mildly free

So tonight and for many days now you have had to fend for yourself. You’ve had to find ways to stave off the demon of depression. Had to exercise some discipline and remember to take out the dishes.

For the last few days she’s been working full-time. Her little shop needs her to be an acting-manager for as long as it takes for the new manager to start. Maternity leave means that the last girl left and the new one won’t start until her last position has been filled, a full three weeks away.

So she has started working full-time. Only they don’t open on a Sunday or a Monday.

You work in retail, so for you there is no ‘weekend’ per say. So you get Sunday off and determine to set off on a little journey into town to get a coffee and write some. Because you haven’t written for so long you’re not sure you are a writer anymore.

Instead you get her in your ear, tugging your sleeve – asking for you to stay home until she is ready to leave for the coffee shop with you.

So dutifully you stay, like any guy with a girl like her would do, out of fear that she will bring this up when you’re with company and make you into the chauvinist monster. Make you into the monstrous man in the face of her feminine fragility.

So you both get to the café and some 30mins in she gets to texting and finding an escape. 5mins later she gets a reply and is invited to a Sunday roast.

Some 6 hours later you’re on your own at 7pm, long done with writing and thinking about what you might do this evening. Whether you might both cuddle up on the sofa, that maybe you should get a bottle of wine, make an effort, make something of a nothing night. These Sundays, which are less and less your days.

And then at 11pm you remember that she doesn’t work Mondays. And then somehow you know she isn’t coming home. You resign yourself to the fact that, whatever she does of a night away from you, she’ll be doing again tonight.

And in your mind she’s doing all the things that a grubby mind might imagine her doing.

She’s got a dick in her mouth. Far in, like she’s never done to you before. She’s making an effort with this other man. Or maybe it’s a woman and maybe she’s rutting against her with an enthusiasm she fakes when she’s with you.

In your mind she’s all you wish she was and are glad she isn’t.

So you sleep, knowing that sleeping alone is the saddest thing about it.

sans changer

Not much has changed really.

She is still as obscurely indifferent as ever.

I’ve gotten used to her leaving for a gig here and there and me being left in on my own.

She’s given me free reign to scoot off after whatever broad fits my fancy, but then I find women overly ridiculous at the moment and all the men I meet are too camp to be taken seriously.

So what else is there but to look to the past?

Tonight I got talking to an old flame who is reigniting my past life maxims.

I used to drink whenever I felt like it, eat when I felt I needed it and fuck pretty much all the time (because I felt like I should want it that frequently).

I look back on that time, the time when my major drive was simply desire, and I feel grief at the loss of it. I desired drink most of all and now that, thankfully is behind me.

But I have lost that attitude that saw me walk up to women in the street and tell them that I thought they were beautiful. Lost what it was in me that needed to conquer each woman, the more disinterested the better. Lost what it took to walk into a gay bar and take home a guy because I hadn’t tried it. I have lost the drive to fill my black book. Now it lays in the attic, like a telltale heart, each pulse bleeding out my courage.

I used to explain all that away as ‘research’. I used to write it all out of me, like I was absorbing each demon only to scribble it out of me again. Triple distilled? Not one bit. Hardly altered, it would be ink on page within the day.

Now I find myself as tame as a kitten.

What is it about these damned cat images?

new dates

Today I went on a date. I took off to Bristol and met up with a girl that I had promised to meet up with for a while.

Was it a ‘date’? or was it more of a Venture Go situation? I guess I just wanted something to do.

She was a ridiculous bore.

She was pretty, but vacuous.

I spent most of the day wishing I were sitting with the girl across from us. The girl that I eye-fucked into oblivion, and her me!

That night I was still in the mood for others, so I took off to a bar on my own – armed, as usual, with my notebook. I met up with Felicity, who informed me that massage is a good remedy for heartache. When I asked whether she would massage my heart all I got was a wry smile and a shake of the head. How could I turn that offer down? With a smile and an exchange of phone numbers and the excuse that I had to get home to feed the cat.

I don’t have one, but now I kinda wish I did. Just so that I could invite her around, confirm my lie was actually grounded in some threadbare truth and then get that massage. Oh well.


- Later that Night -


She stayed out all night again, but what did I expect? I’ve given her license now.

I think I’ll swap her for a cat. I want to call him (for it will be a him) Hart. After Hart Crane. I love the idea of a Hart wandering the night. I feel my own heart leaves me to wander the neighborhood quite often.

I just wonder where Calista goes… like all good cat owner’s do... a wonderment and fear rolled into one.