Sparkle dust has many attractive qualities, but it doesn't always improve one's moral character. Reading back the unexpurgated version of my last post made me wince.

However, when I re-read something I've written off the cuff which holds an uncomfortable mirror up to my venality, I hope that I could deploy the unpleasantness of my reflection as a catalyst that might drag me a little closer to decency. I have a poor moral character, but I'm too lazy to do much to improve it. "I don't know how you get away with being you," Kim said once.

I'm into the second volume of Knausgård. Never has such a prolix novel sequence been so involving. Several bloggers must have written more than could be published in three thousand pages, but you wouldn't read them all in one go -- although certain ones, like Parma Violet Tea, must be read in their entirety in order to experience stupid moments when you almost feel in love with her appreciate the structure of its narrative; and others, like the incomparable On The Rocks, deserve to be read ab initio because it would be like putting the needle down in media res, and you wouldn't notice the literary device he uses to enchain his entries. And there are many "entries" there.

It's a sultry blog, drenched. He spends time in Africa, gets into fights in shanty bars in lawless cities in what I surmise might be Nigeria or Ivory Coast although I don't want to know where. Sex is an element in the chemistry of the air he breathes and he it uses to talk. It reminds me of my time in Funchal, in a contentedly sexless relationship with Kirsty that would never happen now.

I loved the humidity of Madeira, the camaraderie of the locals in our struggles up hills. "Pega o ferro!" ("use the handrail"), an elderly woman commanded me once, as I sweated up the long set of steps that was a shortcut to my flat. Here, in Preston, drinking again, spending the lodger's money, I like the runels of sweat in my skin creases, as warm as piss. I flap my shirt as I go to the bar, but it's just for show, my effort into making us all feel together.

Now, I want to fuck and fuck and fuck. I want to fuck Wendy. I want her to fuck me. I want to stroke my fingers into the rills of her sweat. I want the salt of her cunt. I want my eyes to sting with it, nuzzling my mouth into her. I want us to fuck when it's too hot to fuck. No, you can't take off your dress. None of this will happen, and I can't resign myself to anyone else.

Fuck it, let's send this post to her, see what happens.

---

Update, Sunday 10am. Wendy texts. "...and I love you too, somehow." What is going on?

Wilma came round yesterday with a litre of port, three different cheeses, Mozzarella and chillies, some sort of spicy olives, and a bottle of red. She'd stolen it all. We drank our way through it. We talked about sex. She'd had a useless lover recently. "'Play with me', I said -- and he didn't know what to do."

I said that I feel like I've got this drive, some of which is in sex, but it's also in art. "I wish I did," she said. "Well you won't feel like that will you? You're a depressive," I replied. I like Wilma. I can say what I think.

I'm off my tits. Its ten to eleven in the morning, I'm on my second pint, and haven't been to bed. In the pub, I've just extricated myself from Mick, whose words of wisdom you can see in the righthand column there. He's a cantakerous curmudgeon, one of those men you don't want to like but end up asking to your table. He doesn't know my name. "Are you still at the hospital?" he said. No idea where he's got that idea from, so I said "Yes, you know, just jogging along." I've never worked at the hospital. I know his full name. He knows neither part of mine, because he's neither interested nor observant.

The ship has docked and unloaded a lovely cargo. When people talk about sparkle dust, they talk about it as if it's one drug. Well, no, there are different types and this one is exactly what I like. I suppose it must be a consequence of vasodilation, but fuck the science, it makes me feel sensual, as if I need any encouragement in that respect. Everything is brighter, the trees are more vivid, and the birdsong is more sibilant. Across from me, two men who are trying to be friends but are more interested in their phones, are tap-tap-tapping, heads down. God grant me never to have friends like that.

Me and Trina went out in Preston yesterday and got pissed. We had arranged to go to the Southport Food and Drink Festival today and I rather stupidly said that I had also arranged to go out with Wendy and Kitty and daughters and perhaps I could come over a bit later. Oh fuck, bad idea. Edited highlights: "I have now accepted that you've moved on. Your obsession with Wendy has ruined our friendship. And please don't contact me now as I'm going to get ratted and you know not to go there. Even my autistically introverted ex husband can't be bothered to respond." So much fucking drama, can't be bothered.

I was absolutely coursing with sex desire for Wendy this morning, and managed to keep my hands off my phone, if not my cock. Me and Kitty and her are meeting up in an hour or so. I want to fuck her so much, and that's never going to happen. I want her wearing nothing but her dresses. We can go through all of them, my cock stuck in her as I gaze at her and run my hands slowly along her gorgeous body. I want to fuck her so much.

I remember what Donna said the morning after we were in the same position. Silent, me gazing at her, raking her with my eyes. "I love how you look at me. I feel adored." I want Wendy to feel adored, but she doesn't want me to adore her.

To Morecambe for the weekend. Me and Trina went to a soul and house music festival there and stayed over for two nights. It was a sociable, chatty, dancey weekend, spoiled only on the Saturday night, when some lech took an evening off from cutting out pictures from the Sunday Sport to pin up in his bedsit to go crawling over Trina and a couple of other girls. He was coming up to her from, behind and then running his hands over her, as if she'd be grateful of the attention. It was horrible to witness, a throwback to old nightclub behaviour.

After the first time he did it, I said "if he tries it again, let's just start snogging on the dancefloor." He did do -- twice, and so did we, but he wasn't to be outdone and came back for a third go, at which point we went and sat down. I'd had some mdma by this point and once something like that happens, you can never recover the mood. Around 1am, I suggested we leave. I felt very uneasy with having this groping, controlling, slimeball of a man in the same room as me and Trina, and I was glad that she left the place with me.

We went back to the hotel, I fulminated about him. We had a couple of glasses of port and put some music on. And then, I confess, we had sex. And I'd been doing so well, for months. Wrong wrong wrong. I texted Kitty about it. "I know it sounds utterly stupid, but I feel I've been unfaithful to Wendy."

Sunday afternoon was great though and repaired everything. We sat and danced and drank outside the Midland Hotel with a couple of people we know. Erica and some of her friends turned up and a compliant boyfriend ran to the nearby Aldi for supplies.

---

On Tuesday we went to Llandudno. It's one of the the most attractive, carefully planned and unspoilt early Victorian towns I've ever seen, with an elegance and sense of civic pride that very few northern resorts retain. We went up Great Orme Head. I walked, Trina took the funicular railway, and I got to the summit, and a pint of Welsh Gold from Great Orme Brewery, before her.

Back in town, and the wrong side of a few more pints, she started obsessing about me seeing Wendy today, dragging the mood down. If I could have left her there and got the train home I would have. "I know you so well," she kept saying -- which makes me inwardly clench my fists -- "and your feelings about Wendy are different to what you feel about Kitty or Kim." I didn't admit it but she is right. We were rescued by one of those fellow elderly holidaying couples that one always encounters in seaside pubs.

---

Back in Lancaster, I was itching to see Wendy. This morning, I made a salad and some scones for us to take up to the park. She turned up in my favourite dress of them all, the green one. She looked utterly gorgeous, and I told her so. I texted Kitty. "Wendy looks incredible! Help me!!"

We found our seat on a rocky outcrop, and threw the ball repeatedly for the dog. A loony circled us from time to time; we'd probably taken her seat. She made a pig's ear of opening the Prosecco and it frothed all over my trousers. We talked and smoked some kush in her vape thing which doesn't need any tobacco. Talked and talked and talked, had some speed. Bought another bottle of wine from the cafe. "Do you like Satie?" she said, and put his Gnossienne no. 1 on from her phone. The birds and the frollicking dog joined in the soundscape. It was magical and close.

I walked her as far as where she goes off to pick up her daughter from school. "I love you and fancy you very much. I love spending time with you and talking with you and everything. I love you Wendy x".

"I love you too petal. I really feel we're made of the self same mettle. I recognise myself and I like it."

Back at home, drunk, stoned, and honestly, feeling in love with her, I wanted to write something longer. Put it as an email, with the title of this post, since "Edna O'Brien" -- whose works we both like -- is used as code between us for something; then decided to write it on an arty postcard instead, and sent it to her in the post.

I love you from the bottom and selfish and most base parts of my heart, the West End of Morecambe bit, the fuck I can't stop looking at you undressingly bit, the let's have more bit, all the way up, via this afternoon, which is a lovely halfway, a form of joy in fact, all the way up to the novels and the refinements of culture that are worth every effort in preserving. I want it all, and I want it all with you. I love you. I love you in the birdsong and Satie's discordant notes and his dreaming music, and the sound of [the dog] rolling and cracking the branches. I love you in the mess of our bottles and spillages. I love you in the changing look of that tree. I love you in the park and I love you now.

Tonight, an email arrives from her, a photograph of the frontispiece of William Boyd's Sweet Caress. It's a made-up quote from a character in the novel.

I pray secularly, to myself. Please, please, please, let this be my love affair. Please let us be in love. Please let me have this. Please.

What does she mean, "I love you"? I wish I knew what she means. She never makes any physical approaches to me. It's her caress I want. I long to be touched and stroked and kissed by her. What is this "love" of hers then, that needs no physical expression?

4am and I am on my way to wearing myself out over Wendy, and trying to keep away from my phone. Last night, before going to sleep, I texted her. "Night night, you wordsmith. I wish I could be next to you now, slowly undressing you and stroking you with my fingertips, my lips, my eyes, and all of me. See you Friday x"

It really doesn't help. It rams home to me my sexual frustration and rejection, and it's an imposition on her -- although she is sometimes a bit ambivalent about such texts. I lack clear guidance, so it ends up desirous.

---

Me and Trina had a successful afternoon in Ormskirk. She gets a meagre four hours a week State-provided respite from her demented mother, and we sometimes spend it in the pub there. It took me a while to come round to Ormskirk. I thought it was a bit fur coat and no knickers at first, but the seep of Liverpool has produced a Scouse lack of side; the people are warmer and more frank than they are here.

I quite like the Moneyed Working Class South Lancashire style -- women in tight white trousers and narrow lapelled pale blue tailored jackets, men in well-fitting jeans and un-tucked-in simple shirts with lined patterns without obvious branding -- and there are enough young people from the local university to prevent the town becoming too stale. There was a gorgeous young girl sat opposite with one of those tops -- I don't know what you call them -- with an exaggeratedly wide, high neckline that just about perches on the outermost reaches of the shoulders. This results, as I am sure you are now imagining, in The Visible Bra Strap Syndrome, which is lip-bitingly attractive on a woman.

I didn't get the job I went for last week. I am indifferent about it, and I didn't read to the end of the rejection letter before throwing it into the recycling, but Trina, endlessly kind, bought me a gallon of proper unfiltered Somerset cider she got in a farm shop in north Wales, when she was visiting her son last week. It is excellent stuff and I've already made progress.

---

Talking of drinking, I came across an online journal the other day, New American Notes Online which did an issue on "Intoxication". One of the articles, by Michelle McClellan, discusses the special obligations of self-policing on women who choose to be intoxicated. Starting from a memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola published last year, the article critiques the standard model of recovery alcoholism -- a tale of excess, fall and redemption in which pleasure's true nature is eventually revealed as deceptive and sinful. Hepola opens with a refreshing shrug of a response to a leaflet which aims to help you self-diagnose whether one has a "drinking problem." To the question "Do you ever drink to get drunk?" she thinks back, "Good lord. Why else would a person drink? To cure cancer?"

From such open-minded a beginning, McClellan then outlines Hepola's relapse into the familiar story of the slow process of abjuring alcohol, a story owned by those who have renounced it. "As a result," writes McClellan, "Hepola's initial defense of intoxication rings hollow."

It's a fascinating article which goes on to outline several problems in any simplified or innocent account of alcohol as pleasure with which one might counter the redemption narrative. The article's main, and liberating point to me though, was that it suggests that we hear less from people who love alcohol, and live with it happily (perhaps storing up silent liver damage) or who have an ambiguous but generally happy relationship with it, and have no intention -- as is the case in the vast majority of my peer group -- of renouncing it.

The word "alcoholic" is crushed under such a weight of context-specific social connotation as to have lost any autonomy of meaning. Saying this (less wordily, perhaps) leaves one open to an accusation of resisting the sober physician's diagnosis, which provokes, in a contrarian like me, the impulse to put a neon sign above my head reading "alcoholic", in order deliberately to incite and then examine the responses to such an admission -- or, as I would more bare-facedly call it, a declaration.

I am happy to be considered an alcoholic, but I have no interest in the curative redemption narrative and its heroic teleology, that I'd have to sign up to by adopting such a label publicly. Nor do I fancy being seen as the hopeless ruined figure slouched on Beer Street, slopped pint in hand and volition vanished. I enjoy my drinking, and one day, when I'm less pissed, I'll write A Defence of the Sot -- one of whom might be a happy fellow, interested in others, sensual, with a sexual drive unknown to him in his twenties, intellectually and artistically curious, politically involved, and who rejoices in the disinhibiting sociability that drinking produces in him.

Apologies for the editing errors in the original version of this that you will have seen if you came here before 0600 British time on 16th May. This was due to an inebriated sub-editor, who has now been dismissed. It's not the first time.

---

Kitty rang me with a warning. "Looby, you are going to come in your pants when you see Wendy. She's bought this new dress and she looks absolutely stunning."

I was nervous as I went through to the pub garden. The dress was indeed beautiful, green, with a lovely neckline. I got her a bottle of Prosecco; a strange polished little pebble I found in a junk shop in Morecambe with a single word inscription, "Pray", to which I attached a label to its wrapping, "Because this is the only thing I can think of in the short term"; and a book, "Lost Words" by Philip Howard, because she is never lost for them.

Kitty texted from the bar. "Come and help me carry drinks!" "Fucking hell," I said. "You were right. For God's sake, I can't stop staring at her." At which point the girl herself turned up, and I could say the same thing in a more refined way. Her aunt had also given her a bottle of Prosecco, which was still cold, so after ordering one from the bar she opened the other under the table.

---

Then it was to the girls' house for our annual Eurovision party. Me and five teenage girls, including an American friend of theirs from school watching ESC for the first time, complete with scorecards, flags and a sweepstake. The preparations for all this were undertaken in something short of complete sobriety.

Ukraine won with a song about Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tartars in 1944 used as a metaphor for that territory's more recent annexation. It is an artistically godawful song, and drags needling cross-border politics into a song contest which was originally intended to bring countries together, not to divide them. You can only do that in a shared community, and it made me wish we could go back to only admitting members of the European Coal and Steel Community.

We gave six votes to Spain, their best song for years -- which isn't saying much -- and one for Bulgaria, who sent a dancy number all about the "lav".

---

Kitty texted me afterwards. "Oi! Come round. We're dancing." Me, Kitty, Wendy. Kitty was pissed and was making an right pig's ear of putting the music on. She's not really into music and was giving us this stop-start disco from the first result from typing in "hard house" and turning it off after twenty seconds because she didn't like it.

"Don't get arsey," she said, after I gave up and sat down. "What would you like then? she said, faintly aggressively. "Just type in 'Reelow live'," I said. She couldn't manage that, and went to bed. Wendy put her phone in a mug and put the Chemical Brothers on and at last we had a proper dance. She was sexy as fuck in the green dress, abandoned, waggling her arse and her swishing green dress in front of me and, I know, enjoying it without the sexual overtones that it had for me.

Wendy laid down on the floor. "I need to get Ingrid and Veronica home." This is her six-year-old daughter and her aunt who were jointly asleep with the dog on the sofa in Kitty's front room. I laid down next to her and kissed her neck. "I love you Wendy. I love you." I opened my fingers and raked them through her hair. "They've got to take a dog," she slurred, from the floor.

"Hiya, can we have a taxi at 44 Acacia Avenue? Can you take a dog?"

I woke the sleepers up and we all got into the taxi and I delivered everyone home. In bed myself, I got a text from her. "Looby darling, thank you. I love you xxx." No you don't Wendy. Not in the sense in which I want to be loved, anyway.

At four o'clock or something, she rang me, thanking me again. "Where are you sleeping?" "I'm at the girls' house." "Where?" "I'm on the floor, I don't feel right sleeping in Kirsty and boyf's bed." "Well, thanks for tonight. I needed someone to take control and get us all home."

She texted me again a couple of times, the best one of which was "I love my presents, petal."

Why do I constantly become close female friends with women who don't want to fuck me? It's an insult, telling you how "sweet" you are (fucking hate that word) -- but making you feel unattractive and unwantable. It is immensely depressing to me that someone that I have such a lovely time with doesn't fancy me. I am stuck between a needy, emotionally immature woman I don't fancy, and a gorgeous, clever, witty, woman I love who doesn't fancy me. It's fucking shit. Why can't Wendy fancy me? She doesn't though, and it doesn't help knowing that the story of frustrated one-directional attraction is thousands of years old.