Part the Forth

So I met my ex outside a little discotheque in Todos Santos, Mexico, and that was a pretty magical encounter. Me and Shane – the "star child" (lol) – had been in there having a bit of a dance and on the way out some drunk Argentinean had accosted us and was sort of going on about something and then at the end of it asked us where the women were, and me and Shane sort of looked at one another and realised that we didn't actually know any women, and hadn't done for a few weeks – there had been plenty around before that; all gorgeous and open and lovely – and all totally platonic – and there was this feeling there between us that it would actually be really nice to meet some girls and make some feminine friends. So off we went, leaving our drunk Argentinean behind, and what should we find waiting outside the nightclub but three girls – two Canadians and a Californian – and we just sort of fell into them and started chatting, real effortlessly and with ease, as though it was meant to be, as though they'd been waiting there to meet us. Me and Shane were all into manifestation at the time – or what is now known as 'cosmic ordering' (thanks to Noel Edmonds) – and we just thought, wow, you put out your intention and look what comes…
    Shane was chatting to two of them, sitting down, and me and one of the Canadians just stood there and sort of fell into this gaze of smiles and nods and silence, and it was all pretty otherworldly and unreal – here we go again! – and I guess that was what you'd call "love at first sight"; I couldn't think of anything to say; there didn't seem any reason to; it was all good as it was; not awkward; peaceful; happy. I guess eventually we introduced ourselves, and made some small talk, and I said something about wanting to travel across to the Copper Canyon and she said she'd like to do that too, and then Shane and I went our way back home to the Way of Nature with the girls saying they'd come and visit, and I swear, man, I was skipping and filled with happiness at this meeting and thinking maybe I might have a gorgeous travel companion to continue on my way with and who knows what else?
    During my seven-week stay at the hot springs canyon I'd really been treated to the experience of Life taking care of me, of providing me with my every need, of bringing me all I required, even so far away from everything, to the extent I thought that, one day, my lady would come and all I had to do was sit there. Well, a splinter in my foot took me from there on the appointed day – and Shane had been a visitor to the canyon – and I guess it had worked out in one way or another…
    The girls came down and started spending a lot of time at The Way of Nature, and we three bonded, and I fell in love. It wasn't as intense as the meeting I mentioned yesterday – but then it was far more all-encompassing, and long-standing. My feelings at the time were too strong; I scared her away and in the end I left and we lost touch. Two years later, though, I had a series of dreams about her, and tracked her down, and went to visit her in Canada. Again, I was in love, and I changed myself and my life to become more acceptable to her, and a year after that we got it together and became an item. Our relationship lasted four years; it was pretty incredible and wonderful and intense. And now it's gone. That was a pretty weird way to meet a lady.
    In between all that, however, there was my Parisian affair, with a woman six years my senior – she was 30; I was 24 – that I met on the Amma tour in Toulon when her and her (sort of) partner decided they dug my vibe and decided to take me under their wing, and then ferry me around Europe, and then asked me to live with them in Paris. I had zero money at the time, and just one change of clothes and a lovely woollen blanket to my name; it was the zenith of my sadhu phase. And they – and she – were to be the end of it.
    The energy between us, almost from the very beginning, was electric; it was as though a force larger than either of us, and larger than the sum of our parts, was pulling and pushing us together. Sparks flew off us when we hugged; nothing could keep us apart. Her boyfriend could see it and could do nothing about it, surrendered to the inevitability of it, and mysteriously committed to driving me around, feeding me, and losing his girlfriend to me in front of his eyes. He had money, and lots of it – he had a really wealthy family – and she joked how she "left him for a homeless" – but there was nothing anyone could do. If anything was ever written in the stars it was that her and I should be together.
    It happened back in Paris; she told me that she was going to spend the night with me – and she told me "we're going to make a baby." I was mister hardcore sadhu at the time, but there was an undeniable and joyful truth in her words and I was down with that. She left the room and I rushed about looking for some confirmation, some clue, that it was the right way to go; a makeshift ouija board and a random book spelled out only "yes" and "april" and I gave in to my fate.
    When we made love it was like I was making love with every woman I'd ever been with; it was as though they were all summoned there, as ghosts from the past, and seen again, for one last time, and let go of. I was cleaned of something; I was made new. It was pretty cool.
    We got into something then – madness, I suppose it was. We said we'd get married, and she was my Mary Magdalene, and we'd do something great for the world. We were off our tits on spirituality. We travelled to Mexico; she took me to the edge of despair; I questioned it so much and went crazy with it all. We three – her, and I, and her ex – and another French spiritual chum were this little enclave of God-seekers, always wanting to get higher, channelling this and that, discovering new wisdoms and insights and secrets, rushing onwards for our imagined enlightenment. Truly, we were mental – but it all seemed so real at the time. And in it all my Frenchwoman and I made our love – wonderful, wonderful love – and slowly moved ever onwards towards April.
    April came – it was the Good Friday/Resurrection weekend – and I could feel the appointed hour draw near; the clock hands counted down, but there was one last thing to do: I needed to ask her if she'd been with anyone else since we'd been together.
    "You ask me now, in the middle of sex?" she said.
    "Have you?" I said.
    "Yes," she said.
    I pushed her off me; she protested. I grabbed some clothes and walked out the room, upstairs to the shower, under water and steam and staring blindly into the tiles and all that is in my head is this: I'm gonna wash that girl right outta my hair/I'm gonna wash that girl right outta my hair/I'm gonna wash that girl right outta my hair…
    I leave the house and walk, me and my grey blanket and in the woods I find a huge sequoia and curl up into a ball at its base and stare and stare and stare, and there's nothing much in my head. I'm in shock, I guess; trauma. I don't know what to do because now my world has crumbled and the woman I loved is no longer the woman I can be with, and all dreams for future and babies and life have gone, and I'm an alone young Englishman with not a penny to his name, and no home or past to return to, and I'm somewhere in the French countryside – at her ex's country home; no idea where it is – and I really haven't a clue what to do with myself.
    I'm in a ball under a tree and, in almost every sense of the word, I'm a baby. She has made me a baby - we have done it together. Her words have come true. And it's exactly what I'd needed.
    I left them the next day – but not before I'd headbutted the forth member of our troupe, her one-time lover (and not for what he had done, but for his arrogance and disdain when I'd tried to dialogue with him about why it was wrong) – and I returned to England and cried for several weeks and months, and found myself reborn – resurrected, even. My spiritual illusions and delusions crumbled – although, in truth, the process took years – and I got myself back on the Earth. This was the gift she gave me – and the gift I had come to her to receive. Life, of course, had tried to teach me in more gentle ways, but I had failed to listen, too eager to carry on with what I saw as my quest, too blind to the necessity to stay human, to not ignore and neglect my body and my emotional and physical aspects and needs. My old friend Stevie Jay used to say, "never get so high you forget your zip code" – but I'd gotten so high I didn't even know what a zip code was. I got what I needed, and what I deserved – but still it hurt like hell.
    And that brings me to the end for another day. What will tomorrow bring? I'll be buggered if I know…

Rainy Day Women (Parts 2&3 of 7)

So the most extraordinary meeting I ever had with a girl was back in the summer of '99, when I was touring around New Mexico. Me and some Sikhs were driving from St Louis to a yoga festival near Santa Fe, and not too long before we got there they sort of stopped outside this large organic supermarket to get some snacks. I'd been driving and was quite happy to sit in the car and wait, totally uninterested in supermarkets and snacks at the time, but after a few minutes I decided to have a wonder in. So I did.
    I wasn't really sure what I was doing there; like I say, I had no interest in supermarkets at the time – I'd been off in the deserts of Mexico for months on end before that; supermarkets actually really freaked me out on my return to civilisation – plus I had no money and wasn't as hungry or greedy as I am now. But I had a little wander and soon came upon this stand offering some free heart or head or hand check-up (can't remember what it was) and I thought I'd give that a try. I got in line and filled in a form and waited my turn. I'd do anything back then to gain some extra insight into myself.
    So I gets to the front of the line and there's this girl there with a clipboard; she asks me my name and, probably, I tell her – and then…something happens. It's hard to explain what; it seems so bizarre. It makes no sense and no doubt to some of my readers it will appear that I have lost my mind but…
    Hysterics, man! Without a word we both suddenly crack up – in absolute hysterics! And – listen, I get the giggles a lot, and lose myself in laughter – but I swear I've never had it like this. I mean, it was out of control. I mean, it was beyond all thought or semblance of normality; tears were streaming down our faces; the laughter rang throughout the supermarket; there was nothing I could do to stop it.
    Did it last for five minutes? Ten? I don't know. Every now and then I'd think, what the fuck is going on? – but, like I say, there was nothing I could really do; it was like something else had taken over me. In the meantime, our eyes were locked into each other, big beaming smiles, a real feeling of joy and love. I was seeing colours and shapes – like people talk maybe metaphorically about seeing colours and light – but I was seeing them – reds and golds and greens – all around her – it really was a sense of some altered reality; that there was no supermarket, no time, no world – just her and me and our laughter and tears and these colours and our smiles. And finally it ended and we threw ourselves into each other, in a great big, open-hearted hug and held on tight right there in that supermarket by her little stand and, God only knows what anyone else was thinking but, I honestly swear I've no recollection of anyone or anything else being there anyway.
    I don't know what we said next; probably nothing – possibly, "I love you" – but I remember sort of leaving, and then deciding to turn back and ask her for her phone number – which I'd never done before, and don't think I've done since – and she happily and merrily gave it to me. Still we'd hardly spoken. And then we said our goodbyes and I left the supermarket somewhat bewildered, I suppose, but mainly just really ecstatically happy and overjoyed and grateful. I wondered if perhaps I'd "met someone" – but back in the car I switched on the radio and there was that song, "If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife…" and that just made me laugh and think, nah, I haven't met anyone, it's just another one of these amazing, synchronous, mind-blowing encounters that I'm kind of getting used to now. I guess I put it out of my head and off we went, me and my turbaned and jolly chums to set up tents and get all magically high and divine up in the mountains with Yogi Bhajan and three thousand flowing Sikhs. It was just kind of normal, for those days.
    Anyway, the festival was a blast, and I had a pretty amazing time, and met the most lovely people, and at the end of it myself and two new friends decided we'd go off back down to Santa Fe to meet Amma, the hugging Indian saint who my friend Shawn had told me about, who had changed his life so dramatically, and so much for the better. I had a real strong urge to see her, and from what I'd told a few people – "there's this Indian lady, and she hugs you, and takes away your pain, or gives you a real taste of the Divine" – they were into it too. So down to Santa Fe we went, to get our hugs and – well, you know, that's another story all together but – further amazing that was too. I was in love with her from the get-go, and my hug was higher than acid. Life changing? Sure.
    So me and my two chums – a Texan called Donna and a Dutchman going by the nom de Sikh of Siri Darma Singh – went on another little tour of New Mexico, visiting some like holy Catholic healing shrine, and then some of those old ancient Indian cliff ruins – magic chanting in that ancient dust – and at some point we wound our way back to Santa Fe to drop off Joost (the Dutchman's real name) and then Donna and I decided we'd go over to Albuquerque to see Amma again.
    Before leaving Santa Fe, though, I thought I'd give this girl a ring – even though I hadn't really thought about her during the two or three weeks since our incredible and strange meeting, it seemed like there was something there. So I called, and called again, and could never get an answer; no one home. I tried one last time and then Donna decided we had to go and I thought, oh well, and back on that desert highway heading to Albuquerque, in my seat and happy, despite not getting an answer. To be honest, it was just one of those things and I was always far more interested in what lay ahead.
    About ten miles down the road, though, Donna goes, "I want a coke," and chucks the car into a u-turn, and heads back towards Santa Fe. It seems a bit weird to me – you know, wanting a nasty, nasty coke after two weeks of good clean living (I'd been soda-free for six months) – and we had places to go but, oh well, it's her car and I'm just there for the ride, you want a coke I'm not gonna talk you out of it. So I just settle back and do my passenger thing.
    We pull into a gas station; I go to the payphone and try this girl one more time – and still there's no answer. I get back in the car; Donna comes back with her coke. She starts up the engine and just as she's about to pull out, another car comes in at the side of us and both our heads whirl strangely around to take a look, as does the driver's head in the other car, to look at us, and it's the girl, Grace, and I'm just thinking, wow.
    I can't speak; we're just looking at each other and, once again, the world has disappeared. Our eyes are locked but this time there's thoughts in my head, and the thoughts are scaring me. The thoughts are going: oh my God, I love this girl; oh my God, I think I want to marry her; oh my God, this is insane. It's overwhelming and although I'm loving being there and resting in her gaze – we're smiling into each other; it's peace and light and all the good stuff that was there before (minus the giggles) – these thoughts are seriously freaking me out. I need her to say something – and she does. She says, "the answer to all your questions is 'yes'" – and I freak out just that little bit more. Finally, I can't take it and I get out the car. She does the same and we hold each other there in that parking lot and it is magical and good. I don't know what Donna's thinking; I don't really know anything. All I know is that I like the way this woman feels and that I want to kiss her; thing is, though, I've been pretty hardcore celibate for quite a while (well, three months) and keen to stick to that, what with my supposed 'spiritual quest' and all that, it seems like the way to go. I'm wrestling with that, and then my head is filled with some other words – words from my freewillastrology earlier that day, which I've been reading religiously for years and which has always been strangely and spookily accurate – that said something about "taking a bite out of the apple", in an Adam 'n' Eve sort of way – and I feel like I sort of have my answer.
    My face slides down to hers, cheek on cheek, mouth seeking mouth, and we kiss, long and deep and with ease and naturally, as though we've been doing it forever, as though we aren't just two crazy people who have met twice in crazy ways and barely spoken a dozen words to each other. It feels ecstatically good and I'm starting to think I've met my soul-mate.
    Finally, we stop, and step apart, and manage some words, all the while standing and grinning and feeling something pretty incredible. She tells me she's off to Colorado to see her spiritual teacher; I say I'm doing the same too – but first I've got plans to go to Albuquerque. I look at the trunk of her car and see myself putting my bags in there and going with her – and knowing that it would be accepted, and easy, and good. I want to go but I'm afraid – and I've got my plans too. I think of a quote I'd read recently in The Alchemist – something about, "whatever happens once will never happen again, but whatever happens twice will surely happen a third time" – and I say that and it seems like some sort of an answer; it's like letting go, and trusting that this strange and magical power that had brought us together would do so again, if it was meant to be. Later, of course, a tarot reader tells me I should have gone with her, but…oh well, at the moment I'm happy to let it go, and just dig the amazingness and the synchronicity of it all. She's happy too, and in our smiles and in our goodbyes, all is well. I get back in the car next to the bewildered Donna and we two go off on our way to see Amma again – and, as it turns out, the girl I began my last entry with, Kellie, the Liv Tyler-a-like.
    The story ends – I suppose you want to know how the story ends – actually in some confusion and uncertainty, and I've still no idea what it means. Basically, I went to Albuquerque, met Kellie through the friend of a blog-reader, bonded – but just in a purely super-friend style way – and then after a few days I went up to Colorado to see John Milton, my first spiritual teacher who had lead me on a six-day wilderness solo in Mexico and really put me on the path to sorting myself out and discovering the wild and wonderful world of the spiritual reality. I was up there with him in Crestone for nearly two months, training for and eventually completing an even longer wilderness solo high up in the Sangre de Christo Mountains, this time of twenty-eight days duration. And an amazing time that was. And all the time I was thinking about this girl, and thinking we were going to be together. I made plans to go down and see her.
    Mid-September, I left Crestone, got picked up by a southbound Sikh who put me up for a night and bought me a curry – and who introduced me to the world of the CWG books – and then I made Santa Fe. My last ride there took me all the way to Grace s house – a fun young guy and his female friend who I told a little of my story to and who told me in turn a story about hitching hundreds of miles to see a girl he was in love with only to find out that she had a boyfriend and end up heartbroken, all the while, ironically enough, while he's telling his story The Zombies' 'She's Not There' is wailing in the background and I'm thinking – and smiling – u-oh, this is sounding kind of ominous. And, of course, we get to her house and, well, she's not there.
    I wait a few hours and then a roommate comes home; she's real nice; she tells me Grace's moved, and offers to take me out there. She says she's heard about me; I'm encouraged by that and we chat in a super way that makes me feel better about things. But when she drops me off and I see Grace again I realise something's changed – she doesn't look the same; I don't feel any connection; I'm thinking I'd like to go back with the roommate. But I don't, and we head inside and talk.
    In a nutshell, both the signs proved true: she'd found a boyfriend, someone she was in love with, and, also, she wasn't there. She wasn't there when I first turned up, sure – but, more than that, she wasn't there in the way that she had been before, present and open and true, right there in the moment, full-hearted, giving; it didn't feel like the same person. Well, sure, she had reason to be guarded and protective – and, sure, no doubt I'd changed as well, given my experience up in Colorado – but…well, it made me sad. I cried, and my heart broke, and, given how spiritually high and kind of out there I was, I was like a little boy lost, unable to understand what was going on, bewildered, really. We talked for a few hours but I have no idea what was said – and how I wish I could go back and ask possibly better questions, to try and put the mystery together, and to make some kind of sense of this whole dramatic and otherworldly episode – but I guess I just wasn't able at the time. I left her in the dark New Mexico night and slept in my sad sleeping bag by the side of the road, alone in the night, in the world, not knowing which way to turn next. The next morning I opened my CWG in the hope of answers and stumbled upon the chapter on relationships – which I had somehow managed to miss, even though I thought I had read the whole book – and which contained the answers I needed. I guess I got them when they were required; I don't think I would have understood it before. That made me feel better, and even though I was still open and tender and raw, I found some optimism, and hit the road once again, and ended up back in Albuquerque. I visited Kellie, and poured out my heart, and cried at Notting Hill, and within a few weeks we were in love. I never saw Grace again but I do wonder about her every now and then – as you can see – and would love to know, one day, what her take on the whole thing was. Bizarre is mine – but magical and incredible too. Certainly, even though I've had some pretty amazing meetings with other women – X was absolutely love at first sight, and with her and with others signs and dreams played a big part in bringing us together – nothing has come close to the altered reality of that supermarket encounter and the strange synchronicity of the second gas station meeting and Donna's unaccountable desire for coke. It boggles the mind. It really does.

Email to Perlilly

Hi Perlilly, I was thinking it was probably about time I sent you some heavy heavy sort of email/message type of thing, so here it is - though I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to say but, well, it's obvious I need to say something...

Well basically I guess it comes down to me wanting to know where I stand - and to wanting to find some clarity with the situation we've found ourselves in: ie, one minute we're getting on great, having great, mutually beneficial sex, having a laugh, and then suddenly we're like strangers, not even touching, and everything's gone. It's so totally, totally weird for me that I really haven't got a clue as to what to do with it. And it's making me really sad.

I'm confused as to what you want. At first it was a case of, "I'm on the rebound, let's just have fun" sort of thing, and I was down with that. Obviously we got closer, but I wasn't sure things really changed - but then when we talked about you going back to Oxford and how it would end then - and you were like, "a month's pause" - and me going away in January - "go away in December instead" - it seemed like things had changed for you - in that suddenly I wasn't this guy who you were just having a few weeks' sex with, but something more than that (though I'm sure you'd be loathed to admit it :-) And now things have changed again. To be honest, I had no idea where I stood before Friday; now I'm ten times more unsure.

I feel really down about this; I guess I was getting to like you. I guess I feel stupid for getting involved with and caring about someone that doesn't really care about me - even though I knew that from the start. I guess that's my lesson to learn...

Mostly it comes down to being frustrated; it seems like there's nothing I can do because all the power's with you. I don't think I have the capacity to just stop what we had and go back to being purely and simply friends. Maybe you do, but I don't, not immediately, it's just not that easy for me. And that's not to say I don't want to talk to you, hang out on occasion, have a laugh, listen to your ups and downs, etcetera but...I guess I just need some kind of clarity, to understand what's going on. I still don't understand why the conversation was such a big deal - and why you said things about how that sort of thing mattered for "the future" when I thought I was just some guy you wanted to be with for a few weeks.

I hope you understand all this; I don't feel like I'm doing a very good job of expressing myself. I was hoping typing this would make me feel better - but I don't, I feel worse! lol (Now I feel better).

This is just so fucking frustrating for me because - you meet a girl that you like and dig and have a good time with and then - poof! - it's gone, all of a sudden, for nothing, and there's nothing I can do about it. Voila. There. That's it.

You wanted sex - but not sex with a "religious freak" and so you decided to end it. Fair play; that's your prerogative. But please just tell me that instead of leaving me in limbo, not knowing what's going on, dangling.

A week ago I was telling people how awesome you were, smiling broadly whenever I thought of you - even in front of my ex. Now I'm just confused and down. Oh well. Typical old man losing his head to a beautiful young girl. :-) Not exactly the first time that kind of thing's happened, is it?

Okay, I feel a bit better now, expression probably suitably complete (the last three paragraphs were more just me typing free, less thought out than the first; hope they come across right to you) - only question is, will I send this to you or not?

Answer: yes.

I hope you're having a good day and this doesn't catch you at the wrong moment and mess with your head while you're trying to work and stuff.

Hugs and love,
Rory

x

About sex and women - don’t read if you don’t want to read about sex and women

So I went this week to see me old man rock out in his (proper) Fleetwood Mac (before they got the girls and Americans involved) covers band over in lovely, lovely Wakefield and, as ever, he was pretty amazing. Boy that man can play guitar! And a good job too – 'cos God knows what he'd do with himself if he couldn't (probably go the same way as my nan – his mum – and end his days in cigarette seclusion watching Coronation Street and wishing someone would call). All the old favourites: Green Manalishi…Need Your Love So Bad (what a song!)…Baby, Please Stop Messing 'Round, You're Messing 'Round With My Heart (do doo do do do doo do)…
    Love, they say, is the sweetest thing – but is it as sweet as those marshmallow and chocolate things Americans eat around the campfire? And, if it is, despite its yumminess and moreish qualities, wouldn't we expect it to give us something of a headache, make us a little bit sick? I'm rubbish at being in love; I lose myself, get carried away, my head filled with thoughts of another, no matter how distant they are. Happiness comes only when we're side-by-side; trauma at the slightest disharmony, misunderstanding, disagreement; it triggers something in me; I don't know what. I'm a nice guy and I got a lot of love to give – maybe too much sometimes – but I can't say I'm very good at knowing what to do with it.
    I was in love with a girl once – she was about five years younger than me, which felt really young at the time, since she'd just turned eighteen – and we had this magical month together in Albuquerque, New Mexico, falling for each other, having fun in bed, going on adventures on bicycles and people said that when we rode together down the street it was like streamers of light trailing behind us in our glow and happiness. She looked like Liv Tyler, and I was down with that – but, alas, it couldn't last: I was a wandering sadhu-type and we always knew the day would come when I would move on; the day came – a hugging tree whispered something about some distant, unheard-of mountain in my ear (and you all know how that story went) – and off I went. And when I came back two months later she had met someone else. She told me about it – the precognitive dreams she'd had of him, of how perfect they were together – and of how it could never have happened if it wasn't for what had been done during our time together – and when I met them I had to admit it all seemed pretty magical and great. But my heart cracked open a little, and all the love I had felt for her drained out – no longer anything to attach itself to – and suddenly this big heart of mine that had grown and grown in her presence was left empty and sad. That was a hard feeling and I suffered it and felt it through sleepless nights – and this was the last time I looked at a bottle of alcohol and thought, maybe (this was '99; I didn't) – and eventually, through feeling that, something came and the space was flooded and filled with another kind of love. I thanked her for the gift she had given me – for the way she had stretched me and forced my heart to grow – and she thanked me for her man, and when I saw the two of them laying together sleeping in bed one morning (you had to pass through her room to get to the toilet) and the way their feet entwined together sticking out the blankets I just thought that was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and I blessed them wholeheartedly. It felt good to have been a part of that – and for all I know, they're still together, raising kids and making joy with each other – and I moved on and, alas, never saw them again. I would like to hear from her, though; she seemed like a pretty magic soul and I'd love to know how things've turned out…
    I went to Venice with X last weekend; it was arranged months ago but the timing couldn't have been more perfect, the need to sort out our ongoing break-up, nine months old and unrepaired but never completely final, and it was all rather fitting in that crumbling, ruined city of ancients; Death in Venice and all that. My heart was closed from the start and that made me sad because with my heart closed and withholding my love it was hard to let myself enjoy the time, to be the bundle of sillinesses and excitement and giggles that I generally am – but I guess it was what was needed. I didn't want to be a good guy for her; I didn't want to come across as 'fun' and make myself attractive to her – and, more than anything I just didn't want to give anymore. It was clear that we were over – forever? who knows? but for the foreseeable future and beyond – and that was kind of the business that needed doing. On the last morning we took a boat over to the cemetery island – my most very favourite place in the whole watery city – and then had our big talk and said our goodbyes. Her chin wobbled in her tears, and when she thanked me for our time together – for all of it, all the way back to Mexico, eight years ago – mine did too, and in those tears I was just thinking, what a nice girl, and how sad this is, and how silly and…you have to stop those thoughts. Closeness and tenderness comes, and with it the temptation and forgetfulness of the things that have caused this moment; no, we said our goodbyes, and she gave me back the 'commitment ring' I'd bought her, and in that final hug my head and heart were filled with blessings for her to meet someone new: someone she deserved and who deserved her, and who could take her to the next level and love her in the ways that I wasn't able, to heal her of the harms I may have caused her, to make her feel good about herself, because I hated to see her feeling bad about herself. It was a genuine blessing that overwhelmed my being and I was glad and perhaps surprised to see it there; I wasn't expecting to feel those things. But I did; I guess the time was ripe.
    I'd been praying for an answer to this question for so long – the question of should we/shouldn't we? – and maybe what I was expecting was some kind of sign or dream, some strange meeting in the street with someone who waffled aimlessly but apparently read my mind and told me what I needed to know, some synchronicity – but what I got was much better than that. Life sent me another, and put them side by side, and in my heart I was truly able to see what it was I wanted, and what I didn't, and the answer came from within and filled me, plain as a tofu and ryvita sandwich. All that seems kind of obvious, really – but it was somehow startling to me, so used am I to 'figuring things out' or having the answers come in dreams and wonders; this seemed so simple and beautiful and true – and clever, too. Life is much smarter than I am; Life knows the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect way. Life is good to me.
    And if you don't like the word 'Life' in that paragraph, just substitute it with the word 'God' – in that context, they're basically the same thing. ;-)
    So it was over, and I am new, and alone, and fresh again. Thirty-one – and Xless for the first time in just over six years. Maybe that should be scary; it's not. I'm still young – and my life is about more than finding a partner. Who knows? Maybe I never will. Maybe it's not my path. Children? Sure, I could dig that – but maybe that's not my path either. Certainly there are advantages to this freedom – especially for me when I consider the dreams I have for my future (you know, get book published, jettison everything I ever was and go on further adventures, onward ever onward into the unknown and new). Life is about learning and enjoyment; experience and fun. What else could it be? And who's to judge what shape or form that should come in? Maybe there's someone out there for me and maybe there isn't – maybe I'm destined to a long line of encounters and lovers, learning something new from each on this quest to become 'whole' – whatever that means – and that's not to say I'm some sort of slut – far from it! – but, polyamorous? Sure, why not.
    I was counting up and I reckoned I've had 13 lovers – ya know, sex – another two that was just oral, and then 35 women that I've kissed in total. Several of those I could discount because they were so brief – and then there were three snogs with guys as well, back in my drunken youth. That's not bad going, really – and I mean that in the way that, it's not really too much. Only about twenty percent of those figures come from the last seven years – things certainly slowed down a bit when I quit drinking! (And that's a good thing). All in all, I think I've been a pretty good boy.
    My first girlfriend I was seeing about five months before we went to bed together – and for nearly a year before she first gave me a blowjob. Also, I never came in her mouth – because she didn't want me to – until after we broke up, when we had our little 'farewell fling' (as you do) and she told me she wanted to be the first one to do that. I found it difficult to let her do that, and always have, scarred by the bragging boys at school who did it to girls even when they'd promised they wouldn't, me thinking how horrible and mean that was – and thinking that it seemed most girls didn't really like that (and my experience has ninety percent backed that up) – and I didn't want to be one of those cruel, unfeeling guys, I wanted to be one of the good ones. I dunno, I guess I've always just been happier giving pleasure, and never understood how sex could be a selfish thing; I mean, if the other person's not enjoying it, how could you enjoy it yourself? That's my biggest kick, seeing someone else get off. I love to give pleasure – but I also find it challenging sometimes to receive it for myself. Believe it or not, that's something I've had to work on.
    I was with another girl once – also in America; we were together about three months – and we had a pretty intense and passionate affair, full of the madness of youth. We hurt each other at times, I guess – we were pretty much always drunk – but also there was a tenderness, a love. One thing I always remember her saying was about sex, was about how if she suddenly didn't feel like it she knew with me it was always okay to stop and I'd be just as happy to hug and chatter and, whatever, go and make a cup of tea and carry on with the day; that made me really happy to hear her say that; I thought it was a wonderful compliment; it's the kind of thing I always like to hear. And it's true as well, it's never really bothered me, still doesn't; like I say, there's no point doing something if both parties aren't digging it – and there's plenty else you can do besides to enjoy your time with someone. Of course I'm sure lots of people feel this way – I'd be a fool to think they didn't – but at the same time I know not everyone does. That's sad – and I feel an intense sadness for people – namely, women; beautiful, beautiful women – that have to put up with that. Men can really suck sometimes – which, thinking about it, is probably about as big an understatement as it's possible to get – and a tragic one, too.
    Still, that's not to say that it's all one-way traffic; I'd say I've definitely felt used by women too – and it's a crappy, crappy feeling. I remember particularly this one time, this one girl, and even mid-act I was so conscious of that, so hating it – and so down and dispirited with myself for allowing it to happen – it really stuck in my mind. I guess it was the first time I'd really seen it – and seen it so clearly that I never wanted to allow it to happen again. And you know what? I don't think I have. :-)
    I'd also say I've suffered at the eyes and hands of men – particularly during my table-waiting days in the gay restaurant in Charlottesville – and that's another incentive to try and be a better guy, to experience how it feels to be looked at as a piece of meat, as a hole to be penetrated and fucked, and cast aside like some used-up animal carcass. I first felt that sitting in a gay pub in Leeds where me and my chum went to drink during our skinny-hipped androgyny days, left alone while he was in the bog and looking around at a room full of crotch-rubbing men lasering their eyes at me and licking their lips and wanting. It was fuckin' horrible – and in my eighteen year-old brain there came the realisation, "my God, is this what it feels like to be a woman?" and I never wanted to do that. It's not nice to feel like a piece of meat; doubly so to make someone feel that way.
    Still, I do look at women in a sexual way and like what I see – and I wonder if that makes me bad, somehow – somehow wrong or hypocritical, given what I've just said – even though I'd like to think, really, that's just me being harsh on myself. But, sure, I like the curve of a good breast, a bit of cleavage, the secret thrill of the accidentally revealed, bending-over bosom. Is that so wrong? Or is it – as would appear to be indicated by the excellent 'The Naked Ape', which I'm reading now – simply my in-built and naturally correct response to such stimulus? I'd say so. (I would, wouldn't I?) But finally it appears I have my answer as to why women love to reveal their cleavage – even on the coldest of days – when men hardly ever show off their chest-areas. And the reason they wear lipstick? Even better…
    I had this girlfriend once who didn't give a monkeys about my cum; she liked it; she wanted it; she loved doing it and it made her happy to have that part of me in her mouth, in her tummy. I can dig that – when the roles are reversed, there's nothing I love more than the taste and smell of a woman, to get her off in that way, to have her juice in my mouth and in my face – and especially so when I've been lucky enough to be with one who was blessed with the awe-inspiring gift of female ejaculation. I can dig it, from that perspective – but I still find it hard to receive that kind of love, to let it happen and trust that it's all right – at least for the first few times. I always try and tell them – try and warn them – and if that's not 'lol' then I don't know what is – but I just can't help it. That's sad in a way – because it is such a wonderful feeling. I feel like, in that moment, my semen is me, is the essence of me, and when it's lost, in the room, on a belly, spurned and cast aside, that is me too; conversely, when it's taken in – whether that be by mouth or otherwise – I feel I am taken in, and wanted, and loved, in all aspects of me, and in my essence. You may mock and scoff at the way I feel – you may think, well that's a nice try to get someone to do those things – but I swear that's my true experience, I'm not just making this up. It's sad that we can't just love everything about each other – because we are such delicious creatures. Certainly, that's how I love a woman, and her essence. I even quite like my own…
    My favourite method of contraception is probably none at all – that is, natural timing or the pill. Mostly in my life I've probably done withdrawal – and I'm proud to say I've been good with that. I know this day and age we're all supposed to be using condoms and stuff but, man, I just can't get on with those things; I feel like I've had my nob cut off; I feel like I'm the one who should be saying, "is it in?" Basically, I can barely feel anything at all. But I'd say I'd been pretty careful and, here I am, thirty-one and disease and child-free, and never even really had any scares. It's not good to be blasé, I know – but then, this is about me and my actual, honest experience. To be honest, I'd rather have no sex than sex with a condom; there's plenty of other fun things you can do besides intercourse - things far superior to intercourse that is less-than-great. Sometimes I wish I didn't come at all; you know, what with pregnancy and all that it does seem rather a headache when pleasure rather than procreation is what it's about – and ultimately, coming – the male orgasm – is in so many ways the end to pleasure, the end to intercourse, and the end to the ecstasy of the physical union. Don't get me wrong, I love a good orgasm, and it's still the highest feeling, but because it's the end – at least, for a while – there's also a little sadness mixed in there too. I just want to keep on doing it. I don't really want it to end. I guess there's a reason the French call it 'the little death' – although they say it in French.
    Have I come to the end of my sex-talk for one day? I rather think I might've done! And the work bell beckons. Hope you enjoyed!

Umpty Dumpty

Hi chums! Sorry no blog this week, been off in Dublin and Venice visiting old friends, my ex, and a hugging saint. Some marvellous times! And now I'm back in Leeds and just not got the time nor inclination to come up with anything.
But - just to keep you posted...

• Looks like X and I finally got around to breaking up - for real - nine months after we first initiated it. I realised some things about that. Dig the timing, too - sort of like the gestation period.
• Amma was magnificent; I've no idea how she does it. An hour in I'm thinking, hm, do I really need this? - and then two hours later I'm thinking, is this just the best thing in the world, I can't wait for London! London is in two weeks. I can't wait!
• And that's about all I feel like saying - except, that I have seen genius, and it is a cow on a toilet. "Moo on the loo" baby! Yeah!

Cheers!
Rory

What a wonderful week!

My week began Monday morning about ten to eight laying fully clothed on the floor and disturbed by some eighty-seven year-old lady crawling in on me while my body already rushing stashing sleeping bags and making things normal, sixty-five minutes of sleep in my brain - and as body rushes, pushes socks under boxes, thinks frantically - and, thankfully, "glad I'm not naked" - this head of full of thoughts, this sense of doom: oh my God, what did I do last night? What did I write? Rushing round and feeling horrified, and naked, and mad; I don't know where my head has gone; I don't even know what I am anymore; life has begun new and raw and, is it the lack of sleep, or have I done something to my nervous system in those mad seven hours of madly typing mad till 6.45 in the a.m. when all should be asleep and I'm out in the cold morning investigating bin thieves and chatting with the police...
    I think: I can't put that up there, what on Earth was I thinking? I'll delete the lot, I say, and write something new; I must be mad; oh God, what have I done to myself! I feel too raw.
    I turn on the computer and I do write something else. I write a disclaimer. My mind is somewhat more settled. I toss a coin and it says, "don't delete." I toss another coin and it says, "put it there." I delete the disclaimer and say, "that's pussy stuff" - and then I swallow hard and think, ok, I'll put it there, come what may, I don't care. I am me; I express what I feel; the chips fall where they will; it's better to be yourself and lose your 'friends' than to pretend, to maintain the pretense, and lose yourself in the process. I'm more awake now, more human - my brain has returned and I'm starting to remember what I am: a brain in a mind in a body with arms and legs and feet on Planet Earth in the year 2007...
    I put it there; I swallow hard; I wait. I'm prepared for the worst. I'm strangely elated.

Writing what I wrote last week seems to have given me great confidence; at times, this week, I felt like a writer (whatever that means). The words fall out of me one piece at a time, the sentences and paragraphs building themselves before my eyes; I've no idea where they're going - just a vague one or two ideas of something that might be in there when I start - but in the end it seems to make some sort of weird and wonderful sense. At first, though, I detested it - but in the re-reading I came to love it; in the meantime, I've fluctuated between the two. And, today, it seems like a long time in the past, something done, put away, the doors it opened walked through and now new corridors to skip along and marvel at and explore...
    Can words change reality? I think they can. Was there something in the air last Sunday? I think there was. What magic was weaving its wonderful spell those afternoon and evening and early morning distant but connected hours while words spilled from me and feeling existed elsewhere? What spell did the alternate reality of a city full of explosions and light and excited, sky-bound faces cast upon my hands and fingers as they curled around hands and fingers so effortlessly and differently and, yes, those words had done something.
    "It's beautiful," she'd said.
    Heart leaps for joy and fears and doubts are gone and, really though, that is all I can say about that...
    But I found my mantra: the one word to repeat in body and brain until past is wiped clear and all that remains is shining glittering present, as I wanted, as I wondered for. What would I be without all that? I asked. And now I know.

Oh, Rory! Mad Rory! Heart-aching, brain-awake, electric-body, life-lovin', eternally sad and simultaneously ecstatic, feeling, open, alive-not-dead Rory - are you okay? How long is it since you felt this way? And how recent that you believed and truly believed that you never would again? How many days since...

Kissing (0)
Oral sex (1)
Doing something romantic (3)
Seeing my name in print (5)
Eating fish and chips (6)
Staying up all night (7)
Wanking (9)
Falling in love (11)
Seeing a girl cry (21)
Seeing my mum (49)
Cooking (56)
Hitch-hiking (92)
Eating chocolate (106)
Appearing on TV (109)
Having sex (129)
Crashing a car (196)
Holding a baby (211)
Doing the dishes (239)
Ending a relationship (279)
Crying (295)
Hugging a saint (376)
Going shopping for clothes (801)
Riding a freight train (833)
Drinking alcohol (1079)
Eating meat (1079)
Buying a caravan (2137)
Headbutting a Frenchman (2407)
Sleeping in a shop doorway (2552)
Spending a night in jail (2619)
Taking drugs (3190)
Being drunk (3243)
Getting arrested (3386)
Kissing a boy (3618)
Being on American soil legally (3773)
Wearing underwear (3936)
Stealing a bicycle (4142)
Losing my virginity (5538)
Discovering Everton (8260)
Getting born (11609)

And back back back, till I was just a dot...

Email to Perlilly

Ah, lover duvver, I don't know what got into me. I was just feeling so overwhelmed and deflated with everything and then when I got to work this morning I had like six old ladies and my one special needs person there trying to tell me every little thing under the sun, about their uncles' poodles and the conservatories and plaiting doll's hair and things from the sixties, and then my area manager was there - who could seriously waffle for England (or the solar system, if waffling ever goes inter-galactic) - and so there were even more of them just telling me everything which is normally just about tolerable, but today with all my own things in my head and then a thousand and one things to think about with the shop, and it all falling apart around me, right there in front of my boss (also thinking, shit, what evidence is there here of me sleeping here? - he had arrived unannounced) and it was all too much, I just wanted to run away, and so that's when I texted you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhh!!! - right while he was waffling and my special needs was stuttering her boring and unintelligible stories that I'm always strangely compelled to listen to thinking I have to be nice - well, I am nice - but sometimes I'd wish she'd just hurry the hell up - or, even better, not bother at all - and I guess that (the aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhh!!!) made me feel somewhat better - plus I was hungry too - so then my Friday sub, and my bosses disappearance, and a little get-it-off-your-chest moan with my one non-old lady volunteer (I do still love the old ladies, by the way) and I guess that helped. And now I'm writing it all to you, in the hope that I can get it off my chest for proper - but also that it doesn't bring you down, since I'm glad you're enjoying this beautiful day and - oh, I wish I was out there too enjoying it and...oh, I don't know.

How are you, anyway? Are you all right? :-)

It's just, days like this I think, "man, I got to get my life in order," and, "man, I just wanna get the hell away from here," and, "man, I gotta do something different with my time - what the hell am I doing with myself!" and - well, I know that's only temporary, but that is how I feel right now - and often - and, sure, it's just a byproduct of feeling overwhelmed but - oh! I don't know what I'm saying anymore!

Hey, listen - I'm sorry for bending your ear; you're a nice girl; I just wanna say thanks for that.

Yours, depressingly, despairingly, yet somewhat ecstatic and amused beneath it all inside, realising the temporariness of it all, and knowing it will pass,

Rory

Love

Oh Lord, here we go again; you cross that line and suddenly your head is full of her, from morning to night – just as it was beforehand, actually – but now there’s pain and longing and wanting in there. How does that happen? With one so young? And why to me? I guess if I was less lonely…

Monday night I went to see her; it was sort of auspicious, with fireworks and feelings and it all seemed in the air, holding hands with ease, touches and looks, like a real couple. We kissed – the coin okayed it – and it was pretty good fun. We stayed up late and in the morning I awoke to find my body humping hers, pure physical-driven sex – I wasn’t even awake! – and good again too. Left feeling good…Tuesday, I went to Wakefield, managed without her, and yesterday…shades of the other open mic, disharmony with her and – man, I don’t like the way she teases so much! I want compliments and love and niceties! I want someone who touches my heart and loves me. I don’t think I have the heart/the security to deal with that…

I love you Perlilly! That’s so crazy! What do those words mean? Love – can I really say I love you? “I love you Sophie”? Is that true? It doesn’t seem to be – when I think of her, I feel tired, she bores me. Interested? No. And Perlilly? Wanting, seeking reassurance and attention and fun and sexies and compliments – is that love? Is that the difference? Who the fuck knows – and why even question it? What is love?
Ha! Just say “yes” or “no”.

Do you love Sophie? No.

Do you love Perlilly? Yes!

Yes, I’m sorry, but it’s true. Whether it’s right, or wrong, or sensible or mad, there it is. I’m in love with her.

Oh boy.

Craig David

Monday

It was still dark outside my shop and I was dreaming some unsettled, trammelled dream of a new undertaking – a venture – and things weren't working out as I had hoped: it was as though the doors had fallen off, the hinges hanging loose by their screws, and even my eight arms of Kali could do nothing to hold it all together. Paul McCartney appeared on my left shoulder singing, "no one I think is in my tree," and I knew I was all alone in the world. Depression hung over me like a black umbrella, glued to my hair, my ears, my teeth. I shrank inside myself and curled into the impeccable, immaculate foetus of my soul. There was safety in there…repose. With my eyes tight shut I saw the glimmer of a smile approaching like a train pulling out of some unseen station a hundred miles down the track, adhering to some unknown timetable. The train and the smile began to form into a face: it was the face of a woman I thought I recognised, but I couldn't put my finger on her. The eyes, the teeth – the structure of the forehead and jaw and the skin that stretched over it…it was someone known to me – it was…

I woke with a start, the tail-end of some bellowed word jerking me out of my sleep and depositing me sitting upright, staring into the darkness with bleary, weary eyes and the befuddled confusion of the returning wanderer. It was Chamone, my man-slave – I could hear him rustling away from beneath the pile of old skis I had made his home. Evidently he'd been up all night 'inventing' again. I rubbed my eyes and let the sleeping bag fall to my waist, revealing the sad flab of my belly and the droop of my breasts; for some reason I was expecting to wake up thinner than that. I sighed and groped around for my flashlight and trousers, and thought I'd better find out what Chamone was up to this time.

And just as I'd got the belt done up on my jeans – "Eureka!" – came the cry again, and last night's still full cup of tea went spooling across my pile of sleeping bags, soaking them and my once-worn socks, and immediately I knew it wasn't going to be my day. I sighed again and got down on my hands and knees, and as I started to suck up the tea I realised it was a year to the day since I'd kidnapped Chamone and that then sent me on a sort of reminiscing flashback-type thing that looked a little like this:

The village I live in – God bless it – is populated almost entirely by the old, or the degenerate, or the downright ugly – and, more often than not, a combination of all three. They give off the appearance of having lived impossibly hard lives, their faces weathered and lined by decades and years of being shat on and battered on a daily basis, of having sucked and sucked on so many of the little white cancer-sticks that they've practically sucked themselves out of existence. They grimace and splutter, and cough out every word they say, and rarely smile, except in a rueful way that is hardly a smile at all. They're also uncommonly small – and getting smaller all the time, it would seem, the gravity of their unseen burdens pulling them in stooping hunches ever closer to the dust and dirt of the Earth – and they're given to speaking in such preposterous accents and tones that, even if they aren't stupid (which is rarely the case) it renders them incapable of convincing anyone otherwise.

In short, when I walk these streets on my various errands and dalliances, I feel like the veritable cream of the crop, a king looking down on his subjects, my beauty far outshining all that surrounds me, my light dazzling and blinding to these poor, wrinkled-up souls and their shrivelled, pin-prick eyes.

I feel – in a word – magic darts.

(In town, of course, things are different there: there, I'm one of the dirty ones, slightly shrivelled, a lesser man; there, I have to find different reasons to feel superior. But find them I do, and rest content in my knowledge and security of confidence based in relation to others, which is the only confidence I know.)

Anyway, one day, back in my village, as I strutted my stuff and pouted and posed on my way to Tesco's to read the daily papers – hoping beyond hope to find smut and nude women, and not another bloody article about some 'new development' in the child disappearance case – I saw him: the man who would become my man-slave: Chamone McHendry, all smiles and six foot two of him – I'm five feet eleven and a half – in sculpted leather jacket and D&G jeans, and bright eyes and cheekbones that drew every admiring gaze and rendered me, in an instant, invisible and dirty on the very streets I owned. I loved him and I hated him, and when our eyes met in recognition and he smiled down on me and forced me to look up to him, I knew I would have to do something; already he had become too big a problem to ignore. I invited him back to the shop one day after business, on the pretence of a cup of tea and some model ships I wanted to show him, and while he was squinting into a bottle of Bettabuy lemonade and checking out Queen Elizabeth's sumptuous, fleshy underbelly, I hit him over the head with a recently donated pogo stick and chained him to the radiator with a pair of kinky pink handcuffs that I knew we'd never sell anyway.

Later, I moved him into the ski storage area and let him construct some sort of living arrangement in there. Turns out he was into nano-technology and within a week he'd built himself a full-time lab, happy as Hagman to spend his nights inventing and then sleeping up in the day hidden under the ever-increasing pile of skis while we bustled busily around him, pricing teddy bears and selling unfortunate and ugly clocks to old ladies and crackheads. In the first three weeks he'd already invented miniature mini-eggs and a fully operational laptop so small that it was practically invisible – a thousand of them laid end to end were only as big as the average baby's freckle – (which was pretty good going since all he had to work with were a pair of cheap binoculars, some ladies' tweezers and my second best nail clippers) but what I really wanted was some sort of microwave full of helmet-wearing ants that could turn old potato peelings and such into pizza and samosas, or maybe even bread and humus, and that's what I'd been pushing him for ever since. He was always getting distracted with other things, though, like figuring out equations for happiness that involved text messages, shopping and number of friends on facebook (he concluded it was ever-increasing, in an infinity sort of way – ie, no matter what number you had, happiness would always be at least one text or facebook friend away) and realising Cheesehead Tommy's designs for a zoo that would actually fit inside a key. Still, they were invariably useful, and earned me several million dollars when I sold them on, and it kept him off the streets. I'd say, too, that we developed something of a friendship – though we were never lovers – and I'd like to think I was doing him a favour by giving him that space, and that time, to get on with his inventions, feeding him, and saving him from the demands of the bill-paying world. We lived in harmony, really – yeah, it was mutually beneficial – and maybe most other people wouldn't necessarily understand where I'm coming from with that, but that's okay, because they don't have to.

"How's it going?" he said – Chamone McHendry, my man-slave, the apple of my eye, the pie in my crust, the ski room-dwelling madcap scientist, still good-looking despite a year's worth of daylightness and his stereotypical outfit of thick-rimmed glasses and white coat and pens.

"Stilted," I said, "like I'm not really sure what I'm doing, why I'm doing it – seems a bit ridiculous, really, but sort of interesting at the same time." I was popping my contact lenses in, left eye first, as always, enjoying the contact between finger and eyeball, breaking another of society's taboos. "I'm worried about Perlilly – I know she'll be reading this – but…I mean, what's she gonna think?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," he said, "she'll probably just scan for her name and even then just read the bits that look like compliments about her, and forget the rest. She only really thinks of herself, that girl – you know that."

"Do you really think that's true?" I said.

"Actually," he said, "I haven't a clue – I don't even know her. All I know is what you've told me, and you ain't told me much – I don't even know why I said it." His smile left him for a second and his brow furrowed in deep concentration. "Forget it," he said, "I'm just talking shit."

"Bollocks!" I said, and blinked crazily, the sting of my chilli-tainted finger shooting fire into my eye. "Ouch," I said, "remind me not to put my contacts in when I've been chopping chilli – that shit hurts." I laughed and blinked and laughed some more, digging the pain and the challenge of it – of overcoming it. I love that sort of thing – the immense discomfort and the facing of it head-on, never shying away, knowing deep down there's something out the other side beyond it, if only you fight through. Like getting anaesthetic-free drillings at the dentist's or hiking mountains with golfball-sized blisters, charging over pain barriers like a heyday Ed Moses.

The pain and the blinking died down and all that remained was a cheek full of tears and a red and smarting eye.

"Anyway," I said, "what were you shouting about just now?"

"Oh," he said, "I've invented a pill. You take it and it sort of warps your experiences and ideas and feelings, and mixes them together with untapped bits of your subconscious mind, and it creates like movies or scripts, or even mp3s, in a fantasy stylee. I've even invented a USB link-up so you can upload it to the 'net and fileshare it with people around the world, and they can do the same back, and it's like this sort of pure, unadulterated form of communication better than talking or fucking – or even facebook." He grinned again and gave a little scientist's snort. "That was a joke," he said.

"I gathered," I said.

"Do you want one?"

"Yes please." I stuck out a tired, man-sized palm and he put what looked like a fluorescent green brazil nut in it. "Do I swallow or snort?"

"I thought it was swallow or spit."

"Very funny," I said, "you know what I mean."

"Swallow," he said.

"Shame. It's been a while since I had a good old snort. I used to like that – before I got myself all cleaned out and straightedge. You ever snorted nutmeg?" I popped the pill in my mouth and worked my throat around it. I forced it down after about fifteen seconds of trying. I pride myself on my ability to swallow pills dry. "Gets you high," I said.

"How do you feel?" he said.

"Like I got a brazil nut stuck in my lung." I rubbed my chest and went looking for last night's tea. "God," I said, "I can't believe it's only Monday."

Tuesday

Sadness has come like an unwanted visitor: some boorish oaf whose uninteresting tales waffle endlessly and disconnected, demanding your attention and sympathy and leaving you drained of blood and none the wiser while pumping up the owner and giving him the fuel to survive until he alights on his next victim, you all the while too polite to do anything but listen, thinking, "surely this can't go on forever" – but it does.

Sadness has come in waves, crashing upon the shore of your soul, battering you down and leaving you bent over and grey, begging for mercy, pleading for transportation from that spot, away from the pounding surf, away from that noise. Hours pass and then silence suddenly emerges, the sun after a storm; the clouds part and the waves lap tenderly at your toes and as you look around and dry off in the warmth you want to cry because everything is so all-at-once beautiful and now that happiness has arrived, in stark contrast to all you have endured before, it is as though you have woken from a dream: the happiness in this moment feels so real you wonder what there was to ever be sad about. And just as you're realising this and basking in its warm glow, darkness descends, out of nowhere, unheralded, unsignalled, unbecoming, and with it, sadness, and the waves crash again, and they are all just part of one bigger, more glorious wave, which in itself…

Sadness has come like a trumpet. It tootles on its miniature bicycle and wobbles like a midday drunk. Sadness tastes of apricots and Nutella, mixed together and spread on white bread and cut into triangles. Sadness is sticky and smeared on small boys' cheeks and fingers, because sadness's aim is bad and because sadness has a soft spot for children's grubby youth. Sadness is a pickled herring; a batman cape; an inflatable werewolf howling at an inflatable moon. Sadness is coming like a trumpet, and a wave, and a gun. Sadness comes and goes; comes and goes. Sadness.

Wednesday

My day was a blur of old ladies' tales and internet Scrabble, interrupted only by thoughts of Everton and their upcoming trip to Luton; it's the sort of game we've got used to losing over the last – ooh, let's see – fifteen years, even though we should win it at a canter. We're famously bad in the League Cup, as well as in Europe – and not much better elsewhere. Oh well. I have a feeling, though, that this could be our year – that things could be different. I might even put a tenner on Tim Cahill scoring an extra-time winner. 1-0 to the Toffees, I reckon.

In the evening I met up with Perlilly for a dinner of noodles and green tea – my drug of choice – and even though she was sad beforehand (having recently relinquished her boyfriend) and I was sad also (having grown slightly if temporarily tired of being homeless) when we met up for our rendezvous outside the St Joan d'Arc Shopping Centre on Merry Young Street it was like the mathematical thing that I've never quite understood whereby you multiply two negatives (ie, two really small numbers – smaller than small, really, in that they're less than zero) and end up with a positive, almost infinitely bigger number. And even though we weren't multiplying ourselves by one another, and were in fact adding ourselves together (which would actually create an even smaller number – ie, even more of a negative) – therefore not really demonstrating my point at all – I think it works quite well as an illustrative, if overly-complex and poorly-worded metaphor for what occurred during our meeting that night.

Or maybe it would be simpler to say that when I saw her and we hugged, thirty-six hours of doldrums disappeared and I became a nest of smiles and happinesses and joys, and that the same thing happened for her.

I've only recently met Perlilly, and only recently started to get to know her, but already – and even from those first moments barely five or six weeks ago – she's become a big part of my life. I think of her constantly, and when I wake, and when I fall asleep, she's there in my mind, even though we see each other maybe only once or twice a week. But we text all the time – a ridiculous amount of texts for my aging fingers – and when we get together there's an ease and a joy and an honesty that I find rare. She's cute, too – sexy, even – and we like a flirt, are open about that and don't hide that we know that we're doing it, which makes it all the more fun, and easy, free of undertones and misunderstandings and false hopes/expectations. We've done all the sex talk and said, "I find you attractive" – and because we've done that in such an open way it sort of 'puts it to bed' and lets us go beyond it, into a deeper friendship, like I say, free from undertones and wonderings.

I'm a good bloke; I've got respect for others and I know how to restrain myself – although, having said that, I now realise that restrain's not the right word, because that implies a struggle, a suppression of desire. The truth is, I've conquered desire in the sense that I'm no longer a slave to the impulses of the body – I've come to understand the impulses and seen them for what they are – to the extent that I can pick and choose them, and transcend them if they aren't suitable to a situation. Sex should be something you have a "take it or leave it" attitude about – if it's there, and it's all good, then great; if it's not – and that includes if it's sort of there, but isn't really there, but you want it to be there – then great too. You miss nothing by missing sex if you're complete already. And, likewise, when it is there, because you're complete, you've got everything to give. If that makes any sense.

I've slept over with Perlilly a few times now, and it's been purely as friends, out of convenience, because we've chatted away late into the night, or because I've had my bicycle wheels stolen, or because I've missed my last train. She lends me her pyjamas and we don't touch and I'm happy with that. The company's enough – and great company it is too. The first time, I admit, I felt some desire to be close to that body – to snuggle, and hold – it's what I'm used to – but she drew a line and, because of that, I was obliged to make a different choice. It was a line not to be crossed, and so, instead, I transcended it. I was helped by a dream that night, in which we were making love but it wasn't going very well; I believed it was a message telling me not to go there. I thought about how sex can spoil things – can spoil friendships, can spoil people – and I knew I didn't want to do that. It's good to have a friend. It would be a shame to spoil that. Sex can be several hours of fun – and ecstasy, and magnificence – but a good friendship lasts for years.

Still, having said all that, feelings are feelings, and feelings don't just disappear…

"I'm a little bit in love with you, Perlilly," I was thinking. Her eyes and my eyes were locked into each other, in silence, and I could feel myself falling into her. This gaze is uncomfortable; I'm not used to it. I'm not used to people who can do this. I can feel myself falling and over and over I can think of only two things to say: "you're really kissable," and the above-mentioned thought.

Instead, I pick up my phone and send her a text.

"You're adorable," it says. Two empty plates sit between us and at least I've broken the gaze.

Perlilly is nine years my junior; that's a strange thing for me. I don't really know people nine years my junior; I went to university with people nine years my junior and hardly connected with any of them. But she's wise beyond her years and I hardly ever feel the gap and she teaches me things too. Still, I do have to wonder: am I Humbert Humbert? Am I some silly fool losing his head over some gorgeous and engaging and irresistible young girl? I wouldn't be the first. Those are good reasons to remain friends too – if I needed more good reasons. She's a good friend, Perlilly – at least, I think…

"Do you like me, Perlilly – or is it the attention and time I give you that you like? I'm good at giving those things – but also I'm giving myself. Are you a dangerous flower, Perlilly? Be gentle with me; I have a heart too…"

And in her eyes there is sadness and youth, and an ocean of love and clarity, and an irrepressible child-like wonder and joy – but no answer to my questions, because I haven't dared to speak them out loud.

"And now that I've said these things, Perlilly, about realising that I'm a little bit in love with you – now that I've let it echo around my head for a while, and allowed it out into the world – I've realised that it's more than that, Perlilly, that I'm more than a little bit in love with you. I wonder what you'll think and feel and say when you read these words…"

Thursday

There's something I find confusing: it's when someone's telling me a story, generally about some conversation they've had with someone, and they're relaying dialogue and saying stuff like, "and I was like, 'get the fuck out of my face, bee-atch,' and she said, 'I don't think you should do that,' and I was like, 'fuck you, asshole,'" and I'm thinking, "wow, that sounds like some sort of conversation, I can't believe you said those things" – and then I'll be all naïve and go, "and what did she say when you called her a total bitch?" and they'll say, "oh, no, I didn't actually say that, I was just thinking it" – and that's when I get confused and wonder, "well what about this conversation actually happened? Which things did you say and which things did you just think? Did this woman actually exist or are you just making the whole thing up? And what were you doing if you didn't say the things you said 'you were like' – were you really the opposite? Were you meek and compliant, or just watered-down? What? What? What?" Am I naïve? Or am I missing something here?

Now, when I hear these things, and I know the person well enough to care what the actual truth was – or am just in an interested mood – I might say, with genuine curiosity and enthusiasm, "wow, you actually said that?" – fully prepared to be impressed and amused and inspired.

The funny thing is, never once has the, "I was like," actually translated into, "and then I said."

Friday

So my area manager calls me up and wants to know something about a replacement till drawer and I was like, "stop bothering me, man, I don't even know what your job is – even though you get paid like four times more than I do, and get a car, and all the expenses, and stuff like that – I've no idea what you do, and you've never done anything useful for me – in fact, all you do is cause me headaches – and I just think we'd be better off without you. I mean, you've got no people skills, all you do is get people down – aren't you supposed to be motivating or something, giving out good ideas? – well you've never done anything for me, you just seem obsessed with signatures and paperwork, when we're supposed to be in the business of raising money and none of that stuff does us any good. I work hard – well, okay, I don't – and do a good job – that's true – and takings are up, and volunteers are happy, and everything's running smooth, and you've never said a single word about that, all you care about is bloody signatures on pieces of paper that nobody even looks at anyway! You know what you are, man? Just a good-for-nothing jobsworth! No wonder we have such a high turnover rate of managers in this area – you just haven't got a clue."

Saturday

Perlilly and Rory down in the squash court, working up a sweat. Perlilly hungover and maybe fresh from mouth-roping Elizabethan playwrights and isn't university strange with all those friendships and socialisings and how much of it is real? The pressure to find people, the mad rush of those first few days and weeks when all are alone and in need and plummeting into things that are maybe good, maybe bad, who can say? Well that's what university's for, and just because you missed out on that, and went when you were older, and therefore don't understand – or were never into that sort of thing – then it doesn't make it wrong. And nobody's saying it's wrong – but where Rory's heart's concerned, protection may be in order – because he is sort of real (at least, he thinks he is) and fools rush in and get their pigs trampled on and…

Perlilly loves Rory, and opens her arms to him, even in his sweaty and red-faced state, and he feels triply accepted because of it. A smile upon his face and the heart that has been closed for too long is slowly squeezing open again, tender and raw now like the flesh wound it is, the tearful joy of that creaking door, the hurt that forced it shut, the coldness that kept it closed, melting away in this autumnal sunshine and not just the love of and for this woman that's travelling through that widening gap, but the love that is love, the love that radiates out to everything and bounces off every surface, filling all with beauty, the trees and the leaves and the buildings and the road reflecting the love in me, my projection, the world a mirror for myself, as always, but today the world is shining gorgeous.

We walk down the road after our game and beyond our happy chatter I see the trees and leaves fluttering alive and incredible in their colour, something more than usual – something more reminiscent of being on drugs, of being on the spiritual highs of Mexico and California and Colorado, the memory of those ecstasies when the entirety of the world was taken in with each inhalation, the sky and wind and sun fills my lungs and infuses my body and mind with an ineffable joy beyond all normal joys, and in music the violin sounds and in that note there is the whole history of that note, from the musician, to the instrument maker, to the inventor, to the evolution of all that went into creating that note, and all those hearts and minds and souls are there, in that one note, and now in me, through the open door of my heart and my mind is blown again.

I feel you're doing something to me, Perlilly, whether I love you or not, whether there is love between us or not. I feel these doors opening again, and I feel my love starting to shake itself free. Winter is supposed to be the time for slowing down, for hibernation and for sleeping, for conserving energy – but in this autumn sun I feel myself just the opposite: waking up, shaking free, coming alive, full of song and dance and life.

"You've got more energy than anyone I know," she says, and I rejoice inside, to hear those words from one so young, from one so popular who knows surely so many people, so many fine and strapping young men. I love to be recognised for my happiness, for what makes me special – for what God has given me. My ego depends on those things – and there's a sweet, sweet irony in that.

Sunday

X has started to fade from view, despite her recent visit, and despite our upcoming trip to Venice together. Y came back to my mind during X's visit – forced, I suppose, to contemplate the options, even though it was never a viable one (I don't think) – but soon left. Z, I suppose, was just me wondering; never anything there of note. And now we have E – E2000, I guess I could say – who is always there with her little emails and notes saying, "I miss you, I want to see you," but never doing anything about it. But this week she sent me pictures – nothing saucy, just smiling and looking happy and strong and content – and I was thinking, "wow, she's pretty," and feeling a little stirred, and old mind started to wander yet again.

Perlilly says (about herself), "don't look back, go forward," and I wonder if that shouldn't apply to me, too, since looking back is all I seem to do. But what if I didn't look back? And what if I let go of the past, and truly put it behind me? What then? I would have a blank canvas, that's what – and that's both an exciting and terrifying thing to behold – even more so at my ripe old age of thirty-one (my forty year-old self is laughing now; my fifty year-old self is laughing even more). But a blank canvas…wow.

If it wasn't for email, and internet, and easy, international travel, would I look back at all? Probably not – I would have lost contact with all the people from my past – we would have been as merchant ships, as transient crewmembers in the heyday of the British Empire – and I would be present here only with what is around me. A marvellous irony, that: that these wonders of the future we have today are keeping me more firmly rooted in the past. But what if I did let go?

I would be younger. I would be more free. I would have you, my friend, and the others would be no more. I could let life bring me what I need instead of searching it out in the old movies of my past, the endless repeats of lessons already learned. Why do we live? To grow. And how do we grow? By going forwards, into the future, attracting what we need, in people and in places, and then moving on, and separating, and resuming our individual journeys when the time is right. To backtrack along the path…to try to follow others…no, it's not the way, it's not for me. So: goodbye, my love! And: hello, my love!

Is it as easy as that? I shouldn't think so…

"Chamone, are you there?"

"Huh?"

"Chamone, are you asleep?"

"Oh, hi Rory – no, I'm not asleep, I was just concentrating on something; I was trying to see if I could toss a coin with such regularity – that is, with the same force of flick from my thumb each time – that it would always land on heads."

"Could you do it?"

"No. But it ought to be possible, don'tcha think?"

"You want some tea, Chamone? I got a box of Rooibosh from Home Bargains for 25p; that place is crazy cheap. I got some Bombay Mix, too – but I ate all that already."

"Tea – sure. How was your night?"

"It was good, man – I went to that bonfire in Barwick, had an awesome time staring at the fire, chatting a little, seeing if I could withstand the heat and then making some wicked-ass flames that got everybody a-scampering except for this one kid – M------'s brother – who I swear must have been wearing asbestos-lined trousers or something – the dude was fireproof, man.

"Best thing though was when this group of M------'s friends were playing games and I overheard someone shouting, 'Peanuts!' and I got all excited – 'cos I loved that game – and I went over and eventually got into a match with the best among them – this giant of a bloke, wide as well as tall – and as soon as I locked fingers with him – they were like fat, swollen sausages, man – I thought, 'u-oh, this is gonna be tough.' But we were pretty even at the beginning – that is, I could hold off his attacks, even though I felt like he was so much stronger than me – and then after a bit of just holding on I thought I'd better see if my childhood tactic would work and I just let him go to town on my hands, bending my fingers back as far as he wanted to, seeing if I could take it."

"And?"

"And I could! I let him do his worst and he couldn't do nothing to me! He bent and bent and twisted me this way and that and all I did was relax into it and it didn't bother me at all – maybe it's the resistance that makes it painful, but relaxation was nothing. So I was laughing and joking while he was going at it, and then after a bit I decided to fight back and after a couple of goes – he was resisting pretty good too – I got him well and truly bent back and in the end he was crying, 'Peanuts!' while I had him practically lifted off the ground and shoved into a hedge! It was a mammoth battle, man – and wicked fun! It made me think that maybe this was something I could be good at – like, maybe there's a world championship or something."

"Yeah, you were saying you wanted to do something like that – get a world record or something."

"Yeah, wouldn't that be awesome? I mean, I'm good at most things – in that, I'm above average – but there's nothing I'm really great at. I'd love it, man – even if it was just something like 'Peanuts' – to be up there on the world stage, battling it out; there must be something, dude; there's world championships for conkers, and every silly thing!"

I handed him his tea and sat precariously on an old wicker basket, sort of floating above it, not wanting to give it my weight and make it collapse.

"Any chance I could get out of here?" he said.

I looked at him and laughed. "No way!"

He looked a little disappointed – but only a little.

I sipped my tea and then thought for a moment.

"I'll tell you what," I said, "finish off the ant-pizza machine and I'll give it some serious consideration."

And he gave a proper little joyful leap into the air and, I swear, he was grinning like the child at Christmas when Christmas still has magic.

"How was the pill, by the way?" he said, "did it work?"

"I don't think so," I said. "I sort of felt something at one bit, but I wasn't sure if I'd imagined it or what. I do feel happy – and different – but…as for whatever you said it would do…I don't think so."

He looked a little glum at that.

"Maybe a bit," I said, trying to cheer him up, "and anyway, you know me, I'm already too high for most pills – I got them in me already – so I probably needed another one or two to get the right effect."

"Yeah, you don't take drugs, you are drugs, right?"

"Yeah – except with alcohol. Two snifters of that and I'd be on my back and barking at the moon."

We laughed and I realised again just what good friends we'd become. Kidnapping someone was sort of a weird way to get to know a person, but I guess you meet people in some strange ways sometimes. I'd felt kind of bad about it at the time – you know, chaining him to the radiator under a pile of skis and depriving him of his friends and family, etcetera – but seeing him smile, and thinking of all the talks we'd had over the past year made it all seem worthwhile, like it was somehow meant to be.

"I think I need to go to bed, now," I said, "I've been typing for nearly seven hours and this feels like the end – either that or I'm going to make some mad, 4 am six-mile cycle dash over to Perlilly's house, for some unknown reason; she's been texting me and says she can't sleep, and got stuff on her mind; seems like the sort of thing I'd do, you know, if I was living wild 'n' true."

"It's late, man, you really gonna go?"

"I don't know – I'm gonna finish this and then let the coin decide. Coin's always right, you know that."

"Well, I know you believe that – and, hey, if it works for you…but I'm a man of science; I believe in things I can see and measure and replicate in a controlled environment.

"Like nano-ants?"

"Exactly."

Monday

4 am. There are clues in here; if you were reading closely you can't say I didn't warn you. Is it like a riddle? Isn't everything? There are clues in life, too – life speaks and tells you what's coming, tells you which way to go, if you're listening. Sometimes life doesn't say anything and then you don't know which way to turn; maybe that's a sign to rest from turning, to take it easy for a while – to look around the place where you are and find the clues from where you're standing still. Not all doors open when you knock: some work on a timer; behind some the owner might be asleep; behind others, the owner might be away, and you have to wait for him to come back. Is my door always open? No. It depends who's knocking; it depends what space I'm in; it depends whether or not I can hear you, whether you're knocking loudly enough, whether I've got the TV on. Or I may be in the toilet taking a crap; timing is important too. You may call that luck – I call it fate, or synchronicity, or perfection. You take what comes. You trust it's for the best. You strive for all you can get. You get what you deserve. You look around you and you say, wow, then all these things I have, I must deserve them? The answer is yes.

And now that you've taken responsibility, and owned them, now you can change them, and modify them – or simply accept them and bless them and create them more.

Now repeat after me: I did this. I did this. I.