Perspective

As a kid I used to run away a lot. The most common place I would have been found, had anyone tried to look, would have been the park. I had a tree there that I’d sometimes spend the day in. In that way that boys do, I’d pee from the top of it and jump down and scare little kids from time-to-time. No I never peed on any of them.
I’d often spend hours just laying there in the tallest branches thinking about life. Soon my thoughts would drift to all the happy kids below and how unhappy I was. The thoughts used to make me cry, so I was glad no one could see me.
Later on my thoughts turned to the kid’s mums and how from that vantage you could look right down their tops. I’d watch their ample boobs wobble about in their low cut tops.
Its strange how your perspective can change with age, and how much difference puberty makes. More than anything it gave me something to distract myself with, and boy was I distracted!

Radio

When I am at my most drastically unhappy I like to stream the radio through my computer and flitter about until I reach radio 4. It means I can write with the laptop and still have something going on, some person talking to me. I can’t bear to be on my own. You all know that by now. I don’t cope well with absences.
I’m a writer and we need to have language filtering through us. In winter you wear a jacket; when I want to write I wear the noise around me. Coffee shops always heave with chattering people in the winter. Fuelled by caffeine and lust, I watch people interact with each other and live through their lives like a parasite. I’m in love with them all and would love to get closer and know them. Often I do.

House

When I got here, when I off the train, walked the long walk to the front door, when I turned the key and stepped in, my heart faltered and the beast wriggled in delight. I felt like I was opening the box of the world’s ills. If I had a choice I’d shut the lid and leave it here forever. Home is so sad, is what Larkin said ‘shaped to the comfort of the last to go’ well in this case, it isn’t. Its shifted furniture; moved in new televisions and hi-fi’s; the doors open differently; some doors are locked; my room is nothing more than a music studio. I feel like weeping for that now disbanded ‘joyful shot at how things ought to be’. Gone is the home, this is the house.
I’ve tried to think of where home is. Where my heart is, or longs for. I love Bath, but it isn’t a home. This is a world of sorrows and I’m a wandering kid without the wanderlust to enjoy it. How do they know how I feel? These people who tell me that it’ll be ok. If they did; they wouldn’t lie to me, they’d understand that the longer I stay here, the less ‘here’ I am, the more ‘elsewhere’ the more ‘anywhere’ I become. There is only so much absence you can handle, before you start to fade physically.

Child

I had one for the blink of an eye. I dreamt him back into being, after Melissa had the abortion. His name would have been Ben. I hadn’t known a thing about there being a child until a friend told me 9 months after Lissa left. She told me that Lissa had run away so abruptly, because she couldn’t face the fact that I would have wanted to keep him.
So I dreamt him back into being. First the size of a few cells, up to the size of a pea, then I drew motion into him, a tadpole. He grew to a birth of nothingness.
I accelerate past his first Christmas, first few steps; learning to ride a bike, kick a ball in the park. Past his first crush, heartbreaks, accidents and exams. Cast away hobbies and nights on his own, just thinking and listening to music.
I imagined a wife for him, children and then past my own existence, to him telling his grandchildren about me.
So I dreamt him back into being, but he wasn’t back. All I keep thinking is that he ended as a smattering on a toilet bowl and then I start crying again.

Kingdom

You can’t help but hate the guy that the woman you are in love with is currently seeing. More often than not he is a lazy slob with bad manners and an alcohol problem. Most of the time he’ll be taking her for a ride and all the while be scouting for a better, or rather more pathetic, example of a woman to take advantage of. But you hate him most because the world you long for is his kingdom.
You hate him because you are a better guy but you’re too polite to say so. So you end up hating yourself too.

Lasagne

“I can cook,” is the catchphrase of every girl who wants a guy genuinely and drastically; it is also the death knell of a relationship. So that was the format of my relationship with Lucy.
We struck up a relationship at the halfway point of my second year at university. She’s my Twerton girl, much to her dismay. I caught her spying on me from across the street while I waited for a bus and when our eyes met she picked up her light feet and breezed over the road toward me, smiling.
We shared a few nights at mine and she lit up that awkward little room with an energy that seemed to linger even after she’d left.
“I can cook,” was a statement that lured me, and my grumbling stomach, over to her house.
After a serving of ‘where our lives will go’ and a portion of ‘I love you’ I didn’t have the appetite for the burnt lasagne.

Wet

A small passion is showers and sleep. I get a shower and leave my hair wet. I like the feeling of it on my back and shoulders. I get to sleep and wake up with a cool pillow to rest my face against.
Sometimes I let a partner go to bed with wet hair too. I love getting a blowjob having her long wet hair slipping over my hips.
Most nights I go to bed alone and as much as wet hair leaves me feeling more alone, for the coldness, I can hug my pillow and imagine that I’m making whoever it is uncomfortable enough to stay awake. Just so I can spend longer with them.

Mysterious

Jasmine, 27, Indian, cute, mature, interesting. So I buy her and her friends drinks. Then they take me to Moles, a nightclub, where I make out with her for about 20mins. Then I have the strange notion that it would be mysterious of me to escape without saying anything. So I do.
She calls me. 3 missed calls later and I get a txt message. “I think you are really sweet honey, cute too, but you aren’t half weird.”
I saw it as a small victory and finished off my evening with a cold shower and a mouthful of chocolate ice cream.

Lissa

So I miss the bitch and can’t stop thinking about the night of the photo shoot. Almost the best fuck ever. Second best if I’m honest. Sexy, extravagant, outrageous.
I want sex like that – no guilt. Let someone else worry. Let me suck and lick and scratch and bite and fuck and let me fall in love, like that, again.

Statistics

They’re strange things. 3% of the population are homosexual, apparently, but to me there seem to be a lot more people than that.
Someone said that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. I think they were right, but it doesn’t stop me reading them and thinking about them anyway.
There are apparently 10999999 single people in the UK, and me – 11million is a lot. So why can’t I find someone nice to settle down with? Maybe they are all at home wondering the same thing.

Hell

Last night was the first time I had been to bed without drinking a bottle of wine and passing out.
I called it an accomplishment and almost overslept.
Tonight I’m off to a dinner party and won’t drink. It’s going to be hell.

Broody

I’m quite a broody person and I want kinds as soon as possible. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so honest with women?
The majority of them dismiss me quietly, either as lying or simply as being ridiculous. Some have point-blank refused to talk about kids, which I find rather distressing but respect their opinions.
I’ve a hard time explaining why I want children; all I can say is that the need is there. Perhaps it joins hands with my loneliness and it is because I want someone who will be there, constant and unconditional. Maybe it is because I don’t want to die and see them as a legacy.
All I really want is a partner who I can love and respect and write poetry about and a small child of our own to look up to me with love in their eyes and a smile on their face.

View

I stand about a lot in work. When I do, I tend to gaze out of the windows at the people walking past. I like to make up lives for them, or picture going out with the girls, and being friends with the guys. Although I only see them for a few moments I’m almost sure of them being exactly as I imagine by the time they round the corner and disappear out of sight. It gives me a tiny sense of loss each time. And then another walks into view.

Toothpaste

The majority of the time I am lonely. I have very few friends. The reason for this is that I spread myself too thin. I need to be around people a lot and in an effort to not lose the close friends I have, I tend not to pester them too much with my issues and my need to be around people. As a result I have a huge phonebook full of people I will never ring and a collection of acquaintances that ensures that I will generally see 5 or 6 people I know a day. This is why I believe that it is in my best interests to get a girlfriend and quickly. Being with a girlfriend is a great excuse to spend a considerable portion of your life with people. You stay in, you have them. You go out, you have them and their friends. You do anything else and you can just about guarantee that you will see them very soon. That is what I need, along with the feeling of love and all that as well.

Often at night I dream that I have a lot of friends and a girlfriend. In the morning I say goodbye to them by name, assigning drops of toothpaste foam to each. Then I turn on the tap and they all swirl together and are gone.

Fist

After work I went home and got changed. Then I headed back into town to be around people. I feel desperately lonely if I do not have people around me and so I can usually be found in a café or bar, it is where I do most of my writing. I went to Porter; a small, grubby little place where most of Bath’s artistic type seem to congregate. It is my haven. I order a glass of wine. Then another. Then another. And kept drinking until I staggered out at 11pm. I managed walking, just about, and set off through the park to find home.

Walking through the park I remember feeling desperately lonely. As if in response a cat appeared. I named him Merlin. He had a curious nature and would run ahead of me if I ignored him, so I settled down on the floor and stroked him. Then I got up and walked on. Then sat again after he darted through my legs. I kept this up for 20mins. Then I walked the rest of the way home alone. Soon I felt bad again, and not having Merlin to comfort me, I wanted to feel something else. So I punched a wall and then drew my hand along it until blood poured, from the wounds at the back of my hand, down to my fingertips.

It was effective, but I would have preferred Merlin.