My new umbrella

The best thing I did today was break in my new umbrella.

The rain began at nightfall.  Invitingly it played out a rhythm of patters on the living room roof.  I was concerned about going out purposelessly, and the pointlessness that might entail, but still, it sounded so good, so I departed.

Immediately my spirits were lifted.  A little bit, but still, any little bit is worthy.  The air tasted fresh and I felt cosy cocooned under my personal roof, despite the inhospitability of the night around me.  I followed my own footsteps.  They usually manage to take me somewhere, even if it isn’t far.  Tonight they took me towards brighter lights, and people.  Outside a pool bar an argument between young guys and a bouncer was taking place.  I contemplated going in.  I felt reckless.  Let me get into a fight tonight.  But there were no seats at the bar and no obvious corners to perch in and observe, so I kept walking.

Not practiced in the skill of umbrella wielding, I occasionally whacked a branch or a bus stop pole as I passed, though I was quickly becoming better at it.  I passed by a man also sheltered under his umbrella and our pointy corners touched with a thmmp as we passed.  I smiled briefly.  Some of the closest human contact I had had today in that canvas noise.

I wondered about buying some food.  I felt like buying some food, but had no idea what.  I had struggled with eating all day; it felt like an inglorious chore.

A pub appeared.  It looked more hopeful than the pool bar: dark, old man-like.  I didn’t cross the road to it though, but continued.  Like a bird of prey I often circle probable destinations before committing to them, wanting to scope out my surroundings well.  I saw another pub ahead, it looked less desirable than the first but I crossed the road towards it to examine it from the window before turning back down the road towards the first.  When I got back to it, it was not quite as it had appeared from further away: a little too bright, a little too busy.  With this new information I turned upon myself once again and made for the second.

Inside it was at just the right level of occupancy.  Busy enough, yet with space for me to slot myself in, little noticed.  A barmaid approached me promptly, but ordering whisky was a challenge.  Mixer? No. Southern Comfort? No!  I pointed to one that was empty, ended up with a 12 year old something or other.  She was foreign, Spanish perhaps, it wasn’t her fault, it was just that I did particularly feel like an ‘old man pub’ experience tonight.  Well, eventually I had my glass in hand.

I thought to myself wouldn’t it be nice if you could still smoke in pubs.  Then I caught myself in confusion.  Who was this man thinking? Was it I?  He seemed unrecognisable.  I felt like from the outside peraps I didn’t look like myself either.  Perhaps I looked old and crumpled; perhaps I was dressed in rags.  I rather liked the idea.  Oh what perverse desire! To melt away out of this young body you value so much and are so grateful for.  How could I wish away my health?  Well, I do, don’t I?  With the nicotine I am inhaling into my lungs for the first time in my life.

I sat there at the bar on my stool.  Left knee sore as it jammed into the wood of the bar.  I was trying to maintain the perfect angle of looking neither out into the people nor right at the bar itself.  I wanted to be inconspicuous I suppose.  I wanted to be wallpaper.

I belonged into Billy Joel’s Piano Man.  But the rest of them didn’t.  Except perhaps the other solitary patron to my left.  No, the rest of them were in medium and large groups, chatting, drinking and grinning.  The music vied with their voices for my attention. Pop.  Not piano.  There were to be no sing-alongs, or even melodies here tonight.

My glass was empty.  Time to leave. Anyway I missed the rain.  Also, I had had a good idea about food.  I would buy a pudding of some description in Sainsbury’s -- that seemed like a good idea.  I stood up and the rags I had been sitting in magicked themselves away; I once again wore the track bottoms and hoody I had left the house in.

The rain welcomed me and my new umbrella.  My best friend tonight.  I bought my pudding then lit another cigarette.  Who is this guy? I asked again.  I still couldn’t recognise him.  He did not walk at night holding umbrellas and cigarettes.  Moreover, he was not depressed for days on end.  Who is he? Where is Theo?  Why does his body ache?  These were his questions.  The night gave him no answers.  But the rain was soothing.  And the umbrella gave him something to hold on to.

White knuckle ride

Let's go.
Let go.

I love the very first moment when, seated on a rollercoaster seat, it unhinges from the parking place and jolts into life.  I have not a white knuckled grip on the bar in front.  Quite the opposite in fact.  I let go.

My wild rides are wild for the absence of white knuckles, not their presence.  Unhinged by the adrenalin that comes of not caring.

This is not a rollercoaster.  This is a relationship.  She is white knuckled.  I am wildly free.  I have let go.  She grips on tight, then tighter.  She realises that my hands brush nothing but the air; she needs to do the work for both of us now.  That's hardly fair is it?  She does it though.  She does a good job too.  Anyway, nothing is fair anymore. Anymore? Pah, never was.

Except now I feel her gripping too, I do not know if she knows it but I know it and it makes me shake.  I shake with the effort of not-holding.

Like a funicular railway, it only works if there is a train on both ends, right?  Well I am off rail.

Self Loathing

I don't want anybody else

When I think about me

I hate myself

[Tune of Blondie...]

What a wonderfully vicious cycle it is.

***

That was then.  Today is different (subtlely).  I don't know whether I love or hate the decisions I make and then live with.  I don't know whether I love or hate who I am.  What happened last time?  I drank enough to have no memory of events until the morning after.  I danced and made merry and didn't do anything wrong, in that sense.  In my own eyes though, I did everything wrong.  My hangover is psychological too; my heads churns as much as my stomach.

What happened this time?  The same old thing.  I got caught with a girl.  By my girlfriend.  Wait-- I say with a girl, I don't mean with her you know, it is not like we were in the same building or anything.  Just, chat. Words, play, suggestion.

I don't know if I can change.  I mean, I know I could, but I don't know if I want to.  I love the game.  My mother knows it, hell she encourages it.  Always suggesting, get out there, pick and mix.  As strange as it sounds, she speaks the promiscuous voice in my head.

Why do I love the fucken game so?  Why has the appreciation of another -- a non-partner, an interest -- always felt like it matters more, and makes happier than that of the only one I am supposed to be in love with?

I am a manipulator, too.  Is that what all this has been about?  All this flatness; a lack of joie de vivre. That I perpetuate my unhappiness in order to maintain distance from loved ones (including myself) so that I feel less judged by them.  Why should I feel judged?  Because I ignore their wishes, make bad decisions and embrace a nihilistic world.

Embrace another.  Dammit man stand yourself up and embrace another world.  The one where you make things with your hands that you can stand back from and say proudly "this is mine".  Say proudly too this mistake is mine, do not shy away from those things but neither dwell on them.

To self loathe is not to be destructive as much as to just not manage to create.

Well, get out there, and create.

How to destroy your body

Is my health my most valuable possession?  It ought to be right up there, maybe one behind my mind.  There is one very easy way to overcome health.  Stop caring.

Make bad choices.  Stop thinking about what's goes into your mouth or stomach or lungs.  I romanticise this like the righteous path of the wandering traveller.  The one who is always on the road; the one who walks out of people's lives as easily as he walks into them.

Powerless people have no pretences to protect.

By which I mean that it feels good to let down one's guard completely, to the point at which everything is acceptable.  It is dangerous, but it feels good.  The ultimate powerlessness is to no longer hold control over yourself.  To not try; take the path of least resistance.

It thrills me that the path leads to ruin.  That is not to say that I am going there, it is to say that this is a test.  This body is going to get old, that is given; why not give it a good run for its money, while I can?

What If

One year and a day has passed since I broke a girl's heart.  


How can I say that? Fuck. It makes me sound… conceited, smug perhaps.  I have no idea if it's true, either.  That is the thing about ending relationships, you don't get much of a debriefing.  What then? One year ago I broke something.  I suppose I don't know what it was that I broke, nor how big or important it might have been.

Ah yes, we are there.  It didn’t take long.  Might have been. It might have been something, mightn't it?

What is the point of this?  Why, my words -- when they are honest -- seem rather mundane, without flourish.  It is in other places, make-believe ones, that I manage to convey something, to tell a story I might myself enjoy rereading.  Here I am in the most alone place and so also the most true.  Here phrases fall apart before they have begun.  Leaving me with clichés, curses and – it seems – little character.


The vitriole came later. Though it wasn't much. A letter: I was accused of a thing or two.  No screams were screamed; no books were thrown.  Yet... yet, I am somehow, one year on, hung up on this.  Like my jumper is caught on a neverending tree snag.  As I pull at it it unravels it a little, pulls free for a moment, then unravels again.  What is this nonsense.  The point is, one year on, she sure does still have some power over me.  An interesting sort.  Not the 'what would that be like' sort. I have been there.  Is there something unfinished, something I needed to say or do or try?  Is it just that, after all this, I still fancy her.  Am I in love with her?  Do I want somehow to realise all of the possible relationships I ever could have with every girl I have a crush on? Perhaps.

But I digress.  Perhaps because I am reluctant to stick to any topic.  So let’s go. Come on. The break up.  We sat down in a pub and I told her I had feelings for someone else.  She took it well at the time.  We walked out the pub, up the street until her bus stop and as I moved to hug her she allowed it, albeit awkwardly, with the quiet words


"oh, ok"


and I walked away.

Zero

Who are you? Who are you?

I am Theo.  I live in the sky, I live in your eyes.  I dream of coming down one day.  I dream of coming down to stay.  I dream of little less than the whole fucking entirety of it in my arms.  Of squeezing all of that to my chest; of pressing my face into the folds of skin and hair and sandpaper.

I am a small voice.  We are all small voices. Perhaps I am the smallest. Perhaps not. No matter.

What matters is this.  I write because I am driven to write.  I want words.  I want words written down.  I need them.  I need words like a monk needs peace, like a nun needs cock.

It won't all be nonsense.  It won't.  If one person reads these words, that will be more than enough.  Ah but now I must succumb to the sweet charms of the bottle.  It dozes and drugs me and drags me under, slowly.