and direction. They let the cabin crew through first, then the first class passengers, then those with children or disabilities. As more of the cubicles become free, we’re split into smaller lines by the little Asian guy, who seems to be genuinely enjoying himself. I am not. For some reason, every time the queue gets broken up, I end up further away from being processed.

To pass the time, I let paranoia occupy my mind, carefully watching the people they pull out of the line and away into a sinister-looking office. Surprisingly, most of them are Americans. Most of them, so far as I can tell, are simply going to fill out required forms they’ve somehow missed out on. I start to relax. I have my passport and my visa waiver form and my customs declaration. I know what they’re going to ask me and how I’m going to answer. I’m fairly sure I won’t be jerked out of the line, not unless it’s for the damn T-shirt.

Finally, I find myself confronting an overweight, sleepy-eyed officer who reminds me so much of Al from Die Hard that I find myself expecting him to pull a doughnut or a twinkie from beneath his desk. I smile and say hello. His facial expression remains deadly serious. I hand him my passport and he looks at it for a long time, glancing first at the photo and then at me. I have a goatee in my passport picture, but it’s not as if it looks nothing like the boy standing in front of him.

“How long are you over for, Michael?” he asks.

“Sorry? Oh…just a week.”

Did he just call me Michael? Why the familiarity?

“Is it a business visit?”

“Uh…no, I’m on holiday.”

He nods. He does a little stamping and folding with my papers, takes prints from the index fingers of both of my hands, then takes a picture of me. I smile. If I don’t, I’ll look like a criminal.

“Enjoy your stay, Michael,” he says, handing me my passport.

“I’ll try.”

I’m a little freaked out as I go to reclaim my baggage. I don’t think I’ve ever been called by my first name in that kind of situation before. It’s always Sir or Mr. O’Mahony or – occasionally - The Defendant. I think on it while I wait for my bag and then forget about it until later in the week, when Jennifer and I get to talking about the pronunciation of my surname and I realise that she can’t actually say it without putting on an English accent. It’s one of those strange phonetic quirks you come across every now and again. My name is pronounced Oh-Mah-Nee, and maybe two people have ever nailed that pronunciation first time out. I’ve been called Oh-Ma-Hoe-Nee, Oh-Ma-Hun-Ee, Oh-Ma-Hog-A-Nee, Oh-Mah-Lee, and even Ar-Mah-Nee. I have one of those names people generally look at and see whatever it is they want to see, whether the appropriate letters are there or not. I think poor Al was looking at my passport and trying to figure it out. When he decided the silence had gone on a little bit too long, he just took the next name along. Or at least, that’s my theory.

I only get stopped once more on my way to freedom, and that’s when I present my customs declaration to the really rather angry woman standing at the door.

“Who’s in Fullerton?” she asks, looking for all the world like she’ll simply blow my head off if she doesn’t like the answer she gets.

“None of your fucking business,” I don’t say.

“Why, who’s waiting for you at home?” I also don’t say.

“Osama Bin Laden,” I definitely don’t say.

“A friend,” I say, and she waves me on before turning her anger on whoever’s behind me.

I walk up the ramp and out into what I’m expecting to be a massive terminal. It’s actually a very small terminal. From customs to the street is a walk of about twenty feet. A lot of the passengers have already gone, and the crowd waiting for friends, relatives, and clients is pretty thin. Most of them are away to my right. Right ahead of me, though, leaning against a pillar and looking away, is Jennifer.

At first, I don’t think anything. I just stop. It’s a total mental shutdown. All the words and fantasies and songs and oddities that usually whirl around inside my head simply bail out. In that moment, maybe two or three seconds, I feel utterly and completely blank.

When my brain re-engages, if only to stop me from falling over, if only to make me walk towards her, my thoughts come in a rush, suddenly frantic to reach their destination. I thought my insomnia and irregular schedule would prepare me for the time change and the jetlag, but it really hasn’t. When you go eight hours back in time, it fucks with your body. When you try to make sense of it, it fucks with your head. I’m in the same room as Jennifer and it’s six o’clock in the evening. It’s also two o’clock in the morning of tomorrow. At my six o’clock, I’d been sleeping on the plane. I’d also been between time zones, which means that even then, it was more like two o’clock. But at two o’clock, we’d just been taking off. And so on. Travelling through time zones is like leaving pieces of yourself behind. Or ahead. It’s like existing in several places at once. I don’t know what the time is or whether I should be asleep or awake. I have a sense that things just aren’t where they’re supposed to be. I have gained time, and I feel as though those hours are inside me, trying to push me forward, or back, to the place I came from.

Frustrating, nonsensical thoughts. Everything feels wrong. At the same time, everything feels right. I’m realising a dream and dreaming a reality. I’m getting closer and closer to the girl I came here to meet. I’m memorising her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her dress, her legs. She hasn’t seen me. It’s all happening in slow motion and I still can’t analyse it quickly enough to know what I’m supposed to say or do next.

Eye contact and she smiles. Jennifer smiles. I’m here. I smile back, hear myself saying hi. She hugs me and it’s awkward because I’m holding two bags and have restricted movement and only one free arm. Don’t really feel that first hug, not the way I’d imagined. The details that imprint themselves on my brain are the smell of her hair and the way my hand slides down her back when she steps away, how my fingertips scream at the pattern of her spine and the outward curve of one hip, how all the words in the world won’t ever describe an incidental touch that races up into my brain like the first hit of a future addiction.

Jennifer is taller than I expected, somehow bigger. Her eyes hit me hard but her smile hits me harder. She has great legs. The first thing I notice about her body language is that she’s sort of clumsy, like me. On her, it’s natural and real and beautiful.

Then we’re out into the cold street, and a man with foul breath and an untidy beard is in my face, shaking a bucket and muttering something about Christian children. Jennifer says something I don’t hear because I’m sort of horrified by the man’s wide, bloodshot eyes and the way he’s stepping right into my space. My first instinct is to shove him away, and I have to force it down.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

Really, that’s the last thing I remember for a while. Every minute that passes seems to leave me more exhausted. I joke with Jennifer when she can’t remember where she parked her car. When we finally do find it, there is a charged moment where the pair of us just stand there. I only realise the potential that was in that moment afterwards, when we’re driving out of the car park and I’m lighting a cigarette. The traffic on the freeway is pretty bad. We’re listening to the radio and talking, just shooting the breeze. I see signs for Crenshaw Boulevard and Inglewood, places from the lyrics of West Coast rappers that make the whole thing seem even more surreal. How can I be passing through their world? I learn what a carpool is. I finally understand how viciously accurate the radio ads in Grand Theft Auto are.

It’s getting on for eight o’clock when we arrive at Jenn’s apartment. I sense immediate hostility from Jaguar, her cat, but I’m too wasted to care. We hit the couch and watch TV, some cop show she likes. We laugh at the plot holes. Time passes and I can feel myself slumping sideways. I tell Jenn I’m going to lie on her about half a second before my head finds her shoulder. The images on the TV no longer have any meaning. I cannot stay awake any longer.

I drift in and out of consciousness for half an hour or so, resisting Jenn’s suggestions that I go to bed. Some stubborn part of me is insisting that this whole first meeting bit isn’t going how it’s supposed to. We’re getting on fine but it’s awkward. Our conversations over distance have gone so far, yet only now that I find myself in her company do I begin to understand how little we know each other. Thinking we’d just fall into each other’s arms was dumb. Fairytales don’t translate into reality that way.

These are the thoughts that make me go to bed. It’s all confusion and disappointment and fatigue. I’m just not awake or alert or with it. I can’t find words or actions that might make sense. I say goodnight to Jennifer and drag myself to her room, where I undress, climb into bed, and immediately lose consciousness.

I don’t know how much later she comes in. She speaks to me and I say something back. She laughs and turns out the light. I hear her leave the room. All of a sudden, I’m wide awake and my mind is racing. It goes something like this:

What the fuck are you doing you’re in california for fuck’s sake you’re with jennifer and all you’ve done is mutter shit that doesn’t make any sense and crack lame jokes and put your head on her shoulder wow that was a stylish move you’re a regular frigging casanova there bud and now you’re thinking that you’ll leave it until tomorrow when you feel better and more awake but the problem with tomorrow is that it won’t change the fact that today happened and sure it was awkward but she’s beautiful and there is plenty of chemistry if you bothered noticing it instead of whining about how tired you are and thinking about how you’re going to write about this instead of actually being here and fucking living where exactly is the boy that bought a ticket with money he didn’t have to see a girl he barely knew on a whim and a dream and the way that the words and thoughts connected over an ocean and a motherfucking continent where is that boy now huh I’ll tell you where lying in bed thinking about tomorrow well let me remind you of one simple fact you’d do well to remember arsehole since you’re so worried about jetlag and timezones and the way your head and your body are all over the place because you haven’t caught up yet it isn’t actually caught up at all because where your mind is if you can follow this very simple line of thinking it already is tomorrow and by the time you quit with the frightened rabbit thing it’ll probably be the day after tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that and the reason you did this is because you only live once and you don’t believe in regrets and apologies and turning your back on the things that matter out of fear which by the way is exactly what you’re doing now YOU FUCKING CHILD!

I climb out of bed and walk to the bedroom door. I can see TV light flickering on the walls of the living room.

“You awake?” I say.

“Yeah,” Jennifer replies.

I sit beside her on the couch, sit facing her this time, watching that light on her face.

“I couldn’t just go to bed,” I say. “It felt wrong…me in there and you out here.”

She looks at me and smiles. “I wasn’t going to sleep out here.”

“Oh,” I say, and we both laugh.

Jennifer gets up. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go to bed.”

And we do.

29.11.04

Trip Diary - One: At The Edge Of The Continent

“I remember traffic jams, motor boys and girls with tans, nearly was and almost rans. I remember this.”

At 5:30am on November 19th 2004, I’m lying in bed in the darkness of my room, staring at the bright green digits on the front of my VCR. I’m a long way from sleep and have been for more than an hour. In fifteen minutes, the alarm on my mobile phone will go off. When that happens, all the speculation will end. Sure, I’m only getting up to finish my packing, have a shave and a shower, and organise myself, but those are means to an end, and that end is travelling to California. This is it. No more thinking and dreaming and writing. I’m going. There is no backing out or turning around.

Such thoughts are enough to drive me from my bed and into the shower. I need to wake myself up and get down to practicalities. If I let myself stay in that mental place, I really will get scared, maybe scared enough to back out. Happily, travel has many stupid rules and I have many stupid insecurities. For example, I want to pack my washing stuff in my rucksack because I’m about to travel for something like eighteen hours and I’ll be needing to freshen up before I meet Jenn. As much as I’m sure she’ll like me, looking and smelling like I’ve just been trapped in a cramped space with a bunch of fat tourists is not how I envisage my person at our first meeting. All well and good, only I can’t take a razor onto the plane. I can be clean and shiny, I can smell like the first day of spring, but the stubble can’t be helped.

Thinking about sharp objects gets me thinking about my pens. Are they okay? Will I be dragged away by swarthy customs men as I scream helplessly about being a writer while the other passengers shake their heads sadly and look at the ground? I understand that this is a ridiculous thought, but then I also remember that scene from The Running Man where Arnie stabs that guy in the back with a biro. Then I remember what state Mr. Schwarzenegger is now Governator of and this somehow gives my weird fantasy validation. For perhaps thirty seconds, I actually consider not taking my pens onto the plane.

This is how ridiculous and meticulous I am in my packing. Everything in its right place and nothing that would give anybody any excuse to delay or stop my journey onto that plane. My one concession to instinct is every bit as silly. When checking my main bag, I come across a condom squashed in the deepest corner of a pocket. Unable to remember where it’s from and how it got there, I throw it aside and get on with my packing. A few minutes later, smiling to myself and feeling good about things for the first time in a while, I put it back. It’s not that I plan to use it or think that it will magically get me laid, nothing so crude. It’s just a feeling I get when I replace it, like finding a penny or walking around a ladder. I don’t believe in luck, but I do believe in taking a little confidence from unexpected quarters.

My stepdad drives me to the train station. We talk, but my eyes and ears are elsewhere. I’m memorising the morning, committing it to the writer-place inside my head, hanging verbs and adjectives and nouns on the sky and the people and the cars. On the train, it strikes me that I’m seeing this morning journey as if for the first time, the familiar rendered in strange new colours by the anticipation and fear in my stomach. The inside of my mouth tastes like cigarettes and toothpaste and copper. My hands shake so much that when I try to scrawl what I’m thinking into my notepad, it comes out in a series of jagged, disconnected lines that make no sense. I can’t even write.

It takes me longer than I’d guessed to reach Heathrow, but I’d left myself a huge margin of error and arrive some three hours before my plane is due to leave. Check-in and customs are quick and without drama, and I have plenty of time to wander around the departure lounge, where I purchase the new Jimmy Eat World and the last Tanya Donnelly along with a cheddar and ham sandwich I eat while watching the departure board and listening to Rancid at an incredible volume on my walkman. This, you understand, to make me concentrate on the music instead of getting impatient and worrying.

Of course, I’m about to embark on a very long trip in an environment where cigarettes are forbidden, so before I make my way up to the gate, I drop in on the smoking lounge, where I plan to get through as many cigarettes as time allows. This preoccupies me far more than the music had, as the smoking area is at the end of a long corridor, well away from the main lounge. It’s dimly lit and quiet, its inhabitants getting their fix almost surreptitiously, hunched over glowing cherries and looking only at the floor or the screens above. I take my place amongst the lepers, mentally renaming this place in their honour and unable to keep the smile from my face. It’s an anti-smoking ad if ever I saw one, a group of people exiled and ashamed in a room where the level of comfort is a step down from the rest of the airport. Go ahead and smoke, it seems to say, but do it in here. And never forget that the interior decoration and atmosphere in this place was inspired by your lungs. Welcome to the Leper Lounge.

Though the plane is due to take off at twelve o’clock, it doesn’t even get a gate until twenty minutes beforehand. By the time I’ve made my way there, it’s clear that there’s going to be a delay. There are surprisingly few passengers, but the annoyance is clear on the faces of all as the time stretches out. Five minutes, then ten, then twenty. At almost one o’clock, they tell us that there’s a problem with the plane, that they’re running tests and we should be ready to go shortly.

“That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,” says a woman standing beside me.

I turn and see that she’s addressing her travelling companion. They’re both smiling.

“I’ve always wanted to fly five-thousand miles on a plane that might be broken,” I say.

“Gallows humour,” he says, and we all manage a laugh, if not a conversation.

By half-past-one we’re on the plane, and by the time two o’clock rolls around, we’re finally sitting pretty at the end of the runway. My worries about wanting a window seat but hating being trapped beside other people have turned to joy. Not only do I have my window seat, I have it in a row by myself. The plane is no more than half-full, the passengers spread out and comfortable. It’s another good omen, and it sustains me through the part of flying I hate the most: take-off.

I quite enjoy travelling by air. I have the same fears as most about high velocity death from the sky, but on the whole, the experience takes my breath away. There’s something about being so high up and moving at such a speed that strikes me as unreal. To watch the world getting smaller beneath you, to see the clouds below instead of above, to understand the patterns of road and path and building, then of town and city, that appeals to the way my mind works. Flying gives me a sense of something larger that I can never quite grasp, a sense of the world around me that extends beyond the usual petty concerns. Before I get to that point, though, I have to get through the heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed terror of sudden and massive acceleration. It drives you back into your seat, amazes and frightens you all at the same time. Before you have time to even process how fast you’re moving, the plane is tilting back, its nose lifting into the air. There is a brief feeling of weightlessness that is so horribly wrong that it makes you feel sick, and then you’re no longer on the ground, and it starts to be okay.

All good on Virgin Atlantic flight VS007. I’m a little annoyed that it’s cloudy. After ten minutes or so, I can no longer enjoy the view from the window. But the in-flight entertainment is a hell of a lot more sophisticated than I’d been expecting, offering everything from movies and TV shows to music and even some basic videogames. I explore my movie options and decide to take the lighter route. I really don’t need anything deep and meaningful at this point. A wise selection, as it turns out. Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy is much funnier than it has any right to be. Stupid, senseless, and very silly. Just what I needed. Personal favourite quote: “Go back to your home on Whore Island!”

After that, a surprisingly good dinner leaves me tired enough to stretch out across my seats and go to sleep. I wake up with seven hours of the flight left, change position, then go back to sleep. I wake up again with four hours left. This time I sit up and watch the first few minutes of Shaolin Soccer, about half of Spiderman 2, and a very funny episode of Scrubs. I’m feeling fatigued at this point, and my concentration is nowhere. It’s hard to tell if I’m tired because I haven’t had enough sleep or because I’ve had too much. In the end, I lie down and doze off again, mostly because I’m too bored to do anything else.

I wake up and look at the screen I’ve left tracking my journey. There is just over an hour to go and the map says we’re over Utah. At some point, one of the stewardesses has pulled the plastic shade down over my window. I sit up, blinking the sleep out of my eyes and processing just how wasted I feel. Between time zones, there are no specifics, and it’s hard to know just exactly what time it is. The map shows us passing into –8 territory, which means I’m now on California time and it’s technically a little after half-past four in the afternoon on the 19th November. My body and brain insist that this is not the case, that it’s now the 20th. This is the first and most confusing part of jetlag. It’s not the worst, that comes later, but it is the most disorienting.

Expecting nothing but the thick layer of cloud that was an ever-present before I went to sleep, I push up the shade to see if I can get a look at America. What I find steals my breath.

“Holy shit,” I whisper. For the first time it’s real. I mean, I knew I was doing it, but it didn’t feel like something that was really happening until I pulled up that shade and saw the mountains rising up from an endless, rocky wasteland spreading for miles in all directions.

Sunset over Utah or California or wherever the hell this is, some formidable terrain silhouetted against a backdrop of deep ochre and orange so intense that I have to narrow my tired eyes against its glare. This is my first sighting of America, and while it means less than the first time I lay eyes on Jennifer or even the incredible vista I’ll see on Interstate 15, on a long, sloping curve leading gently down towards the town of Baker, I feel as though this vision is burned on my retinas for all time.

Now that it has me, California just won’t quit. From the mountains to the towns and cities, we descend with the night. I watch the lights of civilisation flicker into life, first in isolated pockets, then in ever-growing masses. I have my nose pressed to the cool glass like a child, eyes wide and fascinated as a dream rolls by beneath me, as we drop towards the ground and I can make out individual roads, then baseball and football fields. I blink again, this time because I have a lump in my throat and tears are pricking my eyes. I did this. I took a chance on something or nothing, and even if it turns out to be the latter, I was here. I was on a plane falling lazily down towards Los Angeles as the day faded into darkness and the night awoke with pinpricks of light that became a conflagration of life that was an affirmation of everything I’d dreamed of. I was here.

“Sir?”

I drag my face from the window and see a steward looking down on me. I wonder what he must see and what he must think. I feel exhausted, sitting here with my morning hair and my slept-in clothes and my disoriented brain. My vision is swimming with stillborn tears and I’m pressing my lips tightly together, trying to keep them from quivering.

“You need to put your seatbelt on, sir,” he says, and gives me his mechanical steward smile.

Right. We’re landing. Seatbelt. Practicality. I’m meeting Jennifer in just a few minutes time. I’ve been overwhelmed before I’ve even reached the evening’s main event. I see visions of myself ending tonight on my knees someplace, staring up at the sky and crying my eyes out. Need to get a grip on myself.

“Can I use the bathroom?” I ask the steward.

He purses his lips.

“I’m meeting a girl,” I say.

This finally draws a genuine smile from the man, and he nods. “Better make it quick,” he says.

Five minutes later I’m back in my seat, feeling composed and about as ready as I’ll ever be. We’re into the final descent now, and the pain in my ears is stealing most of my attention. I’m still gazing out of the window, but that initial awe is receding. I’m thinking less of what I’m doing and more of why I’m doing it. I’m thinking of the girl that’s waiting for me, of how this is going to go. It’s funny, really. I’ve had a year, maybe more, of feeling numb and empty. Now every emotion is like a landslide. Fatigue washes over me like a tide and I actually have to force my eyes open. The plane touches down, slows every bit as massively as it accelerated. The captain makes his final speech and we taxi to the terminal. I grab the back of the seat in front of me and drag myself to my feet, reaching up for my bags. I join the line of shuffling passengers.

This is it, I think to myself. Oh, fuck me, this is it. Here we go.

18.11.04

Words And Wishes

"I hope that everybody can find a little flame. Me, I say my prayers then I just light myself on fire, and I walk out on the wire once again."

I can't sleep. I can't eat. Even breathing feels forced. I think about tomorrow and my stomach turns over. My hands shake. I can't remember ever feeling this nervous and excited.

I said my last internet goodnight to Jennifer yesterday, and it was then that I finally realised this was happening, that I was no longer dreaming or fantasising about things that might be. Tomorrow I go further than I've ever gone from familiar places. I follow whims and thoughts and strange connections. I follow my heart.

That's what really scares me, truth be told. I took a lot of foolish and false knowledge from my teenage years, but one of the worst legacies of my dysfunctional family and upbringing is that I'm really not sure that I know how to love. Not that I don't have it in me, of course I do, but it's been a long time since I felt this young, a lot of years spent at cynical distance from friends and lovers and family. I've become used to those barriers and that distance. I've become comfortable with being a person that almost always stands alone. Given the way I find the vast majority of people, I long ago decided that I was most satisfied with my own company.

And now I find I want to be with someone, want to be with her so badly that I'm travelling all that way just for seven days of her time. I don't even know what those seven days will bring. I get this feeling that something's gone wrong somewhere, that I've ended up in one of those stories that requires a knight in shining armour. I want to wave my arms at whoever's writing this little tale and say, "Hey, turkey, you've got the wrong guy! I don't do romance, not like this."

Then I realise that I'm writing it, co-writing it, actually, and I start feeling scared again, the part of me that is so sure that everything must end badly wanting to find a way to get out of this whole situation, to just burrow beneath the covers and hide until it's gone.

But there's no turning back now, and I wouldn't even if I could. I think of all those cliches about only having one life and living it to the fullest. I think of all the shit I've gone through. Mostly, I think about the time I've been alone, and I realise how long it really is and how much it hurts. I think of Jennifer, and of how the distance we've already covered is far greater than five-and-a-half-thousand miles. I think about all these things, and I know I have to take this chance. Right now, it's everything.

So this is it. No notes for a little while. Thank you for the words and the wishes. I look forward to the stories I'll be telling you all in a week's time, and I hope that they'll have happy endings.

Goodnight.

16.11.04

Sleep Is For The Weak

"You've got cobwebs on your halo. In the closet there are skeletons lined up ready to talk. And they shine."

More trouble sleeping. I despise being unemployed. It should be fun to take some time away from routine, but it's not working out that way. With nothing to get out of bed for, I feel bored and can't find the motivation to use the extra time I suddenly have on my hands to do something constructive. Write a novel, for example. But when I can't even work up the enthusiasm to pen the 3,000 word final chapter of a novella I've enjoyed writing, I'm pretty sure a commitment to 70,000 or so is beyond me.

The idea of The Novel is really starting to bother me. Seems like it's in the back of my mind all the time now, which is one of the reasons why I'm finding it so hard to sleep. I lie there and put my characters in theoretical situations, getting to know them so that when I finally have to bring them to life, the words will write themselves. That's when writing's the most fun, I think, that moment when you realise the world you've created has come to life and you're as much a passenger as your readers. I love it, and I love writing. That's not the problem. My life's the problem, and not even in a bad way. It just feels like there are too many other opportunities I don't want to miss by locking myself away and doing the fingertip boogie over this dirty old keyboard for a couple of months.

All that said, I'm getting frustrated with having this particular endeavour stuck inside my head, and there will come a time - probably in the next month or two - when the blog will slow right down and I'll stop replying to my e-mails. That's when you'll know I've finally pulled my finger out. It'll happen, and when I quit putting it off, I bet I'll sleep like a fucking baby.

Right now, though, at 2:24 in the morning on November 16th, the two things I'm feeling most are nervous and insecure. It's just a couple of days before I fly to California for no other reason than a strange and sweet connection with a girl I still barely know. When you think about it, there are only so many things you can find out about a person in three months of chat, e-mail, and telephone conversations. Those things were enough for me to tempt further debt and buy a plane ticket I really can't afford, but all I can think about now are the possibilities, one of which is a cataclysmic crash and burn.

No, not the plane. Don't even think that. There are only so many horrific outcomes a boy can consider in one day, and ending up plummeting towards a fiery death at about a million miles an hour hasn't even made the list. I laugh in the face of your morbid speculation.

But...what if she doesn't like me in person? What if she doesn't fancy me? I'm not a beautiful, well-hung stud or anything, y'know, just a tall redhead carrying a couple of extra pounds and staring out of a face that folk only usually fall in love with once they get to know me. I've never been one for getting worried about my appearance, but then I've never started to fall for a person before meeting them either. It's a new situation, and I've developed all kinds of new neuroses to go with it.

Ultimately, I know I'll be okay. I wouldn't have bought the ticket in the first place if I thought otherwise. I mean, I have a webcam, she's seen my face (and that's all, you filthy perverts). Even if the reality doesn't turn out to be what she thought it would be, I know more than enough to feel sure we'll be friends. I guess what really horrifies me is the thought that I'll end up hooked on her while she just wants to be friends. Or vice-versa, though there isn't much room in my worry-worn head for that particular scenario. Christ, you've seen that girl's eyes, right? Yeah, me too. At the moment, I see them just about every time I close mine. With a future that involves staring into those, it's no wonder I can't sleep.

But I'm still worried about it. In fact, I'm fucking terrified. Sure, things going wrong would be bad. But what about things going right? Maybe y'all are international jetsetters with heaps of cash and lovers in sixteen different countries. Sure sounds like it from the way you keep telling me not to worry. Don't worry!? It's the other side of the fucking world! five-and-a-half-thousand miles! Seven time zones! You think I do shit like this all the time!? On a whim!? For a girl I've never met!? Aaargh!

Okay, deep breaths. Enough speculation. For good or ill, I am doing the five-and-a-half thousand mile, seven time zone thing, and I'm doing it for Jennifer. I don't know what's going to happen, Jennifer doesn't know what's going to happen, and you don't know what's going to happen. But whatever it is, it'll happen in just a few days time.

I repeat: Aaargh!

NB: Now that I've removed the countdown for crimes against loading time, those of you who are interested in keeping track of the upcoming meeting should take note of the following: I land at LAX at 23:25 GMT on November 19th. Taking luggage retrieval and customs into account, I'd imagine that I'll be meeting the lovely Jennifer at approximately 00:00 GMT on the 20th. That's 16:00 on the 19th Pacific Time. The rest of you will have to do the math.

13.11.04

Small Lives And Smaller Thoughts

"Lately I just can't seem to believe. Discard my friends to change the scenery. It meant the world to hold a bruising faith. But now it's just a matter of grace."

Waiting for the 16:18 from Luton Airport Parkway in an early, eerie dusk. The afternoon has barely had enough time to take its first breath before being stifled by night. I'm tired and sober on platform 1, the only chemicals in my system the last dregs of a sleeping pill I took several hours ago to still the tides of my mind. I'm dressed for winter, standing tall against a freezing wind in coat and hat and gloves, letting it water my eyes and numb my face, shivering a little and watching the chained signs swing back and forth, protesting in squeaks and creaks that sound, to my ears, like the anguished cries of mechanical birds with failing batteries. Beneath that, fragments of conversation carry over and past me, snatches of words and phrases that interrupt and overlap until they might be a single nonsense monologue, a stream-of-consciousness poem about small lives and smaller thoughts. Every now and again, an automated, disembodied voice announces the next train on platform whatever, apologises for a delay, reminds us not to leave our luggage unattended. If it told us that this was the end of it all, not a one of these huddled, anonymous commuters would bat an eyelid.

I walked out of another job. At around eight o'clock on Monday night, I strolled out from behind the bar, made my way calmly to Drone-Director Kevin's office, and informed him I was leaving at ten and wouldn't be back. I can only do these mind-numbing, soul-fucking jobs for so long. I left at the promised time, jumped on a train to N's for a few days, and here I am, trying not to think and anticipating the warmth of the train. Ahead lie explanations and recriminations, misunderstandings and arguments. My family are never going to understand the way I am. Standing here, staring up at the screen and seeing the letters and numbers as nothing more than luminescent curves and lines, I realise that I'm not going to face it this time, that I'm going to lie. I'm too tired for the same conversations about the same things. All I want to do is make it through the next week. I don't think that's too much to ask for. Just let me stumble through and make it to that plane. Whatever happens, things will change. Whatever happens, I'll be renewed, and I'll come back either sure that I was wrong about a lot of things or hardened in my convictions and ambitions. I want the former, want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. But one of the definining characteristics of being able to stand on your own two feet is that the latter will be enough to bring change.

But even here, standing amidst the squealing signs and the shivering travellers, watching the lights of the approaching train dazzle night's infancy, I trust my instincts and the warm nervousness in my stomach. That flight is close now, close enough that I have to tap my toes and wiggle my fingers and grind my teeth. I think of California, of first words and first kisses, and as the train draws up beside me, the sound of its engine finally drowning out the disquieting symphony of nowhere, I look up and catch sight of my reflection in a dull, streaked window.

I'm smiling.

3.11.04

Early Morning Update

"The genetically vicious nature of presidential campaigns in America is too obvious to argue with, but some people call it fun, and I am one of them. Election Day - especially a presidential election - is always a wild and terrifying time for politics junkies, and I am one of those, too. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to it."

7:15am in the UK, and I've been up all night watching the election results come in and talking to Jennifer and Jammie about the ramifications of what we were seeing. At the time of writing, though nothing is certain, it looks as though George W. Bush is going back to The White House. Ohio is the key state, and while in some quarters (NBC, for example) it's already been called in favour of Bush, it looks as though the Democrats are going to dispute the final result until all absentee ballots have been counted, a result Kerry's spokespeople have claimed will swing the state in his favour.

But while NBC have GWB sitting pretty on 269 electoral votes, just one away from the magical 270 needed to win, CNN (who I've stuck with throughout the night) are refusing to call it either way. They are holding with Bush on 249 and Kerry on 211.

It's been an interesting night. I've stayed up to watch a British election unfold before, but never the US equivalent. To be honest, from the figures I've been seeing, Bush has never really looked like losing. Of course, these things can be deceptive, but I haven't yet shifted from my belief that he's going to be re-elected.

That said, I have to admit to having a certain sinking feeling tonight. While I've predicted a Bush victory since way back when, and while my recent political essays have almost demanded that things unfold as they're currently unfolding, watching the results come in was a nauseating experience. In the end, I guess, no matter how cynical I claim to be, what I'd really like to see is some kind of justice done. Sure, maybe my long-term predictions will turn out to be as accurate as my short-term hunches...but then maybe not. Part of me, a large part of me, wants to go to bed and wake up tomorrow to find that a resurgent Kerry has taken Ohio and found himself enough votes to get to The White House.

But the analytical, logical part of my mind refuses this, and insists that the only real hope for any kind of Democracy lies in the popular vote, which is as close as it has ever been. My big hope, friends, is that these are the figures that tell the true story, numbers that will translate into outrage if Bush emerges triumphant, which it looks like he will.

But apathy...oh, apathy...remains our biggest enemy. These are thoughts that fill me with dread, and it's too late to go articulating them at this ridiculous hour of the morning. I'll be back tomorrow night, with a diary of the election-watch, an analysis of whatever happens between now and then, some snippets of my Messenger conversations tonight, and at least one instance of your favourite blogger publically speculating that Dick Cheney takes it in the mouth from the President of the United States Of America.

Until then, remember that brown is the new black, The Grudge is the new The Ring, and Ohio is the new Florida.

Sweet dreams.