Category: Personal (Page 8 of 14)

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.

TEAM AQUA GRUNT sent out POOCHYENA!
POOCHYENA used BITE!
What will WINGULL do?

I sat on the steps, shielded from the sun’s rays, a couple of metres from the left lion. Nottingham had been good to me for the past few days and, although I had nothing to do and nowhere to go, I could sit partially separated from the hustle and bustle of the Old Market Square and play Pokémon Sapphire.

I could get used to this, I reasoned.

Thinking back on it, I needed something to get used to. I knew Nottingham well, and was used to its intricacies, but I was not used to the activities I’d been partaking in all week. It had been too much effort for too little reward – and, since I’d been staying in hotels and eating in restaurants, too much money as well. I had also recently been called “wanker!” by somebody old and wise enough to know better.

Wiping away a tear, I carefully set aside my GBA and considered heading back to the hotel to see if they had another room. It wouldn’t have been affordable, perhaps, but maybe the pretty girl was still there. Old Market Square was lovely, but (unlike the action-packed morning I’d had the day beforehand, when an old man collapsed and I waited for the ambulance for half an hour…).

Maybe I could go to another restaurant.

My body screamed as I wrenched myself off the marble and started ambling towards The Cornerhouse. I passed a record shop in which a band had once played an intimate gig. A band which a girl I had a crush on liked. I didn’t know the band at all, but I knew she liked them.

And my thoughts ran away with that tiny memory.

What was she doing now? Where was she? Would I see her again? Was she having sex? Had she ever had sex? Would she ever have sex with me? How many people here, on this little street in Nottingham City Centre, have had sex? And how many of them have done so in the last 24 hours?

The last 12?
The last 6?
The last 3?

How many people on this street are on their way home from, or on their way to, the home (or hotel room) of someone with whom they were having sex? Maybe that confident-looking man on the other side of the street was having sex less than ten minutes ago and is still coming down from the feeling.

Last five minutes.
Three.

I wish I’d been having sex two minutes ago and was still coming down from the feeling, although unlike the confident-looking man, I probably wouldn’t be walking down the street. I might be cuddling her instead.

In all honesty, I would really like a cuddle.

By the time I got to The Cornerhouse, I was absolutely convinced that everyone I’d passed had been having beautiful sex for the entire year and, furthermore, I was the only one who had missed out on this. I felt like such an interloper, me being this physically repulsive, scruffy wanker who spent his time playing Pokémon and thinking about pretty girls, all at sea in this shining beacon of sexual energy called Nottingham, where I certainly didn’t belong even though I was living there at the time, because I sure as Hell wasn’t good enough.

Burning with shame, I found a Bella Italia which did sherbet lemons instead of after dinner mints. I took a couple and, to assuage any guilt, took a table and ordered myself some food.

The waitress who served me had definitely had sex in the last twenty-four hours.

I felt better after dinner, and walked out into the dusky city, now looking for somewhere else to spend the night.

Earlier this week I had two dental appointments, on two different days, with two different dentists at two different practices. I even had to rush out of work in order to make them – either by cajoling my dad into giving me a lift or making creative use of the North London bus network – but make them I did.

As a result, I now have a repaired filling on the top row of teeth, and a still-open wound on the bottom row, which feels okay most of the time but occasionally starts bleeding.

Kiss me if you want; my mouth is fascinating.

The week before last, in preparation for the same, I went to the dentist for a five-minute “sure, come back in a week” conversation that could have really happened via text…

…and bumped into “Chanel”, someone who, I suddenly remembered with a start, everyone had wanted to fuck.

I didn’t really know her at school – apart from her name and what she looked like. Our predefined social circles never crossed over, and the only time I heard her mentioned it was by one of her friends (in a complimentary way) or one of the rowdy boys I never liked (in a horny way). Despite not knowing her, I remember feeling sorry for her; in every conversation, she had been added to the end, as if she were an afterthought.

It was noticeable. There was an illicit party going on around my birthday one year (it wasn’t anything to do with me, but I heard the whispers). Everyone who was anyone who was going, from what I could tell, but Chanel was also mentioned last. Every time one of the popular clique would list her friends, in whatever order, Chanel always came at the end.

And, as I said before, a lot of the boys found Chanel desirable. Not that I ever asked how she felt about this, but after reeling off a list of girls he wanted to have sex with (he used a slightly more taboo word, but I’ll abstain from repeating that here), one boy paused a second before adding, “…oh… and Chanel.”

She was also the last on the register, although she shouldn’t have been.

Which is to say, I noticed that. I don’t know if anyone else did. Mostly what I remember was her being popular, slightly aloof, quiet and reserved, and somebody who a lot of the rowdy boys wanted to fuck.

I didn’t know anything about her otherwise. But I knew the name. And what do you say, exactly, to somebody of whom your overall memory is someone at the end of every list who some rowdy boys were entirely unsavoury about?

She remembered me. But then everyone does.

And, as it turns out, we work for exactly the same company.

And have been doing so for years.

Small world, really.

I didn’t know, and don’t know still, if I got any sleep at all last night.

I woke up early on Sunday morning – early enough that, had I gotten myself out of bed and towards the vicinity of a cup of coffee or something, I could have gone to church. Instead of doing so, of course, I rolled over and went straight back to sleep.

Had a sex dream; 9am alarm woke me up just as sex was actually about to happen. Thoroughly annoyed by that, although it’s not the first time that’s happened. I hardly ever get to have sex in my dreams, so I wasn’t expecting it right then and there, but still…

Last night was different.

I don’t remember sleeping – although who does? A more accurate statement would be that I don’t remember dreaming! – and I still don’t know if I got any sleep whatsoever. I also don’t remember being particularly awake; I certainly had periods where I felt so. But then I don’t recall feeling any of my trademark boredom, panic, or dark thoughts that usually accompany my insomnia. The night may as well have never happened.

What I do remember, in vivid flashes, is occasional pangs of discomfort. My entire body teetering on the edge of the bed (in order to give them space), ready to fall off. My semi-hard mattress (a very bad choice on my part; I was too chicken to ask for something softer) being a problem for my back. The neck pain I’ve had since our honeymoon occasionally resurfacing with every repositioning.

And, perhaps the most vividly, me clutching onto the bunched duvet like a koala – the sheets wrapped in me, rather than the other way around.

This morning, when asked, I said I was tired. I’m still not entirely sure if I genuinely was. My colleagues and clients all were – making for a slow, calm day at work – and so I decided that I was. I wasn’t sure exactly how to describe how I was feeling, because I didn’t know myself.

But I had a very odd night, and since I have no idea how to describe that, I’m attempting to do so here.

Please forgive me.