Christmas
What are you doing for Christmas, Rory?I don't know; nothing, probably, I haven't really thought about it. Maybe my mum'll invite me over and maybe I'll do that; maybe she won't and I'll do something else. Not fussed, to be honest.
What are you getting for Christmas, Rory?
I don't know; nothing, probably. No doubt my dad'll fish in his pocket and dig out twenty quid when he sees me next, but apart from that...not a clue. If I was gonna make a list of things I'd actually like - let's say I had people who wanted to buy me stuff - I'd mostly try and put non-physical things on it, since I don't want any more possessions (have quite enough, thank you) and also I don't want to be lumbered with things I won't use or don't like. Plus I'm not bothered about having any money spent on me. So, apart from the obvious - you know, giving something to charity on my behalf - I think I'd go for things like mp3 files and copied DVDs (I mean, if you give me original DVDs or CDs I'm only going to copy them and sell them, or give them to charity). I'd really like an mp3 of the tune 'Zabadak', as featured in 'Bang Bang! It's Reeves and Mortimer' when the car guys are slamming their doors, and also some Beautiful South - and maybe some burned DVDs of comedy shows I haven't got, or ones that I have got but don't work anymore, like 'Peep Show' and 'The Royle Family'. A man asked me the other day why I didn't buy books and I just think, why would I? It all just weighs me down - and there's libraries and bookstores if you ever want to read something; I can't understand people that have shelves full of books that they'll never read again, and maybe never have.
A flaky red-rock town in
Initially, strength, and clarity, and weightlessness; later, sadness comes, a hole, and an urge to call. Resist, he says. But so beautiful and so great! Resist.
Heart pines.
Resist. And wait.
There ain't no love and there ain't no use (goes the song in my head) when a little red car drives by.
Tales of Christmas Past
30. With X's family in
29. With X, my mum, her husband and my brother in Ossett. TV, eating, presents and games.
28. With X's mum in
27. Alone in an empty house in
26. Alone in a caravan in
25. With a gay man in
24. Alone on a beach, mid-vision quest, feeling sad for the unable-to-hug whales.
23. Woke up in
22. On a beach in Baja, with a chum, a whisker away from drowning.
21. Alone? In
20. Rollerblading up the beach in
19. Depressed in
18. Girlfriend's family in
17. Different girlfriend's family in
16. Dad's, probably,
15. eating hot dogs and
14. bacon sandwiches with
13. television, and a minimum of fuss.
12. Last Christmas for 17 years with my mum, at her mum's in
11. Ditto. One year I got meccano,
10. sneaked it commando style about
09. four in the morning from
08. under the tree, crawled under my mum's bed and
07. played with it in the kitchen
06. then put it back.
05. Another year I ate a whole chicken by myself; that was all I had.
04. My brother and I
03. sat on our own away from the table;
02. there wasn't room for us amongst all her brothers.
01. They were train spotters, and I was too.
Title
My book needs a title, I'm realising, even for when I'm just sending off chapters and project outlines to publishers and agents. At first I thought, 'Journey', that'll do, until I find something better – but then I realised it was rubbish, even for that purpose. So now I need something that kind of works; I need to brainstorm. What to call a book about a young man from Yorkshire who goes on a trip, gets a bit down, loses himself – "if you want to find yourself, you've got to get lost in the first place" – and then takes to the road, discovers nature, gets hellbent on happiness, from one thing to the next, and eventually discovers it in the weird mysticism of Mexican deserts and shaman, and tromps ecstatically and sadhu-like around and around the country living in the lap of angels and learning his own soul and God? What indeed! Me and my chum fired some sixty second ideas the other day and the best we got was the strange and ungrammatical, "Discovering Beautiful"; I kinda like that. But what else? Finding beauty; finding beautiful; discovering…wonder…journey…
Sketches of Charlottesville
So ten years ago exactly I lived in the small and fancy and convivial and green and humid-in-the-summer northern Virginian not-too-far-from-the-mountains town or city of Charlottesville, which was shortened to Cville by its populace, and which was not far from where Thomas Jefferson lived in Monticello (check out the back of your pennies or dimes or nickels, whichever one it is) and he designed the rather grand and expensive and preppy and fat-necked, keg-chugging university there – UVA; the University of Virginia – and all in all it's a pretty nice place, with a pedestrianised downtown area and lots of bars and arty types and money and – handily – the ghetto is kept on the other side of the slow-moving railroad tracks, so the blacks know their place, and several dozen restaurants are each staffed by several dozen cool young drunken waiters and bartenders and waitresses and dishwashers, milking in the tips and blowing it all on booze and fun livin', and I was one of these. I was a waiter and, best of all, I was a Britboy waiter – perhaps the only one in town – and I was raking it in and I was mighty drunk with it too. I knew mostly gutterpunks and alterna-types – and that's probably what got me into trouble in the first, even though they then for the most part mostly turned against me but – well, before all that there was good times as well (you know, riding on the roof of the car swerving fast down 3am roads and out into the country drunk and yahooing for a jump in a quarry pool, or 4am fishing that was never gonna be successful, or apartment swimming pool hopping, chased away by superintendents and unhappy residents, or all-night parties gulping cough syrup and vases full of rum, broken windows and huntin' frat boys' kegs, or some other such nonsense) but that all ended, pretty much, when I got tired and wasted and pranged my '72 Ford LTD into two other cars and got arrested and felony charge and sniffer dogs and three days in jail – suicide watch and all – and then the day of my release ending up in bed with my best friend's very recently broken up girlfriend (like, maybe three or four hours) and putting a wedge between everybody and threats of fights and beatings and lots of bad blood and hatefulness and never speaking with him again, except to say, "fuck you," and "motherfucker!" and, well, me and her, we stuck it out though and stayed together about four months and were somewhat in love in our unitedness and shared psychic understandings and also the fact that we were drunk and dramatic and young and both waited our tables and then blew our money and got into trouble and were shunned here and there, but tenderness and talking and love and dreams up hills and mountains, and out there in her parents' place with bouncing Labradors and fields, hippy swimming ponds and sauna, and that was different – but December 3rd – let's say it was December 3rd – we were in the city and it was twelve noon and in some redneck bar up JPA the drink was about to start flowing.
I'd told her – Leah, we'll call her, for that was her name – about the fine English tradition of the 'pub crawl', wherein one drink is had in each bar and on to the next it goes, and the next, and the next, and she'd kinda got a liking to that idea, and so off we went one day to give a go. Twelve noon seemed like a good time to start – I mean, that only gave us 14 hours till closing – and – and, you know what? I don't think I can be arsed with this; it ain't time for Part Two – when it's time, I'll know – so I think I'll go back instead to editing my chapters and working on some kickass letter with which to wow publishers and agents, maybe. Well at least I tried! And found out that juice ain't there; I can be happy with that, and let it go.
My Ideal Woman
She will be kind and generous, light-hearted and silly, and maybe somewhat creative - but definitely with enough of her own interests to keep her interesting and satisfied, and not too much in my own hair. She will be fun; perhaps spiritually minded. She will be emotionally aware, and interested in exploring that world, and not punish me, and criticise me, and make me feel like shit. She will give to and want me as much as I give to and want her, and she will be affectionate, and love cuddles and kisses - and not complain about my beard - and when we make love it will be fun and easy and passionate and hot, and afterwards we will curl up next to each other and fall asleep with smiles on our faces, and when we awake our bodies will be curled and pressed together still. She will like my sweat, and not be squeamish; everything will be good; anything goes. She will not require lots and lots of money, but instead will be happy with what we have, will understand that love is the greatest thing of all, and that the universe will provide, and provide in abundance, even when we are making babies. She will support my heart's desires, and encourage, and give useful advice, and perhaps we will create something together - and I will do the same for her. Her face and body will be beautiful to me, and I will never tire of looking at it; I will forever be enthralled. Her parents and family will be nice to me, and her mum will be the kind of person I could see myself being happy with in thirty years time. She will be faithful and true - as will I - and I will trust her implicitly. She will be reliable, and I will never let her down, and when we disagree or argue she will not be afraid to take whatever issues on, will not run away, will not curl up in a black ball, but will love the voyage of discovery, the untangling of the emotional web, of semantics. She will love to get to the bottom of things.
My Ideal Woman
She will be kind and generous, light-hearted and silly, and maybe somewhat creative - but definitely with enough of her own interests to keep her interesting and satisfied, and not too much in my own hair. She will be fun; perhaps spiritually minded. She will be emotionally aware, and interested in exploring that world, and not punish me, and criticise me, and make me feel like shit. She will give to and want me as much as I give to and want her, and she will be affectionate, and love cuddles and kisses - and not complain about my beard - and when we make love it will be fun and easy and passionate and hot, and afterwards we will curl up next to each other and fall asleep with smiles on our faces, and when we awake our bodies will be curled and pressed together still. She will like my sweat, and not be squeamish; everything will be good; anything goes. She will not require lots and lots of money, but instead will be happy with what we have, will understand that love is the greatest thing of all, and that the universe will provide, and provide in abundance, even when we are making babies. She will support my heart's desires, and encourage, and give useful advice, and perhaps we will create something together - and I will do the same for her. Her face and body will be beautiful to me, and I will never tire of looking at it; I will forever be enthralled. Her parents and family will be nice to me, and her mum will be the kind of person I could see myself being happy with in thirty years time. She will be faithful and true - as will I - and I will trust her implicitly. She will be reliable, and I will never let her down, and when we disagree or argue she will not be afraid to take whatever issues on, will not run away, will not curl up in a black ball, but will love the voyage of discovery, the untangling of the emotional web, of semantics. She will love to get to the bottom of things.
She will be called Boris, be about six foot three tall, and drive a red Nissan Micra. She will have three and a half cats, a frying pan named 'Stanley
No comments:
Post a Comment