Part 2 

Repetition, Repetition

By the time I wake up again, according to the glowing red eyes of my digital alarm clock, it is already after 1pm. It’s 1.14pm if you are of a mind that enjoys specifics and a sense of the realistic passage of time. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and gingerly adjust my testicles. I have recently purchased new organic cotton underwear and they are just a touch too tight around the crotch area, they bind a little and the seams tend to nip the skin of my ballsack: it’s most uncomfortable.

In an uncharacteristic flurry of productivity I washed my bathroom towels last night, so they are surprisingly fresh-smelling, something that cannot be similarly said for my ballsack. I walk through to the bathroom and pick the towels from the tiled floor. I will wash my bed sheets later, if I can muster the strength, they have begun to develop that musty smell of engrained sweat, depression and neglect.

But, I can only deal with one crisis at a time; it is constant daily trivialities such as this that sap my enthusiasm and zest for life. It seems somewhat futile to even bother washing my body, it’s just going to get dirty again; I’m just going to sweat again and my skin is just going to get dried out again and begin to flake off and little particles will fall away as my body continues to gradually degrade. You may think that I’m overreacting, but I’m not the type for histrionics.

I turn the water on and it is piercingly cold, I let out a high-pitched shriek and slip and slither to the other end of the bath, while expertly managing to knock all of the mostly empty plastic bottles off the rim around the bath. They clatter against the white plastic and snugly gather themselves around my ankles and splash in the pool of icy water which has accumulated in the bottom of the bath where the plastic is bending under my clumsily hairy feet.

This bastard shower takes fvcking forever to warm up, then it occasionally decides to return to painful, cutting cold completely at random. I think it is just trying to keep me on my toes and demonstrate to me that it is in complete command of my hydro-aquatic-destiny and any modicum of control I think that I can gain from wiggling the temperature gauge is an elaborate ruse to lull me into a deluded illusion of control. There is a crusty white rim around the plughole, so I rub and scrape at it with my toenail and the soapy scum starts to flake off and float on the surface of the now lukewarm deluge.

The residue feels slimy and unpleasant so I just leave it to grow, I decide that I will adopt a pragmatic approach and I will consider it a scientific experiment. I can chart and monitor the development of the culture; you never know I may be able to unintentionally create the cure for some horrid disease or ailment just due to my laziness and lack of basic hygiene. If Alexander Fleming can do it with a bit of bread, I’m sure I can manage with the bottom of my shower. Perhaps, I can combine my scientific endeavours in the bottom of the shower with the damp, mouldy patch on the ceiling above the showerhead, maybe I can combine their medicinal properties and develop a tincture or lotion; maybe I will be responsible for a whole new field of uncharted “scientific” discovery: Bathroom Homeopathy.

I attempt to gather up the empty bottles that are scattered around my feet, but it requires far too much effort, bending over and the like, so I just leave them and kick them around while I struggle on with my afternoon ablutions. I don’t know why I don’t just throw the bottles out, I never use them anyway, in fact most of them were hers anyway. She obviously didn’t feel the need to take the remnants of her jojoba and mint infused hair conditioner when she left me.

Although she did see fit to take my copy of Nineteen Eighty Four with her, even though I am convinced she knew that it belonged to me and she did it out of spite, I had even clearly written my name in the inside cover and the date upon which I purchased it from the Oxfam bookshop on Byres Road. I know for a fact that she will never actually read it, she will just talk about reading it and it will just sit on a dusty shelf neglected and unappreciated.

I also know that when she is at parties or social gatherings and the book is brought up in discussion, she will confidently relate the phrases that she has memorised from the blurb on the back cover, just so that she seems intellectual, how very stinglingly pretentious.

Although I have to say that living with her was very much like an Orwellian nightmare, she would constantly scrutinise me and watch every little move I made, just so as to find something to be critical of, just so that she could make her little snide, sarcastic remarks in order to belittle and emasculate me. Every word that ever passed my lips was subject to stringent analysis and if possible used to generate a convoluted and pointless argument. She particularly used to enjoy torturing me in this way when we had friends over, she saw this as the ideal opportunity to chip away at my masculinity and make me feel small and insignificant, just so that she could gloat and cackle in the corner with her red wine drenched banshees with my withered, bloody testicles dangling from her mouth.

When she finally did leave it was because I had finally decided that I wasn’t going to take her abuse any more. There is only so much that one man can take, only so many pointed words that can cut into your skin without them leaving scars. One night she had been particularly drunk and obnoxious and I just asked her to leave. I wasn’t angry and I didn’t swear and yell and scream, although she did more than enough for both of us, I just asked her politely and without emotion to get out of my flat and to never come back.

She had stormed out in the past in a whirlwind of suitcases, clothes and screeching, but I always knew she would be back, eventually. Sometimes it would take a few days, but she would always come back to me.