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Piss off
It's 3am. Not normally a time you would be loading the washing machine.
I went with Wilma to her appointment with the alcoholism clinic. There's normally a three-month waiting list to get referred -- this is how pissed we all are in Lancaster -- but she's in a bad way and her doctor has fast-tracked her an early first appointment, which consisted of being her given a bottle of Librium pills and a chart of how she's got to dose herself with them.
Back at mine, we had a couple of bottles of wine, the last hurrah before she has to stop drinking at midnight. Everything's going fine and we're chatting away. She's the size of a studio flat but she has got quite nice tits, and with a preamble I cannot recall, she takes her top off and I start fondling them and sliding my hands inside her black bra. We both enjoy it and it gets a bit kissy.
We go to bed, where we do not have sex. I don't fancy her, and I have this idiotic but tenacious idea in my mind that I don't want to be unfaithful to Wendy. The knowledge that we will never have sex does nothing to dislodge my pointless fidelity. Wilma and I are sexlessly spooning, and I am nodding off, when I notice that peculiar form of warm wetness that comes from embedded piss. I am outraged that she has done that, on my futon mattress. I get up, wash myself, change my clothes, and stomp off downstairs. I write her a note.
Wilma. You have pissed in my beautiful lovely futon mattress. You are never coming round here again, ever. You just piss piss piss. On my floor I can cope with, but in my bed, NO. I will always be your friend but I am never ever going to have you in my house again.
I sat in my kitchen, twisting my clasped hands in resentment, then thought "why the fuck am I sitting here?" I went up to my piss-scented bedroom and roused her and told her she's got to leave and that she's never coming back. "You've overstepped the mark, you really have Wilma." Not a word of apology, but "where are my clothes?"
You can't wash futon mattresses, part of the reasoning being that you're supposed to not fucking piss on them. They're heavy enough without the addition of a couple of pounds' worth of a friend's urine, but I manhandled it down from the second floor to the cellar and out into the yard, where I've hooked it over the line.
Earlier, in the pub, Lancaster's Most Unconvincing Transsexual was droning on about the death of her (his?) former boyfriend, with that draining expectation that others are going to be interested in a long recitation of the details of the distress caused by a stranger's demise. Vic was equally boring about some ludicrous scheme to grow and sell pot, into which he has wasted two grand. I was reminded of something that a man in a pub in Glasgow said to me the other week: "They see people like you as easy meat."
No-one was listening to anyone. I was trying to tell the story about Wilma pissing on my kitchen floor, and never got to the end of it, constantly interrupted with the immediacy of the drunkard's chat. "Oh, are you off?" said Unconvincing Transsexual. "Yes, you're not listening to me, so I can't be arsed. I'll see you soon."
I'm tired of all this drunken, pubby, mutual self-examination. I'm tired of my own voice and that of my friends. I want to go to Newcastle and do this course and be busy and tested, and make sociable, tasty meals for me and Kim, and amuse myself at night by making my stories about unzipping Wendy more elaborate, and to write over-sexualised postcards to her and then rip them up in the morning.
The application for the CELTA course which will further such hopes is quite difficult. The grammar and the vocabulary sections are easy enough with a bit of Googling to aid my extensive knowledge of English, but the pedagogical sections are more testing. "How would you teach the difference between 'skinny' and 'thin', bearing in mind that your students' command of English is limited?"
4 comments
white wine vinegar then baking soda then vacuum?
I’m not sure how that would convey the distinction.
So what does this mean? You’ll never have sex with Wendy but you don’t want to be unfaithful to her, ergo, you’ll never have sex again?! You might as well be married, mate.
This blog is, hands down, the best writing out here.
Ha ha :) Marriage is one of the very few mistakes in life that I have never made, thank goodness.
I suppose at some point I’ll give up with Wendy. But it’s very difficult. She is absolutely surpassingly beautiful, fabulous company, witty, and intelligent. Very inconvenient.
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looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person
M / 60 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].
"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.
WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.
There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic
I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008
The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek
Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner
La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes
Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to
mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards
the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity
would be able to use the word again.
John Whale
One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010
The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011
Rummage in my drawers
The Comfort of Strangers
23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
16.1.19: Further pruning
If your comment box looks like this, I'm afraid I sometimes can't be bothered with all that palarver just to leave a comment.
63 mago
Another Angry Voice
the asshat lounge
Clutter From The Gutter
Crinklybee
Eryl Shields Ink
Exile on Pain Street
Fat Man On A Keyboard
gairnet provides: press of blll defunct, but retained for its quality
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
The Joy of Bex
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
The Most Difficult Thing Ever
Quillette
Strange Flowers
Trailer Park Refugee
Wonky Words
"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006
5:4Bristol New Music
Desiring Progress Collection of links only
NewMusicBox
The Rambler
Resonance FM
Sequenza 21
Sound and Music
Talking Musicology defunct, but retained