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I like girls who are into drugs
After I thought Trina and I split up, I went trawling again and was contacted by Donna, the pharmaceutical marketing manager, (ha ha -- the irony) and we arranged to meet up in Glasgow in a couple of weeks' time.
Then on Thursday, she said she had a weekend free and asked if I had any plans. I said I was going to the soul festival at Morecambe, and she said she'd drive up. Fine. Trina's away birdwatching with a friend. Oops. Morals? Over there...
About 12ish Saturday, Erica rang and asked me what I was doing and I said I was meeting this friend from down south. Donna turned up five minutes later so after a decent enough interval, I suggested we go down to meet Erica and sit outside in the loveliest pub garden in Lancaster. I'm not really interested in this intense coquetry à deux, over a meal I can't afford, trying to artificially cook up one's emotions.
Straight away, Erica started an amusing but provoking response towards Donna, who had said that she lives in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. "Sounds shit to me. God, I wouldn't like that." Donna worked a very slow way through two halves of cider; the unbridgeable gap between regular and occasional drinkers was silently laid bare.
"Yes," said Erica. "Italian Looking Woman was asking me if you were single." Please, Erica, no. "I did toy with the idea of saying that you were single but thought I'd better not." I tried to laugh it off, before changing the subject.
We went back to my house. She is an exciting kisser, quite aggressive, forcing my mouth wide open, which drew out my own tendencies in that direction. Out of bed though, she's pleasant. Family, tennis, work trips abroad, her sons, who are doing well at University, and how the house is a conversion from an old maltings.
As quickly as I could, I ushered us to Morecambe where there was a soul festival on. A great many people I knew were there, coming and going at our table. I felt at home and confident. My friend's gorgeous ex -- aka Latino Hellcat -- turned up and embraced me, rubbing some of her status off on me. I made some hints to Donna about ways of banishing any tiredness she might be feeling but she didn't take me up on it, nor was she interested in the poppers we were sharing. But we danced for hours, and we didn't leave early. I sometimes attract these middle class women who want fucking but don't give me the excitement that would make me want to do that.
Back home I surreptitiously texted Kim, who had asked how it was going. "Went out dancing till 3 with a big gang of us. Great kisser. Bit dull otherwise. Overall... BIG FUCKING MISTAKE."
Next afternoon we sat in the sun drinking Prosecco and listening to the DJs, with Erica and a couple of her friends and her husband, and Kirsty and her boyf, while my daughters sunbathed or played with a ball. Donna left, checking that we were still going to Glasgow, and I went for a pint and to phone Kim, before the final session, which featured some fine semi-nude Scottish DJ action.
This evening, Erica rang. "I'm just ringing to apologise for putting you on the spot a bit in the pub. I should have twigged you were up to something with Donna, so sorry about that."
"Looby, she's not for you. She's really nice and while you were away [buying more Prosecco] she opened up quite a lot -- a bit too much in fact, about her divorce and her surgery and everything, which is a bit much when you're spannered -- and she said she's never had a first date like this and she's rung her friend and told her fab it was, and how she never does things like this with her friends. But I'd be careful if I were you. She seems to be investing a lot in it."
Erica suggested I tell her -- before we go to Glasgow -- that I'm not interested in a long-distance relationship. Which is true. I don't want hours and hours on a train, endless fiddling with diaries, investing too much in every meeting and not being able to cancel with hours to go if you went out till silly o'clock the night before. "Tell her there's nothing to stop her coming over for dancey nights, but that it won't work as a relationship with her living so far away. Then at least you've told her early on. But don't keep her in the dark for too long."
Kim's advice: Throw your cards in with Trina. You're having a great time with her for the time being. There's no chance of it lasting for ever, seeing as eventually, the gap in feelings will emerge again. But until then, enjoy what you're doing with her.
I'm working at the European elections this week. It's fucking knackering, it really is, spread over four or five days, but it goes a long way towards my ring-fenced contribution to me and Kirsty and the girls' holiday in France.
You're only supposed to have my job if you've got a car but I've always roped people in to help me. This afternoon, we had to pick up the polling booth, ballot boxes, and the several kilos of election paraphernalia from the Town Hall. Erica's mum, who usually does this for me, couldn't make it because she was taking her friend to radiotherapy in Blackpool, so I rang Francesca. Francesca is a top girl. I must think of a way of thanking her.
She turned up with an aged mother trying her best to be polite in the front, and a menagerie in the back. She'd just taken her mother to a death postponement appointment at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. What a fine spectacle we must have created for the Town Hall staff, who watched us drive off with Francesca and her demented mother in the front, and a budgie, two dachshunds, a polling booth, and me, in the back.
In other news, the rectangular black glasses, brunette, belted khaki mac, flatties, tight jeans -- Italian nurse, hasn't got back to me about the room. I don't understand women. Why would a woman like that not want to live in a kicked-in house with a grubby bath and no shower with two men old enough to be her father?
6 comments
Right… I drafted this, had Erica look over it first, then sent it.
…I also, in the midst of this, and especially after chatting to Erica and looking forward to Glasgow, must say, before we get too involved, that I don’t want a long distance relationship. It was fab at the weekend and it’ll be fab in Glasgow too I hope, but I made this mistake a few years ago with someone from L—, ignoring my gut instincts that L— is too far away. Of course, it didn’t work. I don’t want hours on trains and fiddling with diaries and investing too much in long-anticipated meetings. I just want someone I can ring up and meet in ten minutes, tonight, tomorrow, whatever.
That doesn’t of course preclude any nights on the dancefloor and special weekends up here or down your way or anywhere else, – but I think it’s important I tell you that Donnatown to Lancashire is too far (for me, anyway) to get really involved with anyone.
Hope you understand and that you’d still like to go to Glasgow.
looby X
That was very diplomatic and human of you. A younger man would have strung her along with false hope and occasional lays.
Re: your response to my comment in the previous post. I’m afraid I have to disagree with you for once. Paying people a social wage for doing nothing at all (if I understand it correctly) is a terrible idea. Who would work if they didn’t have to? You’d create a nation of layabouts. I’m no raging capitalist, but that sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
I don’t think it would. Most people are not naturally idle. The ones that are, well, we can afford to support them. In an advanced and humane society, idleness should be an option that one could choose without stigma. You could set the wage at a level which would support a fairly modest existence, thus acting as an incentive to do extra work to fund a more expensive one.
It would also eliminate the fear and anxiety that people suffer from losing their jobs. It would make employers work harder to make their jobs more attractive, since no-one would *need* a job. It would end some of the spiteful drivel of bile aimed at the poor, who are expected to work to uniquely high moral standards.
And if we followed Voyou Désoeuvré’s suggestion, it would be set at a million pounds. (It’s a serious article, btw – I’m just trying to lure you in).
I feel I should stand up for the younger man, Exile on Pain Street.
A younger man would have used half the characters. LOL.
I couldn’t help but notice a picture of a woman thrusting her substantial chest into the face of another. What I took from that: br–sts. [illegal content found - comment not allowed]
Semi-n-de [illegal content found - comment not allowed] Scottish DJ action. That’s the kind of action we all want, I reckon.
I made this comment because I didn’t want to be one of those long-time no-comment lurkers. Was it really worth it, after all?
Brighton wishes it was Lancaster.
Hello SHC. Thank you and welcome! I’ve turned the anti-spam thing off. What kind of crackpot blacklist bans the word “breasts"?
It’s a lovely picture isn’t it?
I’m so glad I no longer live in Brighton. It’s unfriendly, pretentious, socially divided, impossibly expensive, with a rootless, transient population, living under a permanent grey sky. Crap beach as well, not half as nice as Morecambe’s.
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