diary4

[diary4]

12/9/18

So on Saturday morning we got up early to go to Malaga airport. Standby tickets, me Smell and Smarl. Anyway, it was a throwback shebang – we were sat by the gate, our fate in the hands of a thickly accented TRM, holding out hope that no-one would show up to claim the final empty seats. Of course, they did, and when it came down to it there was only one seat available on the early flight. As pre-arranged, Smell took it because Dad had to stay behind with one of us and she’s much more useful to have at home than me (could drive to get Pip, could drive to pick us up, could drive to get food… basically could drive). The next two flights were chocka and it looked like our only hope of getting on was to wait for the 20.30 plane that evening, which left us with a solid seven hours to kill. So off we trot on the train to Malaga town, which is a shithole, by the way, and looks like the majority of mainland Europe that isn’t touristified and gentrified. A few personal highlights were the bridge over a river which was actually just a trench of wasteland with a gutter canal in one corner, and the shopping centre midway through construction, where the bare entrails of gutted ceilings dangled overhead. Nevertheless, I managed to get a few nice pieces copped on behalf of the smarl, then directed us towards trip advisors most recommended nearby steakhouse. This turned out to be an absolute find, the sort of swanky city bistro that bankers go to for lunch and socialites plaster over Instagram. It was all geometric tiles offset by stools and high tables, neon signs glinting between vintage beer bottles, and the most on trend of gimmicks, a foliage wall, to finish off. The food was fucking sensational – I had sushi which was, like, proper sushi to start, while Dad had foi gras pudding (exquisite and unique both tossed at it) then we both had a glass of Rioja and fillet steak. The meal was fab, but really, so was the whole day. It was nice to spend proper time with Dad. It felt necessary, like. Keeping a strong connection with him won’t be as effortless as it was with Mum, who bullied us into it. Dad is more reserved, we have less in common – it will take work, but it will be worth it.

Now I haven’t just been describing this purely to make my future self salivate at the memory of that butter soft steak, or that perfectly seasoned soy sauce, or the depth of flavor lurking in that sleepy deep Rioja pool – the prelude is in fact relevant, and it’s relevant because barely 24 hours later, upon returning from work on Sunday, I found myself consoling a drunk and wailing Dad, who wandered into the front room where I had momentarily sat down and confessed to ‘feeling very melancholy’. He explained that he’s been feeling so so painfully lonely and alone, like no one else can understand how he feels, and that he doesn’t want to talk about it or explain it to anyone else for fear of burdening them with his grief. I did my best to psychoanalyse and therapise – tried to convince him of what Freud convinced me, that grief is not a burden to be borne, it’s a healthy, natural process to be undergone. It’s like tearing off a plaster or, perhaps more accurate, tidying out your room. It’s the step by step of progress, it’s the art of unentangling, it’s the feat of letting go.

Anyway, eventually he sort of nodded off and after dossing on my phone for half an hour I resolved to get us both to bed. Shook him awake, went upstairs looking forwards, more than anything, to brushing my teeth. But upon opening the bathroom door I find that flanking my toothbrush are two giant hornets. God they’re repulsive. They crouch, hunched and ugly and fat as grapes on the white porcelain sink, their swollen backsides pulsing. I shut the door and run and call for Dad. Downstairs we arm ourselves, I wish a hardback magazine, he with ‘the trust newspaper roll’. Brandishing the weaponry we make for the stairs, and all of a sudden I’m a child again and this is a game, we’re playing soldiers. ‘Killing wasps is like killing Nazi’s.’ Dad drawls as he takes the stairs in wobbly drunk strides, ‘You gotta make sure they’re dead’.

He heads into the bathroom and starts swatting. One dead! ‘Behind you!’ Thwap! Two down! Three! ‘on the wall there!’ ‘okay boy, you settle down nicely there’ Thwap! Four! Five! In the end there’s eight hooked carcasses on the bathroom floor. We count them and chuckle and sweep them into the toilet. Then Dad goes off to put pyjamas on and I finally head in to brush my teeth. I’m rinsing my mouth when suddenly – a buzz. And a monster creeps out from behind the unit.

‘Daaaad’ apprehensive call. ‘Daaad! Another one!’ a shout as the fucker takes flight. He’s airborne, swooping dangerously close to me, I’m fucking scared of the little shit now but then there’s Dad in the doorway, brandishing his newspaper and diving in to the rescue. I scamper out the door to safety while he plunges into battle, thwapping once but missing, twice but only catching a wing – now the bitch is mad. I peer from behind the door in fear, calling ‘look out’, but he’s is cool and fearless. A great satisfying thwap! And he deed is done, the monster is vanquished. He emerges victorious, my hero.

 I dunno – I just thought it was quite nice contrast. Obviously, the metaphor doesn’t stretch to reality, as is it’s nature – but the good news is that I think Dad is doing slightly better. Yesterday evening we had a telly marathon, me Smell and Smarl, powering through the first six episodes of Fortnight. ‘This is nice, just the three of us watching telly’ Dad said. And it may be a naïve hope, but I think it really did help him, because today his tone has been a lot chirpier. So you know. Only time will tell. But hope.

[diary4]

26/8/18

Woke up at about six in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. When I did finally nod off, damn I wish I hadn’t, because I fell into the most nightmarish dream scape going.

Phase 1 took me through my surface fears and concerns - the boy situation. Was at Charlie’s house but we were in some kind of love island, with Caroline Flack there. Anyway, I’d invited Eric along or something and he started telling Caroline that I’d asked him what turned him on, and she was telling me off for flirting with someone outside my couple, so then I dragged Eric off on a walk but Charlie followed with Steffen and we were like sitting next to each other in this bar so I asked Eric to give me a moment with Charlie and then I was like hugging and kissing Charlie and crying because I really loved him and it felt so comfortable with him because he was warm and soft and I was so sad to be leaving him behind and letting him go.Then walking with Eric, and Eric goes ape shit like running around tearing his shirt off screaming that he’s afraid he’s going to lose me, which is again a pretty accurate reflection of how I want him to feel about me.So this debating dilemma goes on for a bit then we sort of glide into phase 2The setting is uni, or the first day back at uni. I’m eager to be good and productive and I have a seminar at 9, so in the morning I get all ready then intercept Elinor and walk into uni with her and Sheelps. I’ve basically missed my seminar by the time we get there and I can’t figure out where it is so we just go straight into the ass. We’re all sitting around there working - then Mr Graves is there with some children, like little girls, who are all curled up and adorable. Anyway he’s one of the tutors for my course so I’m asking him about the seminar. Then a load more teachers come and start talking to him about the 80s and I’m squeezed out mid conversation - classic anxiety, or being able to connect with older people. No matter, back to my own friends, and scrolling through my laptop find a load of my old artwork from art. Really depressed because it’s beautiful and I never do anything cool like that before. Resolve maybe to do some later. Anyway then suddenly Sophia is there too, somewhat terrifyingly in a enormous bag of rubbish, like old duvets and stuff. And I ask her how she can do anything because she is literally a pile of rubbish and she says I can get out if I want and springs her arms out at her sides.Then next I know I’m strolling down the street on my way to find the catch up seminar Graves was telling me about. I bump into Ro and that group of her and her three home friends which looks like such a solid crew, and which I’m always jealous of because they’re so close and look so cool and perfect together. And they’re talking about this media project they have to do, and I have to do it to and I’m sort of hanging around them for some reason even though none of them are talking to me. They’re doing little speeches - ‘the first rule of this project is that we are working exclusively with each other’ says one of them ‘because we have enough tonic in the rest of our lives, we don’t need to dilute the group anymore if we want a good project’ says another, ‘so no outsiders!’ Another jumps for joy. Why am I still hanging around? I skulk of down the road, licking my wounds, and they are still oblivious.Then all of a sudden, I sort of start to wonder why I can’t remember leaving the library, or why I can’t remember the walk from home to uni this morning. At the time I was just mildly concerned about forgetting things and thought about getting a student health appointment to check it out. Now suddenly it strikes me, the unimaginable - I’m dreaming? I wander around streets in dazed confusion. I look at my watch for confirmation - and of course, it’s unreadable, the numbers are all the wrong place, the 9 melting around to the bottom right corner and the other following suit. I start to run and shout and then I hear Elinor shouting and I look up and she’s on some shitty council estate balcony, about three block up, in a pink dressing gown and sweeping rainwater off it with a broom. She screaming hysterically so I run up to her and she tells me something about a man, who she came to collect something from or something but now he wants to kill her. I grab her and we run and I shout I’ll protect you, but we’ve barely reached the other side of the street when we glance back and he’s bearing down on us with a shot gun. So knowing this is a dream and death will kill me anyway I throw myself in front of her as a human shield, looking forwards to the bullets fatal kiss, but all I feel is a kind of cool sting on the side of my head. I wonder if this is just how pain is in dreams, but then realise that no, the bullet just clipped me and has instead buried itself in Elinor, who is flopping back dead. Let down a friend - fear, check.So I assume he’s going to kill me anyway, but he sort of stops for a breather and then a police man is creeping up and tazering him and I’m safe! Next a load of people gather around, and this odd yarn about Elinor being the man’s ex lover and there being a child and this was what motivated the whole thing comes out. So then all of a sudden said son, tall and with curly blonde hair and all German and handsome arrives. And someone says he fancies me, and so his friend asks me in German, ‘so, you fancy him?’ And I think that perhaps this is the natural end of the story I have to follow through to to get out of the dream, so I nod, and everyone sort of sighs and claps, and I turn to kiss him, leaning down because he’s sort of kneeling down, but then I keep having to lean further and further into the crowd after his lips, and sink lower and lower until I’m borrowing through a horrible tube and even when I reach his lips that’s just the start of an even tight tube, of endless concentric rings of pulsing flesh that I’m tunnelling down and now I think I’m screaming and flailing because, here it is, a physical fear, claustrophobia.Then with a slam, I’m on the ground in a bedroom with blue carpet. Glance around - have I woke up? The whole place is unfamiliar though, there are shells on the shelves which there have never been in any bedroom I’ve been in. As it do confirm my suspicion, I hear the giggle of the waifish girls pursuing me echoing in the distance. These girls, they have long, straight, auburn hair, and they skip and giggle down tight oblong corridors. Kneeling on the ground I understand fully the expression of hearing pipes giggling - that’s what they’re like, like something you can’t see in the house like the pipes, but the sound is like giggling. It doesn’t make sense now obviously, but it made perfect sense in the dream. Then I see a little outline on the bed and it’s Pip all curled up asleep, and I’m not sure if jumps up and starts running but suddenly everyone is running, me and a load of dogs and the waifs, dashing down these corridors and I’m banging on doors, trying to find a way out of the dream, and then suddenly we’re releasing a load of dogs - Pip but also Homer and Ron and a load of other little dogs we were looking after in this dream -into a wide garden area. Only when they’ve all scampered out do I suddenly realise there’s an open gate at the fair end, so I scream to a girl - this one has curly blonde hair - to close it and she manages to in time, but then suddenly I realise another open gate, and beyond that another one and another one, all impossibly far away, so I start sprinting to it and shouting for it to be closed but there’s a little white dash hurrying over to investigate it and of course, it would be Pip, and I know for sure there’s no way we can close all those gates in time. Then I sort of give up and realise it’s a dream and it doesn’t matter anyway, and as if I’ve passed a test everything around em dissolves and I’m hurtling off, and then I wake up in a navy blue bedroom. Still dreaming? Maybe not. This is Aunty Angie and Uncle Tony’s house, and something tells me I was here when I went to sleep. By this point I’m getting paranoid I won’t ever wake up, and I’m thinking that maybe the reason I can’t wake up is I’m on some kind of trip, and I overdosed and now I’m dead.So With this in mind I’m tentative as I walk down the stairs. There’s no one around, but there’s a big board propped up like you might have at a funeral and letters and postcards spread all over the dining table. I don’t read the board just go straight to the letters and start picking some up at random. The first one reads something like ‘we are so unbearably sad and sorry. You have suffered such loss .... Carina?? Carina!’And I realise all the cards are addressed to me or about me because they’re messages of condolence, because, the unbearable truth, I’m dead.Hot whips of panic. I yell out ‘Eliana’ in my usual intonation, hear her upstairs, run up and grab her, sunk on my knees, head buried in her lap, screaming I’m sorry and I love her and I don’t understand.I cry ‘I’m so sorry, I really love you, and I don’t mind if you wear my clothes. I mean, I do mind if you stretch them but, it’s alright, you can wear them anyway. You can have all of my clothes and read all of my books, please, forgive me’And then she explains, ‘you were drunk and like lying at the top of the stairs and screaming for Mum, Mum, Mum, but no one came and then you sort of fell down the stairs. I was the only one up and I was sitting downstairs and I saw you fall, and then at the bottom you sort of crouched up mouth foaming and asked for help, then just died’Desperation over loss of Mum kills me? Seems like a pretty solid prophecy.And Smell is crying, ‘why do you have to be so stupid? Why you have to do that?’And I’m absolutely beside myself sobbing ‘the saddest part is not that I’m dead but that you have to live without me, and I have to exist, in this weird nether realm, without you. We were meant to stick together. I’m sorry’Curtain call. The black curtain of sleep lifts, and behind it, blessfully quiet and still, I see blue morning through the shutters in the bedroom, where beside me Dad hulkingly sleeps. I’m free.

So basically the whole thing is like a descent through the levels of my fears. We start out surface:

Fear over people finding out about Eric - everyone is present at the Love Island thing, which obviously makes everything public.

Fear over hurting Charlie/ embarrassing Charlie - this is of course a byproduct of number 1. He’s broken by it.

Fear over making the wrong choice between Charlie and Eric.

Fear over missing everything/ messing up my degree.Fear over doing the wrong thing with my life - I long for the creative artistic stuff I used to do.

Fear over being left out - Ro’s group et al.

Fear of letting down friends?

Claustrophobia

Fear of being trapped, held under the authority of those waifs.

Fear of loss - Pip.

The final level is the big guns - fear my reckless lifestyle will end up hurting Dad and Elz, the two I love the most. Mixed in with a healthy measure of grief over Mum’s absence.

Probably was very Bojack Horseman inspired - the penultimate episode of the first season is basically his version of the same thing, one long trip which takes him on a joy ride through his darkest desires and deepest fears. So yah. Thanks a lot, Bojack. Spiritual revelation, check. Fucking horrible ordeal - check. That was the most epic nightmare I have ever had.​

[diary4]

25/8/18

Talking to Eric as usual in the evenings. He tells me he’s been in bed all day apart for about an hour - he smoked about 5 splifs last night. I piss takingly joke ‘oh what a hot mess you are, so sexy 😍😍😍’ when what I actually burn to say is ‘I yearn with every fibre of my soul to have been in the bed with you’. What’s the god damn point?​

[diary4]

23/8/18

In toilets of Olivia’s in Marbella. Midway through dinner at Motown night. Table is long - Larry, Cheryl, kids, tone, ang, max, smells and I. Kids etc. Kemp’s et co upstairs and soon to join us.I’ve shacked up in the toilets. My chest is tight. I can’t breath properly. I keep feeling like I’m having an anxiety attack. I think it might be guilt related - stress over the whole Eric-Charl situ.I keep getting anxious that I’m make the wrong choice - that Charlie is the one, that I’m just acting out, that Eric is wrong wrong wrong.Oh god.Breath easy just writing this. God, I don’t know how, but it just let’s a massive weight off my chest. Placebo? Maybe. Got I feel better.

later -

I mean it’s 2 in the morning, but what else?So technically not Thursday the 23rd, technically Friday the 24th.Technically, panic attack over, and now just purely missing EricMissing? Wrong word?Got in from olivia’s - usual routine, drunk and hungry - devour packet of Doritos, whipe our left over manchego, gobble down non of baguette with butter. Scoff grapes. Food gone.Toilet. Face wash. Nivea. Pjs. Nose blow.Smell comes in and does the same. Then falls into bed and starts mumbling ‘ we had a good night tonight’I mumble back ‘lots of dancing hey?’ Because thats what he enjoys, and low key I’ve realise recently that the genetics are in me and that’s what I enjoy. A good old dance.Anyway mumble mumble, then he falls silent. I think now he’s asleep. But here’s what plagued me. Again, the eternal hope and worry - to find a boyfriend that Dad and Uncle T etc approve of. More than that - one they like, and one they actively include and enjoy spending time with. What is it about Eric that makes me hope he’ll be that one - is it because he’s working class and grounded? BecAuse he’s more comfortable confident in himself.​

[diary4]

15/8/18

The main reason I don’t want to be with Charlie anymore?Because of the way other people view him - and because when I’m with him, I don’t feel like how I’ve always wanted to feel, which is someone cool and respected - I feel like how I’ve always wanted to escape feeling - like a weirdo laughed at behind their back.The truth is that Charlie brings that on himself. It’s just his personality. It’s too big for me to nag away or change.And the other truth is that I’m done with feeling that way. Not to heap all the blame for all my insecurities on him, but - it’s suddenly very clear. Even his own bloody brothers feel that way about him. Even they whisper laughter to each other when he does something particularly outrageous.I guess that until Eric I just kind of didn’t realise there was an alternative. And who knows, Eric might be just as bad. But even if people do laugh at him like they do Charlie - at least it will be for stuff I can make him correct - for being pretentious and posy. You can’t correct that thing that people laugh about in Charl. He’s just got a few links missing. It makes him adorable and special and it’s what I love about him. But I can’t deny that it’s tragic and funny for an outsider. And I can’t blame them for laughing at him. I can only blame him. And I can only blame myself for letting me be dragged back. It’s cruel - but it’s how I feel. You’ve worked so hard to go further socially. Come on. You’re better than that. And at this point, you’re just delaying the inevitable.​

[diary4]

14/8/18

Fucks sake.I’m currently engaged in mission ‘get all the way to Bristol and take my stuff out of the boys house to my house then get home again without anyone noticing’, and so far I’ve made a right cock up of the whole thing. Got to Egham station at an inconvenient time anyway because it was inbetween trains to Reading so I had to wait 20 minutes for one. Then somehow, I was so lost in my own stupid thought that when the train to Reading came I did t even notice, and by the time I’d realised and ran to it it was already pulling away.Serves me right I guess. It’s just another one of the blows karmas dealt me since I officially gave up on morality.Oh yeah, that’s right, you guessed it.I suppose this chapter of the story, which is kind of like chapter two of the Eric saga, commencing after the yearnful intermission, started last Friday. So this is the Friday that’s Friday fast approaching Saturday which would be the Saturday to mark 2 weeks since I officially broke things off with Eric. Had a god awful boring week last week where absolutely no one was around and absolutely nothing happened. Started going stir crazy. More than relieved when Michelle planned to have this little gath on Friday night.Anyway the whole thing turned out to be a bit of a cop out, because there wasn’t enough alcohol and it was a weird, Jamie Foster dominated crowd. The ‘main event’ was Molly’s new boyfriend Oscar, being trotted out and introduced for the first time. It was especially exciting because the word (corroborated by social media) was that he was really really peng. Anyway, it was funny because he turned out to be kind of a dweeb - he had a bit of a tragic man bun and he vaped and he tucked his tshirt into his jeans etc. Anyway, I got pretty drunk and ended up kinda passed out with Soph and Smell on the sofa, in self imposed exile of the general conversation which we only joined in to nag John to take us home. I don’t know if it’s cos it was kind of a shitty night or cos I felt kind of excluded, or if it was just a side effect of being drunk and free of inhibitions, but all of a sudden all I wanted to do was forget all this abstinence nonsense and hit up Eric. Maybe it was also something to do with how unbearably horny I’ve been all week - the predictable time of the month. Anyhow, I felt no pressure to follow through on Friday night only because I knew I was going out again the next day, and that that would provide a far better opportunity to hook up. In the morning I sort of told myself that the whole thing was rubbish, but I think that in my heart I kind of knew that there was no way I wasn’t messaging him on Saturday.Anyway. Saturday rolls around. Unbearably hungover. Meant to be going to Maddie’s to pre for this Artshouse festival thing in London. The whole day has been organised and sold as Maddie’s leaving party, and despite the fact I no longer like Maddy and didn’t really know anyone else going apart from Beth, I’d allowed myself to be convinced to go by Beth, who I felt guilty for leaving alone. I had apprehensions, but I sort of knew it would be fine - once you’re drunk things normally are - and besides, aren’t I supposed to thrive around new people when wasted? It’s true, I always manage to make some random friends. And I did. I can’t be bothered to describe the whole day because it’s not really the topic of chapter two, but yeah, it was fucking lit, i slammed way too much coke, was lucid for the most part but am missing a patch between dancing and being on the tube home with Beth, and, oh yeah, around 7 pm lost all inhibitions completely and hit Eric up with an ‘oi’.It was raining hard, we were drenched to the skin and being shunted around to the sound of tech. I wiped the water off my phone and checked it once every ten minutes or so - after forty minutes he still hadn’t responded. Imagine my sudden panic. Here I had been, assuming that Eric was on standby and would always be there when I fancied dipping my toe back into sin. What if he had in fact moved on? What if he was going to blank me - leave me on read? What if this was operation Lucas all over again?!!In a desperate bid to retain my dominance in the relationship, I sent an angry follow up: ‘don’t you dare ignore me Eric, you shit’.Anyway, long story short, he replied soon after that and we arranged to meet up that evening. My memory sort of melts away around this point, but I know from the messages that I was pretty forward and initiated quite a lot of the whole thing. I resurface from the blackout on the tube with Beth, and it’s at this mind fuck that we resurface.Riding the line with Beth. We’re having some melty, loud, drunk conversation, lying all over each other and the carriage. Then she has to get off at a stop and I’m left on my own, sliding away from the back of her blonde head and the platform and not knowing where the hell im going.Hit up Eric - ‘I’m in central’ (I think?)He comes back saying he’s wine drunk and tired and can’t be bothered coming to central, so I say I’ll come meet him in Uxbridge. Only problem is - how to get there.At this point i try to ascertain my location and find myself staring hard at the blue rectangle that says ‘Embankment’. Right. All I need to do is get onto that blue Piccadilly line, then I can slide all the way down to Uxbridge easy peasy.How I managed to get onto the Jubilee line I will never know - my navigational tactics were just sheer will power. At one point I got on a train, realised I was sliding in the wrong direction and had to do a rapid U-y at the next stop. Somehow, though, around 11 at night, I found myself gliding into Uxbridge station. By this point of course my phone had gone flat, but I haphazardly hoped this wouldn’t pose a problem, and it didn’t, because when I came through the barrier Eric was sitting, dark and broody, in the corner of the station.So he gave me his coat, a kind of quilted denim thing, because ow as wearing nothing but a crochet bralet, and we hooked arms and began ambling towards his. When we got there we continued drinking wine, and I think we did kiss quite a bit but nothing else, our clothes stayed very much on and I sat on his stomach and rattled off what I’d been doing all week and the conversation got deeper until (I don’t remember this) eventually I fell asleep on his chest.So here’s the thing - I fucking fancied him so much. It was like all the doubt and annoyance that had made me doubt whether I did before had evaporated, absense had done its fondening work on the heart, and we were head over heels, all over each other, all gazing eyes and thoughts like ‘I just can’t believe how handsome you are’ bouncing about in my brain. It was the same the next morning - we chattered and laughed with all the ease in the world, and lolopped on each other and I could barely tear myself away to go home.It’s wet and strange but I really just can’t get over how perfect he looks. So I’m not stupid, I know he’s not the best looking person in the world. But for me, for my personal taste, he just looks perfect - like he’s just perfect?! I could play with his hair and stuff for hours man. Hell.He made this stupid spoof film with his friend Janek, ‘the polish cinematographer’, which is on YouTube. In it they’re just sitting around smoking chatting shit trying not to crack up. Basically when I’m bored I just whack it on and I can’t stop watching it. It’s like back when I first met Charlie and I had those two videos of him impersonating Varys and saying ‘if you don’t have a croquet lawn you’re a fucking peasant’ that I couldn’t stop looking at. Except Eric just looks so much better. I don’t know if that’s the me of today talking or if the me of two years ago would agree. Either way - that’s how I feel now. This shifting sands of time and personality thing is impossible to keep up with. I guess you just have to surf the present ?I hope Eric feels the same way as me. I’m kind of concerned that he isn’t really capable of getting all giddy and in love and excited, because he’s been with with so many people and had so much of it. Even I can sort of sense how this time isn’t going to be as giddy and as romantic as it was with Charlie - the first time is always the best, salt in the glass of water that is your heart etc. There were a few things he said which sort of indicate that he really does like me. In the morning, wrapped in each other’s arms with some music humming in the background he said ‘this is what I missed. Just chilling. You are one chillllll motherfucker’. Does that equate to being someone with whom he feels himself falling mind body and soul infatuatedly in love with? Maybe...?​

[diary4]

8/8/18

Making my annual pilgrimage to cex. Haha. The annual pre holiday post being pied by work pilgrimage. Last year we sold all our old Xbox and wii games. This year I’m selling mum’s iPad and a kindle she got me out of lost property at ba. Read into that what you will. The iPad, so often so synonymous with Mum, pilfered from her chest of drawers and flogged in the high street. Is nothing sacred?​

[diary4]

7/8/18

Here’s something they never mention about affairs - they’re pretty lonely fuckers.Take, for example, the other day when we were chilling at Georgie’s. Classic set up, Georgie going to work at 3 so got me Soph and Smell over to chill in the day time before she left. Georgie’s good like that - maximising her time. She’s almost frighteningly good at it. If she got any better, I think she’d be a psychopath.Not to stray from the point or anything though, what happened is that she was moaning at me about how I’d never accepted her friend request on find my phone, so I logged onto the app and tried to add her. Next thing she holds up her phone, where she’s got a text message from me inviting her to be my friend. ‘What’s this weird thing you’ve sent me Car?’‘What? It’s find my friends!’‘Oh my god no it’s not, I don’t know what this weird app is’Anyway transpired for the last six months the ‘find my friends’ app I’ve had downloaded wasn’t in fact ‘find my friends’ but ‘apple people’ or some gay shit like that. It’s all funny and I’m laughing it off, saying ‘well then I didn’t even have find my friends in the first place! I’ll go download it now’, to which Smell replies ‘you must have it because I track you on it all the time?’‘Lol Car’ Sophia laughs, ‘you would be so bad at having, like, an affair’And for an instant I’m laughing but I’m completely jarred. This is too close to reality. Are we all laughing at the same thing? Are they also laughing at how weird and coincidental that statement is? Because of course, when Eliana said she tracked me all the time the first thought that flew into my head was ‘shit. What if she knows about Eric’.Of course the feeling passed, and of course they were only laughing at the hypothetical scenario that one day I might even attempt to have an affair, and oh what a disaster that would be. And I laughed along because of course I had to, but a very small part of me was grinning ‘fuck you. Fuck you guys who think I really am an idiot just cos I play the fool for laughs. Fuck everyone who’s always laughed at me being incompetent.’ Not an aggressive ‘fuck’, but a friendly, ‘I proved you wrong ha ha now who’s laughing’ kinda fuck. And another part of me of course wanted to let them in on why exactly what they just said was so funny and coincidental. And it’s only now days later, upon reflecting on that, that I realise to what extent I will never, ever be able to confide in them, my supposed best friends, about this small thing that would make them laugh. Of all the people I know I think those three would judge me the worst. They’d take one look at Eric and scoff. They’d hate him. But it’s not even about Eric, it’s about what they’d think of me. Those three who are always so morally scrupulous and quick to judge. They’d fucking spit roast me.So yeah. Lonely. Woe betide me. Here I am, wallowing in self pity, awash with self righteousness and the sense of self imposed exile. I am noble, I am gallant. I am the self flagellating Knight who wanders lonely the nether lands because he knows he is not worthy of the Princesses hand. Except I’m not, obviously, I’m just a little shit. What can I say, guilt doesn’t come naturally to me. I joke about Georgie being so efficient she’s a psycho, but what about me, the bitch who laments her inability to soap box about cheating on her boyfriend, and writhes in self pity while barely twitching with guilt. Sociopath, innit, when you can’t empathise. Stop romanticising your own shortcomings.You know what else I was thinking? I was thinking how the person I normally tell everything, Charlie, is the person I can never tell. How’s that for torture? How’s that for empathy? How’s that for an indication that I was never in an unhappy relationship, and I should never have had an affair. I want to talk to my boyfriend about cheating on him. What the fuck?​

[diary4]

4/8/18

Well I mean technically it’s the 5th but it’s the early hours of the morning so doesn’t really count.Been at work for the past two days. It really is so much fun, and I really do properly like Fran and Willow. They’re just easy to get on with - their just just like me, you know, one of us, part of the furniture. We were never not going to be friends - especially with Fran, I kind of feel like if it hadn’t been through work then there always would have been something that would have forced us together, and we would naturally have hit it off. Too much in common, too many people in common, too much sense of humour in common, etc. Anyway, especially after confiding in them about you-know-what i feel pretty bloody close to them, and also like I can let loose around them like I can’t with anyone else. Just like Eric said we would, we’ve moved past the awkward stage of them finding out and thinking I’m a prick. Now we laugh a lot about it, and about whether or not I’m gna dump Charlie or not, and about the whole situation. Take for example today, when me and Fran were leaving work (got sent home earlier than we wanted because there was nothing to do - Jess and Maria, the two under managers, are getting properly pissy with us taking the piss all the time, and they get rid of us as soon as they have the chance to) and we bumped into Alex in the kitchen. He told us to stop moping about leaving work and go and enjoy our Friday night, go get a drink. When we said we couldn’t afford drinks he told us to find some men to buy them for us, to which we dramatically replied that ‘I have a boyfriend...’. Alex then teased that, since he was so far away, I ‘get rid of him’, to which Fran and I make a deliberately cringe face at each other and she says, ‘um, pending’, which was just fucking jokes tbh. And I thought, there’s the kind of lighthearted fucking attitude I want from a friend.Anyway, so since my essay is nearly finished and ergo I’m nearly ‘allowed’ to message Eric, and since I doubt I’m going to get any shifts next week, I’ve been reconsidering the old idea of going down to Bristol for a day with him. You know, kill two birds with one stone - move my stuff out of the boys house, which is playing on my mind, and get to fuck Eric. But the more I put the gears in motion to formulate this (asking Charl if I can borrow his key) the worse I feel about it. It’s just too fucking symbolic - moving my stuff out of Charlie’s house with Eric then sleeping with Eric? Using Charlie’s key to use Charlie’s house to sleep with Eric? My new house is different because I’ve never been with Charlie in it - but I think if I see his bed with the Bowie poster, and all his silly stuff, then I think my heart might break. Even now, I just suddenly thought of my room last year and all the morning waking up with him, or all the evening waiting for him to come over so I’d have someone to cuddle. I know I keep saying that Charlie’s been shit through this whole thing with Mum and using it as an excuse to treat him like shit, but I think I know that in reality he’s been a lot better than I give him credit and he’s actually kind of always been there for me. In a sort of way. When I think of how I’d cuddle up to him and he’d always be warm and soft - and that Mum and Dad and Auntie Mary are the only people who have ever made me feel that safe and warm. I guess I’ve lost a lot of the most important and safe people in my life so why am I now trying to push the rest away? Defence mechanism? Damaged goods? What a convenient explanation.Another thing that makes this hard is that I could never tell Charlie I feel all this just like I could never tell Mum or Dad. He’s too close. You know who I could tell? Eric. I guess I feel like if I had a chance to start over and be totally honest with my partner then I could just tell them so much more. Do I really need a clean slate? Do I really want one?There are a few things I’m actually certain of. The first is that the absolutely right and best thing to do is not to contact Eric again until I’ve told Charlie that I want an open relationship or broken up with him. Charlie is a good person and he’s been good to me and he’s my friend and I absolutely owe him this because he absolutely doesn’t deserve the opposite.I also know that it’s the best thing for me to do things this way. This feels like more of a maturity test. It’s like Eric said. As it goes on like this it stops being about one decision. It starts to define you as a person. I think maybe that if I carry on being a bitch like this then I’ll lose a part of my soul. Sorry to be so melodramatic, but that’s just it.I also know that every night when I ‘kiss goodnight’ to mumma, I miss her a little bit more. Don’t be deceived by ‘little bit’ - it’s like comparing an extra 5 p a week to an extra cavern carved out of a mountain. Aches.So here’s my motherfucking plan that I’m going to motherfuckinng stick to, alright. This week I’m going to focus on ‘getting my shit together’. It took Eric a whole fucking gap year but hey ho I got 7 A*’s at GCSE unlike him so I’m going to do it in a week.I’m going to polish off all my essays, and when I’ve done that I’m going to read a lot, to devour some books in a cold bath. I’m not going to eat, I’m going to drink black coffee and if I need to indulge I’m going to smoke a cigarette. I’m not going to spend any money except on postage for all the keys I’m going to sell. I’m going to focus on getting my finances in order and if I go out in the day it will be to walk to the post office. And whenever I feel bored shitless or desperate to talk to Eric or sexually frustrated or impotent or any of the things I’ve been feeling all summer that have made me think drunken binges and some stupid affair are the right course of action, I’m going to WRITE. I’m going to write up the sordid affair, and fuck market research, I’m just going to get it down on paper. To channel those useless emotions into something real for once. That’s what Mum would have wanted me to do. Then perhaps I’ll stop missing her so much - perhaps she’ll feel less far away.It’s not enough to make your own life into some kind of romantic novel. You can’t really orchestrate that in real life. But you can literally write a novel about it. That’s the only way to become a heroin. To tell the story.​

[diary4]

2/8/18

So it’s now Thursday evening and I’ve managed still not to relapse and message Eric.It feels good to have this moral high ground, and it feels good to keep on (retrospectively) recognising red flags. I’m convinced that Eric isn’t the perfect person for me and doubt whether he ever will be.However.You know what it’s like, it’s difficult to give up on someone. When it’s so hard to find anyone whose even halfway perfect, it’s so hard to give up on someone you invested so much in.God I’m dying to talk to him. I’m dying to relapse.I’m a bit drunk which means that this probably (definitely) isn’t the right time to message him.​

[diary4]

5/8/18

They’re called Kit and Paula.Here are the acts:

1: The First Date The amble, the pie, the drunken confessions, golden hour by the river.

2: The Hook Up: The pretensions, the niece, the drunk, the confession, the frustrated expectations. She begs him to ride the train with her

3: The Breakfast DateThe coffee, The Talking Heads, Louis Theroux, The Bridge, The Wren, The tube, the kiss goodbye (ultimate realisation of self projected fantasy)

4: The big oneThe cinema is inconsequential but aesthetic, oh but it’s ‘relevant’, Annoying each other on the tube with pretensions, he won’t drink with party girl, she won’t kiss him for buying her cinema tickets, oh then she will. The sex. The sleep. The morning sex, like riding a wave. Ride the tube?Now for the first time we’re alone with Paula. Now she tells someone, now it starts raining, now she ‘feels’Shall we not mention that she’s in a relationship up until now? She’s trying to maintain the fantasy for everyone. Or shall we leave him as a shadowy presence? Shall we not mention that he’s sweet and he loves her, and they’ve been best friends for years, and they have their own secret language and they know what they want to name their children, and they’re in love?Suddenly it’s not so romantic. Suddenly it’s terribly ugly.

5: The EndThe attempt to make him share in her guilt, to make him complicit. His refusal to condone. Her lashing out. Ending the whole thing.Then standing. Empty wind sound. Symbolic fucking cigarette packet? Hey, I’m just telling you how it happened. I swear I’m not making this up. Switch from second to first person - authorial presence betrayed.

 Ending = breakdown of ability to fictionalise and romanticise one’s own life, thereby distancing one from it.But then - the ability recovers. Here’s how we make it romantic again. We fetishise guilt and separation. We smoke in the bath and turn guilt into a story. Enjoy?What’s it really about though - frustration of wanting to fall in love but not quite being able to? Of falling out of love with someone? Of falling in love, even just a little bit. We have interludes to the acts -And those are the best bits. The lying in bed with worms in your stomach. That feeling is what it’s about. That’s the only way you ever want to feel. If the whole world could lay thus, in a paroxysm of desire. We’d get fuck all done. But that’s what happens when it doesn’t rain for months, when you don’t get dicked for a long while. You just sort of stop and dream. Here’s a uniquely female ability. Not to fall in love like men do. But the feeling itself. Not to idolise another person. To idolise the feeling. To simply love being in love. It’s hard to make decisions when you feel like that.Justification? Here I go again. None of my feelings are real, it’s just justification following justification. That’s this book. Another justification of a bad thing. Falling in love feels good enough to justify cheating. Reading this book feels good enough to justify rooting for Kit and Paula, even though you know what they’re doing is wrong.Maybe the moral of the story is that nothing lasts forever. Love doesn’t last forever. People don’t last forever. Affairs don’t last forever. Suppose books don’t last forever either. But then, neither does guilt. Moral conscience, in Paula’s experience, has always had the habit of wandering back into its cave a little while after it had stumbled out, absent mindedly tucking itself in, and almost without noticing, falling fast back asleep. And just like that she was unpiloted again, and free to be tossed along on waves of desire, frolicking in the froth, reclining in the swell, and sprawling supine into the great expanse of blank, the empty text box patiently waiting for a new story to begin.

No bullshit, Car. The whole truth and nothing but. Well, maybe a little bit but.​

[diary4]

29/7/18

‘The Wedding’

Our opening scene is men in grey morning suits, standing in a courtyard sheltering under an archway and black umbrellas from grey drizzle. Rippling puddles = courtyard terrain. They are not waiting for the wedding, they are waiting for guests to arrive at the reception; the wedding itself has already taken place, as of course has the whole process of falling in love. What we see here is the aftermath. What we are interested in is the after party.We’re also interested in the whole thing as fabricated, production line, constructed. Weddings as events are a piece of capitalism, another clever plot to trick us into expense. It all gets rolled out, then it all gets rolled away; the ‘happiest day of your life’ is just another day in the life for the staff at the hotel, a meaningless variation on a blue print of romance. There is nothing special about your wedding, and there is nothing special about your relationship, it’s one in a fucking million, and I mean that derrogitarily (query - could the notion of constant, repeated love stories be positively spun? How lovely that everyone gets to experience the day).But this particular wedding is joined by us in media res deliberately - gone is the pomp and excitement and summer day of love - now it is raining, it is grey, everyone is hungry and thirsty and in need of the loo. This isn’t about one couples love, it is about everyone at the wedding being stuck in a state of ‘morning after’ - the wedding isn’t even finished yet and we already feel hungover (they’ve been drinking since 8 am and most of the night before - the wedding reception starts at 3).Here it is - falling out of love. That’s what’s interesting. And also, that from the opening shot we don’t know it’s a wedding, it could be a funeral or a christening or anything else. Human experience is indistinct and inseparable. We dress it up to make it different with ‘Mr & Mrs’ signs and white dresses. The bride is herself just a normal person dressed up with that silly label, ‘bride’; she’s not a bride she’s a person, and while today she may be a pawn in an eons old Romantic transaction she is in day to day life something else. Why the need to slot ourselves into ancient rituals, to reaffirm. Just an excuse to get drunk? I don’t think so. If that all you needed you could have eloped and then invited everyone to the pub. They wouldn’t have come? Well doesn’t that say a lot about how the guests are just as complicit in this outdated tradition.This trope of a ‘journey so far’, monopoly board and holiday destinations etc. Is that really how you plot your life? By hotels?Is love a journey? Or is it just a few moments where we have fun?Who is it that’s so in doubt? The doubt circles like a vulture, looking for a shoulder to land, getting closer to bride and groom.Of course this isn’t about marriage it’s about love in general, and the horribly commercialised nature of romance. What if you want more?Our bride want’s more, she’s not content to be somebodies bride. Possessive pronouns abound - ‘your bride’. This isn’t about gender though, it’s about right and wrong. Is it wrong to want more than happiness?Does bride have to be pitted against groom? In one happy ending could the two of them not be reconciled by their sickliness at the whole thing and run off together, abandoning the parameters of modern romance in doing so? Not a runaway bride or a jilting groom, but the two of them bolting for their lives. ‘Let’s just be friends?’ Perhaps. We must recognise that this is the authors fantasy, and ergo perhaps the brides? Perhaps we should set this up in terms of expectation and reality. Perhaps instead of a doubtful and pessimistic bride we should have one who is steadfastly optimistic.

Expectation: sunshine, sunglasses

Reality: drizzle, brollies

Expectation: young waitresses giggling in excitement at it all

Reality: sour face European waitresses, dead eyed, seen it all before (the author figure as one ‘curating’ the wedding, a member of the staff body - running the show as it were, not necessarily trying to make it perfect but just trying to make it work)

Expectation: everyone falling down to worship bride and groom, worship this image of love

Reality: everyone has their own problems and talk about their mortgages and try and control their children and get drunk to forget

Expectation: raunchy best man sleeps with bridesmaid

Reality: best man is depressed, impotent, and eventually in a fit of rage - he physically can’t live up to this hurculean dicked trope.

Expectation: adorable flower children running around

Reality: snotty teenage flower ‘children’, mope by the side on the iPods.

Expectation: quite moment alone between bride and groom

Reality: can’t find each other - they literally lose each other in the fluff

What keeps you invested? The held lit hope that eventually we will reach the real kernel of truth at the core of marriage, that between husband and wife. But in the end, is it there? Wasn’t it there before and after? Is the realest part of the whole wedding the suggestion, jokingly made, that they will spend enough on champagne to put the bar tender’s Romanian daughter through school? And the fact that little Nikita is in fact at home in Romania, receiving enough pocket money from her distant mother to go out and buy a magazine, in which she reads about all the fabulous weddings happening across the globe and dares to hope that one day she may wear the white dress...That’s how it works: love makes the world go round. Sorry, love, did I say love? I meant money. Pass the money. Bloody ‘love’ written on every damn napkin in here, makes you forget what your even here for...​

[diary4]

29/7/18

Here’s a theory: people, by which I mean myself, have no internal moral compass; guilt etc. are derived not from within but from social perceptions of acts which are deemed good. It’s a complicated system of carrot and stick that is instilled at such a young age we come to believe it is inherent. It is not. Just look at animals and children, who are both amoral to the core. ‘Morality’ is in face just ‘civilisation’ with a different name. It’s essential, but it isn’t inherent.​

[diary4]

28/7/18

So I’ll do back stories and congealed narratives later but right now we’re in the throws of quite a ‘significant moment’ so I wanna get it down.Am sat on a log in a horrid woodland footpath off the main road, and I just ended the thing.Phoned Eric, wanted to talk things through. Essentially he was quite useless at talking things through, but then I’m coming to realise that all boys are. Would Charlie have been any better? They just tell you want they think you want to hear.After him basically saying ‘it will be okay’ and me practically begging him to give me a bit more back, give me a bit of ‘dialogue’ (‘dialogue’ he repeats smirkingly, inquisitively), I realise that there is no reassurance he can give (‘what so you want me to do, do you want me to tell you your a horrible person?’ - essentially that’s all he could have done). There’s no easy way out of this, there’s no boy in the world who’s going to make Cheating on Charlie okay, or if there is I haven’t met him yet. ‘I wish we’d never matched on tinder’ I say, ‘thanks a lot’ he says, ‘I’m trying to compliment you’ I reply, because in an odd way this is the only way left I have to be romantic - by implying ‘it couldn’t have been anyone else but you’ - except perhaps it could. He said to me that regardless of him, the moment I downloaded tinder, that was when the relationship was over. So I said I didn’t think I could see him anymore until I’d worked things out with Charlie, and he said that was the right thing to do, and I had my own shit to work out. I said it had been alright (still flirting) getting to know him, and that I hoped he had a good summer and I might see him at some point further down the line. He said bye buddy. Fuck. Unanswered questions. Why didn’t he say he’d miss me or try and fight for me? What happened to ‘I haven’t felt this way in a long time’ ??! Or is he just being a decent person - of course he is, of course he is.A lot of wind today. Branches sighing in wind. Leaves tittering on road, snickering at me. The villain brought low.Come on girl, stay strong, if for no other reason than that this is the best way to make him like you. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. He’s the sort of prick that needs to be treated like shit. He needs someone to ignore him and not care about him. That what all fucking massive egos need. Come on girl. That was your initial mission, wasn’t it? To make him ur bitch. Don’t go all wet now. Play the long game. For every possible reason, this is the right thing to do.

After Work -

So I’m starting to think that for every possible reason, this is the wrong thing to do. Okay, maybe not every reason, but for quite a few important ones. Does it sound like I’m trying to talk myself out of doing the right thing now my ‘attack of conscious’ has abated? Of course it does. So let me spell it out. If I can’t fucking mount a rambling defence of my crime in my own diary, then where can I do it? Future jury, I don’t whether you will be contemptful or sympathetic or even unbiased, but for fucks sake, this is about feelings, and here are mine.I’ll write it all down, one sec - but since this is all real time, just give me a minute to lay back and listen to Naive Melody and think about how absence has already made my heart grow.Here’s my reasoning: when I got to work yesterday I was so elated from the sex and still riding the walking on air high that had had my dancing and practically singing on the train, on my own, with a massive grin all over my face and the knowledge that at least two groups of people were laughing at me. I strutted in, and I can’t remember if I wrote this yesterday, but I’d resolved to tell Fran everything. Close enough but not too close, and someone I would see often enough to discuss it. Perfectly placed.Anyway I sort of dropped some hints when I got there, saying I’d been in Uxbridge and that I had some shit to tell her. Anyway it had got about 90 minutes into the shift and we were having one of those customary dead periods where there’s a lull in service and everyone just sits around in the painted hall bar. I think I’d strutted over to flirt (outrageously) with Marcin - for whatever reason, I was standing at the bar and I think, ironically, engaging (shamelessly) in a bit of our running banter that my boyfriend is cheating on me. Then Fran came over and said, ‘so have you seen your boyfriend recently’. Flustered no - she sounded very confident. ‘You’ve got a hickey babe’. Oh I don’t know how she brought it up but it completely threw me. Shit. Did I actually? Was she just teasing? Was it noticeable? No, I don’t believe you, you’re joking. I’m not mate she laughed. Fuck. No way to backtrack on this. Flustered I head to the toilet to check. ‘Come with’ I tell her, thinking - this is it. It’s coming out.Anyway, get to the loo and lo and behold, there they are, one on either jugular, faint but unmistakable little bruised spots. Like a thumb print where the pores stand out darker, or like the place where you’re black shame has come pricking out of you - hot pricks of black shame, that’s morePoetic isn’t it?So I stumble through the whole story - ‘contemptible’ is the word I use to describe the story when I tell Eric about telling Fran, and indeed it is. It’s not eloquent or poetic, it’s an ugly tale, and fittingly, it inelegantly told by me as I trip fumblingly through the key events, reeling them off as I would a shopping list because, of course I know as soon as I start to speak, no amount of flowery embellishment and crap about the effluvium or life or feeling frustrated and lost or under appreciated can detract from the story at it’s ugly core - this is the story of me cheating. When Fran asked if Charlie would be angry if he found out I said ‘I think he’d just cry’ which is of course the truest and most meaningful part of the whole story.This whole affair is ugly. It’s a dirty meeting on Tinder with a crude, sweaty man child in his impoverished house populated by nothing but hideous narcissism and grim bodily sex. Impoverished house - is it really relevant that Eric is poor? I’m fetishising him just like he said ‘we’ (the middle class party art girl) would.Anyway, it made the telling of the story distinctly harder that Fran wasn’t really hopping on board like I’d envisioned she would. It’s a scandal! It’s gossip! Oh, what will you do? Is he sexy? Tell me more about him, tell me all about him! And will she didn’t exactly condemn me, she started to look kind of down on me, and I could tell that she thought I was a little twat. It dawned on me, alarming late, that this story might not be well received by my piers who a) love Charlie, b) are used to being on the other foot when it comes to cheating. What teenage girl hasn’t been fucked around by a boy who thought he was above her feelings, above making her cry?Long story short, I suddenly started to panic. Fuck. Here comes the guilt. Not the guilt from within. I think the most contemptible part is that I wasn’t feeling bad about my actions, I was feeling afraid that if people found out they would no longer like me. Fucking self centred I am. As if we needed more proof!Anyway, I obviously mistook this fear for a sluggish and lazy moral conscious which, rudely awoken by Fran’s derision, suddenly began clattering around loudly and waving it’s arms in panic at the mess it discovered itself in. Like Mum waking up and finding the kitchen a tip, cake batter up the walls, clogged utensils on every counter, drawers open and an egg smashed purposefully by the garden door, and slamming doors to wake everyone up and tell them just how displeased she is, and this shit better be cleared up within the hour.Anyway, there was a nice bit of pathetic phalasy - pathetic bit of pathetic phalasy? Everything I do is pathetic man - shit why do I indulge myself like this - but yeah, the thing was that, after literally months of dry weather, baking sky’s and cloudless days and constant threats it will break in a thunderstorm that never comes, the sterile sky finally cracks, and in rolls the thunder, in streams the rain, and there in the corner of the sky comes the lightning’s great knuckle crack of relief. And so my numb and unfeeling state since the death gives way to what I think is self awareness and feeling and grief. Life is no effluvium it’s actions and consequences, and here is one.Isn’t it interesting how we find narratives in everything. Of all this yesterday I was supernaturally certain. Today I doubt all my conclusions. That ‘guilt’ was just fear of being disliked, and that it coincided with the summers first rain was some kind of cosmic joke to help me persuade me to ‘do the right thing’. I mean, it worked, but even God can’t help it if you later on change your mind.Anyway. Panic. Message Eric to the effect of ‘I’m freaking out please can we talk’. He was busy and said to wait, I was dog tired and passed out. Next morning, woke up feeling shitty. Shit. Need to speak to Eric. Had never been so uncertain about him and was feeling ill just that the thought of his hairy back. Headed early to work and called him on the way, ducking into this little woodland footpath so I could be away from the rush of the road.The conversation, as I said earlier, was basically me begging him for reassurance and him being unable to give it because, lo and behold, what I’m doing isn’t actually fair. He’s such a narcissistic prick that I don’t even like calling him a narcissistic prick because it just feeds into his own beloved self image of that. But when he’s silent on the other end of the line, essentially insinuating that it’s not his fault I’m cheating and he’s not really the one who should be feeling guilty, and that it’s my problem and he couldn’t care less either way - I can’t help but say breathily ‘you prick man’. But - here’s the thing - one of the first things he said when I explained my panic was that I shouldn’t worry because what I thought would redefine me forever would soon blow over, and as soon as some fresh scandal came along my friends would be talking about that instead. At the time I wasn’t prepared to accept this as all he had to say - I was frustrated that he wasn’t getting the seriousness of the problem and my emotion, because this was a two year relationship and it meant a lot and it wasn’t just my friends but I personally felt bad. But now I think there might be more to it than that. Because, observe, having told myself and prepared the statement that I had cut things off with my side guy, and having spent all day with Willow who I’m not sure if Fran has told or not, but who didn’t bring it up anyway, I’m suddenly starting to feel quite okay about the whole cheating thing. Observe: I no longer feel at risk of being disliked by my friends, ergo I no longer feel ‘guilty’ about cheating. Ergo, everything is just as it was before, and my reasons for cheating still stand (Charlie’s hum drum messages are driving me up the wall), and I have no crippling guilt so why stop?Okay so I know it’s ‘the right thing to do’ - but that’s by traditional, social models of morality, right? And don’t I think I’ve sort of got a better, more pragmatic working alternative going on? Isn’t that the whole point? To repeat, the selfish thing isn’t the cheating, it’s the talking about the cheating. It makes sense that it’s that I got all guilty and self flagellating about I suppose. Karma? I stepped outside the realms of my own curious mantra.Either way, I can’t stop thinking about fucking Eric, I can’t stop feeling irritated by Charlie, and I can’t help thinking that I may have rushed into ‘the right thing’ a little too fast. Either way, it’s unsustainable.The only reason I can really stand by and commit to, in fact the reason why I’m writing all this here and not in some lengthy WhatsApp to Eric, is that I reckon ignoring him for a few days might do ‘our’ relationship some good - by which I mean, of course, that I mean to make him sweat and hopefully realise the full scale and strength of his feelings for me, fall head over heals in love etc. Arrogant as I am, I’m not used to boys liking me with such give or take nonchalance (a word we discussed - oh shit I’m not over him).So for that reason, I think I might hold out till Wednesday - Wednesday, when I’m back from Devon and have some free time. Wednesday, aka the next possible day that I logistically could see him. Wednesday - so Tuesday night. Cmon girl, you can do it.​

[diary4]

27/7/18

So remember when you first discussed breaking up with Chwill at Ella’s with Georgie, and she said that all my doubts and concerns might be very easily resolved by a good fuck? And that perhaps that was all I really needed to banish my cold feet?Well, three fantastic hard fucks later, I’m starting to think she might have been right. I’m heading home on endlessly delayed trains, aware that I’ve got nothing to look forwards to except three days of ten hour shifts on approximately 4 hours sleep - and yet I feel absolutely fucking fantastic. I can’t remember feeling this good. I just feel so much lighter, I’m waking on air, I can’t stop dancing on the platform! Obviously I’m listening to Talking Heads (Naive Melody is Eric’s greatest gift to me, but Psycho Killer is pretty fucking brilliant too). But man, I’ve got so much groove. Could it be that after all that umming and ahing and ‘perhaps I’ve lost the ability to feel emotion’ ing, all that I’ve fallen out of love and I need to discover myself, all I really needed was a good, hard fuck? I mean dancing on a platform full of old folk, feeling like a million dollars, its looking like it.Pity I couldn’t wait to get fucked by my boyfriend.Have I made a terrible mistake?I don’t know though. Queries to qualify - would the fuck have been that good with Charlie? My sexual renaissance is, as I know well, based largely on the fact I feel more comfortable to be open about it around Eric - he’s more experienced, he’s less awkward and crude, he’s plain sexier, and his dick doesn’t ‘bend’ so we aren’t limited to fucking missionary. I have a sneaking suspicion his dick is considerably smaller, but perhaps that’s better? I don’t know if it’s dimension or just that fact that I forced myself to relax into the pain that meant this was quite a new experience. Today is closest to the continual orgasm, or penetration orgasm, that I think I’ve come. I was definitely in the throes of some kind of second orgasm when he pulled out in round three.Also, I’m fucking on it man. Got the morning after pill within 12 hours of the first fuck, in a lovely pharmacy in Richmond, with Eric wandering around in sunglasses at the back of the shop, among the aftershave. God he’s terrible. He’s so fucking wank and embarrassing and tragic - I hate myself but I can’t help but dig it.Do I feel guilt yet? Perhaps subconsciously. I dreamt about Chwill last night. I actually dreamt that Chwill was cheating on me with some other chick, but of course, since it was my fantasy dream land, everything came up roses and no one was upset.Then I woke up to Eric’s hairy back. Lol.​

[diary4]

25/7/18

Day 10 of The Affair.We now have self conscience.So I told Eric the dreaded secret, I am in fact still in a relationship, he is in fact just a side bit, something to assuage the summer boredom and reaffirm my ‘Emotional Breakdown™️’. We were 20 minutes into Green Street, completely pissed off red wine, rolling around and making out on his ‘bed’ - the pull out sofa in the front room. We’d been flirtily through The Cat In The Hat, gone outside and played football and gymnastics with his niece (‘nice ploy’, I teased - he protested to using her to get girls but whether it was intentional or not, I liked it, it made him attractive as fuck - nothing like a dose of healthy competition in the form of a younger woman). Then we smoked at the garden table, then went inside, and by this point the steady slip and slide had graded into a sheer drop and we were hurtling headlong towards the inevitable kiss. Very drunk, had to be to get it over with - kiss. Then, as expected, mad passion, grasping, ripping etc. Curled in his arms. Heads all over the bed, make your minds up, pick a position. Stop - I have a confession.I think, though my memory is very weak, that he sort of groaned and buried his face in my elbow. I rushed to reassure him - ‘it’s a reflection on the fact that I’m discontent in my current relationship that I was on tinder looking for you etc’. He said something like ‘I think you need to sort things out with him before this goes any further’, which was horrifying because I really bloody wanted to have sex! Then I steered the conversation elsewhere, I was drunk and desperate to get all the bloody emotions that had been eating me up since Monday out and cleared up. I stumbled into a rendition of ‘I’m not asking to be your girlfriend but I don’t want to just be another notch on ur dick’. To his credit, and my stomachs flutter, his reply was ‘trust me. I haven’t felt this way in a long time’.Anyway, I made a toilet trip and returned steeled and determined to have sex, armed with the opener ‘Im cool with cheating if you are’. Needless to say he didn’t need persuading, I don’t think he ever had any intention of not fucking me, and the night proceeded. Too much pain on my part, incomplete sex. ‘Now you know what it’s like to have a .5’ I joke. Now you’re 48.5’.(47 - 48) on Tuesday btw, he had another Tinder date the day after ours, the dog. I do hope he keeps keeping me on my toes.​

[diary4]

23/7/18

So ngl, what Eric said about avoiding grief by forcing yourself to be happy - namely the bit he said about that eventually making you crash and burn - did sort of worry me. I’m not sure if it’s I’m saying it that caused it, or if I’m just overreacting and mistaking another of the horribly physical sensations of being in love for something else, but yesterday there was a few minutes where I genuinely felt like I might be having a mental break down or something. I was sitting in the study and I thought I heard Eliana crying in the other room so I hurried to block it out - head phones in, champs elysses full volume, and all that kept going through me head was fuck, what the hell is going on? What am I doing, I’m actually having some retarded affair with a complete weirdo I met online and worse still I’m completely in love with him. And the only person I talk to about this stuff is Edmund, my chief confidant, and where is he! He fucking hundreds of miles away! I can’t cope!Heels of hands in eye sockets. The moment passed of course. But hell. I’m still unsettled, I’m still unnerved, I’m still infested by butterflies and heart rate a hundred and nine. One day later and I’m still in love.So I’m going to reserve the right to call it ‘in love’ because you can draw a very real distinction between being in love with some and loving them. In love is heaviness and obsession and 24 hours a day on my mind. Love is deep care. In love is obsession, love is affection. In love is iconoclastic and doomed; love is accepting and real and eternal. Can we bridge the gap? Should I want to. For fucks sake, what about Charlie?​