Category: Personal (Page 1 of 7)

The start of a new year (calendar year, not academic year) has always been an odd feeling for me. Logical ILB knows that time is a construct, and that what we are celebrating is an incredibly arbitrary point. Resolutions are made because of a new year, but part of me would rather make them in spite of one.

But, in the past, the new year has always been interesting.

One year I saw a friend who I rarely managed to see on New Year’s Day – not because it was New Year’s Day, but just because he was available. One I did some work for my uncle, who paid me £60 for a few hours and bought me lunch. One year I was still coming down from the high of getting a kiss from a girl I fancied a few days prior. One I spent largely singing the numbers from Avenue Q while my GP tinkled the ivories in a friend’s back room.

And then there are the bad ones. The ones in the late ’90s and early ’00s where I would spend my days in floods of tears. Ones where I would toast the new year convinced I wasn’t going to make it through another twelve months. The millennium celebration was the worst – it was cold, it was wet, it was outside, I was completely crushed by the girl I wanted at the time, and I lost my special pen for writing my diary.

[Most of my misery during those years was due to unrequited love. It was the same girl for several years… and then another for a few more. I even drew a diagram once, in Comic Sans.]

And, of course, I was dumped on New Year’s Day 2011. That still comes back to me in my darkest moments.

And then there are the sexy ones. The beginning of 2004 that I spent in a sleepy haze. The moments when I managed to both finish the old year and start the new one with my penis inside someone else (orgasms are a nice beginning). The one where I got a very drunken text from someone saying she wanted to fuck me. Every time I’ve managed to wake up next to someone and start the day, the week, the month and the year with a kiss and a cuddle.

I usually spend New Year with my friends. This year, that didn’t happen.

New Year was comfortable. I ate hot food, I quaffed some lemonade and I watched Jools Holland with my wife. There wasn’t any high emotion, nor was there any drama either (nor was there any sex). There was a hug in the middle of our living room, a lie-down and a bit of a sleep. Another year passed, and after the action-packed first half of 2022, everything seems like a bit of anticlimax.

But it was comfortable and quiet.

And that is what I needed.

And so forwards we go.

I started coughing and spluttering the day before Christmas. Although I made it through singing carols at Mass, and the day itself (although everyone took a nap in the afternoon; it was an odd day), Boxing Day passed in a haze of sneezes and tissues.

The rest of the week has been similar – a miasma of struggling to move, foggy thoughts, Glee marathons on Disney+, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Beechams Flu Plus. I’m meant to be going back to work next week, and exciting as that may be, I’m really not feeling it.

When I’m this sick, it’s very hard to feel sexy. Yesterday I read through my diary in preparation for tomorrow’s #orgasmcount, and in the moment, it felt like something Herculean to even think about being hard, horny or anywhere close to ejaculation. Even if I tried, it’s hard to imagine my hand co-operating with my dick.*

[*But I’m still going to try.]

If I’m not having orgasms, then I usually end up having my awkward dreams about not quite getting to have sex. Or being naked in public. Or both. Or fiddling with my dick. All four, if you count the dream I had about masturbating on the local bus that goes to town from the corner of my road. Inevitably I wake up hard from having these, and more often than not a little frustrated (not that I ever get to have sex in the dreams; the fact that it could happen is what keeps them going!).

But that’s not been happening either. I’ve been lying in bed feeling sick, day and night, every now and again trying to muster the strength to sit anywhere else – even in my own computer chair. The struggle, dear reader, is real.

Late last night I had a dream about watching porn. I don’t remember which porn it was, or if it even exists. All I recall, really, was a dream about watching porn, in my chair, on my own. (That’s how I usually do so, which is probably what made it so realistic.) And that’s how, in the dream, I had one of the biggest, hardest, throbbing erections I’ve had in the past few years.

And then I woke up and realised it was a real one.

Which was nice.

I don’t want no socks for Christmas – all the clothes you choose are vile
Cartoon ties are only worn by simpletons and paedophiles
I don’t share your taste in music – why would I like JLS?
And I don’t want a fucking voucher – what the fuck is BHS?

I sense a theme here.

Since last week, I have become more Ready For Christmas, insofar as I have now got nearly all the presents I need (most of this is due to my wife’s ministrations, for which they deserve my prudent thanks).

I’m still not entirely sure I’m there yet. My mother, who I talked to the other day, feels exactly the same way. Nobody feels particularly ready this year.

I’ve no idea if this is just my family. If any of you feel the same way, let me know and we can all share in the collected nervous collapse.

Anyway, I’m doing this meme once more. This week’s TMI Tuesday is about Christmas. Again. Maybe it’s a commercial thing – we had great penetration last year with “Christmas II”.

1. Would you rather work on Christmas Day and earn 4 times your daily salary or spend the day with your family?

Strangely enough, I actually know someone who has done the first of these. He was The Oxford Seamstress’ younger brother, who had come back from university and managed to get a job in a company that stayed open on every day of the year, including Christmas. He decided to make bank and went in on that day.

I’d never do that sort of thing. With one exception, I’ve spent every Christmas of my life with my admittedly very large family. As I said last week, I usually find Christmas difficult, but it wouldn’t feel the same without the rest of them – 19 at this year’s count – and I’d choose the second every time.

Plus, it’s quite clear I don’t care about money. If you knew the industry I was in, you’d agree with me there…

2. Would you rather spend a snowy day outside playing winter games or sports or spend a snowy day inside with your most annoying relative?

I actually can’t physically play games or sports. My body doesn’t let me do too much without suffering incredible amounts of exhaustion (sex notwithstanding; I can do that for longer…), and besides, I don’t like sports and never have done.

My most annoying relative is probably my niece, and since I adore her, I’d be perfectly okay with the second option.

3. For the month of December, would you rather sing Jingle Bells really loud every time you enter a room or wear a Santa suit every day?

The last time I went to hospital, one of the pieces of advice I was given was to sing more. I love singing – that’s something I can do without getting exhausted – and although I’m not fond of Jingle Bells, I’d rather do that. We have, in fact, been singing Jingle Bells at work, so it kind of fits.

Here’s an interesting thing, though. My dad has actually done the second one. He was Father Christmas at the Millennium Dome for the one year it was open in ’00! Every single day he’d go down to Greenwich, don the red suit and ho-ho-ho his way through long lines of children asking him for things he didn’t recognise.

I don’t know, though. Maybe my dad actually is Father Christmas. The guy who came into my bedroom when I was a kid and put presents into my stocking looked suspiciously like him.

4. Would you rather choose your presents or be surprised?

Choose them.

This is another family thing we do, enabled by Modern Technology™ – we put together a “Secret Santa” list and everyone pulls a name from the hat. It saves having to buy 18 different presents and we then use WhatsApp to send a list out.

I am notoriously difficult to buy for. I used to ask for Nintendo games every Christmas, but right now I’m playing five Nintendo games I have yet to finish, so I don’t really need any new ones. The things I need are too expensive for a Christmas gift, and the things I want are too frivolous.

When I was younger, I used to get famously upset at getting the wrong present – usually from someone who’d made a wild guess at things I would like – so it’s kinder to everyone to send out a list. Since we all do it, I don’t feel so demanding any more.

5. Would you rather be Scrooge before he meets the [Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come] or be the Grinch before becoming good?

Has anyone here ever actually read A Christmas Carol? Scrooge, although a wicked miser, is actually caustic and witty both before and after his transformation. I’d rather be him, in order to have that quickfire sense of humour.

Plus, I’d have all that money and everyone would love me eventually.

I usually try to do something for International Men’s Day. Occasionally it’s an essay; sometimes it’s a graphic. The same messages keep coming back, though: not all men (with or without the formerly-ubiquitous hashtag) are bad, and what good men need to do is call out any everyday sexism whenever and wherever they see it.

I’ve also talked about how I have a problem with doing this, because I don’t ritualistically surround myself with misogynists, nor do I have a direct psychic link to every man in the world so I can’t just seek it out and deal with it. I’m also a little nervy about how people may react. I asked a man to stop following a lone woman the other day and, although he did, he gave me a very dangerous look afterwards.

I’ve never been that confident…

…but I’m being more brave about it as the years go by.

A couple of months ago I was in a training session at work. On screen we had a list of our most frequent clients, with as many details as the Data Protection Act would allow. I’m not sure about how much our company asks of our clients (although if I had my way everyone would give their pronoun choice on their first day with us), but this did include gender.

“So, as you can see here, most of these clients are male,” said the trainer, “but we have two female clients here: Q and R.”

Younger ILB might have been too scared to say anything.

“I’m not sure that’s accurate,” I said a little too loudly. “R isn’t female.”
“It says ‘female’ here,” someone said from the back. “There’s an F in that field, anyway.”
“But R isn’t,” I said patiently. “They identify as genderfluid. The boss sent out an e-mail about it the other day. Putting their gender down as female is a bit of an insult.”
“They were called [R’s deadname] last year,” said somebody else with a maddeningly patient air. “That’s a female name.” A few people nodded.
“That’s their DEADNAME!” I near-shouted, standing up. “You can’t call them that! We shouldn’t even be discussing this, because there’s nothing to discuss! You need to change that label, or if you don’t want to, give me access and I’ll do it!”

What really got me about all this wasn’t the mislabelling of our one openly NB client (which I was, sadly, expecting). It was more to do with the fact that nobody else in the room seemed to think that anything was wrong.

“Look,” said the trainer, clearly trying to take back control. “This system doesn’t have any other options. You have to choose M or F. We can’t enter data of any other kind, and that’s to do with the company who wrote the software.”
“Well, that’s their problem,” I said. “But we should have at least put a note in the ‘other’ field. I’ll write to the software company, too.”

And I angrily sat back down.

I never used to have a problem with being silently active. When the cadets came recruiting in our year 7 assembly I got up and walked out. I shouted at one of my favourite teachers once for killing an insect in class. I yelled “WRONG!” at a Christian youth event when the preacher said Harry Potter books were satanic. When another Christian event called for us to “attack and destroy the false religion of Islam” I walked out into the dark field behind the venue and called H because I needed to tell someone I didn’t agree.

I even once told a young boy what he was doing was sexism, and he laughed because I’d said “sex”.

But that was all a long time ago. In the more recent years I have developed a fear of fucking everything up. I was incredibly lucky to get this job and I really don’t want to do anything to risk my position.

However, in this situation I did it without thinking. It was automatic, and exactly what everyone should do; I saw an example of everyday sexism (or, more accurately, NB-phobia… is there a term for that? Or is ‘transphobia‘ more appropriate?) and confronted it. It may not have gone the way I wanted, exactly, but I did it.

Not because I thought I ought to, or even wanted to. I didn’t even think. I just did it.

To this day I don’t know how our client found out about it, but the big smile and nod to me the following time I saw them may not have been entirely unwarranted.

Every day we get a little better. Let’s keep working on it.

I have mixed feelings abut Starbucks, which (for those of you who have been living in a cave for the last few decades) is a ubiquitous coffee shop chain (actually, it probably exists in said cave). It’s everywhere, but until I was about 16 or so, there wasn’t one in my local town. Opening one was A Big Deal, and although I never actually went there – I tried to organise a trip for my birthday but nothing came of it – I was fascinated.

Strange? Maybe. I didn’t really drink a lot of coffee until I went to university (I’ve always been more of a tea drinker), but even then, the idea of going to a coffee shop kind of eluded me. Even if some of my sexual fantasies included going into Starbucks, I never actually managed to enter the shop…

…until I was 18, and applying for a job.

I still don’t know why I applied for a job at a place I’d never actually been to. I’d decided at this point that I liked coffee, which helps. But I was in the middle of my A-Levels, very nearly finished, spent pretty much every weekend travelling to Birmingham, and was going on to university in a few months. It wasn’t a good time to apply. Why I got an actual interview I’ll never know.

To my credit, though, the interview went relatively well – I’d have to tie my long, wild rockstar hair back (but that was fine) and cover up any tattoos (but I don’t have any!), and although I didn’t actually get the job in the end, the friendly manager assured me that it was purely because they were only looking for somebody full-time, and I didn’t quite fit the bill there.

Is what she said.

A week earlier, I had been sitting in Starbucks for the first time ever answering questions. It hadn’t been going badly and, although I’d never really had many job interviews, I had a good enough feeling so far.

“Can you tell me about a time you’ve used your initiative recently?” she finished with.

I mentally flicked through things I’d done at school and home and came up completely blank. I could, of course, have said something – mention jazz band or being a library monitor (I was a prefect; I could have said that!) – but I wanted something a little more interesting. It hit me like a ton of bricks…

…but how could I say it without rationalising why?

“Yes,” I said confidently. “Recently I booked a hotel room to find, when I got there, that they had forgotten my booking. After negotiating with the hôtelier, I got my reservation fee back and booked into the hotel next door. I got the room I wanted, rather than acquiescing and taking the only room the first one had available.”
“That’s impressive,” said the friendly manager, “for someone your age. Why didn’t you take the room in the first hotel?”
“Oh,” I said, before deciding to finish truthfully. “I wanted a double room. I had someone with me, you see. The first hotel only had twin rooms.”
“I see. Who was with you, if you don’t mine me asking?”
“My girlfriend. We wanted to escape life for a while.”

The friendly manager gave me a knowing smile and scribbled something like

wanted to have sex with girlfriend so changed hotels

on her notes.

“I think you’re going to enjoy working here,” she said primly, gently but firmly chivvying me out of the door. “You’ll hear back in a week.”

I didn’t get the job because they were looking for somebody full-time. That’s the reason and I’m very much sticking to that explanation.