Category: Personal (Page 6 of 14)

Manchester Piccadilly. Platform 13. This place is fucking huge. Now come and get me bitch before I get totally lost.

Esque

On some of the holidays I have taken with various people over the years, the places become more navigable as time goes on. This increases tenfold, of course, if I have been to the place before. My mission to introduce bits of the UK to my immigrant wife has been fascinating, insofar as what I actually know and what I think I know.

Bath, for example, is very simple. It’s a historical city and also my favourite city, and every time I go back, it is a world unchanged. The same streets; the same layout. I know Bath. Brighton, when not waylaid by storms, is a bit of a maze, but at least I know where the main bits are. I was slightly thrown by Nottingham, since I spent three years there and they’ve massively changed it since, but at least I kind of knew where I was.

As for Manchester… I have no clue.

I’m walking through Manchester on the way home from Blackpool. Are you all right?

I’m not well – in bed with ‘flu (well, you have to be in bed with something on Valentine’s 😉). Happy V-Day, anyway!

Yes, happy Valentine’s!

ILB to H, via text

The problem here is that, in all honesty, I thought I knew Manchester. I’ve spent some of my best and some of my worst times there, but the general feeling about it is positive. For every death stare and overpriced railway ticket, there is a table for nine to have pizza, or a weekend spent having sex in a YHA near Oxford Road (following plans to book into a YHA in which to have sex). I’ve even been there recently – last year, for a gig (even if that was a little bit of a flying visit).

Long story short, I thought I knew Manchester. In my mind’s eye, I could picture the street down which I walked and sang the lyrics from Evita at maximum volume. I could visualise the YHA (no, another one) in Salford Quays and even the layout of Oxford Road. Manchester, I told myself, is focused around one big road. You can walk down it. That’s where the Pizza Hut is with the Bella Italia opposite. Easy.

Reader, it wasn’t easy.

Is there anyone from Johnny Roadhouse or A1’s here?

Tim Booth

As it turns out, what I’m familiar with is the Manchester of twenty years ago. Things appear to have changed since then. If I didn’t imagine the road I knew, then either it isn’t there any more, or it’s been redeveloped. Navigation, for a non-resident, is impossible; it’s much easier to get lost, especially when you don’t know where you are going.

But, throughout the week, at the very least we managed to work some things out. We knew how to get back to our hotel. We knew how to get places from the Arndale and how to commandeer the trams. We even managed to find our way back to Piccadilly Gardens (which has changed the most; last time I went there, you could walk through the centre!) when we needed to.

And that’s okay.

That’s really all we needed, as it turns out.

“It’s strange, us standing here in this garden,” said my pretty former colleague, “when we could be going on a date… or something.”
“Yes, I agree,” I concurred. “It is strange.”

It wasn’t the only thing that was strange. After all, this was a former colleague who I talk to on WhatsApp about two times a month and have met in person all of once since we both left the workplace at which we met. I also didn’t recognise the garden; they may have put it in since I left, but a cursory Google search tells me they have not.

What was also strange was that she was asking to go on a date with me, and she’s attached. I’m also married, and although I’m not always in these situations, I very much was in this case. Yet I just seemed to take this in my stride. Were we heading towards a relationship, despite everything?

Also, what happened to the place I’ve been working at for the past couple of years?

“So do you want to?”
“Do I want to what?
“Do you want to do it?”

I couldn’t give a straight answer without destroying the ambiguity of her question, which I quite liked. I also saw the pattern emerging: I’ll get the opportunity to have sex with the girl, but then something will happen to prevent it actually happening. This is how these things go. I decided to tap out of the situation, knowing deep inside that I could return to it later.

“Sure,” I said without elaborating. “But first I have to find [the name of another pretty former colleague who also started and finished at the same time as me, thus completing the trio], and ask her something…”

And I set off through the maze of corridors I didn’t recognise, swarming with members of staff I didn’t know and clients who I’m fairly sure were never connected with the company at all. Occasionally I entered a room to ask her whereabouts. Nobody knew, nor did they recognise her name. But of course they should have; she worked there. We all did. We were a trio.

Okay, I said to myself, this isn’t working. Let’s get back to the garden and see if [my first colleague] is still there. I’ll suggest that we can go on a date, and then maybe we’ll get to cuddle at some point. I can still be married and do this; where’s the harm?

If this sounds ethically dodgy to you, let’s bear in mind that I was, at this point, an hour late to get back to the room I worked in, and very aware that I was bunking off in order to flirt. Due to the fact that I couldn’t get back to the garden anyway, it looked like this was going the same way as they all do.

Zounds, it’s a dream, isn’t it? It’s a bloody dream; just wake up and then maybe you can reset to the start, and take a different path like a gamebook…

And then I suddenly needed to go to the toilet, so I woke up anyway.

And that reminds me, I idly thought as I clambered back into bed. I need to message her and ask how things are going at her job. It’ll be the end of her second year there and she might be looking to move on…

Just before I drifted back to my next dream, however, I had one more conscious thought.

That was weird.

Settle something for me, gentle readers.

There were doubtful murmurs at work yesterday when I mentioned that there was something inherently sexual about a belly button.

“It’s just a dip in your tummy,” said one colleague.
“There’s nothing really sexy about it,” said another.
“It’s not like boobs, or a bum,” said a third.

“But it’s what’s left of your umbilical cord tied into a knot,” I pointed out. “There’s a link to the maternal womb there. And you’re born as the result of sex, so there’s a clear link there.”

…

Colleague #2 recovered first.

“That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t really scream ‘sexy’ to me.”

My mental Rolodex started flipping at this point. How do I answer this without revealing too much? Do I mention that porn actors shave their midriffs so as to accentuate the smooth areas around their belly buttons? Maybe that I know more than one person from the sex blogging world that has admitted to masturbating themselves to sleep thinking of a belly button?

What about people who get a piercing there? I know lots of people who have – mainly cis women, but not only. Isn’t the point of that to show it off a little?

And what about models? Don’t they often show their midriff during their work?

“A belly button is the central point of a person’s body,” I settled on. “Lots of people use their midsection to be sexually attractive. Models do it and actors do it – we’ve all seen David Gandy topless…”

Some of my colleagues started looking into middle distance at this point.

“…and belly dancers do it as a part of their routine. Shakira shows hers all the time.”
“You’ve got a point there.”

“I’m still not convinced,” said Colleague #1. “Maybe it’s one of these things that I’m just not seeing.”
“Or maybe that’s just ILB,” said Colleaque #3.

Well? Is it just me, gentle readers?

Here we go again
Now I’m not looking back ’cause that pain is dead
If history’s repeating
It’s worth it for the feeling

Earlier today, for no particular reason, I trawled my computer and Facebook photos to find one specific picture of myself. I’m not that much of an egotist (honestly!), but this one certainly speaks to me.

I’m on holiday, standing in front of Blackpool Tower. I’ve got one hand in the air, striking an impressive pose. The wind is blowing back my hair and a bit of the T-shirt I’m wearing. This is the first time I’ve actually worn this tee. I wore it about three times before it mysteriously vanished, lost somewhere in the milieu of clothes I still have yet to be washed.

On my face is a rapturous, euphoric expression. At the time this was taken, I was feeling free.

This is, of course, history. I can look at this picture and remember the time it was taken; I can also look at it and see things long since gone. Youth I have long since passed. A tee I loved and lost. A place I no longer go to, in a group I no longer speak to. I’m even noticeably slimmer in the picture than I am now. Should I wish to, I could look at this picture and mourn the past, wishing I could recapture that feeling.

But I shan’t.

There’s a lot of pain in my history. Whether of my own making or not. I have issues with school bullies, the mental anguish I went through with the villainous conductor of the band I was in, and the tedious drudge through 2008 – 2010, doing a course I hated at an institution I despised, the only high points being sex and cuddles with my girlfriend.

I’m not very good at letting go, either. The smallest thing can pitch me into a spiral of traumatic memories and sneaky self-doubt. I’m meant to be working on it – of course I am – I’m just not very good at that.

But I think I’m getting better.

Maybe there’s something that makes the past more of a friend. Perhaps there’s a funny blog post I wrote about it – there are plenty of those – or a pleasant memory attached to the otherwise-hideous situation. The school bullies who ended up as friends. The conductor leading a round of applause for me specifically because of my contribution to the contest we won. The time I cried because of what happened at college while my drinking girlfriend stroked my hair and told me that she believed me.

It requires a lot of effort on my part – filtering out what I want to focus on. Bits and pieces are there; it’s just finding them that’s the problem.

But I’m working on it. And, if I really can’t do it – if there’s far too much else there and history is too much to bear – then there are always alternative realities to slip into.

And there’s always porn.

Oh hai, sex drive. There you are. Where did you go? It’s been a while, friend. Let’s catch up. Fancy a cup of tea?

It’s funny that you should turn up, sex drive. I think I saw you briefly the other day, when I saw something on Twitter that shouldn’t have turned me on, but it did. Fair enough, it wasn’t my kink but something about the way it was presented got me feeling things. Something about the guilt-free abandon and amount of glee involved. I noticed you then. You were just sitting quietly in the corner, but you were there. I could have sworn it.

Maybe I had you with me last night, sex drive, when I got up from the nap on the sofa to transfer to the nap in bed. I didn’t see you, but when I got up and stretched, I felt the familiar twinge between my legs and had a fairly sizeable bulge to deal with before I could get to bed. Maybe you were there then. I don’t know.

Sex drive, you are very difficult to pin down. Ask me two weeks ago if I’ve spent any time with you and I’d say I had. Ask me earlier this week and I’d say that I hadn’t. I know that I should be a better friend, sex drive, and that’s my fault. I say that I don’t have the time, or the energy, or the resources to meet up with you. But you always have the time for me, and sometimes you turn up even when I don’t expect you.

Like that time three weeks ago when you said hi partway through the staff meeting at work. Or two months ago when I fell asleep on the bus and woke up very hard and very wound-up. You’ve appeared on long journeys and in my dreams. Sometimes you’ve even been more awake than me.

But I haven’t seen you anywhere, sex drive, at least not recently. I miss you and what your company brings. They say that I don’t need you, the voices in my head. They say that, because I’m not having sex, your friendship isn’t at all necessary. But that’s not true. I love you, I miss you, and I wish you weren’t so difficult to find.

And now here you are once again. Hello, sex drive. Let’s be friends forever.

Yesterday afternoon, just after work, I went for drinks to celebrate one the birthday of one of my colleagues. I found myself, although not for the first time in my life, surrounded by women – as they got progressively more drunk, their conversation varied from the size of their boobs to different methods of contraception.

(At one point, one of them may have had said she hasn’t had sex since December. I didn’t quite hear, but…)

While I did my ILB Thing™ of sitting quietly in the corner making no noise, I did pitch in with a few conversations (I’m not that much of a pariah), especially when the topic turned to autism management and the different ways in which people stim. More discourse happened about the way to centre yourself when you feel overwhelmed.

“I suck my thumb,” said one colleague. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do. It helps me calm down.”
“My ex used to suck her thumb,” I said without thinking. “She did it every night; I rarely saw her sleep without doing so.”

I shouldn’t have said that. Not because it wasn’t true, but because I’d forgotten it up until then.

As much as things remind me of my second girlfriend (second chronologically; I don’t have more than one girlfriend!), I do have to wonder if there’s anything that reminds her of me. I have a scarily accurate memory, so I can recall things and events from the past with some amount of detail – you’ll know this if you read my blog – but I’d forgotten about this.

I’d forgotten about this although I know so many things I shouldn’t. I know her married name and I know the name of her son. I’ve read her MA essay and even her Ph.D. thesis (I’m not acknowledged, even though we had sex on the floor while encoding some poetry readings, but then again she doesn’t mention her husband either, so…), both of which are very good. I even know where she works now and have to wonder if she is still as angry as ever.

But I’d forgotten about the thumb thing.

The seamstress used to try to justify this to me. It was a comfort thing, carried over since she was little. It happened while she was asleep and she couldn’t control it. Maybe it was a way to centre herself. It once happened when she had a cracked tooth and she couldn’t stop. Once she even told me it was because she wanted to feel like she had a cock in her mouth. The excuses kept coming, and coming, and coming…

But I didn’t care. I liked it. I thought it was cute.

In fact, I thought a lot of what she did was cute. I liked the patterns on her underwear. I liked the way she pronounced “Ph.D.”. When helping her pick a dress in the shop, I chose the one that showed off her boobs and she giggled. I liked that too. I liked how filthy her sense of humour she was and how she insisted that she used to be cool. When I noticed a chunky pair of sunglasses she had, she lent them to me and I liked that.

But I forgot about the thumb-sucking until yesterday afternoon.

And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Maybe I’ll never quite move on.