Feedback Monday :: Sick

bulk :: bulky
booze :: none
tobacco :: none
healthy food :: none
exercise :: none
teeth fixed :: none
spirits :: low
days to deadline :: 25
panic threat level :: substantial
unpleasant change threat level :: substantial

I’ve just returned from a failed attempt to trek South to get my broken tooth fixed. It took me over an hour to get to London Bridge, where I had to catch a train the rest of the way. But of course, there were no trains. Because of the snow. So I came home. Miserable. I’m sick of this winter. February sucks.

Yesterday was meant to be the beginning of another fresh start for me. I was going to join another gym and sort myself out. Get back on track. Back on the horse. All that. But for two reasons, it didn’t happen.

The first reason is that I am sick. It started last week and is currently at its zenith. It’s mostly throat-based, which means that I have a hacking, wheezing, slicing, rasping, burning, vicious bastard of a cough and am producing repugnant green phlegm at a rate of approximately four litres an hour. (I exaggerate.) The other reason is that with less than a month to finish this book, the panic is beginning to set in and I realise that I need to work every hour that the good Lord sends if I’m going to be able to do it. In fact, if I’m honest, I don’t think I’m going to be able to finish it at all.

In fact, I’m definitely not.

Nah, just kidding. I really only wrote that last bit because it gives me a tiny bit of pleasure to freak out the publisher lady. She gets jittery. Don’t worry, publisher lady, I’ll definitely finish it. But it will be shit.

Kidding! It will be magnificent.

So. Instead of the gym, what I’ve decided to do is get back to basics and make like Max Cady in his prison cell.



I’m talking press-ups and sit-ups on the kitchen floor. Max Cady had a pilates balls, didn’t he? Well, me too, and I’m not afraid to use it.

This weather though. It's really unpleasant. I wish London was just a little more robust when it comes to dealing with snow. Where are the grit trucks of yesteryear? Where is the Blitz spirit?

This morning I saw a cat stuck on a shed roof a couple of gardens away. It was stuck in about five or six inches of snow and too scared to walk along the fence it would usually walk along to get down because the fence it would usually walk along to get down had disappeared under five or six inches of snow. I don’t know what happened because I had to head South to get my tooth fixed. I hope it's OK and indoors somewhere. Cats shouldn't be out in the snow.

Rotten day.

I hope you’re having a better one.

My Body Is A Minefield :: Things That Make You Go Ewwww

Do you ever get the feeling that your body despises you?

Mine despises me.

Not only is my back increasingly problematic and my stomach persistently paining me, but also, the cyst that has twice before grown to the size of a cauliflower before exploding in the centre of my back, is twitching again, like it’s threatening to make a comeback.

And as if that weren’t enough – and I really hoped I wouldn’t have to mention this – my bottom has started to bleed.

And no.

To just about any question that is going through your head now, the answer is no.

Jesus. I feel sick. I hate my body at the moment. It really is an ugly, vicious, malevolent, spiteful thing.

Do you suppose people with perfect bodies have to put up with all this crap too? Does Elle ‘The Body’ Macpherson wake up in the night scratching holes in the backs of her knees? Does Audrey Tautou clamber out of bed, blinded by eye bogies, coughing brown phlegm all over her silky sheets? Does that sickeningly sweet woman out of Mamma Mia have blood dripping from her rectum when she goes for a number 2? Does she even go for number 2s? It’s doubtful.


So. I’ve decided. It’s time I went to the doctor. I picked up the forms this morning. I’m taking them in now.

And in the meantime, until it starts behaving properly, my body and I are not on speaking terms.

Nope.

I'm not interested.

Talk to the hand.

The Long, Dark Soap Opera of the Soul :: An Open Letter to a Friend

So, as you know, I started keeping this blog so that I could help force myself to pursue a healthy lifestyle and, somewhere along the way, find myself a lady. A lovely lady at that. One with silken skin and leathery skirts. Or vice versa. One who would make me giddy with adoration and fill my nether regions with hot blood and gristle. A lady to laugh with and love with, to have and to hold, to tickle and tether from this day forth, as long as we both shall live. Or at least for a couple of months, till the inevitable withering or betrayal.

Finding such a thing of course requires me opening my heart and telling my tales. It requires me sharing my intimates and spilling my beans. And my beans of course are smothered in the brightly coloured sauce of other people, other things. The occasional colleagues. The pets I’ve known and loved. The women I ogle on buses and the ones who give me hope in parks and online. And my family, I suppose. And my friends. Aaaaaaaaah yes, my friends.

I haven’t really got that many friends, and of those that I do have, only Keith is aware that this blog exists. (As far as I know.) Because I told him. Because I had to tell someone. But now, as of last night, I’m kind of regretting it. Because as of last night, I realise I want to talk about Keith. And not in a good way.

I’ve been struggling with this all day.

But if blogging is like therapy, which it definitely is, I can’t just lie here on this virtual couch staring out of the window or talking about America’s Next Top Model every week. There are things that need to be said. Even if they sting. So I may as well say them directly. And I know I may regret this. I may end up not even posting it. I don’t know. If you’re reading it, it’s probably safe to say I forced myself to click ‘publish’. I hope I don’t regret it…

Dear Keith

I’ve known you a very long time and you’re my oldest and dearest friend in all the world and I love you.

But.

I got a call from Patricia yesterday, your girlfriend of more than a year, the woman you love and want to marry, the woman whose children you have pledged to support and threatened to adopt. She was crying. She said that you’d betrayed her, that you’d slept with someone else on Friday night. She didn’t know the name of the woman you slept with, but of course I do. You slept with Ange.

I’m amazed. I’m disappointed. I’m shocked and hurt and totally bewildered. I don’t know how you could do this. I don't know how you could do this to Patricia. I really can’t get my head around the fact that you’ve gone and jeopardised the very thing you’ve always yearned for, that which you’ve described a million times as the best thing that’s ever happened to you. And for what?

Ange is great, don’t get me wrong. She’s a fabulous woman. She’s warm, witty and wonderful. But she’s hardly the most emotionally mature mental patient on the ward, is she? She said to me sometime last month: ‘I’m not a very good girlfriend. I’m a good fuck, but I’m not a good girlfriend.’ I replied that I thought that’s all most men wanted anyway, was a good fuck. She said: ‘Not the ones I meet. Nine out of ten times they fall for me. Or they think they do. And they want to go out with me. Or they want to take me home to meet their parents. I’m sure the fact that I don’t want any of that is what makes them think that they do… But I really don’t get off on being in a relationship. I like my independence. And I like my friends. And I don’t want kids. So what’s the point? I just happen to have a very high sex drive.’

I’m guessing that’s what swung it for you. The sex. I understand it’s a very powerful force. I hope it was worth it.

I could be wrong of course, and I’m sure I shouldn’t be writing all this without having heard your side of the story. But for now you’re not sharing; and I have to.

In a way I hope I am wrong. I hope Ange is the one for you. I hope you’ve fallen in love with her and you both make each other blissfully happy. But even if that turns out to be the case, you could have handled it a lot better. You didn’t have to hurt Patricia like this. She spent most of last night weeping into my arms, trying not to wake the kids with her sobs, wondering what she’d done wrong, what she'd done to deserve the pain she was in.

I can’t believe it.

I know I shouldn’t because it’s ludicrous, but I can’t help feeling a little guilty for bringing the two of you together. I keep thinking, if only I hadn’t got sick, or if only Ange hadn’t got sick before me, or if only I hadn’t got back in touch with Ange in December, or if only you weren’t such a selfish fucking short-sighted arsehole.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about you and Patricia; it’s about you and Ben and Dina; it’s about you and Ange. And neither you nor Ange are answering your phones tonight. Hopefully you’re round at Patricia’s and you’re going some way to starting to sort this out, one way or the other.

I’m sorry I’m writing this to you in a public forum and not in a private email. But I kind of lied when I said it’s not about me. It is also about me. And this is where I write about me and my life. And this ugly mess you’ve made is now part of my life.

I’m sorry I’m coming across all self-righteous too. Maybe if I had the opportunity, I’d be a treacherous son-of-a-bitch too, and maybe you’d be up here, poncing around on the moral highground, all holier than thou and smug as a Samaritan. Maybe. But I doubt it. You're not as self-righteous as I am. And I'm not as selfish as you are.

Most of all, I’m sorry this has happened. And I hope it can be resolved without too much more pain. I just don’t want to see the people I love hurting each other. I know, I know, me, me, me…

I’m sorry.

Good luck.

Love,


Stan.

In other news, someone pointed me at this dating site, OkCupid, which wipes the floor with loveandfriends. Just as soon as I have a moment, I’m going to beef up my profile and find that woman I’m after, the one with leathery skin and the jasmine-scented undergarments. And when I find her, I swear to God I'll treat her well and never ever be swayed by another woman's leather. Or jasmine. I swear.

Oh, crikey. It really is good. I just had someone message me!

I’m in!

Anti-Virus

Ange and I had arranged to meet up for a meal sometime this week so I called her last night to check it was still on. She didn’t answer. Then, fifteen minutes later, she called me back sounding like she’d just regained consciousness after a 12-hour operation. She said she’d been in the bathroom when I called, being sick from her bottom. She’d been vomiting for most of the day, from both ends. She seemed really dazed. I asked her if I should come up and see her. She said she didn’t know, which was really a yes in disguise, so I drove to Hackney, stopping off along the way for some bad magazines (Heat, Now, Soaplife), because she likes that sort of thing, and some carrot and coriander soup, because I had no idea how ill she actually was.

Turns out out she’s got the norovirus. That’s it above. It looks pretty. But it isn’t. It’s really nasty.

I’d never seen projectile vomiting in real life before. It really was like in The Exorcist, but without the other unpleasant stuff, the cussing and the blasphemy and the ultraviolence. Well, there was a bit of blasphemy but nothing that involved a crucifix. God, I hate that film. Ange was in a right state. When she wasn’t passing stuff, she was just lying around all shivery and delirious. She was very sweet and sad and I felt very tender toward her, especially as in lucid moments, she kept complaining that she looked ‘a right state’. It’s true that with vomit drying on her dressing gown, she was far from her best, but it really didn’t matter.

She’s less feverish today, and the vomiting seems to have stopped. She’s still spending a lot of time on the loo but is now well enough to stress about missing work. So that’s good.

Now I’ve got to do another round of disinfecting. I’m determined not to catch this thing myself, but I think it might be a bit difficult to avoid it, what with such close proximity and all.

By the way, last night while Ange was managing to get some sleep, I was eating carrot and coriander soup and losing my cyber-cherry with an Irish girl in Germany. At the risk of repeating myself, isn’t the internet wonderful?