On finding a man

What is love?

What a boring question.

But seriously.

I think I have experienced love. Possibly once. Maybe twice. Can you retroactively love someone? I don't know. Here goes.

___________

It's incredible really - the lengths we go to.

We have this need placed in us to select ONE person from the throng to be our mate, and procreate, but with just one.

We hate the sample, but that does not stop us.

Is it more difficult if you are a man who likes men, to find a suitable partner to aid you on the trip? I'd say so. There is maths involved. If you take, for example, the population of London - twelve million (12,000,000) - take it down to one tenth (average percentage of population that is homosexual) and then halve that (cutting out the females) - we are already down to six hundred thousand (600,000). That's not a lot of people really. And it gets worse! How many of those people will you like? If we assume at least 75% of those will be unsuitable to your tastes (a conservative estimate) we're down to one hundred and fifty thousand (150,000). Now how many people will like you? Assuming that 75% won't like you - you're now down to thirty seven thousand, five hundred. (37,500). That may seem like a large number of people - but if you are a stay at home hermit like me your chances of meeting them are slim. That 37,500 is 0.003% of the population of London. And I was taking the larger figure which includes the outer reaches of London, with conservative estimates of the percentage of the population a person can stand.

__________

I like boys and everything, but sometimes I am tempted by a firm yet subtle vagina.

____________

The chances of finding one person with whom you can SPEND YOUR LIFE are both slim and frightening. Why would you want to? Why I can have as many as two boyfriends at a time! You might say I 'Pulled a Swinton' - only neither of them know about each other. Libra rising - that's me. Always judging.

The people who live in my building play host to a veritable rogues gallery of men - some of them with unsatisfactory penises.

Who could possibly stick to one man, when they are so phenomenally useless on their own. One must top-up! Fill in the multifarious holes with caulk formed from the scruples of other men. There's not a good one among the lot of them. So we create! Art; it's important even when shagging.

There are no words left to say.
No voices.
No words left to echo through orange words. No reason left. No sabres of light. No metaphor. All quiet low sounds drifting through windows and back out, leaving no trace, making no impression. Hard mattress, lined with cold metal, breaking the spine, disturbing the peace. No loss. No sacrifice. No leaps out of windows. No broken limbs, no snap, no bleeding onto the concrete, no staring blankly out onto stars.

There is nothing that matters now. No billboards. No adverts. No celebrities. No television. No music.

______________________

It's all sand to me. All that sun. It's beating down and bursting capillaries, the red glow of summer on Earth, amid the rooms, and buildings and towers. Faces stare down angrily. Distorted. Phonetic.

Rarrar ta beeh lie rar, low skoerm figler getus

Reservedly, I peel it back, and make a go at it. It's not right this morning. Too early. I want nothing more than the earth to open and take me somewhere.

There must be a place where no one talks nonsense.

"Rarrar ta beeh lie rar, low skoerm figler getus."

____________

I lie awake at night,

he's just there sat by the window

Staring at seagulls that can't

seem to find their way home.

Saucers of milk on the floor

spilled by clumsy footsteps.

Lighting cigars and face lighting up,

roll up the pillow.

I can't decide if I want to be here or alone.

Talk to the ceiling again.

Ridicule sculptures and alabaster moustaches,

hang off the walls and the story continues

with relish.

He wants what I want but not with me

not together....

Lying on my back hearing shadows

that call from the basement

That's the old person I used to rely on -

She wants what I've got I'm used to it

Really, don't worry.

It's not the details that scare me these days

It's the lies.

Wandering back through the lanes in my mind

watching ghosts of my friends

passing by.

Still clinging bedsheets to hide behind comfort my sadness.

Leaping and screaming I hear as he dies on the pavement.

Partially moved by the sirens I wait by the window.

Staring at seagulls that can't

seem to find their way home.

Out of the fire....

That bitch killed me. Through and through. She took my heart and squeezed it tight in her fist - I swear to God that's what caused the angina. That bitch ripped me up and fed me to the wolves. And I died. I really died. Some rotten ghost on the floor of this place - that's the last of me. Or rather that was the last of him. He's there, that one who loved him.

A few months on, some different ghosts haunt the same hollow room. I never wanted to live in the room, flatsharing with the ghosts of two people I used to know. I am a different person now. I'm like the fucking Doctor or something. My lover now is this bottle. That bitch drove me to drink. I never did. I do now. See the effects? Manifold, multifarious.

I am somewhat of a Phoenix, lurching burning out of the flames into the cold shower and pouring on the iodine in some callous act of self-preservation. Burned and scarred, but ultimately fresh. It's rejuvenating. I was such a snivelling, obsequious drivel of a man when I loved her. What a waste. What a poor excuse for humanity I put forward. So gentle, so fucked. Always with the fuckery - I raped my own dignity day and night and poured salt into the open wounds of my own relationship. Cliché.

I am all anew, certainly. I came protected to the fight now. I cannot go into battle bareback these days. I'm like fucking RoboCop. Remember him? Me neither.
I have created out of clay some perfect alias, some character that I can act - because it is easier, and hurts less. This beard? These glasses? These headphones? That aftershave? Those expressions? Armour. Nothing more, nothing less. It is a multi-faceted protection against any form of intrusion into the upper echelons of my heart. There you go, girl. Are you happy? I'm just as suited up as you are now. No fucker's going to know how I feel now. I'm ready for a fight. Back off! Fuck off! You're gonna get fucked - fucker. Fucker. Bitch.

This moustache can repel the bullets of any romantic advance - it is my beautiful shield - and with it comes the deepest increase in hostility since the drinking began. I drink now. It is the only way. It'll kill me in time. I don't care. All I want is to not let my fortress be stormed by an uncaring enemy anymore. I have SO many guards - you don't even know it. The vodka shoots down planes, and the know-nothing stare makes sure no intelligent person comes anywhere near me. I want to love stupid people forever more. Does the Daily Mail have a personals section? I could pretend to be a racist. I love race. Do racists fuck good? I bet all that pent-up rage and sexual frustration would burst out in one marvellous display of lust and semen.

My fingers smell of semen, and saliva. It's been a long night - but the moustache remains perfectly intact. I may love him. I may have fallen in love. But he's not getting in now. Why would I want him to? I have these words! I have words and drink! The lime and the quinine are a perfect substitute for true love.

So I am another man now. I should change my name. I still bear the same name as that awful chunderfuck who lost the war of love. Ralph Stanley. Yes. Call me Ralph. Pronounced 'Raif' of course. Because I'm a hardcore wanker now. I sip wine from the bottle and scar poetry on my arm with the vegetable knife. The blood drips onto the table but I don't care. "Keep the VATs coming!"

I want you all to know that I am happy now. I am in love with protection now. It keeps away the villains. The old one is dead - he doesn't want you to know, but I'm a much better person than he is.

A Diary of the End of the Day

Trees look so stately, silhouetted against the silvery blue sky, waifish clouds laying themselves down on the horizon - not entirely without purpose, but mostly restful. Thin golden sabres penetrate through the empty spaces of the skyline and lunge into my eyes, reflected dimly in the window pane. That face looks so much more rugged there - bathed in vague shadows - complimentary flourishes of light - vaseline on the lens. I am stately, and sexual. The Hitler hairdo and untamed beard could stop Cleopatra in her tracks. I'd fuck me. Oh yes - that man in that window - he is a real person.

The light feels precarious, as if it could shatter at the slightest touch. A broom extended from the window might knock the sheet off the curtain rail, and bring down the set, and reveal the perpetual ever glowing dark behind it - deep and rich, full of blues. A sky of deepest blue Indian ink, pricked with gorgeous bright stars, pounding softly on the trees and making them glow dark against the lovingly painted backdrop. The city below breathes softly and hums, exhilarating breaths, long sighs and quiet people all lying and walking and suffering below the massive sky above, pressing down with such momentous quiet, full of planes, blinking softly into the distance.

The light is fading now, faster and deeper, leaving only traces of itself bouncing around the glass, dancing on the fences, resting in the ponds. It is so beautifully dying, caressing the air as it eases the suffering. Endless houses, with their bright yellow eyes, and bright yellow mouths, watch in astonishment, only awake when the day is falling into unconsciousness. All is full of birds, slumbering gently, awaiting the dawn. I see stars, the scouts of Nyx, and that winged goddess herself, in her chariot, grasping the corner of that sky and pulling it slowly down as she flies across the heavens, and the day falls effortlessly under her arms.

That cool orange is so subtle at my back, and sparsely pricking my eyes from out there - earthly, and manly, and ethereal. All history is united under that same sky. The whole of human experience has seen the same skies - just think - you have woken to the same skies as Alexander, you have sat in awe of the same sunrises as Hammurabi - beautiful and delicate, and immortal, unchanging. It is deep on that horizon that we all exist - alone in the solar system, and the audience to a most spectacular exhibition.

Future/Sea

Where is this going? This lot.

Are the days going to end, abruptly, without fanfare?

I can see only so far into the future, and then ocean. A deep sea of memories, desires, expectations and fears. Always fears. Eternal, and deep.

I can look behind me and see the road, in all its barren spectacle, noticing the people and the choices, I can see the road, and I can see where I stand, or sit. In this room, here I sit pondering the future. I can see the future a few weeks from now, where the road turns slowly, but surely to sand. The sand is unstable, unloving, unrewarding, uninhabitable, and it droops slowly to the great black ocean of uncertainty, plunging my head wet below the surface, eyes closed, to drown surely and forever in loss.

Effortlessly I wander the road, not taking notice, taking the wrong forks, wearing the wrong shoes. Without a care in the world - even though that ocean looms on the horizon - to strike me.

Where would I be without this resentment?

Is it resentment?

Is it not fear? Nausea? Tiredness. Am I so tired of the world and all the people in it that I can't bring myself to feel for people - bring myself to put effort into making people like me? Will people like me. Does it matter if they do? Am I a real person after all? Am I not a creation of some other or other and eternally in that shadow?

_______________

I think the world will end in the dead of night and I will be there, floating in the ocean while the bombs fall, feeling the flash, the warm glow blinding me, mouth agape, the sea churning in ironic ecstasy - rumbling deep within the gut, a long harboured wish to see it all gone. Rotten and empty streets filled with fire. I will float and hear the water burble around my ears, and drip into my eyelids, I will hear the planes drop their bombs, all over the cities, and flash, and over, and crash and the rocky mountain ranges of the country become just as civilised as the cities in an instant. The wilderness remains unchanged in its savagery - and the wild men roam freely in forests.Poor child. Your papa can't do anything but crawl under tables the same as everyone, he is just as frightened. He lived through it the first time. Worse times to come. Hope for a quick fire, hope for a quick death. It is amazing how in real life tragedy is silent. There is no orchestra out here floating alongside. (Feel the tapping of the keys, like the lapping of waves) there is no orchestra playing as the heroes crash under the weight of buildings, there is only me now, silent in this sea (hearing the keys lapping against my chest). The bombs make heavy thuds, but no other sound other than that of the water gently leaping and tossing my long hair (for I grew it).

Once everything is silent and the planes are in the water and the fires are gently burning I swim ashore, so softly naked rubbing against the sand, and I crawl so slyly over the sands and the ash collects in my hands and drowns my face so that I can hardly see, and and all is silent. Silent always, like god intended, no noise.

It's now one am, and cold. The stars aren't out but the clouds are - and just out as beautiful. How are you? It's a meaningless question - but you won't answer me fully, or honestly, so I'm resigned to repeat it endlessly. That's a sign of madness, right? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result? That's what it's like with you. The same result every time. Dirty circles that get cloudier with each revolution. I want to be done, or I want it to be real again, or I want it to be like it was, back in the fall, back when I knew where I was.

It's so cold these days, but the air is fresh at least......

These Vicious Mountains

I held her hand, and she ran her nail around my knuckle in circles. I told her I loved her. She sat a while and pretended the air coming out of my mouth carried no words.

I leaned back, lying on the crisp sheets. Littered with crumbs, the ceiling looked paler now in the orange light, soaking through the eyeballs, burning through the cigarette smoke that climbed the molecules toward the ceiling. The base camp at her fingers wore red nail varnish, cracked and smiling - betraying her thoughts - that face was stone, unscalable though. Impenetrable. She had a way of not looking at you, and not taking a drag, and not saying a word. But I knew. I was lost in those sheets I knew so well, my fly open, innards spilled, the metal scratched slightly, but the back of her head pounded hard, and it pained me to look at it. I chose instead to stare into the light bulb, bursting with energy through the thin cotton shade, cutting the eyes deeply. I closed my eyes, and remembered the moment of release, into her cold hands, the hand that now clutched a damp tissue, all evil forgotten in there. She let slip and fell back at last, staring straight up - I saw it briefly as I turned to see where her eyes had fallen, no on me, on the ceiling, I pulled mine back to the ceiling also.

We were not in love, and we had never fucked. This was as far as it got, not even the lips were mine, except to touch my lips with, to whisper into to let her know that her hands were working, were doing the correct gesticulations. Sometimes I had to take control, to better go at the button, for my angle of entry is more familiar. But once opened, and laying back, there the many faces of the ages flash before my eyes and I imagine them all lined up, baring all, bending over. I cheat in my head. I fellate, I caress, I penetrate. All in my head and some primal urge gulps inside of me, some wretched noise and all pours sickly sounding, sickly smelling forth, burning the air with its wickedness. The red nail varnish makes me want to cry, as it melts around the silly masterpiece that has taken place for the millionth time. Ever since I was thirteen I have been playing the same old tune, to different audiences. I never stop, but it is so wearying.

She rolls, and moves my hand from my chest - pure and innocent - and she says something, and places it on that softly warming pile of denim that mounts between her legs, and I wince, and I look at her, and she looks at me.

We talked for a while about her father, and how much more he meant to her than I could. I bet he's got a massive cock, I thought. I wasn't really listening to her, but she was rubbing my hands anyway, all spilling oil on me, and that's really all I could think of.

As I mounted her, all naked and gangly between our legs, as those filthy sheets grasped our bodies, as our warm air evaporated, the smoke still burning my eyes from all the way over there, in that solid glass ashtray. I felt her lips on mine, and again, like always, she asked if I was hard. I didn't care. I didn't answer. She just pretended it was what I wanted to hear, and I pretended I liked it. The sheets were damp, through effort on my part, to keep things relaxed, I was rather more vigorous than I ever had been in the past, with the others. She looked at me - into my eyes. I sat there for a long time - or what seemed like a long time - all I could hear was the creaking and the siding and the air seemed so still between our lips and our eyes were locked. I was climbing that unscalable face, she might let me in, at the top, once I know, once I feel it. She didn't love me. Not really. It wasn't just that she couldn't say it. I held her hand tightly, running my thumb over the cracked nail varnish sent me into a thrill, plunging my head down behind her shoulder and vanishing from sight, in the pitch black - thrusting into that sock, just like the old days before I found the sun tan lotion - there again the myriad images from my youth, the ones that always did the trick. Don't want to disappoint, don't want to keep her waiting. Before long it was darker than ever, and she had had some sort of episode, I felt the quivers, perhaps it was over. I suppose it wouldn't matter if I stopped now. Would it really pollute the experience? I don't think she has ever been under the hammer before, up for auction. She certainly deserves it. I don't think I deserve it. I drove the point home. That is the gold standard. Fuck until you feel like you earned it. That's the rule. I couldn't fucking stand girls. That was my problem. Too much wretched babble.

After long time lying next to her naked, no love lost in the encounter, I heard the door open and slam downstairs, the light from underneath the door lit the gloom, and my thoughts turned to the man, her father, who hated my fucking guts. I might do better than him, but I doubt it. He was about forty five, and average looking. He had a thin beard that always reminded me of the tissue men I gawked at through flickering screens when I was fourteen, going on fifteen. She placed my hand on her crotch and gave me some vile instruction. I complied, without turning my head from that sabre of light, which brought my thoughts of Richard, yes, that was his name. I wouldn't call him that as he fucked me though. I don't think I could bear that load, that would be too grotesque. I scaled the wall once again, she seemed not to mind, I wanted to finish, and now I had my fodder. There he was, clear in my mind, fucking me, fucking her. All so vivid. She seemed to like it but I don't know. There was no emotional bond, so it was not any real kind of betrayal. Just a play anyway. All actors seeping in and out of all the wrong places. Determined to finish first, centre stage, with some prominence. That was me, pounding out the speeches. Monologues bursting from the orifice onto the expectant audience. For once that old bastard had done me some good. Saved some face. I wanted to get out. Feed the street lights with my carbon dioxide, feel the cold air filling me with the dread of night.

That's the post fucking experience for you. Always the awful sense of being trapped within yourself, and wanting nothing more than to crash through the window and fall and fall and fall and fall and fall and fall and eventually stop - earthbound was where I wanted to be now. To place my roots in some other place - anywhere but there. As I clung on to her she whispered in my ear. She told me she thought we were good together, but she thought that if we were to keep this up I needed to stop being a fucking idiot and stop telling her I loved her. I told her I didn't love her, and I never ever would. And we clung together, in the sheets, under the harsh darkness creating half formed figures in our peripheral vision. I licked her lips, those crass and husky mountains, and she felt me, and it was warm and awfully cold all together muddled in one fermented moment.

I drank my coffee, which had been made hastily, and with little care. It was instant. That fuck. I'd never blow him now. Not after he gave me instant. But he sat there, in the yellow kitchen, opposite me, that cock-tickler mustache shining in the bright fluorescent light. I told him I intended to pay it back in full, and he agreed that was probably wise. We had good conversations, me and Richard. But that's not really enough. I hate waiting for people - talking to their parents. It's all so vulgar, but that is what we must do these days, for love.

I am my own worst enemy

I get the Unmade Bed now - Tracey Emin's most well known work. I understand it. It makes sense.
There is something about the environment in which you sleep that says so much about you - so much so that when you invite an outsider in you become worried about what your living space says about you. There is nothing about my being that conveys the way I feel inside. My words are meaningless, my dress sense is non existent. My shallow husk of a face is all that separates the world from my demons - but it shows nothing. I think my face probably portrays a damp squib of a human being. Vacuous, fatuous, and wholly out of step with everything. So that just leaves my room. My fetid den of corruption and low self-esteem. It's rotten, but I get by. The moment though, when you realise that someone you quite like wants to 'come back to yours' - the fear sets in. The hearts sticks in the throat as you can't remember what vulgarities you left lying around - what gruesome artifacts are strewn on the Omaha Beach that is your floor. You cannot even see the floor. 'Oh no' you think 'he might see the awful remnants of last season's summer collection scattered across my tabletop'.

But really - it doesn't matter. The damage has been done. You are who you are. No more you. I am what I am, and that's that. I apologise profusely for everything wrong with my flat - even having cleaned it only an hour or so ago.

Every word I say feels laboured, every glance of the eye is scrutinised as I wonder whether or not I am successfully holding his attention. I imagine I am not, at every second. I hear the words tumbling out - banal, cliché words. I create silences, I cannot fill them. It is only when I try to put my supposed 'interesting-ness' to use that I realise it is a spook, a phantom. It does not exist. A cunning ruse my mind played on me to give me some small feeling of self-worth. Like a child told all his life he is intelligent, sharp, and will go far, who fails to pass his exams; the comedown is brutal, and sharp. I realise I have nothing to say. All my opinions are too stark in contrast to his personality that it would be like shooting him in the face, and I wouldn't, I couldn't.

I cannot even tell if he likes me. One presumes he must - he is in my bed, accepting my monstrous body, willing to intrude, with some coercion. Are older men that sexually repressed? I feel like a horny teenager - aren't the beginnings of relationships supposed to be filled with insatiable sexual hunger, lust for the ages that dies down late and in the autumn. Perhaps he has not accepted my monstrous body at allg. Perhaps it is a ruse of his own. A gentle hoax, allowing my lips to wander while he awaits the train - pre-booked. Pre-booked trains are a nightmare for the neurotic. Does he want to stay longer, but cannot, for the train is booked - or does he desperately want to leave, but cannot, for the train is booked. I cannot tell whether anyone likes me anymore. I have lost all eye for subtlety. I don't get his jokes. I laugh anyway. I don't make jokes, and he doesn't laugh.

I worry I might be doomed to not like anyone ever again. I think because I assume he does not like me - that means I cannot possibly like him. Even though I think he's sexy, and smells nice. And cooks me breakfast. I am so fucked up.

cafecouture

To be honest, I never really was very good at being productive. Not through laziness, though. Well, maybe a little laziness. But mostly I was never very good at being productive because it's much easier to act like a writer, artist, or congressman than to actually put in the work that awards that title. I have called myself a writer and an artist at various points in my life, but I am twenty two now and have not completed a single fully realised piece of work. Just the journals, just the sketches, the outlines, the ideas. It's a wonderful life - to profess to be something and get a lot of the acclaim without having done anything. It is not a life I am aware of however - it is not something I am familiar with. I am only fooling one person with my beautiful charade. Sadly, it isn't me, I've haven't yet been completely taken in by my shirt and jacket, sunglasses and haircut, pubescent facial hair - so if it is you who I have enraptured, somehow, accidentally, you should call me. Perhaps we could have sex, and later you could introduce me to your boyfriend.

It is easy to put on some fancy coat and wear leather gloves in the autumn, practice your moody cover sleeve photo in the mirror and pretend that it will all come true without your doing, but it doesn't get anywhere, unless you plug away at that novel that's been shuffling around inside your head all these years. You know the one, where the small town girl moves to the big city and finds herself. They'll make it into a movie you say. Dakota Fanning will be the perfect age by the time they come to cast it. But that's ok, don't worry about it. I will continue to haunt the cafés with my ungainly presence, spiriting the baristas with my unsolicited advice and aimless chatter.

"Oh yes, I am an artist, you see. You can tell from the look in my eyes as I silently pour disdain on your tacky furniture and artwork."

"Would you like cream on that?"
"Oh no, I couldn't possibly."
"Is that everything?"
"Why don't you work that one out for yourself, hmm?"

What ghastly vision is this? The cruel blade of self-knowledge. It's a bitch, I will give you that.

So I am sat - in some coffee sales place, clacking away at this thing - writing something. Lord knows what. This I suppose.
Oh my.

Slash.

There is that awful blade again.

If you ever want to fall in love, utterly and unavoidably in love, coffee shops are the place to do it. Why, I can fall in love up to four times in any given coffee shop session. They are filled with beautiful people, staring wistfully into the distance. It helps if, like today, Miles Davis is playing, and the hairs on the neck stand to attention, and the other parts stand to attention, and the ears prick up, and the moment is beautiful. It's a miraculous institution. A peculiar institution for the modern age perhaps. There was one boy who would have had been sucking on a cigarette if it were not for the prohibition of such things. I wanted to take him outside and hold it to his lips, in some sort of Felliniesque still frame, where the smoke would wrap around his lips, down around my wrist and up into my face, crashing against my sunglasses. The lighthouse abides.

It is wonderful how sad people can look here. I shall have to draw some of them some time. So beautiful, and so sad. They have faces that stare endlessly, in slow motion, a lightly lifting breeze carrying the steam away into some other conversation - also slowed down and faded, like some awful photo. Like the photos on the walls, of smiling women, and old men playing cards. They stare out, stock still, onto the world outside moving in all its unbearable acceleration.

So I suppose I belong here. Because no one here is being them self. Or perhaps I have it all wrong. Perhaps everyone here is hopelessly them self. Sitting at that big glass window, clutching their latté, staring out forlornly, yet not so forlornly that they lose their enigmatic charms - the couples with hands pressed on each other's knees. The beautiful boys, longing to call up the gods of nicotine and rape their veins, their beautiful blue blue veins. The women, reading Nabokov and listening to Joni Mitchell. Maybe it's not as false as it looks. Maybe it's all deeply, unflinchingly real.

I can't say much for the rest of them - but if ever I need to stare, clinging to the caffeine, riding on the false words, if ever I need to stare outside and wonder why they're moving so fast, I can count on café culture to embrace my fabricated desires.

Art

It is amazing how beautiful the sky looks

when it bleeds out slowly over the skyline

I feel just like the sky

draped over jagged concrete

trying not to draw attention to myself.

The Good Girl and the Scoundrel

I only know what I know, which isn't all that much.

How can I lie there, while he does his business, and think how much I miss you, how much I dearly wish it was your arm around me. It's not fair. It's not fair.

I only know what I know.

I shed a tear in a loving embrace, that was not loving. It was cold, much like his words, much like his intentions. It was no more exciting than cleaning out the oven, and I felt such contempt.

How can I lie there, under the spell of the haunting lilting music, while he does the business, and I am so angry inside, and I wish you were here. I wish you were here. I wish I could remember what love is. I wish I could remember what passion is.

I only know what I know.

I have forgotten what it is like to look at your smiling face, and feel the whole of me smile from the depths of my soul. Your hair was golden, and so was the world. Now the world is golden, but all there is inside is blank pages, one after the other, turning and turning, searching for an illustration, some colour, some meaning.

How can I lie there, listening to him struggle, while I stare into space, knowing what I know, that there will never be another you.

And he wraps his arms around me, and he doesn't know the lines. He speaks in hushed voice and I want to die. I simply want to die, because he doesn't know the lines,
and I know what I know,
that the foolish man survives, while the childish lover cries, and the laughing in your eyes belies the hurt you feel inside, and the knot within unties as the Earth sleeping implies that you might never come to rise to all the challenges you despise, will you ever realise that it's just as loving dies that you'll know what you know and you'll never ever see her face again as it smiles in the morning on the pillow last nights make up still spattered on the egyptian cotton and she looks to you to make it all better and you do because youre you and you love her and she loves you and she knows that everything inside her will feel correct when you wrap your loving arms around her neck and you want to be with her forever and you think you will be with her forever and what of it why not why cant you be together forever is something stopping you i dont think so i know what i know i know i love you i know you love me and hes still there behind me doing his business going at the old ceremony what a fucker i hate him i hate his eyes i hate his noxious grinning why isnt he done yet he can walk himself out the fucker why is he still here i hope he doesnt want me to do anything i know what i know and i know i want the girl i want the girl i felt good with the girl she made me happy maybe i was happy and she made me realise it i made her happy i think i made her happy she never once made me do something i didnt want to she was never cruel i think i still love her and that makes me want to cry.

I said I know what I know. And that isn't very much.

The Adventures of Modern Life

I have lived for some years in the constant agony of the boredom of modern life. Alienation and social anxiety aside, life now is horrible, and cruel, and dirty. We drink our Cherry Coke, and we watch our televisions, we masturbate, we dance to our music. No, scrap that, I could never be unkind to music. Modern life can be exciting, but within in a very limited scope. There is no adventure to modern life.

I have been a fan of the idea of fantasy fiction ever since childhood, but only the idea of it. For the most part reading fantasy fiction leaves me feeling cold. The actual experience is enjoyable enough, swords and sorcery and dragons etc. However the escapist charm dissipates into the aether the moment one has finished, and instead of being enraptured by the feeling of being elsewhere, one is confronted once again by the harsh realities of modern existence, and the cruel tedium that drives people to read escapist literature, or watch fantasy movies, is brought into a more stark and focused perspective, leaving us feeling worse than when we started. You still have that report to write, your girlfriend still isn't talking to you, the toilet still needs fixing. Being so caught up in a story or setting that has never existed and will never exist, then to realise that you will never experience something so exciting, really truly exciting, is a comedown worse than anything I can imagine.

The story of Peter Pan is about the death of the spirit of adventure, the childish freedom to imagine anything, and the 'grown ups' having lost this spirit, don't know how to have fun.
"To die would be an awfully big adventure" Pan states. Beautiful words that to me, sum up the desperation that we suffer as a result of our society having 'grown up'. We have become the Pirates of Pan's Neverland. In Steven Spielberg's re-imagining 'Hook' - the character of Hook is fleshed out, and becomes a much deeper and more profound allegory for the end of adventurous spirit. "Death is the only adventure I have left" he says.

This, I fear, is a statement that has come to represent everything that is troubling about globalisation. There is no unknown any more. Truly the last of the adventures of discovery ended in 1893, with the official closure of the American frontier. The only adventures of the twentieth century have been immortalised in countless films and books and television shows, they have become fictionalised and legendary. These adventures were the two world wars that took place in the first half of the century. War and death are the only adventures we have left.

The Goonies tells a familiar tale, that the drudgery of modern existence will destroy the spirit of adventure in the children, so they decide to make their own adventure, one last time before they have to grow up. Even if it is fantastical and not at all realistic, it is joyous to embrace the idea that adventure, real adventure, can take place in today's world.

Why was the recent film adaptation of The Lord of The Rings so popular? It was not the cast, or the special effect, or the direction - it was because we have always cried out for adventure stories that we can plunge into, and escape into. Fantasy and adventure work best by throwing the reader (and in many cases the protagonist) into the unknown, usually with some sort of guide (Gandalf, for instance) who is aware of the lore of the world and can explain things and create the correct emotional effects in both the reader and the protagonist; the reader doesn't know to fear something unless the guide tells them to be wary, for instance. However authors also rely on the emotional precedents built into us from childhood to create emotional responses relating to the unknown - caves and forest are to be feared for example. This idea of the unknown is both scary and exciting, and it typifies the adventure story. However, I have never been all that fond of fantasy that exists in and of itself, in a completely different universe. Someone once said that there is an inverse proportion between the quality of your fantasy fiction and how many words you make up while writing it; I couldn't agree more. To me, the most powerful fantasy fiction is that which anchors you to a setting you already understand, and allows you to more actively engage in the story. I am thinking mostly in modern terms of zombie films, and post-apocalyptic stories. Post-apocalyptic stories place the reader in a familiar environment, and make it unfamiliar. This creates a feeling of the unknown which is juxtaposed with the reader's expectations of the setting which they take from their experiences in real life. For example, place the protagonist in a post-nuclear-war London, and walking the streets of the West End becomes uncanny, rather than familiar; so the reader becomes scared and curious, where they would normally be confident. This type of adventure story is more powerful, by the nature or the world knowledge, and the same applies to historical fiction. By giving the reader a sense of world knowledge from the start, the readers sense of unease and adventure will be much greater than the fantasy novel where we are told the story of the world and why we should be afraid of Party A and empathise with Party B. Moreover, more often than not, completely fictitious fantasy can be read as an allegory, which can draw us out of the story if it becomes obvious. Even if it is not inherent in the text, an allegory imposed on the text by a group can be just as damaging in this regard. Tolkien always denied that The Lord of The Rings was in any way allegorical, but it is well known that the anti-nuclear lobby took it as an anti-nuclear allegory, and it is hard not to think about that when reading it. Allegories are a little easier to swallow in fantasy fiction based in our world, if just because we know that real world events effect our world, obviously.

To me, the best adventure fantasy has always been rooted firmly in our world. Stories like Treasure Island contain fictional elements, but they are set firmly in a world we already understand, even if it does not exist any more. We know the city of Bristol for example, and we understand the importance of seafaring in the 18th century. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, is a folkloric tale of adventure, set in the wilds of Cumbria, and it is littered to references to places that those listening to the story at the time would have recognised, and most importantly, that the writer of the story would have recognised, and drawn on. But again, both of these stories draw upon that key characteristic of fantasy fiction, the unknown. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is filled with strange and mystical creatures, such as the woodwose, or the Wild Man who roams the forests of Britain, and Treasure Island has the island itself, mysterious, and uncharted.

Increasingly we look towards history to create adventures from, back when real life was an adventure, truly, for real people. The Age of Discovery, the frontiers of America, the conquistadors in South America. Real life adventure, that we cannot experience in real life because there is no more unknown, so we look to fiction. Recently there was a spate of popular Chinese films set in medieval China. These films were popular in the west, because the period is unfamiliar to us, and this unfamiliarity is of course, exciting.

So fantasy leaves me wanting, but the reality is much worse. The real truth here is that for me, the wonders of escapism are ruined by the stark realities of life, and that globalisation, and instant communication, and the enslavement of the population has ruined the possibility of adventure for most of the population who crave it. We need more adventure fantasy stories based in the knowledge we possess of the world, stories we can relate to, that are exciting.

Please do not let the spirit of adventure die.

What I am for

I can't go on forever, acting like it doesn't hurt. It's never all that great when someone decides you are literally not worth thinking about any more, but this one stings a little more than most.

I really have thought I was going to call it a day at several moments in the past few months. Lying in bed surrounded by the dark, cut-off from the world, your mind resets to the default, without stimulation, it is your thoughts then that are the most honest, the most vital, the most brutal.

It turns out my 'default' state of mind is resignation, reticence, and lethargy. 'None of it matters' I think. I listen to music to feel vindicated, not to receive an uplifting message. I long for Leonard Cohen to wrap me in his arms and tell me he felt that way too, he's been there. He in the Chelsea Hotel, and I in my room, in my rags, in my hovel.

I gave too much to someone, and now I have nothing left. My arms are empty of blood, and my mouth is full of words that bubble up from some polluted depth, the words plume to the surface and spray out into the air, but they don't mean anything. I wasted all the meaning on you.

It feels like I'm living underwater, sometimes. Swimming down the streets, gasping for air, diving into buses, and searching for pearls under rocks, prying cigarettes away from lobsters. I can't face the world, so I pretend it doesn't exist, the people are gorgeous, and they are so unaware. If you've ever tried telling someone you have the flu and had them laugh at you and act like you are making a big deal about it, try telling someone you like that you suffer from a very deep depression. Letting that cat out of the bag, on a date, because you feel you are an honest man, is quite a hard thing to do, and you hope to god they've been there to just so they can understand.

I am not a morose person, but happiness takes a lot of work for me, waking up in the morning is a grotesque dance.

The point of all this is that I used to have something that made this infinitely more bearable, it used to not hurt to crawl into bed at the end of the day. It is an unpleasant realisation that you have single-handedly alienated and pushed away the person who means most to you in the world. I always accused you of being selfish, but it was clearly, always the other way around. I was brutal, and manipulative, and I suppose my inability to relate to almost anyone these days is a direct result of my failures in our relationship.

Oh well. At least I have television......

Teeming with humanity.

The sound of cars on wet road, the dirty rain landing on my hands, on my fingernails, warming my hair as it soaks its way in; a crass collection of scents mingle in the air above my lip, combining with that old smell, the one that lingers on the nostril hairs. I smelled it quite deeply, pressed against those furs, the last time was over a week ago; but the moment it returns, all time is forgotten, and once again embrace, and coalesce, and ravish. That scent is all that remains physically, an hour after the fact, the liquids now passed through the system, long forgotten by the senses.

Sat on that same wall I sit on every week, waiting for that same bus. It's awful really, the people who live around these parts. They all have those faces full of stories. Some of them must have lived through the war, although I think their souls are still lost, wandering around in Willeseden underground, looking for their lost father, scattered against the wall by the Luftwaffe. They all have those faces, all lost. They get on at one stop, and get off at another, but they don't really know why. I can see it in their eyes. They have no hope of redemption. No one in this world has that going for them anyway. Not since the old days.

I digress.

Sat on the wall, staring at my ugly shoes. You'd think if I was going to put so much effort in in the bedroom I would at least try to dress nicely. Fuck the shoes though, I thought. They're going to be taken off just like the rest of the fluff when the time comes. Little attention paid to the outer layers, it is only the skin that counts. Only the flesh that has to match the other flesh. But what of the flesh that doesn't match the other flesh? What of that? Is it criminal? Do we worry? I worry. But soon enough it doesn't matter and he has his eyes closed and I am in a very powerful position anyway so I suppose he won't really much care for my clothes, or what I look like under them.

He is a pretty man, and pretty men are dangerous. They are just as unfulfilling as the ugly ones. This is troubling, and worrisome. I lie awake for hours worrying about it. If a man I am greatly attracted to produces the same mediocre results in the head and the heart as the quick fuck I bucked as a way to kill time on an idle sunday then what hope is there for humanity? Or at least my humanity. Here is a beautiful man and licking the same soft neck and same supple waistline presents a pleasant but not altogether exceptional experience, and the conversation is nice enough, but it feels forced and that's not exceptional either. We are playing at liking each other. It is all pretend and fictions and make believe. Even the orgasm can't be trusted any more. I mean certainly the old moloko did flow, and freely, and the ejaculations from his mouth certainly would lead one to suspect that fun was had; it all feels a bit dollhouse. And that is truly troubling.

Walking out the door is always the worst. The awful feeling that you have done something criminal, coupled with a mild sense of self-fulfilment. It pains me to say it, but on a number of occasions, a mad hysteria sometimes comes at me, brought on by that smell above the lip, the wild eyes flare beneath the sunglasses, and I think momentarily about throwing myself into the road and not worrying any more about whether or not the government shall fail to support the weight I so lazily push down upon society, and not think of the guilt as I am enraptured under the sheets of some Lounge Lizard. More often than not, however, I do not commit suicide, and remain stalwartly married to my bus stop, awaiting the number 226 to take me away from my cruel and inattentive husband. The bus gives me a better stiffy that's for sure.

I get carted away eventually, back to the room where so much grotesqueness has been bandied about, the whole air of the place stinks of the foul sweat of the elderly, ploughing their fields, and planting their seeds. Oh, to think I was party to it. It nearly makes me want to wretch.

Of course I always think of giving in, becoming a nun, castration, the one way ticket down into the earth. But the lure is too much, my mind is weak, and the body is strong. I waltz down the street, erection in hand, asking anyone to take me in hand and learn my ways, some new fresh blood.

I wear sunglasses because I do not want people to see the despair in my eyes. They might want to help, and I couldn't allow that. They might see the old airs and graces, buried beneath years of built up grot. A filthy layer of grease and slime covers my entire being. It is the filthy rot of experience, gnawing away at me from the outside in, gargantuan, and terrifying, it yearns to seep into my heart, blast around the veins and corrupt my entire being. But it will not. It cannot. I can still smell that novel above my lip - teeming with humanity.

The Lies We Tell

These things have a way of creeping up on you. The slow lingering doubt, swirling slowly around my gnawed fingertips cast aspersions around the room. I had had my fair share of crestfallen faces staring up from between my legs, but this one was uglier than the one before. The one from last night. He was better. This one made me want to give it all up and become a priest. There's a noble profession.

I drifted off into my thoughts as his lips slowly closed and I felt the damp exhilaration once again, in my head. My eyes, misty and unfocused moved around the room and came to rest on the window, there the rain had been pounding away for hours now, and the drops of water formed their groups and made and severed alliances. One droplet looked set apart from the rest; alone amongst the throng. I recognised its pain, there pinned against the window, all alone and no one listening. Strapped as I was, arms outstretched on the bed, I felt I knew the pain of Christ. The pleasure of my groin, augmented by the unbearable agony in my arms, the smile on my face reached from the very depths of my anus to the tip of my skull, about to cry out. I felt that droplet of water, Christ, and I were the real holy trinity. My cock in the chicken's mouth, Christ forever in his death throes, erect and weeping, and the drops of water dripping from his forehead and mine. It was bliss. Horrible, disgusting bliss.

I came around and came, and he came, and he smiled, and he drank my Dr. Pepper which I had placed on the side for him, and he gargled with it, and he pulled up his trousers and he left, and I shut the door, and I sat in my chair, and I finished the garlic bread which I had been eating when he showed up, and I sank lower into the chair and I crawled into the bathroom and started running a bath.

There I spied the mirror, and I turned it around. I wasn't prepared to see that beard again just yet, that would have to wait.

As I lay on the bathroom floor, gushing water echoing through the air and bouncing back louder still, I stared deep into the ceiling and saw only hatred in the stark white. I turned off the light, and sat in the bath, in the black, listening to the calming water flowing through my head, then over my hands, over my groin and down my legs, pooling around my feet and ankles. Hot life giving liquid. I had given mine up already today, and I surround myself in nature's - because it makes me feel more like a man.

The door of love

There are times - in the dead of night, when all is quiet, and the empty streets caress your thigh ever so gently - when you realise that you are hopelessly alone inside your own skull. No one may enter, and you are barely able to leave. Speaking through the letterbox, and peeking out occasionally to get a glimpse of the postman's package, but certainly nothing else.

That door though, is forever locked. No one will ever be able to get closer to you than rubbing their lips over the sanded wood of the door, desperately grasping for the knob, urging some form of release, wanting something inside you to pulse out into their hands, or into their mouth. It is distressing, and awful. So much do we want to understand the inside of the people we love, that we poke and pry and insert. Exchanging fluid from inside to inside, through the grotesque old ceremony. We take in any excretion we can - because it comes from the body, it comes from inside. De profundis - from the very depths.

That is how much we love - when we try to, when we want to - that pressing tight against that doorway, no matter how lovely, and warm it may be - it is just the bricks and mortar - the lovely cottage, that we yearn to step inside of. We yearn to breathe in the sandalwood, run our fingers over the mantelpiece and laugh at the old portraits of the long dead lovers.

So heartbreakingly painful it is to be strapped inside the chair of your own mind, utterly and ineffably alone, inside the great fortress of the mind, with the gates barred, and the unscalable walls reaching to the zenith.

This is what love faces. There are deserts even lovers cannot traverse, it is woeful.