Memory Music Video - Jentina 'Bad Ass Strippa' (2001)

This came out around 2001, and I was in Angels bar one day with a friend who looked up at the square block TV screen it was playing from and said 'if she's such a bad ass stripper then why does she have to make a song about it?'. It made sense then as much as it did now, yet I felt sorry for Jentina. I still feel sorry for her. I think I was the only one who thought the song was OK. The video seemed a bit naff, but actually, I think it says a lot now about then, now that we have so much shit we consider pop music. 

I'm not sure if she has a cult following now or what, but considering how awful pop music is now, I don't think she was all that bad. However, she was deeply unpopular at the time, and I never remember the song coming on anywhere in public except that once in the daytime in Angels. (Angels is now called Sidewalk).

Jentina was marked to be quite successful before the music came out. I used to read The Face and they featured her in there one month, complete with cutting edge picture, red lips and white skin, eyes concealed by the shadow of a hat, everywhere dripping in excessive gold jewelry.

She was marketed as a sort of gypsy RnB pop singer. At first it was hard to understand why she was so disliked; she was good looking, young, and the song wasn't terrible. She could even kind of sing. There was no auto-tune then! Then I thought that maybe it's a reflection on how society feels about travellers. So hated she was, even Horror Queen of the Chavs Lady Sovereign made a cruel mock up parody of 'Bad Ass Strippa' which in her ghetto black twang she rips apart Jentina with bitchy threatening lyrics. Maybe one member of the working class felt threatened by another by their lower position in the league. Whatever the reason, I think Lady Sovereign is an ugly cunt. 

Like Princess Superstar's 'Bad Babysitter', I liked this song but as a 17 year old desperately wanting to fit in, I didn't admit I liked it to anyone. I used to listen to it at home because I liked the sound of the music, rather than the words, or her. It's not till later that I sort of realised what I liked about her and the whole package but again that could all be down to nostalgia.

The song takes me back to when I was discovering new music but in a new environment, one where you danced, and people can watch you, and I was learning to understand and like what was me, or what was cool to feel being me on the gay scene. I was fresh popped out of school, I felt I had a whole world to discover, and some of those times it was dirty, urban and frankly quite scary. Thinking of Birmingham back then reminds me of the taste of new chemicals, concrete and solvent, intentional aimlessness. I felt like sometimes I was part of a gang (albeit a very strange one).

I was coming out of an outgrown comfort zone, I was hanging round in Birmingham each weekend and not coming home, I was acting in vain to be tough, I was hanging out with kids who had been kicked out of their homes and lived in a youth hostel in the city, walking and hanging round in places I wouldn't even dream of going near now as an adult, whilst working in a bar illegally and being paid cash in hand, hanging out in front of Angels and Missing, drinking Red Stripe, tempting punters to come inside and forging friendships with the underbelly of the cities outcasts and homeless occupants. It was around this time that I had my first threesome with 2 work colleagues in their council flat.

It was hard to take Jentina seriously I guess. The concept was there, but I suppose the definition of chav was a lot specific back then. These days everything merges together, nothing is that clear in Birmingham. Even what was considered shit back then can have a shine to it now, considering the condition of things. Nothing lasts forever.

...so please don't give a thought to me, I'm really doing fine, you can always find me here, i'm having quite a time

I love flowers. I think for Christmas I am going to ask for a flower press. I got one once as a child. I also like bunches of flowers and flower arranging. The most embarrassing moment of my childhood was winning a flower arranging competition. I entered the competition at school simply because I wanted to arrange flowers. I didn't think anyone would notice I was the only boy in the school to enter a flower arranging competition. Unfortunately, for me, I won. I had to accept a prize infront of the whole school and because I was a boy, weirdly some people bypassed the early signs I was gay and assumed my mother had created the arrangement, and as a boy I was simply a cheater. Ironically, my dad had helped me with the flowers, although it was all really done by me. It was exciting and the flowers remained on a table as a centerpiece for a while. I wish there was a picture to show, as all the flowers were from our own back garden.

When I was about 21, I had a boyfriend called Matthew. We went to different universities so there were often romantic meetings that started at the train station, and on one occasion he greeted me with flowers, like a man would for a woman. Some might argue this is pathetic and reinforces that gays are flouncy and camp. But it didn't feel like that at all. They were really nice flowers, roses if I remember correctly. It must of been love.

I'm thinking about submitting my entry to the Born This Way blog, where gay men and women submit a little story about from when they were growing up with the theme of being gay, complete with a childhood photo. There are a lot of entries of little girls in work man helmets and little boys in mum's shoes. I think writing in my flower arranging story is a great idea, shame there isn't an actual photo of the flowers to accompany it. Anyway, here's the Statler Brothers:

no hesitation, no delay

NEVER FORGET 11-9-2001

and I said thank you, your hair is so beautiful

In a month's time it will be 3 years that I started writing here. Master Bracknell originally started off as a photo blog with snippets of detail about my life. Back then, things seemed happier. I think looking back, my problems weren't as serious, they were usually just about boys or my bad habits, yet they still were problems to me. I wish they were still my problems. I've had to deal with much worse since, especially in this last year. But it's okay now. I want to go back to the way things were 3 years ago, on here and in my life. A real fresh start.

I say this because this week someone new has started reading my blog. I don't advertise it out, I don't have the link published anywhere and I hope to god no one in my family reads it. I know that Hayley reads it because I not only value her opinion on my style of writing but people like her who I am close to I like to feel know me completely through this. I place my trust in certain people, and when I see them, instead of awkwardness and knowing, I feel closer to them in a way which is like no other, and seeing as I am not physically affectionate, it's kind of my way of being so. When choosing who I want to read this, I choose carefully, giving them the option to possibly ask. Only intelligent and open minded friends would understand this 'bare all' exposure online. My blog has fallen into the wrong hands of some people, but then, it's served as useful protection and as a way to defend myself.

I met a new friend in Brighton who I have wonderful conversation with and who for a living is a life coach. I have kept in touch with him via email, and having read some of my blog, he made comment which spurred me onto to read back on everything in the past. I then thought that this huge past 8 week update was something quite negative, and that Master Bracknell had become this place to unravel so much pain, and yes that has been helpful, and yes it can be painful to read, but I don't feel like I'm in that place anymore. I don't need to write about anything else that happened this summer, it happened, you know about it, and it's the past. I need to look forward, I've learnt that about myself, it's an important thing to do: move forward.

I know things are getting better. I'm feeling better. I'm excited but cautious. I want to laugh. I'm interested in fashion and my looks again. I'm out of that trampy slutty summer phase now. I'm shaving and washing my hair again. I'm excited to get on with things. And I've lost interest in recounting the events of this summer eloquently. My friend's email made me realise this. He said something that clicked just now, and this blog has helped me overcome traumas and troubles, but I think I am better from it all now, and I am ready to move on steady and realistic, and to post my daily ideas and events and photos for what the main reason this blog was all about: to develop my writing and to show off my photography.

Thank you!

You Know Me Better

dr feel good.

I've really missed writing on MB. I haven't covered all the updates of my recent absence however I have time, and during which I will continue to update how I presently am doing, coping and being (along with any other developments).

Simon has left for Hong Kong. My parents have just returned from Heathrow. They are tired and probably a little sad to see him go. I have to admit that seeing him this time, and after so long, was not in any way how I imagined it. I was anticipating him to come back and sense that I was lazy and start bossing me around. I was expecting to be made to feel useless and rubbish again, and I was expecting to be picked on by dad due to there being the contrasting comparison of success and disappointment in two similar people. However, it was opposite. I didn't spend a lot of time with him and didn't really go on any social excursion as such, but got to talk, and I felt that out of the select people I have discussed my ideas with, especially that of my story, he was the most genuinely interested. I was really excited to talk about it to someone who really wanted to talk to me. It's weird, because people do want to talk to me in my life, my friends for example, but no one ever really wants to discuss anything with me, and not many times when they do is there a mutual understanding, so it felt really great to have that. And because of that I am actually sad that he has gone back. We will email each other about ideas and such though, so I am really happy to have a connection with him. Maybe we are kindred after all. I always thought David was the one I connected to, but lately he's been a nightmare.

I spoke to Greg today, which was lovely. I do think he has an obsession with finding a man, and I hate to have the opinion that anyone who considers a man, or sex, or a relationship with more importance than themselves first as someone with some serious emotional problem, I can't help but let him entertain me with his stories, conquests and chases. It almost saves me from having to subject myself to the horrors of internet dating and crawling round bars, I never bother with any of that, but I've been subsequently single for 2 years now. I have had very little involvement with men since I stopped caring for Steve and have tried to take advantage of such a freedom but nothing really happens to me, except terrible things or mixing with terrible people - 2 incidents and 2 people of which I will discuss later on in the week when I describe a certain 'downfall'. Having Greg as a friend helps trivialise such things, and I really love him for that.

I spoke with Wiggy today, feeling so much better with myself now I am recovering and talking to her and not feeling jealous about not getting to spend every moment I can with her. I guess the summer of drug binges and hot confusion jiggled my head a bit, but I had a female crush moment where I didn't want to be away from her at all, but couldn't tell if she wanted me to fuck off or not. I feel a lot more relaxed now, don't feel a friendship is going to fade or be less favoured and I can't wait to see her again. I feel so good and so happy and positive, honestly, I need to revel in it, but after being ill and having such shit happen to me continuously, and finally getting my motivation back to make myself someone and do something, I feel like I could just shout out and make friends with all my old enemies.

I feel good about being selective on my social life, and being the mature decider. I feel good about building myself up and not having to be an excuse. Guys like me come out best when you think about it. I don't care what so and so thinks when they laugh at me. Because they haven't dealt with what I dealt with, I cannot be touched. I will never be abandoned, lost or left. I have a family who love me dearly, and friends who love me dearly, and I have a life and future I should love and appreciate. I am not alone, yet the ones who laugh... you laugh now, but when you fall asleep next to that 'other half' of yours, I know that those final thoughts in your consciousness before you drop off are ones of crippling self doubt and loneliness. A credit card, a holiday, a new car.... they don't love you. You don't love you.

Anyway, a photo update bit now:

photos from my nan's 80th at the Belfry (really posh and golfy)

 spot the gay brother

 yup, that's me.

 nothing like a giant pink balloon to enchance your gayness. Hayley looks cute here

my brothers and myself, all of us, rarely together, with our mother

chocolate in the garage

Well I am still lying here in bed, being ill. I feel better by the day, though I'm giving myself 4 more days to be symptom free, and 2 more weeks till I start the new stage of my life as a mature and responsible adult who 'does things'. That way, I've had 4 weeks of rest, and recovery, which is the sufficient and typical amount of time one requires when in rehab. And I believe that I have damaged myself so much this year, more than any year perhaps (or perhaps not, it's hard to remember), that if I could afford it, I would of flown to Arizona and booked myself in at the Meadows Clinic. But because I don't have a spare £20,000 in my pocket, I will just have to do with here in Redditch for free.

Not a lot has happened in actual life but as usual a lot happens in my head, and there is still plenty to update about. The last 8 weeks prove interesting. And I need to document it all, it keeps a perspective on everything, the world spins properly for me when it's written down, I don't feel dizzy.

So what to update about now... well, I suppose a recap of my plans for the rest of the year and a discussion of a indepth and very enlightening tarot reading I did last week is in order. I feel having that down in writing (and with a photo) will be beneficial to me in keeping with the successful transition predicted in the finishing outcome card, though, considering what I have been through, and the knowledge of it being my own fault, I doubt it's a stage I will forget to move onto.

Before I made myself horrifically ill, my problem of procrastination became extremely severe. Money I was supposed to raise for my trip to London was never made, and instead I begged and emotionally blackmailed my mother into lending it me. The problem of combating procrastination, and nipping it in the bud ironically became a task added to the long list of things to do before procrastination set in too deep, hence made impossible to achieve. It took being so ill, and a certain experience of unpleasantness awarded through reckless undignified behavior, to begin doing things. One thing off the long lost list was to treat myself to an evening of tarot. I needed this reading, it confirmed everything to a precise accuracy. I shuffled my cards for the majority of the evening, reading them in the Celtic Cross spread just before midnight.

This is what I was told, in prose, but in order of the cards...

As a young man full of life, curious of the world, and a lot of love to give, I am compelled to ask such a question due to the severity of the problems that have effected my life lately. (The second card over the first card I literally saw as myself bearing a cross, a burden). Depression, illness and betrayal has had an effect on me in a way that has created a desperate urgency and I guess when they energy presented itself I asked the cards what will happen to me. I used to ask when or if I was going to fall in love, now I wonder if I will still be alive by Christmas. So the reasons were clear.

Ideally, I have a vision in my mind of what I should be doing: building up my life from scratch, and doing it properly, and doing it without shame. It's hard to do, when you struggle with addiction, and you're surrounded by people who are more interesting to each other because of their success and happiness, people who drift through life with business trips and boyfriends. It's harder when you're betrayed by people you give up everything for and use you up with evil you can't comprehend, beaten down by all the Camerons and Matthews who tell you that 'for your age' you are worthless. The evil these people feel they have the rights to, the rights they feel they can freely access to mentally damage another, astounds me. Even in my youth I have never reached out to hurt someone like that. Therefore my heart tells me to do the wrong thing, I feel compelled to go down a self destructive route, one of quick fix and long lived bad consequences, forever in debt to karma.

The recent past indicates how delusional I was. I feel glad to say that the drugs really messed me up, heightened the need to escape to the point where I was on the brink of turning to prostitution and porn to support my life. Did I really see myself like that? The ideas I had back then were all disillusioned, even to the simple fact that I can't move anywhere without money. Recent future warned me of the importance of patience. That I will be impatient. I see that as the rejoicing in recovery, and as an Aries, wanting to rush into things when things go good.

But I was reassured during the end of the reading; I am a natural optimist, and that always carries me through. Don't ever be put off. The only thing I need to consider is the pressures of my social life, and taking on too much socially, and with that comes obviously the temptation. It will be hard, but good friends will support. If I keep reminding myself then I will be upping to the next stage: maturity. And hopefully, I will be secure in myself and stable, before I am 30.

My dreams are like any one else: harmony in every area of life. I don't want money, cars, expensive shit, and shallow pointless bollocks most twats thrive for. I want someone to love, and to love me back. I want a job that will keep me alive. I want to have the freedom to create in my own time and the freedom to see my friends and family, and to create a life for myself, that will be interesting and inspiring. I want to make the most of my freedom and help others make the most of theirs too.

So....the reality is clear. What I love about tarot is that it's not about being told what's going to happen in a crystal ball kind of way, though there have been moments. It's about spiritual guidance, counselling, it's about being helped. You could argue that this reading is just telling me what to do, in the form of pure common sense. But out of all the cards in the deck, and all their meanings that are so different and contrasting, it seems too much of a coincidence for the cards that mean what they do to fall into the places they did on this reading and give me this in depth advice. I may not of learnt something, but I feel like I have. And that is this:

Patience and Appreciation of what is NOT popular to eventually get ahead is what I need to DO. I can practice patience. I can appreciate the sensible option. I am positive and mature enough to know that I haven't got a choice if I want to live.

Because looking for jobs away from home is pointless when you can't afford to move, when you're not healthy, when you're priorities are shot, when you're mind is a mess, when you've got a hell of a come down to come down on, when you're happiness lies elsewhere, when you owe money rather than need to save.... basically, I am going to live at home till next year. Then, when I am ready, and I actually own things that are nice (a computer, a camera, a pair of shoes) and I have other nice things (dignity, self respect), it might be then acceptable to move and gain more nice things (new friends, a better job, recognition, a boyfriend).

I would love a boyfriend. I would love to just have someone to talk to who likes me. No one likes me, I shan't pity over it, my understanding is a comfort anyway, but I would love to have someone here, unaffected by class issues and pop culture, someone none threatening and who only looks my way, who drives up or ambles by and in and tells me 'Andrew its going to be OK you won't die, you're being over the top and I do care and I do want you'.

I'm going to move to London with Greg. Greg is an expert with finding men (keeping them is the challenge). We will share an apartment, nice, modern, looking over the river. Some weekends I will go to Paris. I will take photos all the time and be obsessed with all my interests. I will write that story, and it will be published. They will turn it into a gritty film, and that bit of my life will be immortalised forever.

write a note to self that i love you and no one else

One of the symptoms of feeling ill like this is suffering from a temperature that in the night can make you have freaky and somewhat terrifying nightmares that you think are real. I just awoke (or was already awake) from a dream where my whole existence was fake, and that the government were waiting for me, my house was a set, my parents weren't real and I was all on and in on some huge government conspiracy theory. So real it was, I ended up having to wake my mom up, crying.

Yesterday I had a funny dream, and enjoyed relaying it to Greg and my mother. The thing about this dream and others I've had are they are simply derived from the sound of my mom in the morning using her new running machine downstairs in the room below my room. So a lot of my dreams in the morning begin or are centralled around that sound and my subconcious mind interprets the sound for my dream differently each time, sometimes simply there is a running machine or a piece of gym equipment in my dream.

 I really liked Greg's other friends

 one of my favourite things to do sometimes is spot the Greg in the background of a mad 3 in 1 photo op.

Yesterday's dream was funny - it starts out with me in the dining room of my old house on Chestnut, but from a really long time ago, as the furniture was from when I was little. I am using a cross trainer and my friend Greg, is sitting at the table. We are both exercising and it looks like I have been making a collage or something crafty. Outside it appears an American academy of some kind are playing cricket. There are lots of nice sexy Americans outside, like some kind of American Eagle advert, and some silver foxes there too. Greg sneaks out of the window, and after being bored on the cross trainer I go outside to find him. When I find him, he is engaged in an intricate orgy with some of these Americans and one of the silver foxes inside the hedge that surrounds the house. I tell him to come down and play with me, and the Americans beg me to let him stay. I argue playfully and ask them who allowed them to play cricket in the front garden of my house anyway to which I am informed my father did. I then ask them what right they had to have a gay orgy in my hedge, and they feel remorseful. Greg reluctantly comes down out of the hedge, and I suddenly announce that 'im gonna tell mom!' He then playfully chases me round the garden, trying to tickle me whilst I laugh like a hyena. Back in the house we head back to the dining room and pass my mom who, in a short moment when Greg isn't there, whispers 'where was he?' and I laughing reply 'where do you think?!' just as he comes back into view. I then wake up, to the sound of my mom on her running machine downstairs.

What is the significance of this dream? Or more importantly what does it mean?

Whether I want him to be or not, Greg is on my mind a lot. A lot of people, usually misinformed or weird sheltered gay types can't understand why a gay guy can have a platonic yet affectionate friendship with another gay guy. I have never been sexually involved with Greg and no feelings of romance have ever been exchanged but beyond that everything else has been- from being forced to kiss him for jokes at a bar to frolicking naked together on a beach. In fact there were times where we enjoyed disturbing friends with our acts of dual nudity. But I guess we've been through a lot.

Everybody is going through something. I may think I have it bad, and it's easy to compare. You can do it with anyone. I could put myself on a scale of how bad things are, to the next person and the next, but it leaves you feeling either like you are doomed or that you have no right to complain.

I believe that Greg has had, probably like me, one of the worst years of his life, a bizarre experience in the form of a relationship that like no other was formed of a base of all things not real. I can relate to the fact that you are sucked into a situation you get used to but that is not right. And it's all over, his whole life is different and in a matter of a day, it's flipped upside down. It's hard to maybe see it like this at first, Greg is proud, he doesn't allow you to see that side of him that suffers but he does suffer, and it's up to me to recognise the signs and to not mix them up with what others might perceive as 'petty behavior'. Greg I think to others is probably easy to dismiss. But they just don't read him properly. He doesn't get the chance.

I would be lying if I felt sad for him. I couldn't be happier. I hated Enzo and Enzo hated me. I was nothing but nice to him like I am from the start to any of my friends partners but he was awful to me and to me represented everything wrong with the westernised modern day mind of the selfish consumer. He made me sick, so I was glad that it was over for them. However, like me, Greg now exists in a place between routine and aimlessness and is learning new and harder lessons with each mistake. It's almost like in two totally different ways, our lives both simultaneously blew up in our faces, right at the same time.

school uniform party, I went to a posh Catholic school, as you can tell

by my rosary beads. Greg went to a finishing school ;)

An Honest Update for those who Care?

Dear Readers of which there aren't any who admit they are,

I have decided to come back to Master Bracknell, as I believe it's the only place where I can write about my life! I feel I can blabber on and on as much as I like and be brutally honest, and I really love blogger, and I really miss its down to earth no nonsense... I could go on... but I just googled myself for no apparent reason and the only thing that comes up is a picture of myself posted on this blog somewhere a few years ago. Looking back now, the photo is pretentious and stupid, and it seems ridiculous that THAT photo comes up as the only proof of my online existence. Anyway, got reading old blog, fell back in love, realised the feel, the style, the comedy, the creativity, the longevity of it all... and feel like it's an old friend, and that I have so much to tell that friend, and that's what I am doing, here I am telling you what's been up (and down) and that after a few mistakes, I will carry on writing here.

Firstly, I want to say, that one of the reasons why I am returning is because I've not always been so down on here, and it's instantly given me a lift that I can write here. I am turning a corner of a horrible part of this year as we speak. My posts on here aren't always as harrowing as my life has been at the time. I feel almost compelled to write comically about some of the worst experiences of my life lately. In fact, it makes it easier to address. But, I recently re read Estelle's old LiveJournal, and got in touch with Estelle, we spoke on the phone, and she just seemed completely indifferent to me, distracted, uninterested. Completely. When I mentioned the comfort and laughs I get from reading her old LiveJournal she just seemed annoyed, and when the offer to write to her in Abu Dhabi was made, she was actually quite rude to me. So I feel the nostalgia of her LiveJournal is now no longer a contender to my wonderful journal, my Master Bracknell.

Secondly, and I realise this now as the words flow out, I have the flair here, and the positivity. I feel inspired to carry on and write. I feel maybe it's because I am not entirely sure who reads it on blogger, where as on tumblr and LiveJournal and WordPress you have people following you and hash-tags are important and networking seems to be the only reason, it seems that I was reading a lot more of other people's depressing lives, and didn't know whether I wanted to or not, and whether the recognition I was seeking was genuine or not, whether I was just being influenced by social media and blogging for the reason of being known. Maybe also that the screen is so WHITE on blogger makes me feel happier. I actually NEED to write, always, and made a couple of blogs between the time of my last entry and now, but I addressed my life in a way which was awful, I was writing shit poetry which I never do and I was basically 'coming clean' in a way that one does at a narcotics meeting. There was no forward movement in the writing, and if i didn't want to read what I'd just written then no one else would too, would they?

Thirdly, I think its been enough time now to carry on writing here without certain people reading up on my life. I don't want to know if they are, so if you know that I no longer speak to you and you are reading this now, then I do not want to know. Do not contact me, let me have this please, it means a lot, but I want to write and wont feel like writing here if you comment or make it known that you are still about. It bothers me, and after what Ive been through lately, I think I deserve at least this.

The last time I wrote was 2nd July, and I was at the false start point of a period of time I refer to as my 'recovery'...

After what can only be described as one of the most damaging and bizarre experiences of my life, I lingered at my parents, no job and no place of my own, and there's, a small flat in a hell town called Dickens Heath, was somewhere none of us wanted to be. Unhappy with their mistake, me unhappy with the cunts upstairs, we sold the flat and started renting a small house in a place called  Oakenshaw near Redditch. It's a vast improvement, and  my parents are already on the verge of buying a new house in the nicer area known as Callows Hill. I am no longer planning on moving away, until I am healthy, happy and can afford it. The last 8 weeks or so have been extremely fun and yet been extremely damaging. I have not recovered like I intended to, and the damaging effects of my experience with Steve effected me psychologically more than I thought. Certain friends became cause for my concern, with their own problems, yet I felt impotent because I couldn't be there for all of them, despite my own problems becoming more and more destructive.

During this summer I spent a lot of time bonding with Wiggy, and we went to Brighton, London and numerous nights out in Birmingham. I however let my drug problem escalate to one of it's highest points, and so I guess that with a certain amount of good comes a certain amount of bad, and the bad really did hit me hard, physically and mentally.

The bad involves a lot of rejection or feelings of rejection, and a lot of things from the past this year haunt me still, like the caring for Steve experience and the aspect of dying. Then there was the betrayals at work still poisoning my memory, losing friends from past and present, and recently, an incredibly violent sexual encounter I suffered which nearly put me in hospital and thus highlighted the ironic situation of my dysfunctional sex life. My drug problem hit a all time low when 2 weeks ago I literally passed out from not being able to function any further, due to endless days of not sleeping, drinking or eating. I lost over a stone in weight, and my hair started to fall out. Whole days, weeks have zipped by like minutes, and I've watched myself deteriorate outside and in.

Being back at home is a forced rehab. I know when things get bad because I tell my mother everything. It's going to be hard to say no to Wiggy a lot more but lack of funds and hopefully a job responsibility soon will make it easier to resist social pressures and temptations. I've been incredibly ill, due to the abuse I put myself through, the wandering around in London in the rain for 4 hours, the drugs, the dehydration. I haven't left the house much and have been in bed a lot. I am regaining my strength, and vow not to touch Mcat, or MDMA or cocaine again. I don't want to ever experience a hangover again, but I do want to smoke weed. Cigarettes are so-so. For someone with such a hunger for drugs, who can go past most people's limits, it's surprising how cigarettes seem so take or leave to me. 

My brother is back from Hong Kong, but is going back on the weekend, I got to see him a bit, and he seemed keen to help me in the research of writing screenplays, as I think this is the thing (along with acting) that is predicted as my surprising hobby that pays off at the end of the year. Something filmy anyway. I don't want to overwhelm this post now any further, so will update during the week with future plans, and other stories from the past 8 weeks, that involve an American, meeting a new yet dysfunctional guy, Greg, emotional traumas and revelations of the future!