January 31, 2005
We are not so inclined to going there often-I go there an average of three times a week for work, and Angus used to have to go there everyday for work. I think, when you live close to a big city, you lose the lust for going there if you already have negative whup-ass work connotations associated with being there. We've been to London a handful of times together and have had good times and bad times. We decided to make this one a good time.
And it was.
We are giggly and happy as we get ready to go-Angus spends some time on the pc looking up things to do, places to eat. I dress in Boho style-short corduroy mini skirt, thick tights and chunky funky sweater. We head out for a day of it, stopping at a news shop to buy newspapers and sweets for the train ride.
We buy tickets and ride the empty train together, Angus slipping off his shoes and sneaking his stockinged feet under my skirt and into my crotch, making whirling motions with his feet. As the train fills up we behave but whisper things to frustrate and alight each other. The train journey is long-works mean that weekend trains take an extra half hour-and Angus nearly loses his temper, but manages to hang on, and we hit the train platform at Waterloo and head for the tube.
On the tube platform I think about the dichotomy in my life. During the week (like all of this week) I am here in London with a briefcase in my hand and an iPod in my ears. I am solitary, I speak to no one. I have places to go and things to do. Here on the tube platform, I am so happy to have Angus here to wrap my arms around him. I am so pleased to be able to grab hold of him and just kiss him, to laugh and to tease. It's a different world, this tube-life this London-bound, when you have someone you get to ride it with.
A much better world.
The first thing we decide to do is have a quick lunch, then a spin around the medical section of the Science Museum. We walk along a street in South Kensington and pass a number of uninteresting-looking cafes. It's when we see someone set a sign outside their shop that we think: That's the one. That's where we'll eat.
And we head inside a Lebanese shop, the first customers of the day. The smell of spices, jalapenos, roasting meat and chilling yogurt grabs our senses. The men behind the counter are Lebanese and in possession of limited English, but their faces split with wide smiles as we positively jump up and down with glee over a nice lunch. Our mouths water as we express the dishes we want and we wait in giddy anticipation. We just love Lebanese food, and in fact, Beirut is a place we have plans to go to this year.
Seriously.
When we are finally granted our falafel and lamb shwarma, we walk along the street, eating fantastic homemade Lebanese food and reveling in just how nice life is. We laugh. We talk. When we throw away the empty wrappers of our fantastic lunch we go hand in hand.
Inside the museum we head towards the top floors and walk through the history of medicine and surgery. All manner of gruesome device of health is in there-from an early version of restraining straight jacket to a thick, strong iron embrionic perforator to help deliver babies (and let's just say I'll never complain about having to go to the woman doctor again. Never.) We walk through sections of old doctor surgeries, antiquated chemists. It's fantastic.
Armed with the willies, we escape the museum and decide to make our way to Covent Garden, to have a spin around the London Transport Museum and some dinner. Angus' project at work is also fraught and stressful, and he has a conference call he has to dial-in to. Seeing as the call can't be carried on the underground, we hop on the bus to get to our next destination, and with a laugh we see the bus we get to be on-an old one, with the exposed staircase in the back so that you can jump on and jump off to the conductor's annoyance, and we hurtle ourselves onto the top deck to sit in the very front. Angus dials in to his call and we sit in the front seat of an ancient bus, seeing everything so close up. As Angus sits on the phone, he takes my hand and we look out the window and the chaotic and bustling city, at the taxis and buses, at the people and shoppers, at people rushing for buses and windows lit up with light. I look at the ancient clasp of the window that lies there, broken, and I bet a million people have looked at that clasp and if I put it on my tongue it would taste like copper or metal or history.
I look out that window and I hold Angus' hand and I think: At this very moment there's nowhere else on earth I'd rather be, and no one I'd rather be with.
We get to Covent Garden and I nip into Lush to buy a few things while he continues his call. We then go to Costa for some coffee and some relaxation before heading into the next museum. As he's still on the phone wrapping up the call, he deposits himself and our things on the couches and I go to buy our drinks. I order him a coffee then decide I want a hot chocolate, so I order one. As it comes to me, it's covered with whipped cream.
'Oh, sorry.'Â I say, thinking of my thighs. 'No whipped cream, please.'Â
The waitress, a tired-looking Italian woman, looks at me. 'Why you no ask?'Â she says angrily.
'I'm'¦I'm sorry?' I ask, confused.
'No cream? Why you no ask?'Â she demands again.
'I'¦uh'¦' I have no words. Clearly she has been on the customer care course. 'Um'¦'Â
She points to the cup. 'No cream there.'Â
I look. There is cream. I mean, I am not a certified expert in dairy products, and I am also not a cow, but I am reasonably certain that is whipped cream. Occham's Razor and all that. 'No, there's cream there.'Â
'ÂThere's no cream there.'Â She reiterates.
Seriously, the Jedi mind trick isn't going to work on me. 'There's cream there.'Â I say again, only it comes out desperately and more like a question.
She leans forward menacingly. 'Is. No. Cream.'Â
Um. Ok. Fearing my safety, I take our mugs and head back to Angus and demurely sip the hot chocolate, worried she might come around, take offense, and kill me for not drinking it.
Angus hangs up and we laugh and talk before heading into the relatively empty London Transport Museum, a fantastic building filled with real trains, buses, underground cars, and all kinds of gadgets and fun things. We take our time walking around, Angus pointing things out to me, and then we start to go inside the double-decker buses. As we walk to the top deck, his hand catches me and swings me in front of him. He hauls me against him and thrusts his hand down the front of my skirt. We're protected from sight on the top deck of the bus and he naughtily and swiftly (it's the danger of getting caught, isn't it?) gives me the quietest orgasm of my life.
Flushed and giggling, we head for the next bus, where I ease my hand down the front of his jeans and cup him, massaging and moving until he asks if there's anywhere in London we can go have sex at. I tell him he has hte loveliest testicles I have ever seen and, truthfully, he really does. Never underestimate the power of lovely balls. Laughing, I leave him alone to adjust himself and we finish touring the museum. We leave as it closes, and head for dinner, where Angus has acquiesced and agreed to have something I would've killed for.
We had Mexican.
Waiting in the bar until a table was ready, I threw down two frozen margaritas in glee. Once we were seated, Angus and I talked and relaxed, and then they brought my dinner. On the plate were two, perfect, beautiful cheese and onion enchiladas in a smooth and beautiful sauce. It was bliss. It was heaven. It was so fantastic. I learnt:
1) I really need Mexican food with more regularity.
2) I actually like refried beans
3) Mexican food can bring about a culinary orgasm. It's like a real one, only these ones involve cheese.
We head back on the train, buying some wine at the station to drink as we go, and sidling up to one another we drink our cheap Spanish vino crappo and laugh. I ask him if he's happy, and he tells me he is. I ask him if he has any regrets, and he says he wishes people hadn't been hurt. I ask him a few other things, and one of them hurts a little bit but I think that perhaps my life is a little more realistic. It's not always easy knowing that I put all my thoughts and feelings out there on my blog a lot, that there's really no secret to where I stand with my heart, but it's my choice and at the end of the day I like knowing that he know how I feel about him at all times.
We go home and relax before going to bed and finishing off the work we started on the double-decked buses.
We fall asleep and I think: Successful London visit.
That, and: I really am in love.
-H.
PS-PMS, seriously. Could you just fuck off? My breasts are the size of a Caribbean nation and about as sore as a punching bag. Could you just knock it off, already, and bring on the blood?
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January 28, 2005
And you just have to love a man that comes up with rules.
We have the following rule: Work email will be accessed between the hours of 8 and 6. Then work email gets closed. The work calls, texts, and voice mails grind to a halt. It is freedom time.
This rule is, of course, flexible, depending on if Prince Charles or some other high-level manager, say Uber-Manager or the leader of the Bohemian Revolution, calls a late conference call to discuss issues with one of our vendors in the U.S., since they're six hours behind. Weirdly, the U.S. vendors we talk to are all Scottish or Australian. I wonder what happy hour looks like at their place.
This all came about on Tuesday as my train slid gracefully into Waterloo, ejecting it's passengers. As we approached Waterloo, I started trembling. Like, trembling. I looked like a whippet on a Summer day, my knees were knocking together and I had no doubt my eyes were all "deer in the headlights", or a variation of whippet "I look like I've just been beaten, when all that happened was someone turned on a light in the room" eyes.
As we got to the platform, the impatient man-travellers started opening the doors and dashing off. See, on the older trains (called the slam door trains) there is no locking mechanism on the door (and no door handle inside the train, either), so if you open the window and reach on the outside to open the door, you can actually open the door as the train is moving. I think this is the moment that businessmen get to feel like James Bond as they often throw open the door as we get to the platform, jump down as the train is still moving, and start running to the tube entrances. They must think: I will throw open the door and hurtle my body down the platform, my expensive dress shoes making authoritative sounds on the concrete! If my tie will fly out behind me, surely I will look like Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible! People will think I am very busy and important. I RULE!
The guard always announces as we pull into the station to wait until the train has come to a stop before opening the doors, but the men do it anyway. Notice I say: The men. The women? Yeah. We're law-abiding. We wait. We actually like the heel of our shoes still firmly attached. We know that jumping out will only hurt our feet, and they'll be hurting by the end of the day anyway so why push it? We give good head. We look cool. We do not need to worry about feeling like James Bond-we already fucked him, made fun of how fussy he is about his martinis and then dumped him when we figured he wouldn't call anyway (not to mention the possible VD he has by now). I think the men feel cool when they open the door and jump, so one of my favorite things to do is sit near the door and not open it until the train comes to a complete stop. I mean, stopped. You can hear the brains of the men exploding in impatience behind me.
I am evil and I love it.
Tuesday I wasn't near the door but was third in line to get out the door, and as the men up and down the carriage started to open the doors they failed to notice that the platform was already packed with people, so I saw more than one unsuspecting traveller get pegged with a dirty Great Southwest Trains door. It was very Laurel and Hardy, if only Laurel and Hardy were funny.
This is what it all boils down to, in life. Sooner or later you're going to get pegged by a door that says: Wash me written in the dust of it. Someday you will be smacked by a door of the most knackered out trains imaginable. You'll get pegged by a door that graffiti smart asses with spray paint have dealt with, changing the sign from "Please offer your seat to elderly passengers" to "Please eat elderly passengers". It's what life has to offer-eventually, a door is coming for you.
And still I was shaking.
I get to the office and was shaking like a leaf at this point, so the first thing I do (after setting up the projector, my laptop, and placing my Starbucks cup of coffee on the windowsill across the room, far away from my laptop), is call Angus. He talks me down from a ledge, comes up with this plan that there are certain hours that I will be working, and I agree. I stop shaking.
In fact, I go into the meeting and although it's very stressful and angst-ridden, I make it.
This project is, without a doubt, putting years on my life.
So between the hours of 8 and 6 I work like a madman. No longer can I zone out and go into a Mitty-ism during a boring meeting, oh no! Now, instead of imaging myself winning a Pulitzer or offering Oprah a tissue as she talks about how inspiring it is that I moved halfway across the world and survived the Marmite experience, I actually have to pay attention to every detail of discussion, right down to what color the seatbelt is that is holding the gerbil down. I have to write down everything and minute it meticulously. I get to write reports, spend hours on the phone, and in general have every ounce of imagination sucked out of me.
But it is working-the new plan hasn't seen me tremble once. Not even when I rode Angus like it was the Grand Nationals. No trembling.
I can only wonder what's next, should the stress build itself back up again. I have a nightmare that I'm at a meeting table, working on Microsoft Project, and surrounded by my team of twenty men, and suddenly it's revealed we have a delay of 6 years. What then? I put my hand on my forehead, swooning with the vapors? I start bleeding from the eardrums? Suddenly my capacity for language disappears and I start speaking in code? I decide that the actress who played the second Becky in Roseanne really was the better Becky of the two?
-H.
PS-My quiet blogging continues, I am just not commenting much. Sorry. Hope to regain my mojo soon.
PPS-Has anyone ever driven from Los Angeles to Las Vegas? Is it a long drive?
PPPS-since Irene asked, my comfort food recipe is attached below.
more...
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January 27, 2005
Anniversaries don't always have to be positive, good, wonderful things marked by a celebration and a greeting card. They can also be tragedies that have ripped and scattered the surface and thrown the grains to the wind. Anniversaries can be haunting reminders written in ink on calendars and in hearts. They can hurt with just as much force as the positive anniversaries can bring joy.
Then there are anniversaries like mine, where it's both a good and a bad thing. It's a positive and a negative, both elation and a painful reminder. Where people got hurt (and I got hurt) and yet where I found myself set free. Curling up in bed last night next to Angus, I looked at the clock and saw it was midnight, so I asked him a question.
"It's officially tomorrow." I whisper, moving his hand up from my hip to around my ribcage. "It's an anniversary of mine. Do you know what it is?"
From behind me came the sound of thinking. "No, I don't. What is it?"
"It's two years since I tried to kill myself." I replied.
"I'm sorry I didn't remember that." he said softly, and curled up like two little commas we fall asleep.
Today is the birthday of two people I care about. Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, one of the most unspeakable crimes perpetrated against humanity. And today is the day that I tried to kill myself two years ago, followed by an evening in the hospital.
A sobering day in a sobering life.
I think about that day sometimes. Not often, just every once in a while. It's easy for me to recall some aspects of it, since I was watching a movie of myself, standing outside the doorway to the bathroom looking at myself, at the mess of blood and the empty pill bottle, but being so far removed from it that my movie thoughts were of which cleaning products will remove protein stains.
It's easy for me to remember that my day at work was unexceptional, it was just one day in a constant rain of stress. It's easy for me to remember the snowy evening outside, the ride home in the car listening to a certain song by Matchbox 20. It's easy to remember how incredibly tired I was-and the irony is, I can't find words to describe it. It's like the exhaustion was the coming from inside of my very marrow, seeping out into my heart and lungs and face, and even this is too insignificant a description.
Other aspects of that evening are bit harder to remember. What I was wearing. What I was cooking for dinner.
And the biggest one of all: Why.
Why. That's the rub, isn't it? If you ask me why, my single immediate response is: I was just so fucking tired. Bone weary, utterly sick of it, unable to carry the heavy carpet cape of memories, feelings, dreams, and losses. Is that a reason? Is that a good reason? Dunno. All I know is, it was my reason. More reasons would emerge later (BPD), haunting echoes of something much more profound, much more frightening than just being tired.
I don't often think about what happened, while at the same time I often feel different from everyone around me. Not better-this is no God complex, I am not manic depressive-just different. Like if you put on special lenses you can see everyone has a certain color, only my color is slightly off, slightly changed. Perhaps I often feel different perhaps because I know trying to top yourself is not a normal activity, it's not what normal people do. Maybe people like me get whispered about behind the back of hands. Possibly people like me get a wide berth in the hallways and super-saccahrine smiles from people worried about our stability.
Then again, maybe I'm just another average person who met their boundaries, and couldn't find a reasonable way of handling it all.
Two years ago I had a very bad evening. Two years ago I was scared and hurt and exhausted and lost. Two years ago a single act changed the road that I had been walking on, erasing the surface with a branch behind me.
I am very sorry that people were hurt that day. But I am not sorry that I was hurt that day, and I am not sorry it happened-sometimes you need a steamroller thrown in your path for you to realize that the cement of your life is broken and needs to be fixed. I learnt what I am made of from that experience, and it's of stronger concrete than I had thought, even if the brand is still dodgy.
My anniversary. I can say with authority that I am not remotely tempted to try to kill myself again-it's pretty clear to me that the decision of when my life ends will not be a conscious decision warranted from me. I have to stick it out, and it may suck sometimes, but this is contract I signed up for: I signed up for life and I have to live it.
Two years on. I rode the train to the office in the morning, and after writing up my blog post I turned off the laptop. I sat back in my seat on the crowded train, an older train, and listened to the tiny clacking noises it made as the frosty English countryside flew past me. I watched the sun come up, a shocking band of pink leading to the glare of an orange orb lying lazily on the horizon, dancing pockets of light melting the patches of frost. I let the sun slide onto my face and blinked into it. Ahead of me was a day of stress and difficulty, I hadn't slept well and don't like my job. I had a lot to do but I let myself sit there and stare out the window, at the country I love living in so much that the thought of having to leave is paralyzing.
I sat in the train and felt that, although I wasn't happy with some of the things happening in my life, I at least felt strong enough to try to handle some of them.
I sat in the train and was calm, just for one second.
I sat in the train and was, unbelievably, happy to be there.
In my mind, my anniversary is a good and a bad thing. It's a deciding moment, it's a point in time where my axis changed. It's where I was born and where I died, and above all, it has become something written on the fabric of who I am and of the will to survive. I broke that night, and even though I am not fixed, I at least know that there are pieces, and the relief of the shattering iceberg could be heard from miles away.
Two years on, and I am a totally different person. To that person, that Helen, that other life and that little figure huddling and crying in the bathroom, the one who snapped and lost the plot, I say this:
I love you, Sweetie. I am so sorry. I wish I could reach through my movie memories and hug you and hold you and rock you back and forth and tell you that you are not alone in that bathroom. I am glad you made it. I am glad you survived and continued, because you became me.
And you know what? That's a good thing. It's a good thing for one, single important reason that I never in my life consciously felt before, and I hope to never in my life lose sight of again.
I am happy to be alive.
-H.
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January 26, 2005
'Did you sleep ok?'Â Angus asks as I wake up.
'Kafka dreams.'Â I croak, smoothing the sandman out of my eyes. 'Plane crashes. Kind of like my career.'Â
'ÂHmm. And us about to go on holiday.'Â He replies.
'No worries. We survive the impact. I land in lakes filled with alligators.'Â
'Oh excellent! We survive then!'Â he says brightly.
So it's a Toastie Wednesday and it's already feeling very toastie indeed. After wrestling my ass out of bed and seeing that I already had emails waiting for me in my inbox that would piss me off, I get ready. Once dressed, I realize I am dressed like a monochromatic wet dream, but at this point I simply don't care. I head out to the car to scrape off the ice-once again I have limited time to get to the train station and work to do before my meeting starts. I have three meetings in a row then, ideally, I really do need to leave since I have scheduled and cancelled my yearly woman doctor check-up three times now, and nothing says 'Party!'Â like an afternoon pap smear.
It doesn't help that I am in the throes of PMS so severe that I would wipe out whole sections of rainforest if I thought it would alleviate the symptoms.
The ice on the windshield won't budge. I keep trying to chip it away. I was hoping to do both cars-I know ice scraping is Angus' hate job so I like to surprise him-but this was super ice, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of ice, more tenacious than Bob Saget at a Cub Scout meeting. It just wouldn't come off on the all-important circles that would be the driver's line of sight. I keep trying then start screaming at the car. I am yelling at the car and on the verge of tears, and I think: Oh yeah. You're handling this stress well.
So now that I'm on the train, dressed as a colorblind darling, heading to London to enjoy a day of Microsoft Project and arguments before spreading my legs and having more KY inserted than I had in the entire duration of my college years, I start thinking: OK, my job sucks. I have had sucky jobs before, and I likely will again. Suck jobs happen. My mind starts wandering to other potential Suck Jobs, and with my ice scraping on my mind, I latch onto an idea of a Sucky Job. In my escapist mind, I write up a diary of what it would be like to have this Suck Job-working as a penguin research Ph.D. candidate in Antarctica.
Oh yeah. That'd suck.
******************************
Day One
I land here at the outpost full of thrilling anticipation. This is what I have wanted my entire life. This is what I worked double shifts at the Gap to pay for, this is why I expurgated my family, who mocked my suitability to cold environments and told me that my youth spent raising yucca plants in Death Valley would make living in Antarctica a fool's dream. Ha! I will show them! I am here to study penguins. Penguins-perfect little bowling pins of biology. I go to the zoo all the time and stare at them, mesmerized. Their sleek swimming skills, the fact that the females are a bit chubby but the men don't care, the fact that the men take care of incubating the egg. Perfect symbiosis. I will make the penguins here my friends. They will love me and follow me around like the Aviary Jane Goodall. I don't mind that I am alone on this outpost as the other scientists are on a cruise to Acapulco-I enjoy my solitude and their not being here proves my utmost dedication to this project.
It's definitely cold here.
Time to unpack.
Day Two
Have spent some time locating various colonies of penguins. There is one colony that I think will be my main focus group, a group I shall name ZX2-F1. It's important not to assign human emotions to these animals as it may corrupt my data. The penguins wouldn't let me get close, but soon I think they will. They will. Animals love me, after all-look at Chad's dog Scruffy? He liked me. Surely that's a perfect barometer of potential animal affection for me.
The accommodation here is basic but clean. Never before have I had to go to bed fully dressed. That was interesting, and hopefully over time I will learn to actually be able to sleep in this situation. Going to the toilet is hell though-my beaver frosted right over within seconds of exposure to the air, so I had to crack the ice to pee through. Ha! And they called me the Ice Queen in college! Ha!
Awfully cold out there.
Day Four
I tried to get close to ZX2-F1 but the possible lead penguin, the one I numbered Z1-Alpha, wouldn't let me close. I will keep trying-they'll like me when they get to know me. Must study the penguins-perfect creatures.
It's really cold. No, I mean really cold. As in: Kill People Cold. I hadn't expected to be this cold. I also hadn't expected to wish other people were around. I can see the solitude may be affecting me, so I will just go talk to-er, I mean observe-Z1-Alpha.
Later
Bob-I mean Z1-Alpha, sorry, of course I should only call him Bob in my head, not my notes-chased me away again. I will work on it. Am sick of packaged food. Longing for M&Ms. I'll even take just one M. I could also do with some sex but there's no one here and am not tempted to have hand freeze to minge. Would also mean I'd have to break the ice down there, but that's one area that I don't want an ice pick near. Could read penguin research book but wish I hadn't been so practical about books-I could've done with a bodice ripper novel.
The cold is just so cold.
Day Eight
Bob keeps chasing me away! I keep trying to get close to him. Is it me? Is it my clothes, my perfume? Is it my iced-over beaver? Bob, why won't you like me, why? No one ever likes me! Oh Bob! We could've been so great together!
I can't stop crying from the horrible cold! Hell hath frozen over and I am living on it!
Day Ten
Penguins are not cute little items of biology-they're fucking evil, smelly creatures. They're foul and hateful and want to kill me. I hate penguins. Hate them! How could I ever have thought about throwing my life away to study fucking penguins! Chad wanted to marry me! Chad! And yes-even though he had the weird webbed toes thing and wouldn't eat if his food groups were touching each other, he was a much better option than throwing it away on fucking BIRDS! They don't deserve studying! Debating eating the little flippered bastards, but can't-I'm a vegetarian.
God I need a shag.
Fucking cold.
Day Twelve
You know, penguins are vibrator-shaped, if you look at them at a certain angle. Hmm...
Day Fourteen
Cold.
Day Fifteen
Cold.
Day Sixteen
Cold.
Day Eighteen
Penguin flambé. Penguin tartare. Penguin casserole. Penguin fillet steaks. Penguin stew.
Day Twenty
Dr. Anderson here. I have found the journal that Helen left behind, although there's no sign of Helen. There are an awful lot of beaks and feet lying around, an ice pick, and one unfortunate penguin that appears to have had two double-AA batteries stuffed up it. Can only assume she's gone back to the States with her research complete.
******************************
Fantasy aside, my Suck Job is still pretty suck right now.
-H.
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)January 24, 2005
You have to put up with some jitter and delay time in packets, sometimes. Occasionally the service just shuts itself off. But if you're rather cheap like myself and hate getting ripped off by exorbitant phone bills, then Skype is the way to go. Plus you feel like you're in an episode of Star Trek or something, as you just sit there and talk to the computer (minus the whoosing doors opening and closing behind you, of course).
My stepfather is a fun guy. In the early years we didn't get on at all, but over time we learnt the best kind of relationship to have is to be friends. And that we are. He's one of the few family members still speaking to me, and he always says things that make me laugh. He's also only 11 years older than me, which I often point out to Angus: "Dude. My stepfather's younger than you are."
It makes him squirm.
On Friday my stepfather and I were Skype-ing. I was well into the liquor (as one does when one has gotten their visa and then spent 2 hours on a conference call in which one sees the end of their career coming). Angus was on the couch beside me, surfing on his laptop via wifi (I have discussed wifi and VoIP in one post. Techno-geekdom, here I come). My job is a crushing ruin, we still had a holiday to book, my family is utterly at split ends, and the stress and depression over my job has me trembling like a love-lorn pigeon during Springtime, and what do my stepfather and I discuss?
Cartoon crushes.
That's right.
The first bit of animation you ever fell in love with and wanted to marry.
My stepfather admitted he dated a girl for a while in college who reminded him of someone. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was both attracted to her and disturbed by his attraction to her. One day she turned around and faced him, and in that split second of realization as clear and unsettling as: Oh God, that's what they look like in the cold light of day, it dawned on him: She was the human epitome of Penelope Pitstop.
Penelope Pitstop. The cartoon woman of his dreams.
"How did she remind you of Penelope?" I ask, sipping some wine. "I mean, whenever you wanted to pick her up for a date was she always busy being tied to some railroad tracks or something?"
"It was her hair," he confirmed. "The jaunty ponytail. Did me in everytime. The relationship ended just after that, I couldn't live with dating my cartoon fantasy."
I thought about that. Being older than I was, he was treated to a whole array of cartoon characters that had panache. I mean, my childhood as pockmarked by Shirt Tales and Strawberry Shortcake, and who gets off thinking about a tiny raccoon whose thoughts appear emblazened on their shirts? And if people do get off on that, who admits it?
I mean, yeah-Monchichis kicked a clown's ass, they were oh-so-soft-and-cuddly, but that didn't mean I drooled over them or anything. Hello Kitty was cool in a "aren't those Japanese folk just a little bit nutty with the sparkly bits in the eyes", but it wasn't something to fantasize over. And Josie and the Pussycats? Oh yeah. They were hoes. All of them. It was hard to tell whom I loved the most before Solid Gold came on at noon, signalling an end to cartoon time and the peace and quiet that adults knew while their children were having their brains occupied.
The smurfs were ok, although I would've only gone for the stable and always-good-in-an-apocalypse Handy Smurf or-I admit-Papa Smurf. There was something vaguely sexy about Papa Smurf. I'm not sure if it's his red tights or his ability to lead small Smurfs in a single bound, but I found his absolute authoritarianism to be wholeheartedly sexy. Like the Smurf you would go for just as you became an adult.
Maybe it sums up why I still havea thing for older men who are in charge.
Hmm.
Sad. My childhood is marked by cartoons that exemplified anthropomorphism. Not like you can fall in love with that.
Oh sure. In non-cartoon time we had Land of the Lost, only Will, Holly and their dad were really dense and for some reason found it necessary to run screaming from the Sleestacks, only the Sleestacks move about as fast as I do the morning after a heavy drinking binge. Fraggles were cute but one does not lust after Muppets as that violates some kind of human rights code somewhere. But as far as cartoons went, we had nothing.
I didn't even have surreal crushes.
Then I remembered.
When I was 6 years old I had a record player that had a blue plastic cover that was designed to look like denim jeans. I had a 45 of The Little White Duck (not the one sung by Burl Ives, but sung by some other person). I would listen to it over and over and over again, carefully replacing the pennies on the inside of the record each time so they wouldn't fly off and knock the needle.
I swore I was going to marry the boy that sang that song on the record. It was perfection. My mother and father teased me mercilessly. I didn't care-I listened to those words knowing that this was the one for me, the one singing the most beautiful words in the world:
There's a little white duck sitting in the water.
A little white duck doing what he oughter...
He jumped off of the lilypad.
Then the little duck quacked and he said: I'm glad!
It was a symphony. It was poetry so fluid that not even Willy Shakes himself could have put it better. The way the words moved, the perfection of the stanzas, the slip even of the utilization of the word "oughter" (a slight I forgave). I played the record over and over and over again, so certain that his was the man for me.
It drove the others in the house crazy.
On reflection, I also suspect that the singer was a woman, which puts things in a bit of a different light.
Mystepfather and I discussed further. I did indeed have many crushes after that-I loved the Wonder Twins equally, until their fucking monkey Gleek just starting to get up my nose. My stepfather and I discussed this, too-who did the Twins think they were, muscling in on the Superfriends territory? Like Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dummer could rescue Batman. As if.
As a chick, I have to confess-I always found cartoon Batman gay and found Superman to be a wuss. I had zero respect for them. My stepfather hit the nail on the head when he said: I bet girls liked Aquaman.
Bingo. I loved the flippered boy. I thought he was the bomb-swimming underwater, getting the dolphins to do his bidding and saving the world that that somehow commanded a swam of mammals to save, seeing as how Superman was busy dicking around with his kryptonite again. Blond, charming, and with gills. He could hold his breath forever. He could stay down as long as he needs without needing to breathe through his nose or mouth.
As an adult, I admit the thought still has practical applications.
We laughed and talked and then Angus and I hung up to make some dinner. We make dinner, drink too much, and fall asleep wrapped up next to each other. On Sunday, we booked our tickets for our holiday which will be the first two weeks in March (whew).
I keep hoping Angus will learn the lyrics of Little White Duck, but the signs aren't looking so good so far.
If you feel like sharing your first cartoon crush in the comments, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to know I'm not weird or anything. Or weirder, anyhow.
-H.
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January 21, 2005
The post will be loaded up on Monday, since I can't sit still long enough now to write it.
Instead, I give you four of my current most favorite photos.
This is Angus and I at the Christening we went to over the holidays. Isn't he gorgeous?
This is Maggie, inhabiting a box. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see she's sitting on a box within a box, only she squished the little box flat. I don't know why I bother buying her toys. She doesn't care about them at all. I should just bring her gifts from the cardboard recycling center.
This is Mumin. Mumin spends her time on my lap, on a pillow, or playing fetch with her mouse. Her favorite position is lying on her back. Like mother like daughter, really.
And finally, this is my current favorite picture. It arrived in the post today, and as I tore open the envelope and released a waterfall of paperwork and documents, I found the grainy blue leather. I found the gold embossing.
And I found the new residence visa stamp, complete with a bad photo of me.
I'm staying in England for another three years at least, courtesy of the Home Office and, I suppose, Her Majesty. I wonder if a thank you letter to her would be out of order...
No funny post today, instead I'm so happy I can't stop crying. Actually, I can't stop shaking. I can't stop calling Angus at work and screaming: "I got my visa!", which luckily, he hasn't gotten sick of me doing yet.
Because that's right.
I got my visa.
There is joy in Mudville. I can work here. I can live here. In three years time I can become a citizen and not stress over this visa business anymore. Despite the time of day, iIf anyone needs me, I'm getting drunk. What the hell. Who cares if it's morning here. It's already evening in Hong Kong anyway.
-H.
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January 20, 2005
Wednesday was one of those days for me. Angus was in Aachen, I had to hurry to get my ass off to London for what I am now calling Toastie Wednesdays (as in: Your ass is toast) project meetings, and I had to think about how to approach my day, seeing as I would shortly be lined up against red rings that turn my flesh brown.
So I get out of the shower, do the usual of makeup, deo, dreaming of sex, blow dry hair, wishing I was a Rockerfeller, get knickers on, get bra on, wishing I could win the lottery, and get the black trousers on. Strangely, they're a little loose. A lot loose, actually. I mean, I bought them a size big, but hanging off my hips? A glance at the clock tells me I'd better step on it-there's no time to rearrange trouser for skirts. It takes anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes to get to the train station from our house, depending on traffic and how patient I can be with the 4x4 driving mothers that take up the road while dropping off their children at the private school at the end of the road, and I had to be on the 8:04 train to London.
I put on a white stretchy Gap shirt, keeping one extra button open just to show that I can be cool, I can play that funky music. I feel pleased. I feel comfortable. I look at my reflection in the mirror.
I look like a waiter at a Mexican restaurant.
I add a januty pearl belt.
I look like a waiter at a Mexican restaurant wearing a jaunty pearl belt.
I take off the shirt. I put on a purple sweater. I look like Grimace trying to go incognito. I take off the purple sweater. I put on a white sweater. I look like I should be out harpooning whales on the front of a skipper, swearing and saying: Hahr! Thar she blows! a lot and giggling at the innuendoes.
This is not going well. According to the clock I should leave the house in 1 minute. I scramble around in my closet and find a wrap-around shirt that I love but that I seldom wear. I throw it on, button my coat up, and race out of the house.
When I get to the office (after the requisite visit to Starbucks, where the bastards are no longer selling my gingerbread lattes), I get to the conference room where people are already setting up. It's like a rat race. Whoever gets to the LAN connection in the conference rooms first wins, and the rest of us have to be put out and beg for cheesy nibbles of internet connection. This is where being the project manager and owner of the Wednesday meetings has its perks.
Well...actually...that's the only perk of having this job.
Huh.
This job kinda' sucks, huh?
I take off my coat and commandeer the LAN connection, providing a hub that others can link to. I swing my coat off and hear a muffled gasping choking laugh. It's Ike, across from me, one of the technical leads.
"Oh. That shirt." he says, bright red.
I look down.
The wraparound is nicely exposing a large V of flesh, from the Swiss-dotted pink bra I am wearing to the top of my pink thong hanging over the top of my pants, which are threatening to go South for the winter and take the jaunty pearl belt with them. I yank the shirt closed and hitch up my trousers, noting grimly that the bottom of the shirt only just scrapes the top of the trousers while they're behaving. I suddenly remember the last time I wore this shirt-it was in a Wednesday meeting and I stood up, the tie of the closure catching on my armrest, and I neatly exposed a black lace bra to the surprised face of Ike.
I remember now why I haven't worn this shirt in a while.
I also now remember why I had been looking for a brooch.
I grin in apology, but I know Ike's not offended.
Ike smiles. "It's ok. I'm just back from holiday. I'm calm. I'm not stressed. I just want to get this mother fucking design draft out."
I look at him, raising my eyebrows. "'Mother fucking'? Where'd you go on holiday, Detroit?"
Philip, another project manager, races in. Philip looks remarkably like a Leprechaun and has the temper to match it. Philip specializes in getting involved where he doesn't belong, summarizing all of our projects and sending the reports to top management. His favorite activity is to send emails booking conference calls with about 7 minutes of warning, and said calls always take place at about 6:30 pm. I severely pissed him off with his last meeting call-he called a conference call from 6:30-7:30 pm on a Friday. I declined the invite with the following message: "It may come as a huge surprise, but I actually have a life, and said life begins at 5:30 pm on a Friday."
He races in.
"Helen, I have a call booked tonight at 6:30. You are joining, yes? I need your summary of your project."
"Ooh, sorry Philip." I say regretfully. "I would do, but tonight is my annual visit to my psychic."
He laughs. I don't move. The laughter titters away from his lips as he comes to a realization that I might not be joking. "Oh. OK. Right, sorry. I'll get your input from you tonight, afterwards then?"
I pretend to shake an invisible Magic 8 Ball. "Outlook not so good, Philip. It really depends on what my psychic tells me. I could join, or I could spend tonight meditating in front of patchouli, I simply don't know which way the spirits will guide me."
He smiles, confused, and dashes out.
Occasionally, I just love fucking with people's minds.
More people are hopping into the conference rooms. I reach for my Starbucks and, misjudging the tiny sipping spot, it splashes down the entire nubbin of my right boob.
"Fuck!" I cry out and head for the ladies room. I splash water on it and manage to get the coffee out, but now the shirt is plastered to my breast, highlighting (again) the Swiss-dotted pink bra I am wearing. I sigh and walk in. Ike nearly goes purple at the sight of me.
"Blimey!" calls out Ron. "You ok over there Project Mistress?" he asks, as the room full of men gawk.
"I'm lactating." I say flatly, and start the meeting.
The meeting starts. One of our vendors stands up and announces that there is a potential three week delay. Three weeks, in a plan that is so thin on time that an anorexic ant can't make its way between the Microsoft Project timeplans. I have been threatened with grievous bodily harm if this project is late, I have been told that it's the end of the world as we know it (go ahead. Sing it. You know you want to) if I'm as much as a week out of scope. They will blister me. They will crucify me. They will make me endlessly watch repeats of Weekend at Bernie's while dressed in a Lala Teletubby outfit. My career, for all intents and purposes, will be a smoldering ruin.
I look at the vendor representative, furious and in disbelief. The vendor representative is, not surprisingly, Hadrian. "I spoke to you last night on the phone at our 6 pm conference call. On that call I asked you twice if you were running late. I told you twice being late is unacceptable. You replied twice that you would not be late. And now you drop this on the table today?" I can't believe this guy. He is a complete waste of decent oral hygiene.
He looks at the table. "It's that other vendor's fault," he says, gesturing to a gobsmacked fellow Englishman. "I just didn't feel like talking about it last night."
The table goes nuts with people pointing fingers and accusing, screaming across the table. I sit there in shock. I have come so far in my life-recovering from being laid off from my job, where I co-led Company X's largest development project in history. I have a college degree and have been in this industry for 7 years. I am articulate, quick on my feet, not to mention the fact that I give a mean blow job.
And what do I think?
I need cheese. My mind screams wildly. I need to go home and eat some cheese.
The arguing continues.
We have gouda in there. And some dodgy feta. Buffalo mozzarella. We even have that French one, the one that's been in there a while and has just purchased a bungalow and hung out geraniums on the porch. I could eat that one. My mind scrambles desperately.
I get a grip. "This is unacceptable," I heard my dairy-loving mouth sayiny calmly. "Let's go through the plan and see what can be done to bring the timeplan back." Who is this calm chick talking? Who is this who is coming across so professional and ok? And why isn't she eating cheese?
We make our way through the meeting, my ulcer going off and my mind wailing for processed cow juice. The plan is well and truly fucked-we're talking prom night with no condoms. The relief is, I'm not in trouble for it (thus far)-there's no way I could've known about it as the issues took place in 4 different countries (and me without a passport) and weren't reported up (that's been remedied). Thursday will be spent in London trying to analyze what went wrong, and trying to build a dam as quickly as possible to stop the town and our little wooden shoes from flooding.
I make it through the day. I worked until about 8 pm, then I decided to get drunk and kill off all my Sims before watching Desperate Housewives. I got out two bottles of wine for myself, and made myself homemade macaroni and cheese, using up nearly half of every fucking cheese I had in there.
-H.
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January 19, 2005
One snowy afternoon I was driving back to the house after such a visit. I drove my little yellow VW Beetle then, and it actually handled the icy roads surprisingly well (even if the electric system was a little more obnoxious and would sometimes lock me in the car until it decided to stop being petulant). I was thinking of what we'd discussed in the meeting, and I realized that I was potentially more damaged than I had ever given myself credit for. That said, I was also more productive (in an emotionally ambulatory sense) than I had also given my self credit for.
It helps when you lock things away.
As I hustled along home, looking forward to putting my pajamas back on and staring out the window in misery, I was struck by a memory. This is unusual for me, since my memory is full of Swiss cheese holes that prevent anything from being a fluid pattern. I'm like linoleum with cigarette burns in the top-sooner or later you always hit a crater.
I was in the woods near the house I lived in, in a tiny suburb of Colorado Springs. The woods were almost literally behind our house, thick evergreens and darkened skies. It was a massive playing field, all at once a nursery and a friend, a consoler and a provocateur. I spent time in the woods with various friends of mine, girls with names and faces that live outside my memory and are pegged only by my memories of what color their various bobbed Dorothy Hamil cuts were. There was an old rotting cabin in the woods called Capp's Cabin, a cabin that was built by settlers as they made their way west, who stopped and built the cabin before perishing, a tiny desolate cabin that was still open to people, the door unlocked.
Trusting times.
My memory fluttered in the car, running a black and white 9mm tape in my head. I remember being outside of the cabin, in the woods, playing with one of the Bobbed Girls. I don't remember what we were playing, and I don't even remember what color the bob was. I just remember playing.
And then I remember looking up through the trees, the light coming in between the leaves in a halting schizophrenic pattern. I looked up into the face of a man. A man was there, an adult but not an old one. A man, someone we didn't know, in a jogging suit. He was talking to us, holding a bright red dog leash in his hands, dangling from thin fingers. The leash is red where everything else around me is black and white, shades of a Georgia O'Keefe picture. He is someone strange long before Stranger Danger became part of the dictionary. My friend is eager-he has a lost puppy, we should help. She takes his hand and turns to the side, a picture of unity.
I am absolutely terrified, and I don't know why.
The memory changes and I am shifted outside of myself, as I always am when the going gets rough. I watch a movie of myself in black and white, a stomach full of fear as this man holds a leash. My friend starts calling into the woods for a lost puppy but all I fear is sick dread. The Movie Watching Me can't even move forward and put my arms around myself, I can't offer any comfort. The young me is terrified, and I see her take one step before the film starts unraveling out of the canister.
I can't do anything but watch the petrified version of myself in this memory movie, and wonder why it is that although I would have been a curly-haired braced-teeth 11 year-old at this time, the me I see in my memories is about 7 years old, with long hair and long eyes.
The memory ends, as my memories generally do, with no resolution. I snap out of it while driving, shaking and cold. I don't know how the memory ends, and I likely never will. I don't know that the young me did in the woods, I don't know what (if anything) happened. I know that until now, I've never thought of that incident since it happened, and I know I've never told anyone. There's a leftover image in my mind which doesn't make sense-an image of that Capp's Cabin with its doors padlocked by thick chains, and bars over the windows. There are needles, used wilted condoms and graffiti visible through the small windows in the walls.
I don't know if that image is real or not. And if it's not real, I don't know what it means.
With a sigh I glide the car home, unsettled again by yet another memory from my time traveling mind that makes no sense, one that has no beginning and no end. I know I will discuss it with my psychotherapist later, but I also know that he won't make any more progress on that one. Even now, I think about the memory and feel nothing, which I imagine (whatever the outcome of what happened that day, either good or bad) is for the best.
All these years later I look into the sunrise as I ride the train to work today. It's a London day (as all Wednesdays are), and it's cold outside. Commuters on the train read their papers, nap, try to make phone calls on dropping network lines. People jockey for seats, for space, for souls. We are all of us grown-ups now, and all of us spending each day hurtling towards grown-up land, the land where we are further and further away from the skinned knees tree climbing people we used to be.
Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe memories like mine are best kept in slam door trains, hurtling their ways to other commutes as I step off the platform. Maybe some people are better off having movie views of the past hurts. Once we grow up, we can leave behind the things that hurt so much, we can siphon off the top layer of sins, both the ones we committed and the ones committed against us. Maybe that's what growing up means-we can be free to let things go.
Which doesn't explain why, in the big empty bed I slept in with a business-tripping Angus snug in Aachen, I slept with my 30 year-old arms curled around a cuddly toy.
-H.
Apologies-I am not commenting on blogs much at all, and I am not so good at posting right now either. Call it a temporary lapse, a 'Why am I blogging?'Â dip.
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January 17, 2005
If insomnia gets into the water supply in the house everyone comes down with it. The water looks innocent enough, but floating between the hydrogen and the oxygen are trapped little dimples of sleeplessness. When, after drinking the water, one mind whirs and makes one spin around in the bed, the other person whirs and spins, too.
Insomnia is the battle axe that just keeps grinding you down. In the tiny hours of the evening when even the streetlights want to go to bed there is no comfort anywhere you turn. Insomnia is the solitary sadness, the single suffering. It makes you twist your mind around things, making them insurmoutable hurdles that crush your optimism like a little bug. And just like that worry that boys have, once you start thinking that it isn't going to work, it doesn't. Stressing about not sleeping just adds to the acceleration of insomnia.
A year ago I was in the throes of the worst bout of insomnia in my life. I would manage maybe a few hours of sleep a night (if I was lucky), always under the heavy curtain of sleeping medication clogging up my senses. In that house, I was alone in this-my X Partner Unit would go to bed at around 10 and sleep like a baby.
I guess he didn't drink the water.
All that passed and unless we have had a fight here, I can drift off to sleep on my own at night, medication-free. I may have Kafka, but at least I have sleep. But now Angus is suffering from insomnia, and I wish I could reach into his mind and blow cool air on his worries, turning them lukewarm and sippable, smoothing the surface of his troubled thoughts.
He has had a hard time sleeping sometimes, if it's a Sunday night and he has a lot to do at work the next day. But recently he's had a lot on his mind. Estate agents. Court custody discussions. Selling the house in Brighton. Finances. Potentially changing jobs. His new role at work and the travel it is entailing.
It's led to him not sleeping well, spinning around in the bed like a top. Last week there were two whole nights of him not sleeping before he caved and dosed himself with melatonin to get some sleep the next night. One evening he came home like a zombie after nearly wrecking the car and falling asleep at the wheel, and once he had just 30 minutes of sleep it was enough to refuel the tanks.
And last week I too started to have some problems sleeping-the evening he was away I stayed up until 2 am unable to sleep. Maybe it was due to being alone. Maybe it's because I drank the water, and nothing is more contagious than insomnia. I found myself hoping that was the case, as insomnia for me is a slippery slope, one I often realize I have forgotten my carabiners as I gilde down the mountain face.
But instead of stressing or dosing I let myself read until my mind felt ready to let go, and when I tumbled into sleep I did so with my hand clutching a small stuffed duck as soft as a washcloth and my heart clutching a stunning need for someone who wasn't there.
Saturday night we had a nice dinner out. Good food, good wine, a little restaurant in a little environment. We came back and opened another bottle of wine, started a coal fire in the fireplace and watched The Human Stain before feeling extremely tired and heading off to bed around 11. We got into the bed, curling naked bodies into the commas we sleep in, and tried to sleep.
When he stroked my side in conciliation for him having to roll away, I was awake and felt his fingers all the way down to my hip bone. He rolled away to his usual sleeping position and I was in mine. We were all set for sail to the Land of Nod.
But he couldn't sleep.
And, having drunk the water, neither could I.
We tossed and turned until he gave up and went and did some work on the pc in the middle of the night. I tried to satisfy my troubled sleep by stroking a cat snuggled next to me on the bed. Once the object of my attention jumped off the bed, I pad softly naked to him at the pc, where the glow on his face showed blue eyes burning bright under the pixelation. This must be the greatest adventure of my life, I think. I'm here naked and searching, a colt without its bridle, a liar set free from her lies. After smoothing my hand against his forehead and some low words passed between us over the hum of the computer fans, I pad back to bed, petting a cat in the hallway, and curled up in the middle of the bed, taking both his pillow and mine.
When at last he came to bed he scooped me up in his arms.
"Why can't you sleep, baby?" he whispered, and I loved him a little bit extra for calling me baby.
"I dunno." I reply, tracing his arm with my fingers. "My mind is racing. Why can't you sleep?"
"My mind is racing, too." he replied, pulsing his thumb against the underside of my breast, against the curl of a rib.
Sometimes it's difficult to put things into words. When your mind is a racing river of thoughts it's hard to tell which drop of water is which. I thought I might have guessed some of what was on his mind-his divorce was to have been final on Friday and I think it's impacting him. He has an offer on the house in Brighton. He hates estate agents. He has a lot of worries. I couldn't articulate what was on my mind-the water was just too deep to wade into. All I knew was that the current in my mind was strong, and the top level of water was just the continuous loop of The Blower's Daughter playing over it all, making my fingers itch to sit down in front of the pc and try to write write write.
Then his fingers moved over my side, finding a pattern in the skin that only men can find. His voice was calming and I found myself stretching like a cat, feeling my skin on the chambray duvet cover. He smoothed and soothed and burned and in no time we were twisting and practicing an ancient dance as a cure to insomnia. He whispers to me to relax and just think calming thoughts while his fingers and hand moves, the other hand reaching over my head and entwining my fingers.
We lay down after, oozing spots on the sheets and throbbing blood in the eardrums. We pull on the fallen (kicked off) duvet cover and wrap ourselves up like burritos. Miraculously we sleep for about 5 hours, a gift. Perhaps sex is a temporary solution to insomnia, a tonic for the mind, warm milk for the lactose intolerant.
We wake up and go about our Sundays the way we always do-coffee in bed. Enormous breakfast. A walk to get the newspaper and a trip to the gym.
And between us lies the knowledge that we drank the water and it's now in our system. At least we drank it together, sharing the same glass, sipping from the same spot. And at least we know that fingertips on skin helps ease the sleeplessness, even if insomnia itself lingers as a threat.
-H.
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January 14, 2005
Instead I am dozy in front of the pc, coming off a melatonin sleep, sipping coffee, in my warm thick bathrobe, and Angus is in Dusseldorf on business (I can't sleep without him here. It's desperate. Seeing as he's away next week too, I have asked him to provide me with a cuddly toy I can sleep with. I'm 30. I will be sleeping with a stuffed animal. I can get over myself, no problem).
Not exactly what I had pictured.
I should be heading for a long weekend in Spain, the only problem is I don't have a passport. My passport was sent snugly wrapped in about 3 pounds of paperwork, a huge chunk of payment, and my hopes and dreams for the future to the Home Office last week. My work visa is up in March, and if I don't get it renewed, I get a one-way ticket back to the States.
I have no passport.
My wings are clipped.
I am trapped.
I can't go anywhere.
A passport is a living essential for me. That blue grainy faux-leather stamped with the ominous looking gold eagle. Pages full of stamps I can hardly read, one page covered with a pink Swedish resident visa, another page covered with a yellow English working visa, and enough memories to fill a box.
I'm going to get you soon, baby. I want to whisper to my passport, locked in a cupboard somewhere. Mommy's coming for you.
The Home Office is the authority that needs all of my info. I wanted to call and say: Tell David I'm an American. A discreet one, not at all a social climber. Oh, and I like dogs. But by the time I sent all my details in David Blunkett and his seeing eye dog had left office for having sex with the wrong American.
That's what you get for not having the patience to wait it out, baby.
The website held all the supposed answers but in truth it was like every other government website. It was damn confusing. There were mountains of paperwork. I thought I would be ahead of the game if I sent all my details in January, seeing as my work visa expires March 3.
I would be wrong.
I was informed that the process is currently taking up to 13 weeks. 13 weeks! That's a fucking lifetime! You could have had kittens, watch them open their eyes, had them shred your curtains and have given them to lovely homes by that time! You could've solved world hunger (for the tiny nation of Lichtenstein, at any rate)! You could've had sex over....well....many times, anyway. 13 weeks, and for my visa type, you couldn't send your paperwork in over 5 weeks before the visa expired anyway (luckily they've over looked that one).
13 weeks. All my pay stubs. All my bank statements.
And my passport.
They have to keep my passport.
So no Alicante this weekend, and even worse-Angus, myself, Melissa and Jeff are off for a 2 week holiday the end of February. This is when they have off of school, this has been planned forever, and beisdes we have an actual reason for going...only I maybe can't go if I don't have my passport back in time. We haven't booked it yet, as where we're looking at going is very expensive, we don't want to have to cough up for my seat if I can't use it.
You can fax the Home Office with what's called an Urgent Request for Treatment, where they endeavor to send your passport back ASAP. They have no guarantees. I remain hopeful, if not very stressed out. I flit between being Pollyanna or being Beaker. One minute I can see sunshine and happiness through my blond braids, in the next my mouth purses in dismay as I watch the lab go up in flames.
I am also hopeful that my visa is renewed-if they do renew it, it's good for 4 years, after which time I can become a citizen. If they don't renew it, I have to hope Dream Job will sponsor my visa, otherwise I have to leave the country within 90 days of my visa ending. I will not be allowed to work. I will utterly fall apart.
Don't think about that, Helen. Just don't think about that.
Forms often entertain me. I know that most people hate them, but I generally find them amusing. The information people want to know! Why? What do they really use a lot of this for? If I give you my birthdate, does that mean you'll send me a card? Does it matter if I'm male or female? Will you look up my address on Streetmap to see which roads I take to the train station?
The forms I had to fill out were like this. More or less.
Form 1-the Basics
Name: Helen Adelaide
Date of birth: 1 April 1974
Gender: Female
Address: 1 Bunny Trail Lane, Whitney Houston, UK.
Company: Dream Job
Form 2-The Details
1) Did you enclose two passport size photos of yourself: Yes
Note: If we find you to be ugly, your case may be summarily dismissed. We have reached the 2005 quota on ugly immigrants. Just FYI.
2) Did you enclose your latest bank statements?: Yes
Note: If we feel you have spent too much money on Lush products, we may have to fine you £1 per bubble bar. Consider yourself warned.
3) Did you enclose your latest pay stubs? Yes
Note: If you make more money than we do, we will use your application as target practice. If you make less, you will me mocked. Mercilessly.
4) Have you had, within the past year, bacterial vaginosis?: Yes.
Note: Ooh. Hurts your chances. We like our fish with chips, missy.
5) If you are not stupid, skip to question number 545.
6) Ha! If you are reading this, then you found we don't go up to number 545. In which case you are smart and will be fined. Please continue.
7) Are you a Leo? No
Note: We don't like Leos. Several of the ladies in the office have ex-boyfriends that are Leos, so we're trying to do damage control.
Name the source of this line-Good morning, Worm Your Honor.: From Pink Floyd's The Wall.
9) If you answered Pink Floyd's The Wall you are clever and we might like you. If you answered the Spice Girls, we have a ticket home for you.
10) In fact, if you know any Spice Girls song we have a ticket home for you.
11) Have you ever swung both ways?: Yes.
Note: If you answer yes then please provide evidence. Photographic's ok although an invitation is not out of order. We're not asking for stadium seating or anything, we just need a little excitement ourselves.
12) Do you want to remain in the United Kingdom?: Yes.
13) Really?: Yes.
14) Really really?: Yes.
15) Just checking.: OK.
16) In order to be considered, you must be able to quote one Monty Python line. : Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!
17) Be advised Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! doesn't count. Everyone knows that one.: Oh.
1
Do you drink Gingerbread lattes?: Yes.
Note: Damages your chances if you answered yes. We have enough problems finding dentists as it is.
19) Whom would you go for, William or Harry?: William.
Note: William is a popular choice, so the queue is long. The official recommendation around the water cooler is to go for Harry. He seems up for it, anyway.
20) Finally, answer in your own words why you want to stay in England.: I am very happy here. I have a job, I have a great guy, and I know how to work the London Transport system with serious efficiency.
21) Really, that's your answer?: Oh. And I'm great in bed, too. Nubile and all that. Like Gumby, only I'm not green.
Note: we'll be in touch, Ms Adelaide. We'll definitely be in touch.
Wish me luck.
-H.
PS-many, many sincere thanks to my anonymous friend in Canada. I just absolutely love this movie, and now Angus and I will hopefully settle in tonight and watch it!
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)January 13, 2005
I was sitting here on a conference call this morning, trying to keep my mind from wandering and pay attention to what was happening, when I peeled a satsuma. A lovely, perfect, orange satsuma, the perfect fruit, a baby orange and grown-up mandarin all in one. The peel came off in one long strip, popping out the lovely white navel out of the fruit. I peeled each slice and got ready, pleased that the white stringy bits had come off of the satsuma with the smooth de-gloving motion of the peel. I bite into the satsuma, waiting for the sweet explosion of juices in my mouth, the tongue-curling sour and the gentle ease of juice, and nothing happened. The satsuma was disappointingly dry and tasteless, my tongue quivering in disappointment.
My perfect satsuma was not what it looked like.
What you see isn't always what you get when you start exploring beneath the skin. The onion peel splits as and it unravels, it makes you cry as you get closer to the core, through the happiness and sadness. Sometimes a big and pretty package doesn't equate to the best gift, it's the little ones nestled under the green needles, hiding in the shadow of a Christmas ornament that you want to look out for.
Monday night we watched a new ITV show called The Commander. It looked interesting-tough-as-nails police captain, this time played by a woman. The commercials showed witty script and I was pleased to see the police captain played by a woman with a simple blunt cut hairdo and minimum make-up. It had promise, as we are always shopping for a new series on TV to watch together.
But once we turned it on, we were dismayed to see that in the first scene she totters to Scotland Yard on spindly stiletto heels and the chippie police uniform. Surely a police captain would be of the sensible shoes variety. As we sit it out to unravel what lies beneath the stiletto-heels wearing police captain, we see a sitcom obviously written by men-she's not clever, she's a real bitch, and she tries to sleep with anything that might have three dangling body parts from the lower extremities. We turn off the show.
It looked good but was so disappointing.
Reminds me of a book I read once. I am someone that can be grabbed by titles and by title covers. If it has an intriguing title, it will make me pick up the fragile spine in my hand, flip it over, and read the back. If the back sounds interesting, I will flip open to somewhere in the middle of the book to do a taste test of the dialog-many books start off well, it's a true winner that keeps up the pace. If that satisfies, then more often than not the book will come home with me (I am not a glutton in anything but literature, and for that I offer no apology, not even to my bank manager). If the cover is something of note-not too many riots of color, not some knee-jerk picture, then it too will get a perusal. Some of my favorite authors came about this way. It's a method that works.
One day I was perusing just such a book when my briefcase swung off my shoulder and knocked off an inoffensive pile of neighboring books. I picked them up, red-faced in my clumsiness, when at the end I held just one book that needed to be resurfaced on the book-piled wood table, entrancing and intriguing. The book was simple. Plain. A blue cover the color of a robin's egg and a title that passed by, unnoticable. Something made me turn the book over and read the back. The back was meager in its explanation, so I opened the book somewhere in the middle and began to read.
I was hooked.
I bought the book and took it with me on a holiday, and unusually, the book came home with me. I usually write my name, the date, and where I bought the book before I leave it behind-I figure if I liked it then maybe someone else will (and it also means I can buy a lot of things to fill their space-I generally take 5 to 8 books with me on holiday, if it's a long one). It was the only book that I took home with me, and I have read it hungrily 3 more times after that and suspect I will read it many more.
The book was Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones.
I think it's brilliant. It puts many other books to shame. It made me want to stop writing altogether, since her writing is the way it should be done. Sometimes a writer can touch your life so profoundly that the word "humble" doesn't even begin to explain it.
Yesterday in London I was walking to the tube when I caught a split-second sight of a woman in the reflection of the glass of the tube. Even as tired as I was feeling, I was struck by her, intimidated by her. She looked polished and perfect, makeup perfectly applied and a dash of auburn on her full lips. Her hair in an expertly messy chignon in the back of her head. Silver hoops in her ears and an expensive cashmere wrap tucked around her shoulders in lieu of a coat. A rose-colored cowl neck sweater peeked out and black trousers, slung low around her waist, bellowed out to shiny black boots. She looked smooth and professional, a picture of control.
With a shock, I came to on the platform and realized that reflection was of me.
I couldn't believe I didn't recognize myself, but once I did, I stopped thinking the woman looked so beautiful. She was just me. Just me is not polished. Just me does not intimidate. Just me is definitely not in control. But it surprised me that on the inside my shrink wrap contains a mushy tomato paste of emotions, and my outside presentation was...well...polished.
Ah, but look deeper. She has two rings on her right hand, but none on her left. She's single.
Indeed, her left hand was dangling naked and vulnerable, cupped around her briefcase handle.
And see under her left hand sleeve? That strange looking bracelet? It's a Navajo ghost bead bracelet. It looks so weird, doesn't it? Made of dried juniper berries and glass beads, the Navajos believe it wards off bad dreams. She got it for Christmas and hasn't taken it off since. That must mean she has issues. Somehow, she's burning inside.
And sure enough, when I pull back the rose-colored wool, indeed there is a strange bracelet, one unlike any others I've seen in London.
Ooh, and if you think she's so perfect, what's up with those two tattooes? Two tattooes on her body that mark where her heart peeked through her skin, screaming her devotion to two men in her life with thick black ink. That must mean something. No professional businesswoman would have those.
It's true. With my eye-spy glasses I see a tattoo on her left shoulder, for Angus, and a tattoo on her right leg, for Kim. She is a marked woman. She has been owned, and still is.
And finally, if you think she's so cut and polished and in control, what's up with all those scars on her body? She falls, she trips, she has no control. She's a salvage yard, a broken train, a rescue puppy from the pound. And those thin white scar on her wrists? They fade neatly into the creases of her wrist, but if you look, you can see them. Two tiny lines that are forever etched into her skin, the mark of a mind gone mad. No perfect woman would ever have such a dark secret.
Under the sleeves of her sweater are indeed two white lines, almost hidden in the skin but still visible if you look.
On the surface, it looks so together. Smooth. Calm. Serene. Inside, things are different-a riot of emotions. Love. Lust. Anger. Childlike wonder. Stress.
Scratch the surface and you never know what you're going to sniff.
It might all seem so ordinary, but to me, it's so extraordinary if you're willing to take the time.
-H.
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January 12, 2005
One single white hair.
It mocks me. It taunts me. It grows in on the right side of my part, dead center. I pluck it and it returns, without fail, like a stubborn telephone salesman that won't stop calling as I sit down for dinner. My one white hair stands straight up while it starts to grow in, highlighting to the world that I have one angry white hair. I am debating coloring it in with a black whiteboard marker, but I am not sure if its time for that or not. If my white hair calls in its buddies for a keg party on my head, Miss Clairol will become my new best friend, along with Georges of Beef and his after-dinner buddy Jack Daniels. I will not have black hair streaked with white.
The Elvira look is so 1980's.
I am petrified of getting old.
Since the age of 22 I have been slathering my face and undereyes, twice a day, in wrinkle cream. I will not have wrinkles too soon. I cannot have wrinkles too soon. If they start to come in I will start bathing in anti-wrinkle cream. You will be able to twist my arm like a washcloth and watch anti-oxidants ooze out of it, twinkling the pavement with their radioactive goodness. You will be able to part the Retinol like rivers on my youthful looking flesh. I will wear a neck brace slathered in eucalytptus and lavender to keep the skin from wobbling in any way shape or form on my neck and to ensure no one ever mistakes my neck for an elephant leg (Hey-did you see that head on top of that elephant leg? How'd that get there? Weird.). Barring that, I will take up that weird Countess' ritual and start bathing in the blood of my servants as it makes my skin more youthful.
I just need to get some servants first.
I'm not vain. Just terrified of looking too old too soon.
There are no wrinkles so far. So far I have the one white hair. The one white hair and still smooth skin.
And then yesterday had to happen, as yesterdays do.
I was standing naked in the bathroom perusing my minge (you know. As one does). My minge needs a bit of work, as Angus and I have been changing the shape. We had a star shaved into it for a very long time, and then we decided to change the shape just after Christmas. He laid me-giggling-on the bed and got the new shape we would use, a nice spiffy diamond. As he shaved me it became apparent that my resistant beaver hair was not yet receptive to a new shape. It fought back. It dug its heels in. It wanted traditional.
We had to scrap the shape and my Michelangelo had to clear his canvas. Completely.
So now the canvas is beginning to grow in again, and I have to be vigilant in catching in-grown hairs (which I actually kind of enjoy-I feel like a vindicator, a liberator of wronged pubes faced with a lifetime of not being exposed to open air). I suppose I could just get waxed, but what fun is that? Isn't it better to lay down, splayed out like a lamb dinner, and let the man of your dreams spend ages attending to you?
Yeah. I think so too.
So I was perusing the in-growns, when I saw it.
It. You know. It. Similar to the horror of the novel by the same name.
There, nestled amongst the sleeping other black pubic hair, was a white one.
A white pubic hair.
I had a white pube.
Complete mental breakdown in 5...4...3...2....
"Ohmigod!" I shrieked. "Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Oh-my-fucking-God! I have a white pubic hair! I've been invaded! This is significant! I am not emotionally mature enough to handle this yet!"
No one was home at the time, which was a relief, as talking to myself would only have served to enforce the theory that I am indeed old, and am indeed going senile. I had to sit on the edge of the tub and check out the area, in case the pube had branched out and infected the surrounding area. Contamination measures would need to be set up. Hasmat suits gotten out of storage.
Nearly weeping, I got out my tweezers. My minge would NOT be a home for wayward white hairs. Take that "For Rent" sign down! I will only have black pubic hairs living here, I am a pubist! This couldn't happen. It couldn't be happening to me. I know my 31st birthday is 3 months away, but I cannot have white pubic hair. Not even old people get white pubic hair-I know. I watched "Something's Gotta' Give".
I grasped the pubic hair gently, worried that breaking it could cause pollen from the white pube to spread like a fine dust around my beaver, causing spores of other white pubic hairs to grow. I wondered if a weed whacker would be better here. Or electrolysis. I'm sure I could wire up a home version of it. After all, I have a toaster.
I pull the hair out, too stressed out about the whiteness of it to care about the pain. I look at it, examining the tear shaped root of it. It makes me want to weep. I think of it, staring Angus in the face as he gets me ready for my next shave.
"Honey, what is this?" he will ask, the electric beard trimmer in one hand and the vacuum cleaner in the other.
"It's...sob..." (and I will say the sob with great efficacy. I will sound like a soap opera heroine dying of hand cancer. I will be believable as I choke out my anguish) "it's a white pubic hair."
"No!" Angus will scream and gasp. "My tragic beautiful girlfriend! How can this be? Where did it all go wrong? Oh the humanity!" This he will say after flinging the shaver on the floor, grasping a handful of his lovely brown hair.
"Don't stare directly at it, darling!" I will cry. "It's...too horrible!" Together we will sob in fear.
I take the offensive material to the sink, to the light by the window. I check it out in detail, taking in the little tag on the end that is full of my DNA (I watch CSI!) I examine it in the light of the window and see...it's not white. It's blond.
Blond.
I check it 6 times before I am convinced. I flush it down the sink in order to make myself stop staring at it as it's conceivable I will spend the entire day checking it to make sure it's not white, and that's a little too fucked up, even for me. The pube was blond, not white. I wasn't being delusional.
When Angus comes home, I sit on the stairs. I shakily tell him of the bullet I nearly missed. I tell him it was nearly a breakdown in our house.
He can't see the problem. "You have dark hair. You're bound to go gray faster. It's not a problem."
Easy for him to say. According to the fine sword of society, men get "distinguished" with age. Women just get old.
White pube eliminated, I am calmer. Alert and combing through my remaining hedge on a daily basis, but calmer. Dilligence, after all. One must be dilligent.
-H.
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January 11, 2005
I loathe and detest sport hunting because not only am I one of those bleeding heart animal lovers, I am also familiar with how it feels to be hunted. I got to be a fox for a long time, and I left Texas before they finally put the Anti-Stalking regulation into place, regulations that hopefully have freed many other little foxes from their hunt.
Spring 1994 saw me a troubled young woman. I had dive-bombed head first into a vat of pure anorexia. I was living in a condo in North Carolina and was unable to find a job, no matter how hard I tried. My marriage to my ex (whom I'll call Allen) was a complete and utter joke. Allen, 9 years my senior, my Pale Blue Tile man, the first man who had ever remotely liked me and I was so fucking grateful for that that getting a ring on my finger from him was the best way to prove that I could be loved.
I was so grateful to be loved that I stayed with a man that assaulted me in a shower.
Sometimes I surprise even myself with the levels of emotional crippling that echo in my soul.
One year into marriage and we were doing badly. We had nothing in common, and no common dreams. In March 1994 I got our phone bill and saw a number of calls to a number I didn't recognize. I dialed it and got a sorority house in a town that was north of ours, a town that Allen had to pass through sometimes when he travelled for work. I asked some questions and as the bubble-gum popped down the line, the sorority chick living my life affirmed that Allen was the new guy that Mary was seeing, some guy who travelled a lot.
I was not devastated. Nor was I relieved. I was wry, and I was sarcastic, and I felt the bindings begin to unwind from around my wings.
On my birthday that year I told him I didn't love him anymore. I told him we had to go to counselling or it was over, which he refused. I told him he couldn't see his sorority girlie anymore, a girlie he denied existed. We were living in the same house but I couldn't stand the sight of him, so smugly sure that my bindings were still on and so smugly sure that he had never had any.
I told him I wanted out. He said no, that he wouldn't let me go. It was as simple as that.
One month later we were done. It took a guilt-soaked act to end it.
I flew to Dallas for a bit of work and met up with an old work friend from the book store I worked in. We went for a drink in Deep Ellum and somehow went from the streets of Dallas to his couch in suburbia. As he peeled my jeans off of me, I had in my head the grim determination that this is what I needed to do. This would end it. My Italian Catholic partner would never stand for another man touching his property. As Michael took off his jeans and aimed his erection at me, I closed my eyes and knew that this had to be done. And as Michael entered me and gasped "This is perfect! It feels absolutely right!" I closed my eyes and just waited for it to be over. It felt anything but right to me.
I flew home and confessed my sins immediately to Allen, getting thrown against the wall in exchange for the chance to lift my wings and take flight. I left him and drove away, letting the white linen ties over my feathers fall on the landscape as I left.
Back in Dallas I fell into the life that I had left behind, a neat-Helen shaped hole still visible in the ozone of the Dallas landscape. I went back to university. I went back to working in the bookstore that I had been working at before I left. Everything was the way I had left it when we moved to North Carolina, only I was now a single girl.
Allen sent me a bouquet of red roses asking me to come back. I took them and planted them-vase and all-in the front lawn of the apartment complex. Letters came in the mail. He went and altered all of my accounts so I had to go and password protect everything. His family would come checking on me, and one of them tried to cause a huge scene in the bookstore I worked in and tried to get me fired.
And then Allen came back.
It was little things at first. I would go outside and see my VW covered head to toe in feces. Seriously. It was covered with a thin rotting layer of shit, human or animal I have no idea. Then tires got slashed. The soft top of the convertible met with the business end of a knife.
Then came the phone calls. I changed my number. He found me anyway. I went unpublished. He found me again. In a threatening tone he told me his best friend, a policeman for Grand Prairie, could find me no matter where I went.
A dribbling dog sat, waiting for the scent of its prey.
Then he started parking in the parking lot outside of my apartment. I called the police but each time they came they would tell me he was on public property, that the parking lot of an apartment complex was deemed public property, but if he came to my door then they could do something about it. So I would often come home from work and see him parked there and know, with tight-fisted fear, that there was nothing I could do.
Freaked out, I moved. He found me. I moved again. He found me again. It was a constant cycle. Eventually he took to sitting in his car and videotaping my front door to check my comings and goings.
I was being hunted, the braying of the hound right on my heels, the hedges getting too high to jump.
There was nothing I could do. He fought me on the divorce, contesting it, not wanting it to go through. It took over a year before we had to go through adjudication-I had to sit across from this wound of humanity while we sorted out why he was contesting the divorce.
At the table I stared down my tormentor, a broad expanse of polished cherry wood being the only thing to keep the hunter from the nervous fox. In terms of the divorce, he no longer wanted me but he didn't want anyone else to have me, either. When the divorce went through I had a protection order (similar to a restraining order) put in the divorce, specifying that he could not get within 200 feet of me. I took a massive chunk of the debt in order to get rid of him, and I got almost none of the possessions. I thought it unfair but I accepted it. I was free.
Almost.
I still had to always keep moving, keep changing my phone number. I never knew when Allen would appear. I had two cans of pepper spray and a panic alarm on me at all times. My home had an alarm. I screened all calls. I learnt how to get myself out of a locked trunk (thanks, Oprah). I was so fucking scared it was unbelievable. When I moved in with Kim things were much better-we had a Rottweiler, and Kim was a brown belt in Karate. He was also a gun freak (something I didn't approve of). He would keep me safe. As if he knew it, Allen disappeared from the radar.
Then when I moved out into my own house in Dallas, Allen came back, somehow sniffing the air and finding I had been seperated from the pack. I got a shotgun of my own. Another dog. The most expensive home alarm. Outside lighting all over the place. I was so paranoid and scared I couldn't breathe.
At night I would wait to hear the bugle, egging the dogs on to chase, notifying the sight of the prey.
And then I moved to North Carolina. I left my lovely little house in Dallas and had to start all over again. Driving across country, I wondered if the states between us would stop him. I wondered if time would stop him. I wondered how much security I would need to keep myself safe, and when I realized the severity of paranoia I had going through my head as I zoomed down the interstate, I reached an epiphany.
I was done with running and hiding.
It was time to stand my ground, to turn around and bare my teeth at the dog behind me.
When I got to Raleigh, I got rid of my shotgun, which had never been fired. I threw out all my pepper spray and lived without a home alarm. I signed up for Tae Kwon Do classes, the only allowance to fear that I gave myself.
I figured: if he's going to come again, after all these years, then so be it. What is he going to do, kill me? Rape me? Beat me? Let him. Anything would be better than this so-called living I was doing. I couldn't live a life of paranoid fear like that anymore. I was so sick of being afraid. I was so tired of looking over my shoulder. I was bone-weary of being hunted by someone who couldn't let something go.
I got a few weird phone calls.
And then...nothing.
I turned back to my fox hole and snuggled into it, letting my face hang out of the opening in the sunshine, no longer afraid of the hounds.
I hope the Anti-Stalker legislation is doing its job now. I think about other women that I know have had exes that just wouldn't let them go. I'm sure there are a number of men out there who have been through the same. I know that the loss of love can do funny things to us sometimes-when we are left behind, love can make us crazy, can make us become people we would never want to be.
Fellow foxes-here's to safe parking lots, to secure telephone lines, and to believing that we are worth more than staying in relationships like that.
-H.
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January 10, 2005
We laugh easily and Angus takes the winding twisting backroads slower for me. For me, a chick from a big car country with big car roads, who now gets car sick. We joke and invent new words, new strings of insults, and talk about the daily lives we lead outside of each other.
On this motoring Saturday, we go to what are called reclamation yards. Reclamation yards, a kind word for graveyards which house the floorboards and bricks of houses that are gone, the gardening decorations and lamp posts that no longer have a path to light. You wander around the yard and can buy up items of the past for what (to me) seems like relatively little money for what you're getting.
Reclamation yards are a mishmash of old and new, of building materials and fixtures, of anything a house could have been purged of. Windows stare blankly unblinking out of lead-lined panes and bathtubs sit forlornly gathering fallen autumn leaves and water bugs within their claw-foot anchors. Victorian fireplaces that linger against fences, giant white statuesque pieces with Italian tiles curling up the frame to echo in the warmth. Some finds are gold-an iron bed made from King George's own stock tucked sagglinly into a corner. Some finds are embarrassing reminders to when we had no taste-a 1960's avocado-colored sink that mocks the white sinks around it.
We love these places. Angus loves them as it makes his finges itch to buy a home and tear out the kitchen, the bathroom, the lounge. To buy old items from reclamation yards and put them in a home as a tribute to the past, a reminder. To take back history, when items were made with care and by hand, and put it back into the forefront.
As for me, I too want a house. I too want a kitchen I can rip out (for I love to rip out household fixtures. Give me the crowbar and stand back, for I will be ripping away my problems and banging out my issues as I tear the timber out.) I want an enormous claw-foot tub and a 1920's style bathroom (they had such style, the 20's. Such style.) I too want to bring the old back into the home and prove that once we were capable of great ideas, we will be capable of them again.
I think about the ghosts in the reclamation yard. I wonder if the stained glass windows that are stacked in a row have images of their former owners-Gibson girls with thick dark hair and little boys in sailor suits. Are there fingerprints on the outside of the hand-hewn bricks? Are there imprints of baby's first steps on the floorboards that lay awaiting more baby feet?
I wonder if the fireplace remembers what it was like to have stockings hung up on it and little children's faces peering up inside, looking up, wondering about Father Christmas. The garden decorations with their stamps of King George or Queen Victoria once lined a garden wall with pride are now sat, stained with rain and lichen, wandering lost around a reclamation yard. And a large stone, engraved with the words "This is the boundary of the Property of Mr. E Jeffries, 1862". The stone outlived its owner, and now must feel so lost without him. It has nothing to protect anymore.
We drive to Guildford to buy a few things for our home, and over a Pizza Express lunch we draw up paper napkin dreams of what we want in a home. We discuss where we can find and draw in every possible penny we own to put as a down payment, his fingers itching itching to build in a house and my fingers curling, curling over a tennis ball to throw to a dog. We want the same things-an old house that needs work. We want to do the work ourselves, to shape and stretch our back muscles and rub the callouses of our hands as we survey the work we're doing, hands around each others' waists. We want to fill our new old house with reclaimed pieces, authentic pieces that need work cleaning up before taking up a space as a constant homage to what life has seen before.
I want a large water tank and a bathtub, a shower head the size of a dinner plate. He wants to be able to re-do a kitchen, and as he is the one with better visions out of the two of us, I want to try to envision it with him. I want a dog and a garden with lilacs and roses. He wants an en suite. We want an island in the kitchen and an Aga wouldn't be amiss. And together, we both agree that if it's important to the other person, we will try make it happen.
After our motoring Saturday we motor home, Spandau Ballet replaced with 80's anthems, songs you have to sing to, songs you have to like. We stop at Sainsbury's to buy food for dinner and I laughingly point out the shopping carts in the ditch by the side of the road-they are making their break for freedom, and I hope they make it.
At home Angus goes online and starts searching for houses, while I do laundry and play tidy up the nursery. He finds a few just within our price range and we start making notes to get ready, to know what's out there. We are not moving yet-we have his house to sell and we are under a lease on the one we are in. It will be a while.
But we know we will be moving-you can only stop itching fingers and dreams of a loping dog for so long.
I tell him I saw a commercial that had a guinea pig in it, a wibbling bit of fluff whose squiggling giggling sounds made me laugh, too. I tell him I want one. He tells me no, that guinea pigs are for children. I tell him I am a child, a child who wants a guinea pig. He tells me to wait until we have children and then I can pretend their guinea pig is mine. I thread my fingers through his. Maggie comes and sits on his lap, a first, a tribute, a tiny act of self-serving love.
We are a family.
My itchy-fingered man and I sit down and watch tv in the glow of candles and chardonnay, and when I sleep I have Kafka dreams. The ghosts in the house gently nudge my shoulders and whisper me awake. They guide me to the toilet to splash some water on my face and pet my hair as I rub the awfulness out of my eyes. Then the ghosts guide me back to bed and tuck me in, whispering that its just a dream.
I want to take these ghosts with me, when I go.
I want them to meet the next ghosts I will have in a fireplace, a windowpane, an old countertop. I think they could be friends. I want to take care of them, and make sure they never have to wander around a reclamation yard, wondering if they can be loved.
Because I am loved I will love them too.
H.
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January 07, 2005
And on that assumption, one would be wrong.
While-for many reasons-it is easier to live in England, the same language isn't one of them. We don't speak the same language. Close, but no cigar. Honestly.
One of the more interesting things about the United Kingdom is that even though you could fit the whole thing into Texas and have a little room left over to sell to France, there are more accents on these islands than in any other comparable land area I have ever been on. Within these islands you have a London accent, Scouser, Manchunian, Liverpuddlian, Yorkshire, Irish (of the Kerry variety), Irish (of the Belfast variety), Scottish (Highlands versus Lowlands), Glaswegian, Birmingham, Southern English, Cornish...the list goes on and on.
And the regional accents really do sound very different. Some of the accents make you want to give them a cuddle (I work with a guy from Scotland, and I just want to give him a copy of War and Peace and have him read to me while I play with my special toy, the one equipped with two double-AA batteries. Scottish accents are lovely, eh Amy?). While other accents make you have to squint your eyes to try to figure out what the hell they are actually saying.
Once Angus and I were sitting in a pub and I overheard a man talking on the phone. I wrinkled my forehead. "What language is that?" I asked him, biting my lip. It sounded so familiar.
"Um...that's English babe." He replied. Huh. No wonder it sounded familiar. Only it sounded like he was choking. "That guy's from Newcastle." Angus explained.
Ah.
But above all, accents aside, they use a lot of the same words. As a linguist nut, I love learning about the words they do and don't use, but I absolutely hate being the brunt of constant jokes because I refuse to use some of the words here.
However, I have adapted and taken on some words, while there are others I will stand my ground on and use my sloping American accent on. Often, it's not just the word that is different, it's the pronunciation. Some words just slay me everytime an Englishman says them, while others I have taken on the English pronunciation, simply because it's easier. That stupid song "Lets' Call the Whole Thing Off" (You say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe) really takes on a whole new meaning to me since I started living over here.
I am absolutely not saying anyone is wrong here-the cultures and the languages are just different. Since I chose to live here, like living in Sweden, I have to learn to talk like the natives, walk like the natives. It has been both fun and frustrating learning the lingo here, and I am still learning as I go. Here's just a short list of some of the differences from what I learnt (or is that learned?) as an American. The list is far from exhaustive.
Trust me.
Day to Day
- In Europe it's called petrol. Or, if you're Angus, it's called by its full title of petroleum distillate. In the U.S. it's called gas, which over here only refers to natural gas or the stuff that seeps out of your ass after eating too many onions. So you don't go to a gas station, you go to a petrol station. Except for me, as I feel like a dick saying "petrol", like I have channelled Julie Andrews or something, so I still fill 'er up at a gas station.
- A truck is called a lorry, which is unfortunate if your name happens to be Lori. Seems a little unkind of the parents.
- You don't go to the hospital, you just go to hospital. There's no "the" there. For some reason, this makes me think of weeble wobbles but I don't really know why. And you don't go to the doctor's office, you go to surgery, which is somehow much more thrilling and dramatic to say-I have an appointment at surgery today. No no, nothing serious, just a minor amputation.
- A TV is called a telly, which you can add the Savalas after if you want.
- A vacation is called a holiday.
- A line is called a queue. Pronounced like the letter "Q", not the Spanish "que", which is what you use when in holiday (vacation) in Spain and the waiter is trying to explain the specials to you.
- A wench is a spanner.
- You don't have a hug, you have a cuddle, which somehow seems far better to me than just a hug, especially when it's directed at your knees by a 3 year-old with chocolate around her mouth.
- If something is "twee" here then it means quaint (I think twee sounds pretty damn twee myself, but maybe I am missing the point).
- Apparently, you are British if you were born in England and can trace your ancestry back a ways. If you can't do that, most people tend to call themselves English. Unless you're Welsh, Irish, or Scottish, in which case calling one person from that group by another ethnicity is a serious slap in the face and is likely to get ugly, resulting in a trip to hospital (bypassing even the surgery). Someone tried to explain it to me once by saying it was like me getting called Canadian, but that doesn't really stress me out, so the comparison was lost.
- Women's underwear are called knickers. Men's underwear are called pants. Those long-legged things you tug on over your pants are called trousers. And what men keep under the trousers and pants can be called a trouser snake. Really puts the whole Adam and Eve fable into perspective.
- There is a whole version of language here called cockney slang, whose goal is to indicate a noun by creating obscure rhymes. Sometimes you have to sit there and try to work it out, and if I talk to a real Londonner, I am often a few sentences behind in the conversation trying to figure out what the hell they are being Dr. Seuss about. Examples:
whistle and flute = suit
Ruby Murray = curry
dog and bone = phone
- A German Shepherd is called an Alsatian.
- If you're meeting someone at 6:30 you're going to see them at half-six. This always makes me pause and think: Right. Does that mean 5:30 or 6:30? Either way, I'm probably going to be late, as I'm always running late.
- An airplane is called an aeroplane (which lands and parks at an aeroport), terms I refuse to say as I feel like a real asshole saying them.
Children
- A stroller is called a pram here, which is short for parambulator, which to my mind is something you either do to coffee or in physical therapy.
- A diaper is called a nappy.
- A slang for the word children is sprogs. They don't call them kids here, maybe there's angst about relating them to baby goats, I don't know.
- A woman falls pregnant here, she doesn't get pregnant. I'm not sure which is worse, the idea of tripping over a crack in a sidewalk (called a pavement here) and standing up, realizing she's pregnant, or taking a number and finding out, at the window of the shop, she's been knocked up while adding up her grocery list in her head.
Food
- Candy is called sweets. Just as cookies are called biscuits, except the chocolate chip cookies which appear to have retained their hallowed status as bonafide members of the cookie category. Crackers are also lumped into the biscuit category, which I think is pretty damn unfair. Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho-Hos, in a slight to the whole Hostess dessert cake category, don't exist here.
- Dessert is called pudding, even if you're not having pudding, you're having cake.
- Dinner is often called tea. So if you watch British television and hear that children are being called in for tea before bed, they are getting a wee bit more than just tea. Hopefully.
Pronunciations and Spellings
- It's not a controversy here, it's pronounced "con-TROW-versy", which sounds even more shocking. I don't pronounce it that way, but I do get a grin out of it when people say it. It just sounds so dire.
- Buffet is pronounced "BOOF-ay". It's like an explosion from the mouth, which is indeed often the case if it's an All You Can Eat.
- Take those nasty z's (called zeds here, not "z") out of the words! They're dangerous! They have pointy ends! So aggressive! We use s here instead of z, so we can be more civilized. Oops, I meant civilised.
- And just for measure, add u's to some words. Gives them more colour.
- If you see a "-ham" at the end of the word, it's not pronounced "ham", it's pronounced as an "um". Like Birmingham. It's pronounced "Birmingum". They love to have a go at the American Birmingham, Alabama.
- Same with "-cester" at the end of the word. It's not "chester", it's "-ester". So the very scary Leicester isn't Leichester, it's pronounced Lester. I know. Bear with me.
Body Business
- A mouth is called a gob, in slang. You can be called a gobshite, which I guess roughly translates from English to English as "shit mouth". You can be gobsmacked, which is a less gentle term for speechless. Makes more sense if you remember Roald Dahl immigrated to the UK and coined the beautiful term Everlasting Gobstoppers.
- A hooter is a nose here, which is possibly why the popular chain of chicken wing providers doesn't exist here.
- A fanny is the anterior of a woman's reproductive genitalia here. Or, to be more blunt, a fanny is a beaver. In the U.S., the fanny referrs the butt (which is called a bottom here. Or an arse.) Imagine the looks of surprise you get here when you hear older American movies threaten to smack youngster's fannies. Which is why I don't understand why Fanny is also a female name here, it seems even more unkind than naming your child Lori.
- Sex still means sex, although there are kinder, gentler ways of saying it, too. "Rumpy-bumpy" is one. "How's you father?" is another one. You can also "try it on" and if you are trying to get lucky, you are "going on the pull".
There are so many constant examples of differences in language. It's a day of constant pitfalls for me, and some of them make me laugh, others make me cringe. I love living in the south of England, where it sounds like everyone has been part of the filming of Masterpiece Theatre (including my lovely Angus who has a posh accent), complete with velveteen slippers, a roaring fire, and a book that not a single person out of an E.M. Forrester novel has heard of.
I absolutely love living here, and while I am able to understand the language, it still doesn't mean I speak it. Maybe I never will. I meet people from other cultures that have lived here so long that they sound English, whether by habit or from the constant tearing down of not pronouncing things the same way here, but to be honest, I would rather retain parts of my strange bastardized American accent (I moved to Europe nearly 6 years ago, and I stopped talking like a Southerner a long time ago. I think I had it beaten out of me).
Either way, I have my stake in the ground. I may call it petrol, but I will never call it an aeroplane. An aero is something you have for pudding here. I mean dessert. I mean it's candy-er, I mean a sweet.
Ah fuck it.
You can see why my head often hurts.
-H.
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January 06, 2005
That's right.
We went to the dentist.
It had to be done. I hadn't been in a year, and neither had Angus. And unlike Angus, I've had a terrible toothache in one of my bottom molars which lead me to horrible fears that should I not book an appointment to get the cavity filled people would take a look at my gaping blackened smile and point, sniggering and say: If only she'd bothered to floss. And we're talking about flossing her teeth, not the other area. To which I'd say: Bite me. Flossing is boring. And you can never take away my thong.
England has a similar system to dentists that Sweden did, in that you can join dentists on the public health care system (which is called the NHS here in England). The problem is, most dentists are full up with NHS patients (for which they don't get paid very much money) and so insist on only taking new patients privately. This costs an arm and a leg, and to be honest, who wants to blow their dough on the dentist when you could be doing things like going on holiday? Not to mention that if you do find a dentist who can take you on, they can't see you until October 29, 2008, from 7:45-7:48 am. And this time is not negotiable.
In order to find a dentist in England that will take you on NHS you have to do one or more of the following:
1) Promise your first-born child to be trained as a London bus driver when he/she grows up.
2) Sing "Rule Britannia" 20 times while standing naked in the middle of Picadilly Circus while hopping on one leg and wearing leg warmers over your ears.
3) Wait until there is a complete planetary alignment, and if Lara Croft has taught us anything, it's that such an event only happens once every one thousand years. Well, that and that silicon can be injected almost anywhere.
4) Hover around the offices for planning permission to find out when the next dentist office is being built, and then kill people in the queue ahead of you to get your name on the list first.
Since Picadilly is already heaving with people trying to get their names on lists, I decided my best option was to go about this two ways: to Google until I found a nearby office still accepting NHS patients, and once I did, to try to charm our way into the patient load. So the second to the last week of December, I did just that.
Imagine my surprise when I found a dentist's office had recently opened just down the road. And they were still taking NHS patients. And I was able to get through the first time I rang them.
"Blah Blah Blah Dentist's Office." said a female voice on the phone. I could tell from her accent she was Australian.
"Yes, hi." I said. For some reason this is my standard greeting to office staff. I have to say the yes. I will never understand why. "Are you still taking NHS patients? My partner and I live nearby and we need to book a dentist appointment."
"We're pretty booked right now." slangs the Aussie. "We can't take you until...." and here I flip my diary open to 2009, fearing the worst. "January 4, 2005 at 12:30." says the receptionist, with a tone anticipating an outrageous reaction from me.
"Excellent!" I crow. "We'll take it!"
Aussie seems taken aback that we are so willing to be satisfied. "Really?" she asks, surprised.
"We're easy to please." I reply.
We book the appointment, and with dread, we go. When we get there, we find it's a massive house in a nearby neighborhood that has been converted to a dentist's office, and judging by the names on the plaque outside, all of the dentists are foreign. And when we get inside, we find that nearly all the staff is foreign.
I could fit in here.
There is a huge squealing sound emanating from upstairs, of tools being used on something hard and resistant. A sound of torque pervades the hallway, followed by a hammering and thumping sound. Then the sound of intense drilling. I look around. "Now that guy has a tarter control problem." I breeze. "I'm really not happy going to a dentist who's tools say 'Black and Decker' on them." One of the receptionists laughs.
Aussie looks at me. "We're renovating." she says bluntly.
10 out of 10 for the bleeding obvious, honey, I think.
We are handed pages of documents to fill out, documents which look old and which I suspect were reproduced via mimeograph, which I think is cute and quaint and makes me want to sniff the pages. One of the items that we have to check yes/no to is the question: I want to be sedated.
Stopping myself from singing the words to the 80's song and doing a Snoopy style shoulder dance there in the reception, I ask the Aussie.
"I want to be sedated?" I ask, and there is a hint of that melody in the way I ask it. "What does that mean? Like, if I'm having a rough day I can pop by here? That I can opt to be knocked out if I feel a little insecure?"
She just stares at me. "It's for treatment. If you want sedation."
Right, I think, looking at her. You are only the second Australian I have ever met who has had a humor bypass, the first being a guy with an action hero name and a beer gut the size of Montenegro.
I check yes. Why say no to sedation? Besides that, no one is getting near my teeth without anesthetic first. I was offered that in Sweden-did I want my cavity filled with anesthetic, which will cost more? Hmmm....let me think about that. Does the pope have a balcony?
We are led to the waiting room where there are numerous magazines draped around chairs, all happily from 2004 but a disturbing number of them are dive magazines with enormous Great White Sharks jumping up on the cover, rows of fish-filled triangular teeth aiming for the headlines of the glossies. A disturbing vision of the orthodontic possibilites behind Door Number 2, really.
The dentist comes out to get me first. Long black hair, big eyes, and a cute South African accent, she puts me at ease smiling and telling jokes. She asks me how often I brush my teeth, etc., and I find myself striving to prove I am a worthy dental patient. I always do this. It's like I am still expecting a gold star to be stuck onto my sweater for good oral hygiene, as opposed to just good oral.
She looks at my form.
"You want sedation?" she asks.
I usually ask that people buy me dinner first, but yeah. I'm game. "If you have a caivty or something, then yes. I do want anesthetic." I reply. "I'm a bit of a chicken. I won't pass out or anything. But I don't want to feel you drilling. Not that you'll need to. I have good dental hygiene."
God. I just said the words "dental hygiene". I have had a brain transplant and I am now Strawberry Shortcake.
"Oh that's different. Sedation means we use gas to knock you out. Of course you'll get anesthetic." she says kindly.
"That's good. " I reply. "But do sedate me if you need to take out all my teeth or something. I mean, in case it all goes horribly wrong. But it won't as I take good care of my teeth. I swear." Shut up, shut up, shut up you absolute fucking moron.
She starts poking and prodding at my teeth. "Do you floss?" she asks.
I hesitate. Do I lie and tell her daily, or do I tell her the truth, which is that I floss if I have to dress up fancy and look nice or if I have a popcorn husk caught in my teeth, whichever comes first? "Not really." I reply. "Sorry. I know I should do it daily."
She laughs and leans forward. "Let me tell you something." she says in that gorgeous South African accent of hers. "Not even dentists floss daily. It's too boring."
I laugh.
"In fact," she continues, snapping on rubber gloves. "I eat sweets. Constantly. But don't tell anyone."
I love her. I briefly debate going gay for her, but then realize that perhaps that's an ianppropriate response of gratitude. Overkill and all that. Besides, she's into sweets, not beaver.
She takes X-rays using those bite wing things designed by a sado-masichist who gets off on damaging pink gums and laughing at the drooling trolls it turns us into. She leaves the room as my face gets exposed to a splash of X-ray, and when she returns she pulls the bite wings from my mouth, leaving a trail of saliva from my mouth to the trash can so long that Hansel and Gretel could have used it to find their way home. I am horrified my cool dentist will think me a dribbling idiot, but she laughs again.
"You should see me!" she giggles. "Fountains of saliva!"
This is the coolest dentist ever. I never want to go to another dentist again, no matter where I will be living, I will drive to see this chick. This is the Uber-Dentist.
In the end, Angus and I wearily finish up our appointment. As NHS patients, we pay a grand total of £30 for the X-rays and the check-up. But we don't get off that easy-I do indeed have a cavity, and Angus needs 4 of his older fillings replaced. We get to go back next week for dental work, and this time it will be out of pocket, as this dentist uses the new white enamel fillings to replace the old silver mercury ones. The silver ones are covered by NHS. The white ones aren't.
It sucks to have to pay for non-fun things.
-H.
PS-I watched the first episode of Desperate Housewives last night as it's come to England now. Oh yeah. I'm hooked.
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January 05, 2005
Walking to the wall with Angus, I had a sudden thought-at 12 years my senior, would Angus go before me? Would I be like the widows of old who lives a long life alone, with a supply of cats and tea cozies? Would I go on, or would this be the last time that my heart unfurls?
What do you do when mortality gets in the way of love?
I wondered what I would do next, should something happen to him. Where I would go, what I would do should my new life come about, life Number 7, where I live the life of a cat. I have managed to live a thousand lives in my thirty years so far, would the next life be too full as well? Could I wait and bide my time for my space next to him in a plot, a space that beckoned me every Sunday and in which I would take meticulous care?
The instigator for moving on to the next life is if I lost Angus, and to my mind, only that. I have been utterly content with where I am in my tiny village in England and with my lovely man, the only thing that would knock me off of this bridge is if my bridge support disappeared. As much as I would like to say that I will stay here, find someone new, build a life with a man named Nigel or Alec, I know the truth of the matter is that I would bolt and race off into the distance, a colt whipping out its legs to cover more ground.
When you've had the brass ring, it's impossible to say you'll be willing to settle for a Juicy Fruit wrapper should someone take your ring away.
In my mind it is clear. In my mind it's all quite a ways into the future, when I have hopefully become a grown-up. I would buy an old Land Rover. I would pack up my dog-for I will always have a dog, and when my lovely girls pass away I know I will likely never have another cat-and drive away.
And I will just keep driving.
A few years ago I wrote a book (which lingers in idle digital moments on my pc) called Nomads. It was the story of my move to Sweden, of what it's really like to be posessed with the need to move, to keep hunting for what it is that defines contentment. I don't think I will ever do anything with Nomads-it exists as a record of that time in my life, but fundamentally, it stands for so much more.
I always moved around as a child, a pattern I continued as an adult. I couldn't stand to live in the same apartment, the same neighborhood, the same town. My feet would itch once my boxes were unpacked, and I invariably had an old lover banging on my mental space trying to get past the door frame.
If Angus disappeared, I think I would have to leave and I would go at it as I always did-I would leave without a trace and leave everything behind me.
There are areas where I can never go again, I think. The small hot dusty town in Arkansas where a curly blond girl forgets her dreams. Corn fields in Iowa that whisper of haunting pain through the crackling fields as the cicadas force dandelion fluff to hustle through the air. The ache of the keyhole building in Dallas, of giggling companionship overlooking the city and a boy who held my hand. A tall concrete hospital in Stockholm near a perfect gingerbread house that saw my imminent failure. This lovely town we live in, whose cricket green echoes with Angus' deep and happy laugh, should Angus not be there to laugh with me.
These are places I cannot go back to because the truth is, maybe the issue is not that I need to keep moving because I have such wanderlust.
Maybe I have to keep moving since I can't bear the memories.
I want to say I would be able to stay and live my life here in this tiny place I call home, even if it was Angus-less, but I know myself a little too well to be able to say that with any certainty. I will hope that if anything happens to my boy, I will stay in this place that we created. It's not just the fact that I have someone that I love so much-it's that I have someone that I like myself when I am with. I couldn't bear to lose us both.
But in my vision of how to cope in a life sans Angus, I get into my old Land Rover, a lazy big dog dripping his tongue onto the seat beside me and my heart packed up in a hat box, and drive away. To Africa, to India, to as far as I could get on as many tanks of gas as I needed. And instead of leaving everything behind me, I would actually have more with me than I ever realized, than I ever had before.
Because I have learned that there are some people that you can never leave behind, and whom can never leave you.
I will have had the greatest love of all times and have known that in all of the places I have been, I was actually entitled to have felt like home at one point. For a crazy chick like me, it's thanks enough. My boots fit here. My keys open this lock. My laughter rings this chimney. My bedouin tent has been firmly packed and lashed with its ropes.
If I were to lose Angus, I would have with me the knowledge that once I knew a place where my feet didn't itch and the moving boxes didn't need to get stored for the next move. Where a man knew everything about me and didn't flinch. Where the word "home" had a meaning, a belonging that I wore about my neck like a scarf.
And the loss of that would be a reason to keep driving if there ever was one.
-H.
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January 04, 2005
It was big fun, actually.
By the time people arrived with their dishes, we were in high party mode. Candles lit around the house and festive music playing. The cats were on guard, having been through a racuous Christmas, and knowing that an event could rapidly turn into party popper streaming exploding at a moment's notice, thereby necessitating a slink along the ground to the caverns of the upstairs. Best Friend in particular was doing well, which was a good thing-it would've been his ten year anniversary, and he was trying to keep the demons at bay (and he's setting up his own blog to tell his own stories shortly).
Everything went fabulously. Wine flowed for some (like myself) and beer for others. I learnt my lesson a while ago-never mix grape and grain unless you're making muesli-so I stuck to the wine until the fizzy stuff got opened. At around midnight we dashed outside to the cricket green and started lighting the rockets.
I never had fireworks of my own in the States, as they're illegal. We had some very tame ones once in Arkansas, but beyond that it was sparkler city. No fireworks. Verbotten. Not allowed. So when I moved to Sweden and found I could actually buy them and set them off, I could literally burn up my money, I thought I'd hit pay dirt. Angus loves them as well, so we love buying enormous rockets to set them off with a bang (sometimes a cigar is just a cigar).
Of course, this doesn't mean I am so world-wise about using them. I got a baby rocket out of the pack, a very small one, and I knew it had to be standing up. So I planted it in the ground, lit it, and ran. Of course the fuse went off, but seeing as I had planted the stick it sent brilliant sparkling pink crackles right into the ground. It looked pretty. It also burned a one foot circumference black scalding mark right into the cricket green.
Lesson learnt, the rest of it went well, including the kissing at midnight.
Back to the house after that, where the champagne flowed. A few bottles got opened, as did the whiskey for the men-folk with a hankering. A few guests started making their apologies, swerving out of the house and walking back to theirs with a giddy drunken gorgeousness. Finally, it was just Angus, Best Friend and I. I went to do another load of dishes while Angus and Best Friend kept drinking. Walking back, I realized that everything was moving with a flip-flip-flip like those picture books that illustrate how movie frames work. Everything was flip-flip-flipping...at a 45 degree angle.
And it was thus I uttered the words on college campuses everywhere: Dude, I am drunk. Really drunk.
I made my way to the bed and passed clean out, waking in the middle of the night to drink some water and down some paracetamol. When I woke, I realized I was alone in the bed and went downstairs to see Angus, looking grey, a pillow on his forehead.
"Hi Honey." I said. "Want some paracetamol?"
"I'm having a bit of a time holding things down right now, actually." he replied. "But thanks."
I nod, and realized my insides felt a bit dodgy. I take a long swig of orange juice and then I made it upstairs in time for an absolute colon clean out. Shaking, I made my way back to the bed. Then had to dash back to the toilet. This repeated itself four times, until the fifth time, wondering what the hell could still be left in my intestines, I reached the door with a new connundrum. What do you do if there is about to be icky shooting out from both ends? How do you spin the roulette wheel then?
I took my chances and sat on the toilet to the fifth explosion of the day, luckily not with pink sparkles. And as I sat there, I realized there was no stopping it. My mouth opened and I threw up orange juice all over my legs. And me-germ-phobic, dodgy me-didn't even get upset. I was too hung over to get upset. I just thought, with the chainmail-clad knight's grimness: You have chosen...poorly.
I cleaned myself up and went back to bed, toilet dashing with its new dimension occuring a few more times. There reached a point when I had to get up-Best Friend had to be taken to the airport. I took a short bath, pleased I was able to do so. Angus had crawled back to bed, so I decided to take Best Friend to the airport and hope for the best. I was drinking water, and keeping it down, so I thought it was a good sign.
Best Friend, with absolutely no hangover, was chatty and normal on the drive. As for me, I had to make sure I didn't turn to look at him, as turning my head would be bad. Very bad. I started feeling the rumblings of ill again, but I promised myself to hold on. I dropped Best Friend off at Heathrow with a hug goodbye and sped home...only just out of Heathrow I knew I wouldn't make it.
Praying paratroopers suspecting me of terrorism would be held at bay, I pulled over outside the airport entrance and threw my ever-loving guts up. It was all Exorcist, baby, only orange juice and water instead of pea soup. My jaws and throat ached as my stomach pushed everything out at what felt like 90 miles an hour. When I was done, I rinsed my mouth out and looked at my face-my eyes were streaked with broken blood vessels and the pettichiae that come with too much strain. I looked awful.
I made it home and crawled into bed with Angus, where we intermittently slept until declaring ourselves fully recovered, sometime late in the evening. And now, a few days of quiet, loads of laundry and dishes later, we are happy and ok. And a few pounds lighter.
Thus, we had a very Happy New Year. No really. We did. It was just the day after that was a bit rough. Reduced to two trembling phlegmatic babes, we took care of each other and even got the shagging in the next day, to welcome in the New Year.
Who cares if it was one day late.
-H.
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all suggestions gratefully received (H says you lot are very, um, inventive)51 queries taking 0.0796 seconds, 504 records returned.
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