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[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

I can't believe how i feel right now. A way I haven't felt in a long time, being depressed again. My bubble ruptured itself so quickly. After six months of bliss and happiness, I'm suddenly unhappy again. I'm at uni now - the goal, after so much time and effort,  finally achieved. And you know what? I don't even know if it was worth it. I hate it.

My course sucks. The people in my lectures? I hate them. Not individually, but collectively. People keep telling me, just wait it out. It'll get better. Change course if you're not happy.

I think that's wrong though. It's not really about my course. It's about uni itself: I don't like it. I hate students when I see them in the street. They're part of this big bubble. All fancy dress pub crawls and self-importance. Academia is a fraud, too. It's an extension of the bubble. I can't imagine anything worse than studying for life. I'm sick of essays, of referencing, of ridiculous left wing student politics.

And I'm in so much debt already. If anyone had half a fucking brain, they'd realise that the problem with uni isn't the rise in fucking fees. The problem is the fact that my maintenance loan doesn't even cover my rent. There's no possibility of getting a bigger loan without having poorer parents. It's not like I'm any less likely to pay it back than someone else. In fact, you could say that's why I'm more likely.

I don't get any grants or bursaries, either. One of my housemates gets his maintenance loan (probably a higher one than mine too, due to having a poor mother) and then a six grand grant, just for living in Wales. He complained the other day about having no money, already. The concept of looking for a job here only just occurred to him, and he found it upsetting, as if it was some kind of great inconvenience that might impact on his studies. He has 6 hours of contact time a week. I have 14 hours a week of contact time. He attempts to justify it with "more reading", which is bullshit. I was set 70 pages to read this week, from a textbook I've only just been told about, that I can't afford anyway. The worst part is the book is written by my lecturer, yet I'm still paying a ridiculous full whack for it. Academia is fucking fraud.

I couldn't even have ordered it if I had the money and known about it before, because I don't technically have a fucking address. I've only just sorted out a house, and I don't move in until Friday at earliest. Three weeks into term. Entirely not my fault, either. The first house I was supposed to move into fell through the day after I was supposed to move in (I realise the ridiculousness of that statement) due to combination of landlord greediness and agent incompetence. It's ridiculous that the university don't have enough halls to provide for even a majority of first years.

Despite the shitty nature of uni itself, I genuinely love the town in which I live. It's a fantastic, thriving place, completely stimulating and fascinating at all times. The people I've met are interesting, smart and challenging. Unfortunately, uni is not.

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

Happy Birthday, Mum

“Do they ever show you any affection, man? Like hug you or stuff?” Man. Stuff. Filler words he uses to pepper his speech, like parmesan to a flavourless carbonara.

“Fuck off man.” The words are definitely aggressive, but I'm totally passive. Passive aggressive, that is. I'm grinning a sick false smile. Open body language, closed fists. Without a doubt, he's hit a nerve. Then again, he's talking about my parents, hitting a nerve in such a context is like throwing darts at dead whale on the beach: it's easy to draw blood. “Just shut up, bro.”

The sun is beating in through the windows, making my thick red carpet heat up and send dust streaming through my room. The tree outside my bedroom glimmers in the sunshine, like emeralds in wherever-the-fuck-you-find-emeralds river. I struggle to hold down tears, pacing away and blinking rapidly, hot feeling threatening to erupt from my eyes. I am an active volcano. Though it feels like seconds, the moment hangs like a Mexican stand off.

I cautiously glance over my shoulder, to find him totally indifferent and inattentive, wrapped up in some book on my bed. I'm relieved and happy to have him as a friend due to his obliviousness in noticing the changes of my emotional states.

It's weird, my family. I can never tell whether I hate them or love them. And I don't mean that in a nice way, I mean it in the most horrible way you can mean it. I couldn't ever see my family accepting me for who I am. For one thing, my mother is a homophobe. The amount of times she makes ugly homophobic jokes that I grin and bear my teeth at, in the most basic appreciation of humour. One chimp signalling safety to another.

Or when she's racist. Particularly about Somalis. She calls them “Somalians” and talks about them like they're generally an inferior race, sponging off benefits and abusing women as an evolutionary imperative. I'm not a cultural imperialist, but I completely and absolutely know that any culture that deliberately and continually marginalises women needs some serious work. My mother also shares this view, but she's extrapolated it to a point where the view of Somalis verges on utter racism. Racism is another view I despise, but I also empathise where it comes from; essentially it's all just fear. I would expect and partially empathise with this view from anyone else, I can't from my mother. I know she is too clever, too smart, too sharp to be deceived by the crime reports in the local paper.

This is from a woman who used to be a Lib Dem councillor, has a politics degree from Brunel and used to be and English teacher. Suffice to say, such views lack congruence with her history – except that of being a Catholic. The other day, she said that even though she wasn't a Catholic anymore (even though that is technically impossible without being excommunicated, something I am striving all baptised Catholics to work towards) she is still a “Christian”. Christian, that most vague and undescriptive of religious beliefs. Ones subscribes to no particular church or indeed even to monotheism, but believes instead in cultural and social conservatism. Well, at least no one could argue that they are suffering from an excruciating god delusion.

It's strange that some of my main interests are politics and literature, I don't consciously believe I got either from her. The first thing I ever wanted to be was “an author”. Not a writer, but specifically an author. My dad used to tell me and my brother stories at night, like any parent. That seemed to be one of his duties in the family, back when me and my brother shared a room. I have no idea why we shared a room. Stories about whatever we wanted to hear about. Thomas the Tank Engine and Captain Scarlet. I remember the stories catching my imagination, and I used to dream about them. I will always remember my dad talking in his particular excited voice about the climaxes of the stories. He'd revert more back into Scots and gesture wildly. I think he loved it as much as we did.

Then as we got older, he pushed books my way. First it was fantasy and light spy novels. As I got a bit older, thrillers. I always loved the thrillers. So exciting, accomplishing their main task and being absolutely thrilling. He'd always read them too, no matter how childish and silly. I guess he enjoyed them too, and he had someone to enjoy them with. He's always telling me about how he read this or that book or comic as a kid, and loved it. Never classics though, as long as I can remember he's only read crime novels or bestsellers. Surprisingly though, he seems to have read such a huge chunk of classic and cult literature, I think he must have been really into it when he was younger.

“An author”. I remember deciding it one day on a car journey home from somewhere. Maybe from Glasgow, where my aunt lives. I always said that I would write a book and then buy a castle on Loch Lomond, and she could come and live with me. She always encouraged my reading, I think it must've been in the family.

Apparently my Papa used to borrow several books from the library a week too. I never saw him reading, but then again he died when I was pretty small. I sometimes find photos of him around the house. I sit at them, and just stare contentedly. He's always smiling, laughing. Just like I remember him. Much like my dad, even though he's constantly dour I'll always remember him having a chuckle. There's one of him, in a pub or a bar. He's old, it looks like the 60s or 70s or 80s. Him and a few blokes are sitting there. Him with his big pipe, and them with their 50s glasses and suits before they became cool again in the noughties. And I can hear his laugh. His chuckle at things. His ashes were spread at Loch Lomond too. I don't know if I went to the ash spreading, but I haven't been there for at least a decade or so. It was probably before he died, even. I still remember it. The smooth pebble shores, and my brother skimming stones across it and me not being able to. I remember the Asian family having a barbecue just behind us. They didn't ruin the tranquillity of the place, even if it was after Papa's ashes were scattered there.

I've always processed death pretty well, even as a child. Apparently after Papa's funeral, my Gran was really impressed with me afterwards. We'd been discussing it or something, and I'd blurted out with “it's okay, Papa's a ghost now.” My dad told me this recently in a fairly whimsical moment, I don't even remember it. I'm an atheist now. Thinking about it makes my eyes water, the screen I'm typing this on becomes momentarily blurry. I wish he could've told me that before. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had tried so much harder to impress my grandparents. I think they would be proud of me though, if they were engaging in the cliché act of watching down on me, I like to think they'd be enlightened enough to be proud and happy for me as I become happy and good at something. I like to think they'd be proud of me wanting to be a writer, whatever disgusting shit I write.

The real thing is I have so much love for what I remember of my grandparents and what I say here about my mam and dad, but that's not just life. My dad has been absent at best, aggressive and worst. My mum was always so warm and comforting. I can still think back on memories of her when I was younger and see us lying on white sheets, taste chocolate and smell perfume. As I got older, it was peace offerings with packets of crisps and those smiles that always follow a fight. Even older, I just remember her getting more and more paranoid and accusatory. Very few people can empathise about how it feels to be vehemently accused of conspiracy and hate by someone you love very much. I don't say that as one of those writers or people who is attempting to be exclusive and obnoxious, but I meant it sincerely and kindly.

My mum reminded me that it's about almost a decade to the day we moved here, up from where we used to live. We used to be much happier there. We all were. It was a dumb move, but that's a different story really. Looking back on it, the move was really the start of my mother's downward spiral. She's only really getting better now. All my friends know my mother as crazy, which is true and therapeutic to hear, but it still stings a little, like saltwater in a cut. I don't even know why I'm writing this shit, to fucking strangers at that. She's lost so much of her personality, her warmth and intelligence. Whittled away by too much drinking and an early onset of senility. She's 57 today, in fact. You catch occasional flashes of what she used to be, but it's not the same.

Occasionally she'll just come out with these thoughts that make you think she's been listening and paying attention all these years... but then she'll follow this by getting extremely angry and upset, over trivial or imagined matters. It sounds funny, but I can't imagine the woman she was 25 years ago violent, screaming and paranoid over someone's failure to put away a pair of shoes. I can't imagine it 10 years ago.

Well, happy birthday, mum.

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

Some boys are just fuckable

I'm not exclusively hetero or homo. I call myself bi, but I wouldn't really. I hate the word, for a start. “Oh, I'm bi.” Or is it “Oh, I'm Bi”? Does it get itself a capital letter? Is it a proper noun, does it even need a proper noun? Do I want it to have a proper noun? I just hate it, all the implications it puts on you. Like the assumption you're just greedy. People always say it and I know it's a joke, but it pisses me off because jokes like that are so widespread they set the tone for how people perceive you. And surely by saying I'm greedy, meaning I have “intense or selfish desire for something”, means you want it too, but you can't have it? I've tried pointing this out to my straight friends, it usually shuts them up.

I guess I normally would just go for a girl, but occasionally you see that kind of cute guy and I just can't help myself. I'm much more interested. It's illicit, forbidden fruit. Some boys are just really fuckable, I guess.

A lot of people say they don't like feminine guys, they want the masculine hetero types. Normal guys. But I like the feminine types. The flaming homos, the queens, the Lady Gaga fans.

Another thing thing I hate is the assumption that you can't be into both men and women, you've always got to be more into one. Girls always want you to be a gay best friend, guys actually seem to care a hell of a lot less. I never say bisexual, just bi. I have this fear that if I say the word bisexual, people will try and pigeon-hole my preference from the extent to which I lisp on “sexual”.

You can never really tell a girl you're hitting on. They find it massively off-putting. It seems to have the same effect as “let's just be friends”. I was watching a TV show at my friend's house the other day – one of those model reality TV shows, like “London's Next Top Anorexic Slut” or something. These two girls were talking about how one of them had hooked up with this guy finally that she really liked. It all seemed like normal, boring semi-scripted reality TV conversation until the other one said “I would never want to hook up with a bisexual guy, I'd always just have this visualisation of them sucking cock.” What a wonderfully enlightened twenty first century attitude you have there sweetheart!

That's the shit I put up with if I tell a girl about my variety in sexual preference. It's beginning to grind on me. The last two girls I was with, I could never tell them about it even though the conversation topic literally came up. I distinctly remember them describing bisexual guys as “weird” or some other adjective with negative connotations. So I never said anything.

Imagine that, not being able to open and honest with someone. No wonder neither of those worked out.

And if I don't tell people, they never work it out. There's no obvious sign hanging around my neck singling out my sexuality. I'm glad girls don't notice, otherwise it'd put them off. And guys never realise, ergo I never get hit on. That's my fault as well though If there's one thing I've learnt from The Game, it takes two to tango and you've got to lead.

The Game has changed my life. It really has revolutionised the way I hit on girls, and the success I have with them. At the very basic level, it's made me so much more sociable in just a few months.

The sociability is such that I was at this party tonight, I started a conversation with two random strangers, a guy and a girl. The girl was pretty, pretty. Eye-liner, fine features and good dress sense. You could tell she did art, but she wasn't a complete art type, which was a shame. I like the crazy ones. The guy was skinny, cute and laughed easily. It seems silly to point out he was gay, no one uses the word cute to describe heterosexual men.

I was more interested in the girl. I'd been looking for a chance to try and talk to her properly since I'd borrowed some smoking paraphernalia off her earlier – I'd noticed how striking her eyes were over the heavy marijuana smoke. I hadn't been able to start a conversation in the garden, this other guy was just dominating the whole scene, and the girl and her friends were all tucked away in a corner. A party full of guys and none of them are talking to the three cute girls in the corner on their own? Maybe there are more gay guys out there than I realise.

I'd been too constrained by shyness and awkward friends clamouring for my attention to really open that set. Too nervous too, there was a lot of people there and I didn't want to be shot down in front of twenty odd acquaintances and friends. In a way, being yourself around a group of people you know is harder because there's so many expectations and to a certain extent you care what they think. I need to stop giving a fuck what my friends think.

I was sitting outside, the thick smell of weed still hanging over the garden from the numerous joints passing around, locked in conversation with a soft spoken South African. We barely took a second look at a gargantuan twelve inch bundle of hashish being delicately passed around. He was telling me all about the beaches of Durban in a voice so low it would've been too quiet for a whisper. Something told me I needed to get away from this static drug-addled monotony and find somewhere else to go. I walk through the house, looking for a good conversation with someone I don't know at all. I pass into the living room, to see the girl with the eyes and the cute boy. They don't notice me. Numbly, I ask where the toilet is. I've been here at least a dozen times before.

Outside the toilet, I berate myself silently for fucking up a chance to open that set. I hear voices from the toilet. Not exactly hushed tones, but voices lowered to the level that implies casual and proud drug usage but behind closed doors. Wonderful. I have messed up two good chances to start a conversation with a pretty girl and now I can't even take a piss.

I wonder back downstairs and mumble a joke about someone being in the toilet and slump onto an office chair opposite their sofas. Finally, I begin to talk. Just me for the first little while but they open up soon enough and then I'm telling the odd joke. We go out to the quiet front for a cigarette, but I'm out of papers. She says she'll wait for me and puts out the cigarette she's just lit, which I immediately note as a indicator of interest.

I go out back.

“Hey man, you got a rizla I can borrow?” A long pause ensues. I tap a beat of four on my thigh.

“What?”

“You got a rizla mate?” Another pause ensues.

“Uhhh... yeah man, check the... the t-table.” I dutifully check. I have already checked before, but I don't want him to feel I am presumptuous, so I make a show of looking quickly.

“None here man.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Any of you guys got a rizla I can borrow?” An even longer, aching pause ensues. The tension builds dramatically, like a black and white film. The smoke even gives us greyscale.

“What?” The charade repeats for a few minutes before someone volunteers and provides me with a silver king skin. I thank him, and promptly return to the front door. I rip it in half and roll a cigarette that I don't even want to smoke, for the twentieth time tonight.

I notice the guy more now. He's really cute. I am feeling that feeling I get about guys sometimes. He has soft skin, he's skinny and has good hair. Often times, gay guys seem to have ugly faces. It's a real sticking point for me. He doesn't, though. He is handsome and I want to kiss him. He is fuckable.

At this point, I decide I want him more. My lift is leaving now. I note my bad luck. I can at least get a number or a kiss. Not to spoil the ending, but I get neither in the end.

Despite having decided my target, I am running game on the girl. Good quality game, better than I have in weeks. Given more time, I could've had her that night. What's going on? I'm doing the exact opposite of what I want to do. She playfully disagrees with me about something, I laugh and tell her we wouldn't get on. She laughs, showing a smile I like the look of. A dirty smile that shows off rows of perfectly white teeth set against a subdued lipstick and a tan skin tone.

This goes on for minutes, for some bizarre reason all my chatter is directed at the girl. I even turn my body away from the girl and towards the guy, but in a real life application of sod's law, this only makes her more interested. Normally I try this, and people just think I'm rude.

I am warmed up now, I know I could make one of them tonight given enough time. I am excited, the blood is flowing in me.

Then my phone rings. My dad is at the pub up the road. Fuck, why the hell does my car have to be in the garage today? I hate the arbitrary nature of having to rely on someone else for lifts. The lack of control you have.

I leave, not asking either for their numbers or names. In the car, my dad regales me with stories about visiting South Africa in the midst of apartheid whilst the mist rises in the glow of suburban streets, like some crazy dream.

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

Tragedy

I am properly alone for the first time in about 24 hours. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but I am essentially a loner and I need my time to collect my thoughts. It has been a bit of a whirlwind 48 hours. I woke up on Sunday in the same way you always wake up on a hot summer's day, hungover and just past midday. A quick smacking of my lips provides a less delicious aftertaste of London's finest ales. This particular aftertaste seems to include the texture of carpet in place of my tongue. The best part of Sundays is not being woken up by the hammering of tools, the crunch of gravel and the banter of my strange, stammering uncle redecorating my kitchen.

After a few false starts, I manage to make it down the stairs. I glance around for breakfast. My stomach churns at the thought bacon and toast, then finally settles on fruit. I crunch my way through a tasteless apple or two, flicking through newspapers as I do. I glance over the front page of the normally dreadful local paper, nothing particularly registers. Headline is another dead teenager. My eyes flick to the picture. The face is completely unrecognisable to me, despite distinctive lip piercings and a big fringe. Her name is Natasha, she plays violin, aged 16. I am indifferent except in the sense of that old chestnut about the death of one being a tragedy, the death of a million being a statistic. I mutter this to myself, wondering whether it was a slow news day at the paper. I guess it's always a slow news day if you completely ignore the goings on of local politicians. Where is the coverage of Syria or Libya, the only real news going on? Local papers are the reading equivalent of white bread, bland and unfulfilling. They allow xenophobics and fools to close ranks in a geographically and metaphorically small worldview.

Suddenly a twitch of intuition flicks in me. Natasha, violinist... I flick to the double page spread and read. I realise in the last sentence. My friend always used to talk about her. In the way he did about all his friends, but this one I remember hearing a lot about. He later tells me she had a plastic bag stuck over her head. A seemingly peacful way to die, a few sleeping pills and then just wait for the curtains to close. Just waiting for the curtains to close on your life, like some grotesque cabaret that wasn't entertaining anymore.

My stomach lurches for probably the fiftieth time that morning. I shake my head in disbelief. I've always been sensitive to death. The girl, she's pretty in a crazy way. But I've always liked the crazy ones.

Tributes cover the walls of facebook. Meaningless words about so sweet, so sad, so young. Thoughts with the family. One of god's angels. The saccarine sweetness of false tributes sicken me more than anything else.

What if I had known her? If I had tried, I probably could have met her. Six degrees of separation and all that. But what would have been the point? Would I have liked her? Maybe. And I would probably have tried to show it by hitting on her, if I did. Tried to “game” her, like some kind of master seducer. Nice, now I'm considering sex with a dead girl.

In all the tributes and fictionalised memories, there's no mention of her being what they colloquially call an emo. Black hair, piercings, androgyny. The sort of kids these bland, normal people ignore and shun. Laugh at and call out for their silly piercings and skinny jeans. I know this, because I used to wear skinny jeans and get laughed at. I still wear skinny jeans and get laughed at. Yesterday she was that goth making out with some pizza face under the statue, today she's the honoured dead. What upsets me more than anything is that despite this, despite this realisation, people are still fucking horrible and ignorant in the same ways they were before.

For example, I glanced onto the Daily Mail's website to see how they'd carried the story. Spun it into something about bullying being the cause. Whether that was a reason or not, I don't know. If it was, I doubt it was the only one. The media just loves to package things up into bitesize portions. The article is maybe a hundred or two words. A whole life, summed up by a couple sentences on a website. I'm not expecting a modern epic in the format of an obituary, but at least some less vague reasoning would be nice. The comments are a bloodbath of idiots and bigots climbing over each other to shout the loudest about a broken society, about failing schools and even relating it to political correctness. Political correctness in the context of suicide? It doesn't even make sense. It's just fools foaming at the mouth about “Britain going to the dogs”. Any chance for a soapbox, I guess.

One particularly venomous comment even dismisses the emotional after effects of bullying, getting in the key words of liberal, namby-pamby and emphatic speech marks on 'counselling'.

It's not that I don't care. I do. I really do. Enough that I'm not up for this sycophatic pandering and patronising of her memory. Complete strangers, leaving cliché messages all over the internet about the tragedy of the situation. The tragedy. Tragedy. Isn't it funny that tragedy is a rough anglicisation of the Ancient Greek for “goat song”? What the hell does that word even mean? Does it mean anything to these people if they use it at every fucking mildly upsetting happening? And how can it be any more than mildly upsetting – a stranger you never knew or cared about has killed themselves. An open message to the people using that word in everyday speech, you're killing its impact with commonality. Save it for your own funeral.

Her death speaks volumes in itself, it's too late to be sympathetic now. She was depressed, probably for ages, probably obviously. How did her family not noticed? They were probably too busy locked up in the bullshit that is most parenthood to care. Now that it's too late, we're all telling her to rest in peace and she'll never be forgotten. But she will. Slowly, by the end of the week, she'll have slipped off the front page. Then a little further in. Following that, a small column on the side. And then she'll be gone, the collective guilt complex of society effectively and temporary wiped clean until the next bout of national soul-searching that somehow never seems to make any progress or change our behaviour.

I, for one, am fucking sick of it. I'm so tired of this false love for the dead. It's much easier to offer love and sympathy now, in hindsight. Now that they're dead, so you don't actually have to bother. It's ten times harder to actually extend a hand of friendship to someone in a messed up place, to make a difference. Why? It's not because it's hard. That's not it. Because we don't care about anyone else. How many of these stupid sheep who have written these mind-numbingly empty internet posts are actually going to make a change to the way in which they treat others? Are they going to be better people? No, but they think these hollow platitudes will ring out and cover their guilt about being part of the machine that drove someone to death.

My proposition is simple. Let's just stop bullying people. Let's stop “just teasing” too, if that's what you think this stuff is. Harmless fun is videos of cats on youtube. Harmful fun is yelling at a stranger they look like a faggot in the street. If you can't make people laugh without picking on other people, you're either not trying very hard or you're just not funny. If you have to laugh at other people in order to secure a cluck of sycophantic giggling, what does that say about your insecurities?

And the day ends the same way it started. It's hot, I'm thirsty and my stomach is lurching side to side with confusion, anger and fear.

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

Puce

It is past midnight on a Sunday evening. The house is quiet, the road is quiet, the birds are quiet. Everything is quiet apart from the noisy hum of my computer. Without further ado, I proceed into ritual masturbation.

I've never been one of those shower types. It's seemingly impossible to do standing up. I've tried, and every time I end up orgasming completely bent over in order to achieve perpendicularity and I fall, grimacing like some wet, masturbating Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Or in the bath. It seems creepy and unhygienic, with the mental image of my seed spilling out into water like the blossoming of some sinister flower in a Darren Aronofsky film. Not to mention I can't seem to cum with my dick underwater. The neurotic in me insists this does not bode well for future intercourse. If I ever make it that far.

Or even in bed. Masturbating in bed seems silly when the computer is on and you have the full array of erotic tools within your grasp. The internet must've completely revolutionised masturbation and eroticism, I think to myself whilst browsing Youporn. A sort of Industrial Revolution for porn. Prick Spring. Erection Rising. The Wanker Rebellion. Whilst insensitively making crude puns out of notable uprisings is fun, it's not getting me any closer to orgasm.

Eventually I settle on a video. There's always the few false starts, where you flick through the 33 minute clip (why are they always that long? Not only do I not want to spend that long masturbating, but 20 minutes of scene setting and foreplay followed by an orgasm to which I have grown indifferent to is the pornographic equivalent of the movie Vanilla Sky) looking for your particular penetration fetish and find yourself disappointed. Work needs to be done upon introducing a sensible tagging system on porn sites. Once again I find myself the most discerning viewer of porn and no closer to orgasm.

Moving forward, I finally find a video. Well rated (meaningless though that rating is, as it's only the producers who rate their own stuff), sufficient in length (though not so long that I either get bored or start from the middle, in which case I wonder about what I've missed so far. It takes me a while to get out of post-modern cinema analysis mode) and involving a busty though not fat blonde. The video begins, I momentarily consider listening to the opening dialogue. Immediately I regret this choice and jump a couple minutes ahead. Our chosen seraph is still clothed, albeit skimpily. The baritone of the cameraman-cum-actor asks a question, followed by the hollow voice of our blonde star. 3 minutes in, and they are still discussing her life. She is a poor college student, he is a man with money. He is supposedly coaxing this woman into sexual favours for cash, which is an inherently disgusting premise and I feel guilty, despite her being at least mid-30s and clearly not under duress.

Things proceed in this manner for several minutes, and I feel my resolve begin to sag slightly. I jump even further ahead to the action. Blondie is performing vigorous fellatio. She is enjoying this. I perceive this from the loud moaning and affirmative noises she makes everytime she is asked. The cameraman-cum-actor repeatedly grunts. I turn the sound down slightly. This grunting is not what I am here to listen to. You would think that after some 30 years of porn, some ground rules would be established. Not too much male grunting and less chatter from him in general would be an obvious one. Evidently, this unwritten rule of erotica has been disregarded for this particular performance. How avant-garde. He is making more noises. More and more. So is she. She attempts to go louder, but he drowns her out, the camera begins to slightly lose focus. His acting talents are superb. I think he is what they call a real “scene stealer”, because despite his entire physical presence on stage being concealed in the depths of an oracular orifice he is overbearing and completely impossible to ignore. All the same, I am enjoying myself.

My enjoyment continues for the next couple minutes. I watch avidly, stretching out my session in what I tell myself is practice for the real deal, but I really know is prolonging the return of boredom and emptiness. I am close, I can feel it. In a particularly loud moment, I flicker slightly and look away from the strings of spittle hanging from her temporarily empty mouth. I notice the carpet. The carpet is a particularly ill-advised shade of puce. I gasp. Coincidentally, so does our heroine. A diet of coke and cock probably leaves one short of breath often. I am sickened with the horror of an interior designer. Even the word puce fills me with a sense of dread. I pause my film and consult Wikipedia on this important matter. Wikipedia confirms my fears, it is definitely puce and not a malign shade of lavender.

Back to my film and I am disgusted and put off by the inclusion of puce. It is more than just a background carpet. It is a supporting character. Puce leches from the sidelines, saying to me “this is real porn, boy. I'm a dirty '80s carpet hanging around, just getting fucked on. Know how many whores I've seen in my time?” Puce offends me, an ominous hangover of a future in which I nervously and impotently sleep with uncaring hookers in motels. Puce is the colour equivalent of that seedy fat man with a moustache. Or a rapist in a bar.

No. I have come too far to change videos. My Will be Cum. I block out the puce. It creeps back in from the left corner. I concentrate my eyes on the right cheek of the blonde girl. Things pick up again, and I am enjoying myself. I am breathing heavily, possibly grunting too. I empathise with the cameraman-cum-actor breaking my cherished rule of porn. It is hard not to make noise. Next time, I will bite a pencil. Eventually, things come to a head and I finish myself off, letting out a long sigh.

Like a well trained reflex, my fingers flick to close the tab the moment I finish. I have cum all over hand, and I am left holding my dripping dick, looking at the Wikipedia page on puce.

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

paperlesswords liked your post: Acne

<3 thanks!

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

Acne

My name is Edmund. and I have, like many others, bad acne. I'm nineteen years old, and I live in England. I remember getting my first spots in Year 7 – that's age twelve or so, I think.

It first started with the odd spot, mainly in that well-known breakout region the chin. I remember the experience of an early, if not my first, spot. I remember accidentally squeezing it in school and that was most probably the beginning of my emotional scarring from acne, not to mention physically. I remember that horrible feeling that is now far too common to most sufferers – the self-consciousness, the anxiety, the depression – welling up inside of me, and me not having the resources to explain and understand or even comfort myself.

Over the next few years, my acne got worse, probably reaching its peak when I was around fourteen or fifteen, then gracefully plateuing for a few years. I remember one of my most memorable encounters with the gargantuan mammoths that lurk under the skin. I was fourteen and had just broken up with my very first girlfriend, a confusing and all-together fruitless relationship that lasted the gauntlet of a fortnight. Of course, I was devastasted and life had no meaning except for that found in obscure Joy Division lyrics. Anyway, as I slowly clambered out of my first brush with the black dog, fate saw fit to throw that most horrible of fates my way: a triumvirate of giant papules on the end of my nose. Red, swollen and with no determinable weakspots (or “heads”) to speak of. I distinctly remember the name “Rudolf” being bandied around, and I distinctly remember being unimpressed at the lack of creativity amongst my classmates. However, it is probably worth noting that I like the name Rudolf, and hold no particular ill will against those many illustrious and noble Bavarians who have held that grand name. Except Hess. In fact, I later named my treasured gerbil “Rudolf”. Freud, eat your heart out.

This unwelcome trio proceeded to make my life more miserable than it had been before, particularly as no one else really had acne at this point and children are especially cruel to those who stand out and are a bit different. I attempted dozens of different strategies in vain attempts to fit in, none of which are worth mentioning. Except the one of “being a dick because people will think you're funny and overlook your faults”. I remember lightly making fun of a girl in school, an occasional friend of mine, who on one particular occasion took my jests the wrong way and snapped at me, yelling “well at least I don't have a giant fucking spot on my face, you spotty dick!” I didn't in fact have a “giant fucking spot” on my face; it was three. However, this acerbic comeback only graces me with the benefit of hindsight. I remember being immediately taken aback and mumbling something about it being a boil, not a spot, as if this venerated me of my enforced title of “spotty dick”. Why I thought a boil would be preferable to acne, I don't know. Needless to say, the flame of friendship never really fanned in the same way again.

Other choice moments over the years include someone seeing my shoulder acne in the changing rooms and eliciting a loud “eurgh, what is that?” and thus drawing much unwanted attention (if you have ever been in secondary school changing rooms, you'll be aware this inevitably leads to some form of assault) and an eloquent group of youths walking past me in the hallowed lanes of my fair town and proclaiming the sight of a “spotty cunt!” to much merriment. Try as might, I could not see a blemished womb in my field of vision, though I must grant that this event happened before I wore glasses.

Like many other sufferers of acne, I have at times allowed acne to get the best of me; allowed it to determine what I can and cannot do. At times, I wouldn't go out because I felt I looked horrible. I wouldn't pursue rare and brilliant opportunities with girls because I felt uncomfortable (if there were any, my memory now ominously draws a blank). I ended up judging myself and assessing my worth against the attractiveness of other people, in short. A really super philosophy, if your aim is to feel hollow, depressed and lonely.

In conjunction with all the other stresses that blight a teenage existence, acne, severe or moderate, is a horrible fate I wouldn't want to wish on anyone. That said, it's taught me a lot about life. It forced me to develop a set of social skills in order to compete with my unblemished bretheren. A strong sense of humour and a certain sense of self have propelled me out of the vast abyss numerous times (the worry is that one day gravity will win, however). I guess what I'm saying now is I don't regret my acne – all the unneccessary suffering, the absolute pain it was to me when I was younger. It's made me into a stronger person. It is only recently I realised how little other people care about your looks – much like you, they are far too preoccupied with their own.

I sit here now, eyes heavy, gazing upon my Prom photograph from three or four years ago. My skin looks peculiarly good, and I wonder if my acne has slowly gotten worse since then, without my noticing. I force myself back to reality with the fact that it is very good lighting (my teeth look exceptionally white) and I was probably wearing make-up. I regret wearing make-up, or doing anything to hide my acne. These spots and scars are as an essential part of my external tapestry as anything else. Embrace yourself. Inner balance creates that outer balance we all crave in our lives – the wealth, the lover, the friends. Having clear skin is not an ends in itself – it is a means. Do not let your journey end there.

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

How about In Bruges?

My friends are on the way to pick me up in 10 minutes, and I am not even slightly ready. I am undressed with a giant bowl of ice cream in front of me.

My first priority is nutrition and nourishment. With this in mind, I wolf down chunks of cookie dough, chocolate, brownies and nuts held together by frozen dairy. Despite my being lactose intollerant, I am usually very partial to ice cream. Today is so exception. The Dairy Deity will later punish this abject sinning with absolute purging. I wince at the thought, but it is a small price to pay for such a delicious treat.

Whilst breaking my dairy excommunication, I am reminded of the forcefed and chemically pregnant cows from where my ice cream began its journey. I pause momentarily, in comtemplation. I press on.

In the panic of getting ready, I struggle to find my belt and shoes. They are both leather. I wonder what symbolism I am communicating to the Dairy Deity by dressing myself in dead cow carcass. I pause momentarily, in contemplation. I press on.

My jeans are stained but this is okay, I tell myself. I am Mr. Rock 'n' Roll.

Mr Rock 'n' Roll proceeds to remove his nasal hair with an expensive electrical item. He wonders whether the Rolling Stones ever tackled this sensitive and no doubt typical rockstar issue in a musical format. Suddenly, he realises a gap in the market to be exploited, and considers whether he can fit this into his economics essay. A moment's deliberation tells him this does not fit into the topic of “Foreign Direct Investment as the best way to stimulate growth in developing economies”. He is disheartened, the slow tumbling of shaved nasal hair into the abyss of the sink a perfect metaphor for his crumbling dreams.

After of a minute of stream of consciousness narrative in which I refer to myself in the third person, my ego is sufficiently built up enough to face the wild world of lawless and primitive human behaviour that is That Club on a Thursday.

Just a few last minute touches – aftershave (“no spray, no lay!” sager advice is rarely spoken by toilet attendants with a weak yet profound grasp of English), flossing and just a touch more hairspray.

I am ready, with seemingly moments to spare. A straw hat momentarily doubles as the leather fedora of Indiana Jones snatched out from the jaws of death or worse yet, exposure of hat hair. The headband crunches over elegantly coiffed hair.

Five minutes later and my sense of urgency and high-octance lifestyle have dissipated somewhat. I am picking detritus from under my keyboard. I ascertain my friends are somewhat late this evening.

Five more minutes pass. I am considering doing some reading in these vital moments, perhaps I could find that one realisation that has been missing all my life.

Ten minutes pass. I am paralysed by my indecision. Then, a knock at the door liberates me from the tyrannical yoke of choice.

I dash across to the door, opening it onto those vaccous and warm greetings that always proceed a night out. Big smiles, handshakes and raucous laughter fill my hall.

“So what's the plan?”

“I think we're just going to stay and watch a film. Something funny,” says Friend #1. Friend #2 nods in agreement.

“Oh right.” My excitement leaks away like air from a balloon. “How about In Bruges?”

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

a poem about how nice it is outside

who cares about english exams

when there's flowers opened like hands?

who gives a shit about your ex

when there is, in fact, an even fairer sex!

remnants of a midsummer mist on a flower's fold --

an aesthetic joy that i find infinitely untold!

do not measure out your life in coffee spoons

nor in women, power, or even dubloons!

but in how many fresh faces blooming

and how many fresh flowers smiling.

dilute your woes into the fresh air,

and feel the sunlight on your hair.

Byron was right when he said before;

"I love not man the less, but Nature more"

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

Hey sir/madam,Sorry I took so long to reply. Keep your poetry coming since I really liked that one I read. One thing I do is use "Yeah Poetry!" which is a blog that gives prompts for poems on a daily basis, which people then use as inspiration. Also, you can submit prompts for what you want others to write about. There must be at least 60 to 70 poets on there, and it's a pretty good time. I submit all the time. Anyway, if you still use tumblr, go check it out! I think you'll like it.

sir :)

 it's ok. thank you. yeah poetry! as in fuckyeahpoetry? if not can you link me to that? i still use tumblr, times have just been hectic recently.

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

Some Lines Composed About A Rose (an experiment in octosyllabic lines)

Do I take leave of my senses

and ignore the broken fences?

This is more than the lust of loins,

A feeling on which you toss coins

Even though he is much taller

My intellect is not smaller

I said I wanted to hold you

My desires never come true

I wonder if we will amend

To kiss your tender face again

[edmunddegloucester-blog-blog]

The Journey of Peter Featherweight

a short story i wanted to post, my first tumblr post

Trusted writing implement; the humble pencil? Check. Passport? Check. Journal? Check. I've checked and double checked my item list a hundred times now. I'm ready. I'm all packed up and ready to go.

It's just that, well, it's been a bit of a last minute decision for me – I always find it hard to make spontaneous decisions and stick to them, I'm too rational, and I always think about the long term. The later. But I've thought about those things this time, and I've made a decision.

My name is Peter Featherweight – I know, it's an unfortunate name. Kind of fitting, as I'm like 5'10 and I'm under 10 stone. I really prefer 'Pete', but no one ever calls me that. I always wanted to have a nickname, they always made people seem cool. 'Just call me Dave' kinda thing. More relaxed, more friendly. Peter is a bit too stuffy, really, but people still call me it. No one calls anyone Jonathan – they're always Jonny or Jon. Just slips off the tongue a bit better, and it's cooler.

Anyway, I've decided I'm going to go travelling. Hit the road, you know? I just can't be bothered to deal with it all anymore – it's all so tiresome, and so very meaningless. Not just like school, but the whole world. I'm so bored of the same cycle of things – every interesting girl I meet isn't interested, every conversation is an absolute chore and everything is overrated. I just want to get away from it all, for a bit. Well. Forever, really. I don't want to be one of those people who go away for a couple months then come back to 'real life' and live like everybody else. They say it's real life, but really it's sleepwalking. I went to a festival for the first time last year, and it changed me, it really did. People always glamorise the past, but this is true. It opened my eyes, I became a totally different person for 4 days. I felt really awake. Just unworried, happy. Once you let go of a lot of things, you realise how pointless holding on to it is. Take showering. Once you don't shower for a couple days, you completely stop caring. Even now, I only ever shower every other day. I never wash my hair anymore, and I don't really use deodorants.

So many little pointless things that we do in an effort to improve our lives, but really they have no impact – they're a complete placebo. Anyway, since I came back from that festival the 'real world' seems completely unreal. It feels like everyone is sleepwalking – so calm, so controlled. So made up of millions of these little placebos. So I guess I take issue with that whole idea that this is the 'real world' and you have to wake up and do 'the right thing'. People always say that, 'wake up and see the real world', or stuff like it. It doesn't really mean anything, because it's a lie. The only time I ever felt really really alive, in my whole life, was at moments like that. Like festivals. Or going on a road trip to somewhere, because once you get rid of all those silly little placebos, there's a lot less holding you back so you're a lot happier. Not a lot happier – you are happy, as opposed to being miserable. You can't be happy with all these material possessions, they just weigh you down. Can't take them with you.

I'm not really religious or anything but there's this bit in the bible, that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. I like that saying, cause there's good reasoning behind it – the excess of stuff you have just means someone else doesn't have as much. It doesn't make you happy, either. I reckon that once you get rid of your stuff that's weighing you down (and on your conscience), you could practically float up to the pearly gates, you'd be so light. I'm not a socialist, even though I'm talking about the perils of consumerism.

So anyway, it's in an attempt to gain that whole feeling of weightlessness – that freedom – that I've decided to go travelling. Capture that happy, content feeling I had. The way Jack Kerouac writes, makes it sound like he found it. A lot of people don't like his writing, cause they don't get it. It's sad really, because it means they've never really experienced that feeling of freedom therefore they can't relate. I sort of struggled with that the first time I read On The Road – I didn't really get why he had to describe all these scenes so much, but it kind of gave me glimpse – a taste – of that freedom.

There's a lot of ways to get that feeling, you know. People catch tastes of it through daredevil stuff – that whole risk factor makes everything a little sweeter, because for a moment you don't sweat the small stuff – I mean there's bigger stuff at stake! It's the reason why a lot of people do drugs and stuff – it's a little buzz, a moment away from all the petty stuff.

A lot of people don't know the whole feeling. Take this girl Charley, for example. I was talking about like having fun, and about how like drinking and sex and drugs and stuff are kind of like fun – not like in a nihilistic hedonist sort of way, more like how these things create experiences that are worth more than like objects. Yeah, I know they're all single-serving pleasures but they make you happier in the long run. They're like a little release from all the worries of the small stuff, you stop caring for a little bit about all those little placebos cause you realise they don't work, cause they don't make you happy – that's why they're banned or restricted or frowned upon, because they make you realise how all this shit is so stupid.

Anyway, me and Charley were just talking. She's really really pretty, and I mean that in a cute sort of way, she has a really nice face. People always describe pretty faces as looking 'porcelain', but I don't really think that's a compliment. Porcelain is all rigid and cold, but Amy's not – her face is really expressive and fluid, and warm. She's smart, too. She can talk pretty well about stuff, so I'm not bored and she always laughs at my jokes, even if they're not funny. I know that sounds stupid, but it's a big thing for me I guess. And she's got like these really big eyes that just kill you – big and brown, they're amazing.

So like we're talking about something we did, or maybe even someone and somehow we got talking about what we want to do with our lives. Eventually, after a little bit of coaxing – it's always hard to get personal stuff out of interesting people – she starts talking about how she wants to get married around 30, really likes kids and what job she wants one one day. So she's all talking, and I start to feel a little bored of her, for the first time ever. She's talking about this stuff, it's all the small stuff, those placebos – I mean there's nothing wrong with it, but it's so normal. Normal is the worst thing, it's pretty much synonymous with 'boring'. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wanting kids or getting married, but the fact that it's one of the first thoughts that comes to your mind is wrong, just shows an absolute lack of imagination. I tell her all this, and she gets all 'personally offended' – her words, not mine. It's really not personal, I'm just trying to show her that she's not thinking about stuff that'll really make her happy, just give her the illusion of happiness.

It sounds like I was being really harsh, but I'm just summing up. I was trying to show her what life was all about. I was a lot nicer than I make out, a lot more apologetic. I didn't want to upset her, or her to be angry at me, cause I really quite like her.

I was pretty depressed about that for a while, glum like. That's how these things go, you obsess over them for ages because you feel absolutely terrible cause that person's feelings and opinion of you are really important to you, even if you don't think you were wrong. Emotion versus logic.

Anyway a couple weeks or so later, we're back to the way things were, and it's great. I couldn't even remember that little episode. I'm making her laugh by being a stupid idiot monkey, with the addition of my resplendent wit. We're walking somewhere, and it's night. Not going at any particular pace really, it doesn't even matter where. It's all about the journey. We have a little quiet moment where neither of us had anything to say, just being content in each other's company.

Thinking that this was a perfect time to advance things, I try to hold her hand and she just pulls away. I remember saying something about it, like either pleading with her or making light of it, I can't remember what exactly. I don't even remember what she said, I just remember the blank expression on her face. I was just another rejected suitor, just any other boy liking a girl prematurely.

I really do remember how I felt though, cause thinking about makes me relive it. I remember all the expectation before that moment inflating like a balloon, then the rejection just popping it. Crushed, my whole existence in that moment just evaporated.

It's stuff like that, and the fact she's a bitch now – she's changed, she's all nice one minute then like completely indifferent the next. Such a little girl, she's such an attention whore. Not to mention she's a complete lick arse, you know. So fake... she's not even into anything interesting anymore, it's like she's actually got stupid.

But I don't really wanna talk about this, cause it's killing my buzz. I should be excited, I mean I'm about to go away. Just one more thing to get away from.

I've been really ill lately – I still kind of am, to tell the truth - and that's another one of the reasons I'm going to take this trip. I'm sitting in the hallway near the door, there's this big window at the end that looks out pretty far. I'm high enough up I could catch my plane from here. I decide to start rolling a cigarette – I've got a bit of baccy left, and you can't really take it on board. I know you're thinking that I shouldn't smoke, cause I'm ill and all. But it's not really that kind of sick. It's more like exhaustion. I'm just really, really tired of everything. I feel like I'm just burned up, that I don't have much to offer anymore. Like I'm all spent. I mean it's been getting better recently, but not by much. It's kind of like a mental exhaustion, I'm all tired of doing all these little things that I jut need a break. I guess it's like Friday syndrome, you know that feeling you get on a Friday afternoon before work finishes or whatever, and you just want to go home and chill and unwind? It's a lot like that, but it's more extreme.

I hate people who have a go at you about smoking. They moan about lung cancer and crap and how other people shouldn't be forced into breathing your smoke as well and it's disgusting. Preachy people are so annoying, especially when they're misinformed. I read this study or article once about second hand smoke. It said there wasn't really much proof of its effects, except on kids. It wasn't exactly scientific, but it was more about debunking all the outrageous claims of the anti-smoking people. You only live once, anyway. My phone rings, it's a friend I haven't seen in a long while.

'Hey man, how are you?' Greetings and stuff always go on forever, they're so pointless. 'What you up to?' Going away soon. 'Where to?' El Paradiso. 'Nice. Seriously, whereabouts?' The other side of the fence. 'Haha, okay then. Long flight?' No, it's pretty short. No transfers. 'Heard you haven't been doing so well lately, everything okay dude?' Fine. 'Well all right man, if you ever need to speak to me I'm here.' Sure. Thanks. Bye. 'Bye.'

I don't know why I even keep a phone, that call just messed up my ambience. Well anyway, time to leave. I don't want to miss this opportunity, I don't know if I'll ever have the balls to do it again if I miss it. I'm pretty scared, to tell you the truth. What if it's not what I expected, and it's not paradise? What if I get stuck half way between? What if I miss out on something good when I'm gone?

I put these things out of my mind – they're only gonna hinder me from this point on. I take one last check. I'm packed, I'm well fed and I'm wearing comfortable clothes. I'm dressed like Indiana Jones in a leather jacket and trademark hat. I'm an explorer. I open the window and look down, breathe in. It's a very large window, once it's open. The air is sharp at this height.

Did you know 'goodbye' is actually a contraction of 'God be with you'​? Well, I hope he is this time. I walk back to my journal to write these last things. 1... 2... 3...