Category: Personal (Page 8 of 15)

Blam. Blam. Blam blam blam.

I blearily opened my eyes. My digital alarm clock showed a time of 02:30. That was chucking out time at the union bar plus half an hour for a kebab and possibly some more drinks. Usually I’d stay at the club until 01:45, duck out before everyone else and get chips and cheese before heading back to my room alone.

Always alone.

But this was the night where I’d decided to go back to my room at midnight and get some sleep. (If there was one thing I needed, I reasoned, it was sleep.)

Blam! Blam! Blam!
“Oi mate, got any porn?”

Evidently, however, some people had other ideas. I was in my pyjamas – a rare occurrence, but a fortunate one. I thought, vaguely, of making no noise and pretending I didn’t exist – which would have been easy, since most people on my corridor seemed to assume I didn’t – but, since the knocking would have probably broken down my door eventually, I opened it.

“PORN!” shouted a very large, very drunk boy I had never seen before.

I blinked. There in the corridor stood an assemblage of large, drunk boys. The only one I recognised lived in room 1, which was the large room on the corner where we usually watched movies. I was in room 3, which was about the size of a matchbox.

“Hey, ILB,” said the boy I knew. “We were wondering if we could borrow your Emmanuelle porn disc.”
“I have an Emmanuelle porn disc?” I said. I wasn’t fooling anyone – in fact, I had two. One of them had been fast becoming my favourite thing to watch. The other less so. (In fact, one of them had arrived while my parents had been visiting. I said it was a book and didn’t open it until much later.)

I didn’t know how he knew I had one.

“PORN!!!” shouted one of the other boys, in a voice which probably woke up most of the city. Maybe all the lights went on at the same time, like in the last scene of Diana.

“Sorry about him. Could we borrow your Emmanuelle porn disc?”

Obviously the answer was no. Last time I’d lent someone something it had come back broken. I’d even paid for a £30 flight to Germany for the guy in room 2 who brought back a different girl every night. I never got that back either.

“Uhm, no…?” I ventured. “It’s not, not, not… good,” I lied. “It’s very baaaad porn; I think I’m going to… sell it…”

And I shut the door before any of them could say anything.

“PORN!” somebody said.

I went back to bed wondering how anyone had managed to find out I owned any porn.

And I sold it in the end anyway, so…

It was my birthday yesterday, and as a result, I’m now officially in my late thirties. I’m feeling very old.

Last night I had a nice meal with my parents; tomorrow, there is a family thing in the afternoon. I got a book from my wife and I’m assuming there are more presents forthcoming.

Is what I assume. What I’m also assuming is that I’m a relatively difficult person to buy for, insofar as I never really know what I want. Younger ILB never had this problem, as every Christmas and birthday was an opportunity to get a new Nintendo game. This is still a nice thing to get, but when one considers that I have five unfinished Switch games on the go and there are many more being added to the retro console emulator thingies, it’s more or less apparent that I don’t really need one right now.

I sometimes get things that I might use, but more often than not they become little more than ephemera. I’m more likely to use a stick of glue than I am my Stylophone, but then I like the fact that I own a Stylophone. I am a contrary boy.

I’ve decided, in these calm moments, that what I want the most is some quiet time. Time like this, with no distractions, no noise and no other responsibilities. The time to sit in silence and write my blog, or read a book, chatter on Twitter or play the aforementioned Switch.

Time, in short, to just be.

And, since you can’t package that and hand it over as a present, I’m having to find it for myself.

Or, if not, new porn is always welcome.

Sometimes I have these moments.

They’re not all good moments. Case in point: last night I had a dream in which I was having sex. The person I was having sex with (my wife, truth be told) told me it was boring, left, and just sort of wandered off, sending me into a sneaky hate spiral.

Is this really the reason? Dream ILB wondered. Am I the problem here? Is this why all my previous relationships ended so badly?

And then I flashed back to how my previous relationships ended, and how traumatic they may have made me feel at the time. I remembered being cheated on, and working it out beforehand but never saying anything. I remembered being jettisoned, without warning, unceremoniously – just before a year in which I was going to work on my life. (If I think about it, I still don’t have a reason for that one. Part of me thinks it boils down to “I don’t have a car”.)

I was responsible for how badly my third relationship ended. I still feel guilty about it, and I wasn’t honest about how our relationship had been ending for a long time before it officially happened. The train ride home was one of the worst times in my life, and she made sure I paid for it, too.

In all these cases, my brain tells me, the repeated factor is me – I am the lowest common denominator and I am genuinely not good enough. Why? Is it because I don’t have a six-pack, or a high-paid job, or a driving license, or an intact trapezius muscle? If I work hard in a job I like, does it really matter if the thing I take most pride in is a blog that makes no money, and music with no discernible talent?

If I have to use a stick to walk and say “Oof!” when I stand up, am I even capable of having sex? On the off-chance it ever happens again, will I be able to perform? Or will it be something else to add to the sneaky hate spiral?

Dream ILB wanted to talk about all of this to his wife, who had just left because the sex was boring. When Real Life ILB woke up this morning, he also wanted to talk to his wife about this. But then he also wanted to stay in bed. He wanted some quiet time to himself, just to think, to reboot, to decompress. Maybe just be alone for a while.

In the light of the day, it all doesn’t seem so bad. The worry is still there, of course – maybe there is something genuinely toxic about me? – but, with the sun peeking through the window, it all seems a bit lessened. Easy though it is to say that “everything will be better in the morning”, there’s a certain degree of truth in that.

I can’t look in the mirror and see something I like. I can’t even do that on self-reflection, even in the most positive of moods. Part of me will always feel like things are made a little worse by having me involved. People have told me this, and who am I to disbelieve them?

But sometimes, I forget. I forget to be unhappy with myself. I forget that I am a completely unsatisfying person. It might be someone saying something, or doing something, or even something I’ve seen or read which takes me out of everything for a while and gives me the space I need to forget how I feel about myself.

And that’s all right. That’s okay. For now, that will have to do.

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.