Evenin’
Hello again you rolicklingly lovely people, here is another sample of my general distaste for humanity. I hope you like it. I’ve just set up a new Twitter account: @thelitbeast and a Facebook profile: www.facebook.com/thelitbeast. Please feel free to ‘geez some mad banter’ as we say in Glasgow.

Thanks for your time,

G.

Part 1: Drunk Again.

I just can’t stop writing; I can’t stop the flow of words onto these unassuming, bemused pages. I can’t stop the gushing tongue of my fingers on plastic, violating the simple, innocent beauty of white blankness. I keep staining the perfection of nothingness, emptiness, with twisted little characters and ink stains.

Even referring to myself as a writer is probably offensive to people who are actually good at this and make a reasonably sustainable living out of it, but I don’t have anything else interesting to say at parties and social gatherings, so I stick to the writer thing. I have to tell them I do something while I avoid their eye contact and take an awkward sip of my drink, looking deep into its potent swirling contents, secretly hoping that I could drown in it. Sadly, I am useless at small talk and I am fairly sure I am the world’s worst conversationalist. So, I guess I have nothing else productive, or better to do, so I may as well dribble my scorn and rancor into the keyboard yet again.

I don’t know how many precious hours of my life I have wasted staring into this glowing square of light making little jagged shapes that join together into words and then convoluted, verbose sentences and then paragraphs and eventually something that is more or less long enough to constitute a book, or a novella. I’m not really sure which; I am completely unaware of any form of technical definition. I have yet another horrendous hangover after having drunk too much whisky. My constant battle to recapture and channel the spirit of Charles Bukowski rages on.

I drank most of a bottle of ten year old Jura I got for Christmas, I drank it straight from the bottle and didn’t even have the decency to drink it with a little splash of water and swirl it in my mouth for a few seconds, or stand on my head, or drink it through a metre of rubber piping, or dribble it down the back of a spoon, or lick it off the toenails of a badger or whatever you are meant to do with it. It was a complete waste, I don’t even remember what it tasted like and then I just pissed it out, just like any other unpretentious liquid with no respect for its value or perceived social sanctity.

For some reason the words seem to flow easily when my head is heavy with the memories of excessive intoxication. I’ve been trying to remember how to put a ‘header’ into a Word document for around 20 minutes and I still can’t do it, I’ve pretty much been staring blankly at the screen and making little indiscernible movements every now and then to convince people that I am still alive. I still can’t believe I have been outwitted by a series of little pixilated pull down menus. Since last we spoke, my phone has incessantly failed to ring and the hopeful, smiley email attachments have continued to be sent and they have remained wide-eyed, expectant and unread in junk mail folders. It seems interest is still low, or non-existent in this broken sham of a malebeing and his stolen and unashamedly plagiarised words. It seems it is highly unlikely that I will ever get anywhere with this writing lark, but on I struggle regardless.

Yet again, not trying to sound like our old friend Charles, but women have come and gone in my life and they continue to constantly perplex, bewilder, confuse, intrigue, haunt and delight me. On the advice of a close friend, I’ve decided that this time, I’m going to try and write about love, without being overbearingly cynical and jaded.

So I will do my best to relate these things to you without allowing my obsessive and biased nature to trickle into the proceedings (please stop me if you have heard this one).

Part 2: The Truth of the Matter

A new ‘story’ starts here; ‘the writer’ now becomes ‘the character’ as ‘the reader’ waits in partially bated breath and reads on…

I met a girl last night who at first instance seemed quite pleasant and was more or less capable of maintaining an interesting, stimulating conversation (as I have already mentioned, this is something I struggle to do). Then after a few more drinks and few more partially sincere nods from him and the constant reoccurrence of a painted on face from her, comes the awkward standing a few yards apart, shifting uncoordinatedly on inebriated feet, encased in dusty shoes or high heels, with fiery alcoholic breath punctuating inarticulate, malformed sentences, all the while he is unsure whether it is appropriate or considered sexually aggressive to hold her hand, while he secretly feels protective of her fragile little body and he feels the natural compulsion to put his arms around her, but he doesn’t want this simple, altruistic act to be construed as sexist or patronising in nature, then comes the inevitable taxi ride with the difficult, stilted conversation in temporarily enforced and restrictive close proximity, with the silently eavesdropping taxi driver, the semi-reliable bastion and gatekeeper of a drunken night out, the omnipotent ambassador of the safe passage home, eagerly listening to the slurping sins through the plastic wall of his motorised confessional.

Then we staggered up the concrete steps of my flat and I fumbled with a bunch of thin metal shards and then I managed to slide the correct thin metal shard into the corresponding metal slot which turned the requisite metal mechanisms which opened the flaking wooden door. Then we stumbled across the threshold, giggling away.

Then, she seemed to go through some sort of demonic metamorphosis as soon as we stepped over the threshold, as though it was some mystical portal into an alternative reality where she was the manifestation of a total arsehole.

In the bar she was nice to look at and reasonably nice to listen to, her voice had a certain seductive melody to it, but as we walked down the white, empty corridor and into the soulless, minimalist lounge; the spirit of the devil trickled up her spinal column and spilled and flowed into the back of her mouth and then her voice changed and it became sharp and grating and she grew fangs and her bone structure and musculature stretched and distorted and when she opened her crushing, blood-soaked mandibles she drenched me with unspeakable, venomous vulgarity and the thick, glutinous residue of bile from the carcass of her last innocent and gullible victim.

She hastily ruined the delicate illusion that there was a pleasant human being lurking under all that make up. I don’t think I have ever met a person that changed so quickly and ended up with such an upsettingly hideous personality. She was inevitably obsessed with all things empty and superficial and as her mascara began to run as she incessantly harped on and on about her past failed relationships and abusive boyfriends and their expensive cars with big growling engines and their high-profile jobs and their spacious apartment buildings blah blah fvcking blah, the same old, tired story. I had to force back the vomit tickling and coaxing the back of my larynx before I called her a taxi and asked her to leave, instantly. She looked confused, as though she was entirely unaware of how perfectly repugnant she was. Little did she know.

As usual, every time I go anywhere near public transport or a shop or a garage forecourt, I fall in painful, aching love with some unnamed, hauntingly curvaceous woman. She suddenly becomes a beautiful and endlessly desirable entity, she is a perfectly formed accumulation and construction of glistening flesh and skin and lips, she is all of god’s intricate plans come to fruition in perfect motion and grace, she is everything I could ever want or ever need. And then you see her fvcking husband.

However, I still maintain the deluded idea that I will be able to fulfill my idealistic notions of love; I am convinced that she exists somewhere; this faceless, resplendently wet-lipped siren still waits for me in the melancholic mists of future days and she forlornly looks back at me when I watch gratuitously graphic smut and she is silently disgusted and disappointed by my less then salubrious tendencies.

The faceless curvaceous woman (well she may have a face but I never seem to notice, it is usually a blur in comparison to her other more obviously enticing fleshy treasures) usually has a nice, normal conventional boyfriend or husband who studied an anonymous engineering degree and has a respectable, reasonably well-paid job and is prone to occasional drunken macho posturing and bravado if someone looks at his girlfriend/wife for too long or too intently, he is wearing a T shirt that she bought him from Topman that is a size too small, but he would never complain about it, just in case.

It says something ‘original and humerous’ related to drinking beer or looking up women’s skirts, or something generally insinuating how insultingly and overwhelmingly small his penis really is. He is generally so devoid of personality that he finds it necessary to display his personality traits on his clothing and when he does manage to purchase something for himself, he buys it because he thinks that it is something that she would approve of and pick out for him, clothes that would make her proud to be seen out with him when they are walking around holding hands while his chest is about to burst with pride since he was able to ensnare such a beauty. He does try bless him, but he just has no sense of style, everything time he tries to wear something trendy he just looks uncomfortable and sheepish and his appearance is always overly synthetic.

Mr Generic doesn’t realise that she thinks about other people when he is with her, and if he does, he tries to pretend that this is not so, she is thinking of someone else when he damply flops on top of her and then spasmodically jerks and then she lies back sighing. She is saying over and over again that it’s OK as he apologises profusely as he takes off the performance-enhancing condom, ties a knot in it and throws it in the bin next to her snidely chuckling computer desk.

She says she understands that he is under a lot of pressure at work and that it doesn’t usually happen, he has just been distracted and a little stressed lately, but it was really nice just to spend some time together. Switch. She is thinking about what she will wear when she goes out tonight and whether the short skirt that she has picked out will match her ostentatious, dangling breasts, I mean earrings. He retrieves his unapologetically brightly coloured, patterned underpants from amongst the bright-eyed stuffed animals that, during the all too brief spurting interludes, have been pushed down off the end of the bed and lie nestled in crumpled pieces of paper, highlighters and cracked, empty CD cases.

He awkwardly puts his boxers back on and sits on the end of the bed with his back to her with his elbows bent and pointing outwards from his almost hairless, turkey skin chest. He really hopes that he doesn’t disappoint her or that he has let her down. She scratches her tanned, toned stomach and thinks about the vibrator that is in the drawer next to her bed, she needs to change the batteries in it because they are getting a little flat lately. He doesn’t realise that she has already starting contacting someone else behind his back and she hides the texts from him and says it is her friend from work, when it is really him and then she clears out her inbox so when he tries to read them there is no evidence of her misdeeds.

Mr. Generic Number Two also wears similar T shirts of a similar branding, but instead of jovial and avuncular logos, he manages to choose garments for himself that hark back to nostalgic notions of eighties cartoons or emblazoned with bands that he has never listened to, but they are featured in the NME, so he bought the T shirt and then pretend he likes them. He has a slightly longer, more fashionable haircut and he shapes his eyebrows and he uses expensive hair products and straighteners (even though he is secretly ashamed of them and he hides them whenever his Dad comes over) he always remembers to wash, rinse repeat, wash rinse repeat, exfoliate, he takes care of himself, he visits the gym three times a week, he does mostly cardio and he wear lycra tops that are a little too tight to be entirely heterosexual.

It never ceases to amaze me that it is invariably the people that you think would be least capable of hurting you that end up doing so. It tends to be the ones that you have trusted, perhaps given something of yourself to; perhaps even misguidedly loved, that end up hurting you the most. The one person that you used to hold aloft on a golden pedestal for all the world to see, just like our friend Mr Generic Number One, we have all walked along holding hands with another humanperson with a furiously beating heart and fleshy, pink, healthy lungs taking in deep gulps of invigorating fresh air that inflate our chests with pride.

So we feel buoyant and light and just excited to be out in public with such a fine shapely specimen in our company. You can hold this glowing, incandescent person up for everyone to behold, everyone you used to go to school with, all those toned, muscular types that played rugby and had cool hairstyles and wore designer jumpers, everyone you have ever worked with, every single person that ever doubted you or put you down or humiliated you or insulted you or anyone that just thought you were a creepy weirdo for no identifiable reason, they can jealously bask in his or her fiery beauty.

You can wield the unimaginable power to parade this image of perfection to their doors and kick it down and just scream at them ‘Look what I’ve got you fvcking loser! You will literally never be as happy as I am right this second, look at your pathetic house with peeling wallpaper and look at the pans in the kitchen encrusted with Supernoodles and look at these shameful stained and crispy tissues everywhere, you’re a disgusting pig!’. Then you can victoriously stampede out of their house with them, the thing, groveling at your heroic porcelain toes with tears blinding them asking: How did you do it? Where did you find her? I’ve tried all of the internet chat rooms, please, please, show me how to get one of my own, please, I’m begging you, I’ll do anything! And then you can self-righteously gorge yourself on their failure and revel in the disgust of what a wretched thing they have become, and rightly so.

I should probably tell you that there was this one girl who I had fallen entirely in love with, I mean completely and utterly worshipped her. It was the first time I had ever even come close to comprehending what the word ‘love’ meant; even her sweat tasted like sweet nectar to me. I would have carved her name into the sky. Every time I woke up, I would have a burning, yearning sensation in my stomach just because she was with me, just because she had chosen me and that she felt the same way about me. I was excited just to be alive, since every next breath had the potential to be an incredible sticky delight, laden and dripping with opportunity and optimism. Or so I thought.

I guess there is no real way of knowing exactly how someone else feels. You can listen to them talk and watch their lips move and listen to the words that dribble and spill from their mouths, but you never really know for sure, not really, not one hundred percent, not definitively. You can never really know that, no matter how hard you try and no matter how many hours you torture yourself and tie yourself up in knots: both physical and metaphorical. Even if you lie awake at night and wonder where the other person is, and then secretly wonder if the other person is thinking about you at that very moment, as if your minds are somehow connected by an infinitesimal, silver wire that runs between your lonely fevered brows, or whether the other person is being passionately rutted by some other other person and the thought of your pathetically soft milky body hasn’t even entered into their mind for a fleeting second through the explosion of sweaty thrashing and multiple splashing orgasms.

Then you just get drunk and try to forget. You try to mend your wounds the best you can and continue doing normal things like brushing your teeth and washing the dishes and painting the dog. You must plaster on your outside face which now looks like a leering plastic clown mask since it is so simulated and false. You can go about your normal daily business just like normal people; even though you are rusting away and dead inside, inside there is nothing left but scorched ashes and anguished memories. But there are always your dreams, you can’t escape them and they will gradually destroy you.

Trust me.