Anyone for Pingpong?

To those who know me well, it won’t exactly be news to read this. They’ve heard it all before. They even love me for it. However, for those who don’t, here it is.

      
I, Clare, don’t fit in. Anywhere. Never have done; never will. The only place where I feel remotely at home is with other people equally as estranged as myself. Even then as some kind of group gradually forms, I never fully feel part of it.

     
Welcome to the human race, I hear you cry.

I’ve tried on various identities throughout my life (as though they were ill-fitting raincoats or top hats). And I spent the first twenty years of my life feeling lost as to what my identity might even be. It was only when I became Buddhist that I began ‘exploring’ different sides of myself. I ditched my long black skirts for sky-blue dresses stitched with swirls (gazing at them helped me slip into blissful, meditative states). I went on the road with like-minded people. I experimented with ‘open relationships’ (placing values of ‘freedom’ and ‘letting go’ above the humiliation of having to smile at parties like someone had just stuck a fork up my arse as my beloved seduced some hippy dippy chick with perfect tits.) I saw Buddha nature in everyone. Made 'spiritual' friends. 'Found’ myself. Lost myself. Found myself again. Then I realised - I still don’t sodding fit in.

Within the Buddhist movement in which I was involved, I was encouraged to give up my name and my personal vision, supplanting it with another, greater one. I could be an individual as long as I took on board someone else's interpretation of Buddha's teachings and swore my faith on it. A big part of me wanted this. But I was still, on some level, doing as I was told. And I was doing it alongside people who at best possessed grace and compassion as well as insight into their own and others' lives, but who at worst were nutters you wouldn’t have given the time of day to had they not been wearing a skull mala or able to harmonise brilliantly on a Vajrasattva mantra.

     
So I left and became ‘an artist’ - a writer. Maker of music. Poetry scribe. I kept going with the fucked up relationships but moved into a flat on my own where I no longer had to put up with people’s rows about veggie sausages or Tantra or why one person had 'inadvertently’ shagged the other's boyfriend. I shut my door - the world and Enlightenment could fuck right off.

     
It’s a shame about loneliness. And it’s a shame that being ‘an artist’ brings with it all the same bullshit everything else does. I replaced a genuinely deluded idea that I could escape the pain of being alive by getting Enlightened with a genuinely deluded idea that I could transform that pain into great stories and poems that would bring me a purpose in life (and an income). That I’d fit in somewhere – into the world of books and writers. Hey, I’d make songs and maybe I’d become some kind of pop diva (even if my songs were about sticking ex-friends in freezers, burning down cities ,and ‘deep-throating’ large mulberries). I’d find my place – not in renouncing the world, but in reclaiming it for my very, freaky own.

     
Oh dear. I spent five years filing my poems away, writing a blog read by approximately 3.5 people and performing, ooh, at least twice. So then I decided on something else. This time I wasn’t going to shy away from the very thing I’d kept at least half-shoved in the closet most of my life.

I've cut my hair again. Happily (and somewhat unusually) for me, I am experiencing absolutely no post-haircut regret. In fact tonight I'm loving it and am, as a result, rather smug.

I'm also thinking again about what is going on underneath all this compulsive haircutting. I seem to be trimming and pruning almost weekly, my hairdo creeping shorter and shorter, its style wavering about, curling and creeping behind my ears, seeking its shape. With each snip of my scissors, I feel like I'm desperately trying to match how I look on the outside with how I feel on the inside.

My appearance has always been massively significant in my world. I have hidden behind femininity and then I have slung it out in fury. I have utilised its powers and I have been crippled by its limitations. I have blundered around confused as to what this thing called womanhood even is. My clothes and hair have always played a vital part in that, from a childhood of boys' clothes and loathsome haircuts to long hair and a precocious, feminine sexuality at thirteen, when I was a loner indie-kid in my uniform of biker boots, black eyeliner and short skirts. By 15, I was a raver, popping pills and returning happily to baggy trainers and jeans and sexless Mambo T-shirts.

I don't think I really felt remotely female until my early twenties. I think I could pretend like I was one, and there was some sort of inkling in that direction, but on the inside, it just didn't match up. I would scour the magazines for pretty girls who felt like a different species from me.

Also, I realise I can also actually recount the entire last ten years purely in terms of what shade of colour I was obsessed with at the time. At 23, I discovered Buddhism, festivals, hippies, meditation, chakras and Reiki. I moved to Brighton where the sun always seemed to be shining and felt like I had escaped from a lifeless, colourless, dowdy, grey cell. During this period I became obsessed with turquoise, silver and baby pink. I painted my entire bedroom bright turquoise and hung glitter balls from every part of the ceiling that reflected the sunlight a thousand times over. I made a large silvery glitterball shrine devoted to Vajrasattva, the Buddha of purification. He was my discoball Buddha. I wore little baby pink jumpers and sparkly blue dresses and I painted my nails silver. Sounds foul, I know, but I still think it was kind of kookily cool. I revelled in cosmic-girly chic, young and vibrant and a world away from how I'd felt for the previous 7 years, which was old; old and grey as the fucking mountains.



Then I started to get a bit of a feeling for some inner sexual power and my real passions and desires. I got into Mary Magdalene and Rilke and Patti Smith and became obsessed with dark purple. My bedroom became a dimly lit shrine with an abundance of Evolution shop netting, Edward Munch pictures and dyed blue roses. My next room was similar, but this time with little sculpture shrines of broken glass around it, a Garcia Lorca poem handwritten around the top of its walls and a huge purple swirling vortex I'd painted on one wall, six feet high. Then I broke up with my boyfriend and painted over the whole goddamn room in coconut and duck egg blue; light, grounded and non-intense colours. I got rid of the broken glass and the Lorca poem with the painful relationship. I was done with intensity.

When I moved into my present flat, the decor and all my clothes went green, right down to my purse. I became a lady, with a wide brimmed hat and a flat full of birdcages and spotty scarves and flowery teacups. I wore polka-dot flamenco skirts and neckties and my boobs even grew, so for the first time in my life I had a cleavage to show off. I liked my new life as a lady. It was kitsch and camp and over-the-top feminine. It suited my newfound curves and womanly figure. I dressed up in frills for festivals with my friend and we sold chocolate energy balls and gave out free spankings to the highest bidder.

I have a certain fondness for retro chic. The Twenties, Thirties, Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, I love them all (though I'm still not sure about the Eighties). I find it hard being a modern girl. And at present, I am finding it hard being a girl at all. I have largely eschewed the frocks and skirts, the busty tops. My flat is still a haven for birdcages, Venetian masks and flowery teacups, but the flamenco dresses are firmly at the back of the clothes rail. I've taken to wearing more boyish clothes, comfy jeans, shirts, caps, jackets and sometimes, even ties. I feel stronger somehow in these clothes, and less in need of something, even if I'm not sure what that something is. And I have cut my hair off for the first time in my life.

During a lot of this year, I felt like I just wanted to look and feel boyish. I felt constrained by my hips and my curves as much as I felt constrained by my still insistently alive desire for affirmation from men. I wanted to be free from all of it, perhaps a skinny, boob-less boy-girl. Perhaps I wanted to be free from gender altogether, from sexuality, so I didn't have to work out what it all meant and why it was felt complex. On the one hand I began to renew my interest in gender politics and on the other, I was falling for poetic images in Christianity and saints such as St Francis of Assisi.

Although to some people it may seem like a deep contradiction, to me it feels like maybe it was no coincidence that, as I started going to local Queer events where cross-dressing, sexual ambiguity and androgyny are the norm, I also began going to church and following the trail of saints such as St Clare, who defied religious convention by sneaking out of church down a secret passageway to join St Francis and others in a new, radical way of life, as she experienced a holy conversion. In the dark of that night they helped her cut off all her beautiful hair.

There are now days when I wake up and I want to look feminine and definably a woman. It feels good. So when I stood in front of my bathroom mirror tonight inspecting my new self-administered haircut, I suddenly realised why I liked it so much. There was, at last, the start of a synthesis. It was that same synthesis I've been seeking inside myself these last months.

It is a synthesis of different sides of myself, where one does not have to reject the other for its own survival. Where I can feel masculine and feminine, boy and girl, woman and man and all the shades in between; where those words mean everything and mean nothing at the same time. Where my desire is my own, and not something reflected back to me through the half-light of another's desire for me. Where my sexuality is not what my identity hinges on, and men (and women) do not hold the keys to my self-worth. Where I am hard and soft, potent and yielding, receptive and active. It's a place of the hunter and the hunted, the chaser and the chased (chaste), the doer and the doing, the done; the giver, the taker and the giving itself.

When I strip back the layers of conditioning, take off the years of habitual behaviour, the naked sight underneath is a disconcerting one.

The lady and her polka-dot skirts have left the building. There's a strange boy in her place, with very feminine charms and a gentle touch. She is soft as ever, but with a wilful eye. She is the figure in a photo, me at ten years old, pale blue jumper, jeans and Clarks brown shoes.

Last year my mother suffered a massive stroke that left her brain-damaged and unable to speak, eat or move. The strange thing is that I now find that I have almost the same haircut as when I was ten; just as my mother weaves her slow and painful way out of this world. I cut my first fringe earlier this year as she lay looking the other way, out of the window, in a half-trance. Her words, spoken to me regularly from the age of thirteen, have lain dormant in my mind until tonight, yet they were words that always kept me away from the scissors ...Don't ever cut your hair, never cut a fringe, always keep your hair long; such beautiful hair...

Whatever it is I've lost in that beautiful hair as I chop and I snip, is worth it for what I gain, simply from its absence. It's been a lifetime of seeking myself, losing myself, creating identities and shedding skins. The clock ticks, the sea of life surges on, personality unravels to reveal itself in more brilliant colours than ever. The final bed is made; the sheet turned over. The mirror reflects the light shining on it. A bird takes its final breath. I am alone. The bathroom is empty except for one reflection; a face looking back at me. It is nothing I have ever seen before.

Constanza and The Nun

Ever since watching a programme about it last Friday, I can't stop thinking about Gianlorenzo Bernini and his sculpture The Ecstasy Of St Theresa. I feel haunted. In the most transient moments - sipping a cup of tea, throwing a bag over my shoulder to go out the door, turning over in my bed in the early morning, slicing potatoes on my plate, I see the image of St Theresa's enraptured face, turned upwards, her mouth open, the fine point of an arrow entering her, a spray of golden light behind, her robe in swathes around her like liquid sunshine.

It is almost a cliche now to talk of the greatest art as being created by the most messed up people. And true, there is much powerful art that is, and has, been created by men and women where neither mental illness nor egomania is the driving force. But equally as true, genius springs from what is incomplete, flawed, sordid, neurotic, stupid, disparate and ugly. From the gutters of despair, in the midst of crashing disillusion, loss, sorrow, hatred and violence (I wonder if life itself is only as beautiful as its own despair, only as pure as its worst filth, only as strong as the weakest, most despised runt of the litter).

I think of this when I look at the Ecstasy Of St Theresa, and when I remember Bernini's torrid life story, and his dramatic depiction of this woman, a holy woman, and, in particular, of her physicality, her face and body as the meeting place or conduit for divine revelation and bliss.

I think a woman's body, in all its variations, is to me one of the most beautiful forms there is on this planet. It is one which has been, and still is the site of devotion, adoration, violation, reverence, contempt and horror in our world. Exalted, degraded, ridiculed, feared, controlled, desired in a million different ways, a woman's body is as complex as life itself, as death, as dying, as growth and decay, as desire, wanting and repugnance.

Sitting here now, under my clothes, I can feel the skin of this body that I breathe through, I can sense the blood circulating my veins, hear my heart beating in my ear if I press it to my shoulder. My breasts, my hips and vagina, my neck, legs, skin, hair, eyes, buttocks, feet, my back are all realities in and of themselves, but they're also the vehicle for a thousand different projections, some dazzling, some shimmering, some comforting, some lit up in the crudest red light or beset by howling laughter.

Some of these have been handed down to me through time, some are of my era, some through art, through philosophy, religion, culture, literature. Some are inside my own head, most surround me from the outside, from the voices of men, from the voices of women talking to men, from the voices of women who do not care what men have to say. From my mother, from my father.

Am I ever my own woman, I ask myself, can I ever escape this hall of mirrors, know my body beyond its own symbols?

I think of it split and ripped by giving birth, a cell multiplying inside it, growing into foetus, forming, enlarging, holding the blueprint for its own destiny, forming hands and feet, a nose, a throat. A life being born - my body as toil, violent music playing through a crackling stereo. A child moving through me, pushed out by labour and agony through the birth canal, ripped from my flesh, out into cold open air. The uncut umbilical cord, the bloody placenta.

Inside and through this female body, life is formed and grown and expelled with massive effort and incredible physical, mental and emotional intensity. And this intensity, this force and power is there, whether realised or not, in every single woman as part of her physical being.

To me, this force inside a woman is beautiful, and messy. It is complex and it is also the simplest force in the world. A force not different from that of the uncovered grave, a corpse peeping out at us from under the soil. Or from a puja on the Ganges, in a blazing light of candles. Or the baby floating past, its head, a bloated shrine. Its skin, grey.

And yes, it is The Ecstasy Of St Theresa, hovering in the air. But it is also Bernini, the artist who carved it, a year before its conception, sunk to the floor, a nobody, a nothing, the memory of the failure of his greatest architectural ambition ringing in his ears.

As it is the epilieptic nun, scissoring in divine rapture across the wooden floor, eyes rolling in the back of her head. She is not pretty. She is not even beautiful. Only a coarse woollen robe, two pairs of old hands holding her spindled tattered frame in the sunlight that pours through the stained convent windows, too bright to bear without her palm across her face.

And this same force is also Bernini's illicit lover, Constanza, in marble, the loop of her cotton blouse pulled slightly undone, her eyes like wildfire in a forest at night, or a tiger esaped from the zoo, once leashed and captive, now, more than untamed: out of control, hunting, hunting down.

And it is Bernini's servant with a sword, slashing at Constanza's face in retribution until it is ribbons, the pillow soaked in her blood, the colour of her most beautiful dress, of her lust. She will never again have a face that can be immortalised in sculpture. The Muse becomes damaged goods, fallen from ecstatic grace, imprisoned for fornication, disfigured.

So it is Constanza who pays the greatest price for passion, and after nearly killing his own brother and scarring her face for life, the real perpetrator goes free: Bernini, the great hero of Rome becomes an even greater hero, the great hypocrite, scoundrel, egomaniacal amour, liar, destroys and violates in the name of love all that he once created and revered as beautiful, as divine. This woman who was his Muse, who became marble, who fired one of the greatest sculptors in history's world with a blaze of signifiers. Who torched it all with her own betrayal. Whom he will never want again. Whom he will never again watch sleeping through the night, holding his breath lightly so as not to wake her. Whom he will never long to press her small head into his chest as though she were his own restless child.

And now her face is a map of stars, all traced in blood, her honour a withered flower, her wildfire burnt out beyond all reason. Where is left for the woman to go? At Bernini's command she is again caged, this time in a damp prison cell without light, in rags and humiliation, taught the lesson that all women who play with fire must learn in 17th century civilisation, the image of her passion, her beauty, her womanhood, consigned to a sunless locked vault.

This same man conceived and gave birth to the remarkable, transcendent Ecstasy Of St Theresa, long after the light had left his eye, long after such tragedy and violence, after his own sudden descent into failure and his turning to God. And this same woman, Constanza, also gave birth to it, and is enfolded within the creases of St Theresa's robes, in the openness of her mouth, her half closed eyes, though almost certainly neither she or Bernini will have ever known, will ever know this.

Woman, Muse, sister, daughter, mother, virgin, slut, truth, beauty, warfare, corruption, fertility, deceit, the earth, the stars, the moon, the fields, the tether, the breaking of all mundane bonds, the higher, the lower, animal, angel, divinity, a flower, a rose, the scent of death...these words and images haunt me, as the Ecstasy Of St Theresa haunts me, as Constanza and the nun haunt me, as a woman who, like every other woman, is all of these things, who is Constanza and St Theresa, Bernini and the ecstasy itself, and, who, in the middle of the night, or when sipping tea, or throwing a bag over her shoulder to go out of the door, slicing potatoes, is none of them, never has been, and never will.




(top image: 'Eve', Rodin's studio, 'Cain' in background.)

Every Time You Go Away

Tonight I watched Celebrity Masterchef. Marie Helvin, the model, some guy that I think may have been in the pop band Imagination and, love of my life at age 10, the one and only, Paul Young, all competing to come up with the perfect culinary dish to win the title of this BBC2 cooking competition.

Jesus, it was strange seeing him. I used to actually keep a notebook to record my obsession with Paul Young, making a note of each new poster that I bought, which eventually covered the entire walls of my bedroom, (except for an increasing number of Aha ones, but I don't talk about that little betrayal). I even had a life size one which I got in installments through Smash Hits - one week his feet, the next his legs and groin etc. I firmly believed I was going to marry him and was devastated when he got together later with Supergirl actress Helen Slater. The cow. I even had a Paul Young scarf, with a very distorted picture of his face on it, as well as his pretend signature which I ordered through his fan club, of which I was, of course, a member.

The only other club I remember joining through the postal service when I was young was the Desperate Dan Club. I'm not quite sure where my fascination for Desperate Dan arose from, as it wasn't exactly a popular girl's thing to be into. I remember getting all the stuff through the post, and how excited I was to open it. There was this picture of him on the front of the Membership Card with a big bristly chin, about to tuck into a Cow Pie. As I opened the pack, I was confronted by a test that said unless you can answer these three questions, you cannot join. You are not a true Desperate Dan fan as you are not tough enough. It was three jokes, of which you had to guess the punchlines. Easy probably. But I didn't get one of them, and I remember the shame, the utter humiliation of the fact that I had this stupid membership pack, which I'd been so excited to receive, and yet I had just exposed myself to the fact that I wasn't worthy to join it because I wasn't tough enough. Ok, no body else knew, but I knew, I knew I wasn't up to the job. I remember thinking it's because I'm not a real boy - now they've found me out. I slung the membership pack into the back of my sock drawer, hoping it wouldn't be discovered by my Mum or any other potential Askers of Difficult Questions, who might realise the truth that I was trying to infiltrate some secret boyhood that I could never truly belong to.

I never wore dresses growing up, except on the odd occasion, and they were still somehow ungirlish and unflattering, with frills or flaps on them too large that they engulfed my entire chest. Me and both my other sisters all had our hair cropped short, a trio of little pseudo boys, until I finally protested against being constantly mistaken for a 'sonny' and decided to grow my hair long. That was when I was ten, and I have never worn it short since, some kind of life long compensation for feeling for so long like I'd been born into the wrong body.

I didn't look like other girls, and I was sure as hell at the time that I didn't feel like other girls. I did like playing with my Sindy dolls, but my favourite game used to be 'let's tie Sindy up and pretend a train is coming to drive over her'. That was one of my favourite film themes as I was growing up - the silent movie 1920's starlet tied to the train tracks whilst the black caped baddie chuckles on the sidelines rubbing his hands in glee, and the train hurtles towards her whilst the hero grapples dotingly with her ropes. I think I wanted to be that curly haired girl, dressed in some flimsy negligee, squealing silently and struggling in black and white as the piano tinkled on and on in the background. I think I also wanted to be the baddie in the cape, and the dashing hero as well. How kinky.

So yes, I did like playing with dolls, but that was about it as far as my girlishness went. I was strikingly tall for my age, and very strong, not delicate at all. I remember playing kiss chase in the little school when I was six or seven and finding it a highly erotic experience, but whenever a boy caught me, I would punch him in the chest and run off shouting "NO!". I hated those namby pamby girls that would just relent and giggle and toss their pigtails in the air. The boys loved them. I never wore pretty shoes, and the boys never fell in love with me.

My two best friends at that age were Jamie Pope and John Stewart. John Stewart was the Pete Doherty of Sandford House School, the bad boy amongst a classroom of seven year olds. God he was sexy. He used to swear and use words like 'shit' and I was terribly impressed, amongst this bunch of mainly drab and dreary girlies and boys. My favourite lunchtimes were when him and Jamie said I could join in with their games (no other girls were allowed the same privilege), which mainly involved dragging Action Man in and out through the holes in the wire fence behind the playground bushes. God I felt cool and I loved playing with Action Man. John Stewart NEVER tucked his shirt in.

I used to have fantasies at night of staying behind at school to play alone in the shed that was in our playground. In my fantasy, John Stewart would appear, and he would tie me up in the shed. This tying up thing seems to have been a bit of a theme for me. I didn't know why the idea of being tied up by this boy was so exciting, and nothing else would happen but that, but it gave me a feeling in my body I liked a lot. At night I would pull my arms out of the sleeves of my nightie and slide them underneath it so that my hands could roam freely over my body. I didn't know why I liked this either, but I did.

John Stewart never did find me in the playground as I wanted him to, and I moved up when I was eight to the big school next door, where boys were no longer allowed. But it started to really perturb me that I didn't really feel like other girls seemed to feel, and still looked the gawky young boy in the brown round toed shoes. Little Lord Fauntleroy, my sister used to call me. In fact, she still does, when she's feeling fond.

When I was eight I also got a silver bike for my birthday. I remember being so chuffed that I had a fancy cool bike, and so disturbed when I realised it was a boy's bike. For a while boys from around the council estate across the road would come and play with me, and admire my bike and take a ride in my Police Car, which you could sit in and peddle and it was cool and it had a flashing light on the back. But they never fancied me.

In fact, the only people I remember there being any kind of fancying scenarios with, were girls. There once was this girl, who for some reason came to play round at mine one time, whom I hadn't the foggiest who she was, and for at least half of the day I thought, was in fact a boy. She was so androgynous with her short hair and jeans. I remember feeling curiously drawn to her, finally asking her outright whether she was a boy or a girl. When we sat together on my Dad's reclining chair, I still remember a strange feeling in my belly as we sat squashed together, our arms pushed up against each other.

The only other frisson was with one of my best friends at the time, whom I played with a lot. She was Indian and I would go round to her house and her Mum would dress me up in saris and I'd like it because I felt pretty and feminine for once, and her parents had a Hindu shrine in their bedroom with a picture of Ganesh in front of their mirror. I was fascinated by him with his big long elephant nose and the smell of incense that wafted around him. Sometimes we would eat curry for tea but mainly we had Findus Crispy pancakes which I adored, particularly the ones with cheese inside. Sometimes she and I would play 'peeping tom', where one of us would take our clothes off and have a shower and the other would pretend to come in by mistake and look. It seemed to always end up being me in the shower. One sunny day in my back garden, my friend confessed she was in love with me. By this point I was ten, and absolutely horrified by her confession. Sadly, in a blind panic and confusion, I stopped being friends with her that summer, denouncing her a 'lezzy'. Oh dear.

Looking back, I see that in certain ways, my life plays out now pretty much in the same ways it did then. The parallels are unnervingly striking. Perhaps the only difference is that now my hair is longer and I most definitely look like a girl, I made sure of that. And I'm not so into tying my dolls to imaginary train tracks, at least not all the time. And that sometimes, when I'm caught by a boy, I won't always punch him in the chest, but let him kiss me on the lips. But only if he kisses like John Stewart.

And ah I remember, the actual point of this meandering post, was to tell you about Paul Young. Well, my beautiful animus, my soul singing icon of sexiness who set my heart and loins a flutter with "Wherever I Lay My Hat" in 1983, he won through to the quarter finals of Celebrity Masterchef with his dish of Cajun Prawns with a basil coulis and wild rice. Despite looking somewhat haggard, he had tears twinkling in his eyes. Bless his cotton socks.

A Sad Affair

Apparently it's Friday, and it's a damp day today, sunlight intermittent on the horizon, a swell of sea mist ebbing up my road.
I am restless, feeling heartless, but that probably just means I'm feeling too much of something I don't want to, and so it turns around into nothing at all, except a quiet sense of outrage. The worst kind.

I vowed as usual to stay off this damn computer tonight, coming down, as it feels I am, with some strain of cold. And I am far from full of grace, resenting, a slight taste of malice in my mouth. I feel miserly and miserable, calculatedly fucked off with the whole caboodle, though I can't quite tell what that caboodle exactly is.

Tonight I want to be to be a raging child, telling you all what I think of you, whoever you are, slamming doors, stamping my foot until it hurts all the way up through my shocking little body. I want to jump up and down, and if anyone dares tell me, "go ahead then" in a therapeutic kind of way, I'll knee them in the bollocks, or if they don't have bollocks, some other suitably soft and tender part of their anatomy. I also want sex. Not the kind that filters through my entire body like sunlight through the droplets of rain on an open glass window. No. I want the kind that is like an engine charging up, where you can hear the revs as he turns the handlebars again and again. Vroom vroom. I want hot steel on tarmac sex, burning rubber with no trail left behind in the distance. The kind that hurts my head, and makes laughter come demonic from our throats, the kind that is acute fever.

But enough of what is elsewhere. I realise the symptoms. That desire to wear a tight red dress, one size too small, slightly vulgar. The dark sideways glance I give at nothing in particular across the room, reflected in my mirror. That longing for anything illicit, anything with the word 'Affair' in it, for anything that burns deep and scarring. That mild hatred of humanity, the simultaneous loathing and utter desire for MEN.

It's hormone time, it's a blood red moon filling up on death and chaos time. It's a particular place in my cycle where the devils come out to play, and wreak havoc on decency and upstanding citizenship. It's 'leave me the fuck alone unless it's to play The Stooges top volume non stop till collapse, or read Baudelaire until we drown in a jagged union of sorts, burned up on all manner of death and fire' kind of time. Shit.

Not the kind of time you want to be caught at your computer, alone, 9.53 at night, dressed in a green woolly jumper, the nearest dionysiac pleasure at hand being Roget's Thesaurus and a bar of raspberry chocolate. The edges of the walls are too polite and my neighbours won't appreciate the screaming. So what do I do?

I must send out a search party to the wanton overlords to save me, from my pink spotted curtains, from the tedium of pleasantry. Come on, I'm waiting.

And oh, it's Thursday.