Once in Royal David's Ghetto

Work's going well. Bad luck hasn't destroyed the urge to work. In fact, it's making me want to work more. I get a lot from it. I suppose the only thing at the moment is that I am at that typical stage where you start to carve a little bit of dignity and confidence for yourself but then suddenly something happens and you're back being made to feel like the lowest ranking of the group. I suppose I should concentrate harder on keeping myself to myself. I'm impressing the people that matter, and I'm really nice to everyone.

However, I honestly don't feel a thing about Christmas. For the past 4 years, Christmas has been a joke. It's not brought me peace or feelings of happiness. It's a constant reminder of how poor I am. It highlights other people's suffering and sadness. I just think of how lonely some people are around this time, and how many people kill themselves. It's really depressing thing considering it's all based around the birth of a person who none of us know was real or not, in a religion that no one I really know are part of.

I wanted to embrace Christmas this year. I thought I could be won back by it. I wanted to theme each post this December with something Christmassy. And I think I will, in vain maybe, but I can't guarantee that I will be with you having a holly jolly wank of a time. Sorry.

I am looking forward to the staff Christmas party, because I want to see what everyone is like in a social context, and I want to socialise with new people, and I really want a drink and a cigarette, it's been that long.

He of Little Faith

With such a bad start to December I briefly felt like Christmas was pointless to celebrate. However, there is a middle ground for me, as there's no getting away from it. Somewhere inside me is the urge to go to church at Christmas, but that's another story. However I shan't deny that I'd like presents, and working where I do, and being surrounded by wanting and consuming, and the fact that I no longer want to be like Mother Theresa anymore, here is a list of things that I would like to WANT:

Humbugs - because they are tasty
Cigarettes - Gitanes to be precise
Spliff - every Christmas I'd have one between 2003 - 2008, straight after Christmas dinner
Whiskey - my favourite drink goes nicely with spliff
Lavender Oil - Useful
Cartridge Pen - because my other one broke
Notebook - preferably with tropical cover
Dream Cream - my favourite cream
Large leather suitcase - to store my memories in one place
Rose Water - to help my skin
Chanel No5 - Parisienne Chic
A comb - whatever happened to my old one ...?
A good book to read
Candle
Bathbomb
Sexy Underwear

Desperate XXXmas: Why internet dating is doomed

At Christmas, us single guys probably get a little more desperate. There is something about the festive season that makes you think you should be waking up next to someone in a plush city centre apartment you both share, while your chic and modern Christmas tree twinkles as you make egg nog latte's to drink in bed. Instead, I wake up surrounded by snotty tissues dowsed in Olbas Oil, next to no one, in my parents house, with a fat lip and a waning ego.

The other day I realised that the nearer to Christmas we get, the lower our standards become. But it's stupid because in less than 4 weeks you aren't going to meet someone, make a settlement and then be wearing matching Christmas jumpers on Christmas Day drinking frothy Christmas hot chocolate next to each other soaking up each other's Christmasness. No? Well, you might be. Gays go through the motions like no other, and everything happens at the speed of light. By New Years Eve you'll be divorced. By Chinese New Year you'll be at the Nightingale, waiting for your rebound, drinking cheap fizzle piss from a bottle with a straw.

The irony though, Christmas for an adult who has lost the magic (and let's face it, if you're single, gay and work in retail, the magic is hard to hold on to), and as much as you understand the consequences and the irrationality, you still go ahead anyway, making plans in your head, hoping to get off with the guy from the other department at the Christmas party or like me, hoping in vain to meet someone in A&E. When did I become this? Oh wait... I've always been like this. Just very much in denial "I refuse to be tied down to anybody!". Yeah right.

The reality is this: the guy at the Christmas party will have a boyfriend. You will go home alone, or worse, go on to a sleazy bar in town where you will drown the rest of mid winter away in a rummy wave of despair, and go home with a guy who's old enough to be your dad grandad.

So, in spite of all that, you still hold onto the hope that is Internet Dating. Internet Dating is a strange thing for me, and it's a permanent fixture in a lot of gay guy's lives, to some it's always been there, they still have the same profile from 12 years ago, I know this because each time periodically I make a new one, they message me. Or like me, it's a certain bane of your life, providing you with enough drama to at least have something to fantasise about before you fall asleep at night, but never amounts to anything in real life.

I think, for me anyway, Internet dating is doomed. I was at work, and one thing I do when I am bored of repetitive folding and 'helloing' is daydreaming about an imaginary boyfriend or a relationship. However, what daydream starts with an online message 'wanna meet for a coffee sometime'? Is this what I have been reduced to? Having to adjust my daydreams to an online agenda? Because in my fantasy, I meet a guy in public, face to face, at a party, anywhere, and I go home thinking about the encounter, it stays on your mind. It's something to think about.

When you're online, it's already mapped out for you. You're already expecting the worst. And with how Christmas goes for me each year now, I already know that clicking reply won't get me anywhere good. But I'll still do it because I already know how it ends.

Memory Music Video - Christmas Special (i): Bjork 'Bachelorette' (1997)

The song and video for 'Bachelorette', and the album it's from, 'Homogenic', conjures up memories of Christmas during a time where I was awkwardly changing from a sissy prepubescent to a sissy pubescent. My involvement with Christmas, and the memories I was creating, often associated with music, stem from around this time. The year before was my obsession with The Nightmare Before Christmas and from that my obsession with the American way of celebrating 'the holidays'. Like an adult, I wasn't ashamed to be into music anymore, and asked for 'Homogenic' for Christmas. 'Bachelorette' was the single released around this time, and out of frustration and impatience on Christmas Eve, went into Sutton and bought the single with all the remixes. I think I was about 13 years old.

I didn't mature like a normal teenager, the typical things teenagers do I did when I was much older, and might explain why I don't ever feel how old I actually am, which is frustrating for me. While everyone was being typically 13, I wanted to 'make house' and Christmas was the perfect opportunity to get involved and feel grown up, and my tired over worked parents were more than happy to let me decorate and make cookies and cakes.

Bjork was my favourite singer around this time. In fact, she was probably the only music I listened to. Those days, to listen to your favourite song or to see your favourite music video, you had to wait hours listening to the radio or watching MTV, which I often did, and it was the arrival and anticipation of Homogenic where I probably experienced my first real excitement to a new release, having starting to understand her as an artist. You see, I was quite stubborn with music when I was at school, and it was NOT cool to like Bjork, I discovered, after proudly telling people I liked her. I learnt to keep it to myself, but there was no way in hell I was going to join the crowd and listen to the fucking Spice Girls.

On Christmas morning I opened Homogenic and listened to it all day. I made gingerbread men, making sure it was photographed with a camera I got too, taking over the kitchen and being homely. It was weird looking back but it was so exciting to me then. The music was the soundtrack, I think I played it in the kitchen, so the album is Christmas all over, but Bachelorette, and the video, directed by Michel Gondry, how lit up it was, theatrical, with Bjork and her sparkly dress and blue denim jeans combo, will always remind me of the cozy build up to Christmas, and the grey sky outside on Christmas Eve, as I let myself slowly burn against a radiator looking out the window in anxious contentment.

you'll be known as the boy who's always dancing

A weekend wasted on kindness, cars go by, in the city there's always people. A famous diver 'comes out'. A role model finalised, I think we now have one to be proud of (?). I look for them. Am I always going to be like this? Can I choose to not be walked on, pushed over, or is it part of who I am? I don't want to walk like a victim. I want to be someone you DON'T mess with.

I used to think I had beaten it, but I'm just as frightened now as I've always been. And I've never felt uglier. Fears flood back from far ago, like sitting in biology trying to remain dignified and cool while Martyn Carter kept knocking my glasses off my face. Laughing off humiliation is an art that is not nice to look at, and worse to create. Standing up for yourself can be hard on your face.

This December I want to try and write my blog every day, but with the theme of Christmas and being festive entwined in each post, no matter how irrelevant. It isn't cookies and egg nog and it isn't carols and candles. I understood last night once again the pointlessness of a time of year you have to really force yourself to enjoy when you see it for what it is. Charity starts at home, and it ends as blood spit in my mouth.

I won't give up on myself because that's stupid but I may give up on Christmas. I don't feel like it's something I will be able to notice. I don't give a shit. I really don't. I hate all this family shit. But I will remember stuff, and I will use it to help myself. It's around this time of year where I wish for summer, and I realise how good I look with a tan, and the happiest place to be ever is a tropical beach with your imaginary boyfriend.

in Love

I'm feeling really down, so here are some animals that are in love:

the seal of approval

two turtle doves...

polar opposites attract

monkey wrench

what a pair of lookers

what a pair of lookers (ii)

ear nibbles

beaky licks

On the first day of Christmas

I was going to write about Christmas, or Advent, or at least it being December, but I am not in the mood because after work today I was assaulted by a homeless guy for a reason so ridiculous I can't even imagine.

I may be angry, and what I am about to say might be just because, but at the moment, I will tarnish each and every homeless scum bag with the same brush. I no longer will give them anything, and never will ever waste my time, money or worry on them. I feel okay in now saying that although I may earn squat helping people with too much money, any amount of money if you're homeless is worthy, and that you should be grateful, and that if it isn't adequate, then maybe you should actually get a fucking job. I was punched in the fucking face, for not giving enough money to a down and out cunt who sits outside Sainsburys on Navigation Street.

There are times, like now, where I really struggle to hold it together. When will I be given a chance, I wonder. People are putting their Christmas trees up and are basically having a good time with their loved ones. I'm fed up of expecting this kind of luck all the time. I deserve a break, it can't be like this forever, can it?

your standing on my neck

wow

On Netflix you can watch Daria. I was obsessed with Daria growing up. She was a spin off character from Beavis and Butthead, sometimes cropped up in the comic books too that I used to read (her nickname to Beavis and Butthead being 'Diarrhoea'). Daria is the epitome of a dragged out Generation X wannabe, a Beavis and Butthead for girls perhaps. To me it was what MTV was all about in the 90s, and reminds me of the time when we first got the internet. We were with AOL. My first email was ezkimo@aol.com and I saved the clip art icons from MTV's Daria page on their website. You could even listen to 'Daria Radio' which basically played American grungey garage rock and 'riot grrrl' shit, which I bought into at the time. In fact, this was just before my 70s phase, but I still hold them dear, and have no regrets.

Wish this was real ...

Anyway, Daria was all about being a teenager and for some reason being a teenager seemed really American to me growing up, probably adding to my awkwardness even further, and I was MAD about America. I was jealous we didn't celebrate Halloween like they did and that Thanksgiving was meaningless to us. I wanted to carry my books to school and not in a bag and not wear uniform and I wanted to hang out with friends and go to parties, and live in a big house, and come back from the supermarket with those brown paper bags with no handles, play American football and everything be perfect. The fact that my teenage life was like if someone told Mike Leigh to direct 'Grange Hill' for 5 years was very depressing to me, and very English, in a very bad way.

I blame this bag for a number of obsessions

I saw Mark yesterday which was really good because I haven't seen him since the hot sexy summer and it just feels weird when the next time you see a friend it's a completely different season. We both realised that we haven't seen Spitroast since January, which is shameful. We drank beers in our favourite old haunts and went shopping, and stayed at my brothers and watched Daria until we passed out, coughing in our sleep and waiting for our headaches to pass. We ate a very delicious pie for dinner.

friends, arsehole, beers, tits. we could be straight

We never managed to discuss it but we thought one day we could probably combine creative forces and come up with an art and fashion and photography collective for our ideas. We are both at the same time becoming more interested in gay rights, something I was quite ignorant about before. Inspired by the recent injustices and new laws in Russia, and the shocking pictures that went around, I think we both want to explore the history of gay rights. I want to be able to perhaps involve and develop some ideas from what I learn into my photography and into my writing, taking influence from such things as the Stonewall Riots to the murder of Matthew Shepherd. 

 please watch if you're not familiar with the story of Matthew Shepherd.

A lot of art is created with these (political) themes in mind, but I don't want to become an activist, I just want to educate myself on something that in the past I am now embarrassed about being quite openly ignorant to.

From Russia, with Love Tilda

Thanksgiving is today. I have spent the day with my mother. We went Christmas shopping and went to the Becketts Farm Shop, where I had a tasty cooked breakfast. Now I am relaxing at home and have a Lush bath to look forward to. I filled in my USA map. I am tired. I keep having dreams that my ex boyfriends are all going out with each other and I'm pretending I'm OK with that like I would in real life, and last night I dreamt I dropped my phone in a bucket of water. Tonight for dinner I am having steak.

Stereotyping at it's most geographically accurate

i'm an ocean and you're salt air

Tonight, while I was taking advantage of a fatherless living room (he's in Cyprus for some reason) my mum looked up from her maxi-pad with news that Nigella Lawson was a coke head, dubbed 'Higella' (clever that) and that she was 'really disappointed, because I really like her'. Has my mother not learnt anything from me at all? I quickly informed her that she also really likes me, that cocaine does go up your nose but it in no way defines how good you are as a person. I'm sick of trying to keep my mother in the know with the right attitude towards drugs, and harshly reminded her each time she says things like that, she is showing her age. Drug abuse can effect anyone, and when it escalates, like it has done with me in the past, it's usually for very understandable reasons. Nigella Lawson was clearly in an unhappy relationship and probably turned to drugs to escape from an abusive, money fuelled marriage. Money does NOT buy happiness. She exceeded with food; I suppose drugs were a welcome release.

Not a lot has happened to me since last weekend. I've been working. I've realised the pointlessness of personal list-making for things, now that looking at something from a simplified perspective is so much easier. I am taking care of my skin with Lush, Creme de la Mer and Kiehls. I am taking my health kick seriously. Today I ate an entire apple. I've been feeling like shit all week, so I am glad to really be genuinely taking my health seriously. There's a guy at work who I think I might fancy, I haven't really got a good look at him, and it might just because I caught him looking at me, he seems a bit camp and there's an element to him that for some reason makes me think he might be an absolute cunt but maybe that's because he reminds me of a cunt I once worked with in London called Karl who I once thought I liked but was a complete cunt to me. We'll have to see. That's all you're allowed to know for now anyway.

now I'm just somebody that I used to know

If you know me then you will of recently heard of my good news and the thoroughly enjoyable (but final) rejoicing I took part in. However, that is as far as I will go in discussing said news as I am very protective over it and extremely cautious now, paranoid, scarred for life by unfathomable betrayal.

Ordinarily, and like I did at the weekend (and not just because), I'd be out every weekend, sometimes in the week, turning up days later reeking of whisky and plant food. I remember on Sunday, in Moseley the air was colder, made me think I could get away with looking like I was on my way to a meeting or church. I realised I may of spent the majority of the year looking like I was constantly on a walk of shame. Mostly I was. I walked with shame, it became a permanent fixture.

I'm one step towards the main goal, but it's the first step, maybe the second when you consider I've pretty much conquered drug addiction.

I realised today that the next steps have to be small and rational and careful, and I think those next things to consider are health and money, while I munched down sugar and chocolate and spent my day dehydrating myself, looking at my sagging body in the harsh reflection of a green bathroom in the evening, I know it's now a priority. And when I do finally get money, it's not being spent.

I like feeling normal. Nothing is normal, and not everything is fixed just yet. Balance and rationality, dedication and patience are all things I am putting into practice, along with being a nice person to people. I hated knowing that people knew who I was and what I got up to. I hated knowing that when people saw me they instantly thought 'druggy'. That won't happen anymore. I've jumped back on, and I am eager to be taken in, knowing there is a master plan and knowing that I can, somewhere deep inside of me, retain that person I thought I only knew when I was in some kind of mental psychotropic nightmare.

5 Different Types of Gay Couple that Make me Sick

All couple examples listed are defined by actual couples I somehow (?) know. 

Greedy Fat Snobby Cunt Couple

They've been together for a while. They're usually in their 40s and my opinion used to be that they should know better then. But I learnt my lesson that age doesn't equal wisdom. So... they are old enough to know better, but they are totally OBNOXIOUS. They are like the gay equivalent of Matilda Wormwood's parents from (you guessed it), Matilda. Good old Roald Dahl. Anyway, yeah, they are awful. The 'woman' guy, clearly the (lazy) bottom of the relationship, is always fatter and taller, shiny and loud. The kind of person who after drunkenly drowning himself in a name dropped bottle of nondescript over-priced fizz, dons a feather boa and 'performs' famous show tunes to a room of other obnoxious 40 something guys while the other guy, the 'man', bravos him on. They both are ridiculous in self maintenance, barely left with any eyebrows, and they both secretly hate each other. They both spend ridiculous amounts of money on stuff yet possess literally no taste. They are always in terrible debt however, the dirtiest secret to their life together (dirtier than the weird gas-mask sex and anonymous threesomes in Marbella).. But they simply can't live without their Clarins and Champagne, darling. Oh fuck off. How do you even have sex with each other?


Emo Fags

I hate these because I used to have to work with a guy who was basically going out with his twin brother, and spending a working day with just one of them nearly drove me to spontaneous suicide but whatever. These emo fags are a bit dated now but let me assure you, they still exist. They walk among us, strangely, as they never go out. They hang out with each other constantly, because the reason they're together and have exact matching hair, clothes and 'personalities' is because they are too socially inept and physically freakish looking to develop what their real personality and life should of been. They spend their time playing computer games and role playing with swords in forests and shit. They piss me off because together you get a double dose of hostile smugness, but let them have that, they need to reassure themselves that at least they aren't that much of a sad twat on their own. Sadly for me, I'm inflicted with two sad twats at once, which is ironic, because when they are alone together, it must be hard to tell whether they are together or just leaning on a mirror.


Just Plain Weird

They kiss a lot in public, they are literally in a bubble with each other, and always try to out-weird each other in front of you. They are extremely awkward, you want to slap them. They are actually really boring people, and quite like the emo fags I mentioned, but instead of computer games, they fly kites or collect gherkins or something stupid. They smell off, and seem completely and happily oblivious to anyone on the outside of their world. Weirdly, I see this type of couple at parties, often wondering how they even know the people there, let alone managed to be invited. These couples also always shock me with the longevity of their relationship, as usually they already look really young. They talk to you in a distant kind of lazy way that implies that they simply don't need to get to know you. Fuck off.


PR/Media types

You don't actually know them, but you do because they broadcast their joint lame sense of humour that always involves tagging each other and hash tagging each other constantly. They refer to each other as 'other halves' but don't seem to look right together. They drink gin, live in town, are ignorant arrogant fucks who drink too much and become even more obnoxious when drunk, wear terrible t-shirts and jeans from Topman and Hollister. They barely speak to each other on a night out, but you know they have freaky dildo sex with each other, and they never last that long together, but when they start to, their dickhead friends publicly congratulate them on Facebook and throw them parties you can go to so you can be ignored. 


Boring International Photo Couple

They take a lot of photos because they travel round with each other everywhere, and they take photo's of the wing of the planes they fly on. They want the world to know that together, they are travelling around and are international, darling, one is different to the other, and we are IN THE AIR. They are almost kin to the PR/Media types. They have greedy tendencies and are often very smug and arrogant together as a duo, yet can be OK caught alone. They spend their time believing that jet setting around and constantly being on holiday transcends them above people who 'don't travel'. They photograph their food a lot and have no friends.

HOLD YOUR WIG

Now that I'm working, I can hold my wig and get back to writing again (and maybe a little partying).

London here we come...

Radar Receiver

The more I eat, the hungrier I get, the bigger my appetite becomes, the sexier I feel. I'm not trying to get fat. The whole food thing is a good start. I have a body type goal now, and I want to see if I can achieve it. The body type I'll talk about later, but for now I am proactive, even just to see if I can do it.

My mood has lifted and my mind has cleared. Everything seems to make automatic sense. I understand that there needs to be a balance of control and enjoyment in my life. One can't be applied without the other. I guess I got fed up of being frustrated with myself all the time.

 

good

bad

I can't be bothered with writing properly, so here's a list of everything I've been up to, in no particular order:

• ate loads of sweets
• went to Chipping Campden
• Went on a date with a 44 year old. Was unimpressed.
• Had a juicy steak
• Saw Greggers with Wiggy and Brother
• Carved my pumpkin
• Went on 2nd date with 44 year old. Was repulsed. Informed him that I will not be pursuing anything further with him. 
• Visited my friend in Moseley
• Went to a party with my friends
• Had a Halloween feast with Hayley
• Saw Captain Philips at cinema
• Went to the Nightingale
• Met what I consider Wiggy's future husband and the most nicest, attractive hunk ever. 
• Watched Teen Witch. Was really great.

 

This is the 3rd time I chose to 'go' as a woman:

2013

2012

2006

why you think I let you get away with all the things you say to me

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

you're the one who grows distant

druqgs

When I look back on my life, I blame drugs for the way it's never really worked out. Not always entirely, but for the most part, I do. I wonder then, why I still do them, after how much I've had robbed from me because of them, and as they slowly start to take from me the only thing I have left (my looks) I contemplate of what importance they ever were to me. Or what purpose I thought they served, and what they actually were serving. I find that I'm a coward for not facing up to life's problems, and for not being able to accept myself, and an idiot for letting something as simple as euphoria escalate into a life sentence.

This week I have been called a number of things, mainly anorexic, but all reference to my weight and how tired I look. Ming told me I looked like a tired, over worked dad in my new Facebook photo.

I feel fed up hopelessly trying to find work, paranoid that they all know who I am, or someone is working against me. I am a constant mistake being made.

I also feel fed up of having to cancel and decline things, especially around Halloween. I can't go to Fran's Halloween party, I can't go anywhere. I can't do anything. I can't even go downstairs to relax without my mom getting her fucking iPad out to talk jobs and to nag about 'what to do tomorrow'.

So am thinking to stop but really stop, shut away for a while, but it's that reclusion that scares me, I am not making a point with that, I can't keep going on like this. If nothing ever goes right for me, and this year is a prime example, then have drugs ever helped? Not really. Then why keep doing them?

Role Models: Bill Murray

Contentment. What contentment?

 

 I feed you every morning and ask so little

 But you belittle all the work that I do

When you take that walk without permission

 I'm not defensive, I'm just saying this cause I love you

 You know I hate it when your friends are in the pool

 Old money stinks, send those faggots back to Forest Hill

 Contentment? What contentment? I am bald and impotent

 Is that what it's about? 

Oh honey, honey, shut your mouth

smoke gets in your eyes