Wednesday, March 14, 2007

what we did

There's nothing quite like telling your boyfriend what you did.

Come in, hug me, kiss me, sit with me. Back against my bedroom wall. Listen, all along your lips are moving, we're mouthing the lyrics to that last song we sang, the story of what you did. Tit for tat never felt so ugly.

And all the questions. You have less than I did: is she pretty, is she soft? How long for and where, who was on which side and where were your hands when she touched you? I wanted to know, to the inch; to the second.

You drive us to McDonalds, let me tell my own story. We were here, then we were there, and then we were somewhere else and then - somewhere else again.

I falter, let it hang in the air as the man leans in, takes the order. And then -

- and then I thought about everything we've ever said, when you asked if we went 24hour shopping when we ran out of things to say, if I still wanted you then, if I still want you now (which I do, of course I do but there's so much to say and we're just not -) or when we met the parents, when we drove to family dinners, when we sat by the stream, paddled and listened to Incubus - do you remember? When we had a midnight picnic, played 'Maybe I'm Amazed', when we were fighting and you spat on my hand for a laugh and it felt so disgusting I gagged, when I threw beercans at your window, when you covered my room in post-it notes, when you slept on the sofa at my house and I slept on the floor, when i fainted and you gave me your t-shirt, when we got drunk, got stoned, got happy, when we sat outside the club and I wanted to say it but you said it first, do you remember how we started (which I do, of course I do but there's so much to say and we're just not talking) -

- I ask for double cheese and tell you what you asked.

We live beyond our means, you and I, spend more than we can afford, drive further than we know how to get back, make promises we might well prove unable to keep. We walked for 7 months before we learned to talk; we forgot to trust each other.

*****

About our pasts, then. You walking for three hours to see your first girlfriend, me dating older guys, while you were a skater and I was a goth, while we attended playgroup and college and school together, while we worked together and clubbed together and never knew each other. When I got depressed and you first started smoking, the girls you've had, the boys I've wanted, the jobs you've worked, the A-levels I got. The different paths we took to end up there, my 19th birthday, and how by the time we got there, I was too drunk to even remember meeting you.

Apparently we spoke. I know you got my number because you called, but I didn't answer. So when I saw you down the line through sober eyes and realised how beautiful you were, it was only fitting that I be ignored.

Until I called you.

And you answered.

And then -

- no money, no jobs, no place to live, no car to keep, no prospects, no faith, no trust, no clue and very little chance. But cheer, and -


Tuesday, March 06, 2007


Of course, the difference, the one difference (if you don't count gender, accent or ability to play the mouth organ) between you and I is that you gave up. You just accepted the fact that you'd ruined your life and never entertained the thought that you could begin to make amends.

I promise, with me at least, you could have.

So I will. Because I will not die alone like you did. Not when there is still one moment in ten to live for.

black sheep

This is the dragon, the Maeshowe Dragon, that's cast in silver on my grandad's ring, that I wear around my neck.

Maybe if he never knew I came to university, he'll never know that I'm failing. I don't want him to see me lying, or fucking my life up like this. I don't want anyone to but, see, you can't lie to the dead. Because they know, and all apologies can't shield the truth from the people with arial view.

But who lied first?

I'm drunk on my own right now, but who drank first? Who fucked up first? Who let down the team? Who isolated himself long before I did, who made this path that I'm walking?

I think maybe you know a thing or two about the darkness, think maybe you understand what that feels like.

You and I, you selfish bastard, think we were two fucking peas in a pod. And you could've known that, I could have fucking told you that if you'd called. If you'd even called.

Who should I call? Which member of the clan would I let down if I left today? See I don't have eighty years of wrongs to right, I barely have two decades and that alone hurts so bad I don't even know how you stood.

With eighty fucking years on your shoulders, how did you stand?

I'm nineteen. I can barely even lie down right.

I won't stop this til I have no one left. I won't stop til I have nothing. I will destroy myself and as many else as I can before I sleep, just like you. I breathe for any little thing I can grasp of your long existence, like scraps from a table because you never called.

I hear your voice from ten years ago, I hear your voice reading me stories because it's the only time we spoke. I smell your scent on my pillow from that time you fell asleep because it's the closest we ever sat. I feel your hands on my wrists as I danced on your shoes because that sometimes feels like the only time I've smiled.

You're dead, so tell me, what does it feel like to be free? How does it feel to not be eating yourself from the inside? How does it feel not to hurt anymore?

They say that suicides go to hell, but they never mentioned you. They mention murderers and thiefs but on the subject of absenteeism go strangely silent. Perhaps if I died, you and I in all our heathen joy would find each other.

Perhaps you could explain.

I'm in arrears, apparently, with my lost job and failed degree and tendency to both spend and drink my pain - no one ever said that scars would heal but money gone is gone - I can't even think straight. I can't even smoke right.

Yesterday I went home with a guy from one of my classes and got so stoned that I kept falling asleep on the way back. I spoke to people I didn't know, saw old friends in strangers' faces. I saw you. I saw demons; I saw you.

Funny how, when you're fucked, the nearest, strongest voice is the worst, and it sounds a lot like God's. God, who used to tell me to keep my legs shut and dump this guy or that guy, to not think or dream or feel or taste or love or live and promised me peace in return for brainwashing myself - yesterday he told me to run out into traffic.

Couldn't be God, you say, but if he sounds the same and dials the same number to get into my head then who else can it be? Maybe someone stole the poor bastard's mobile.

So I get home and play my favourite songs and tell myself that they remind me of times gone by - there is no greater misery than to remember in sorrow a time when we were happy - except perhaps remembering that this feeling has always been here

and I have always been this way.

All the God and gin in life cannot save me.

I am what I am.

And that is just like you.

And I'm drunk on my own. Are you proud of me yet?