I am sick of sitting here, answering bullshit phonecalls, telling people that I give a crap. Also: I am on the internet at work. SCANDAL!
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House Of Cards.
October 10, 2007 – 5:29 pm
(The title is in reference to the new Radiohead album. It’s good etc).
Holly - who is more James’ friend than mine, right now - left a comment on here concerning me and my storytelling abilities. It may seem a bit harmless, but I’m actually pretty fucking pissed off. Whatever I have that I might choose to share, it’s my fucking decision when I do, right? That’s the point of this stupid thing. And then James goes and decides - all by himself, I might add, like a good little grownup - to cut me off because we had one stupid conversation when I was in bed and worse for weather, and he says, “oh, well, whatever, nevermind”, and we’re done. I haven’t spoken to him since, and I won’t be talking to Holly anytime soon either: she wants me to write my fucking life story, tell her to write it herself, if she’s such a good damned writer ().
“It’s a well known fact you can’t keep things like that to yourself…” FFS, she barely knows me. We met a couple of times, whatever, and she thinks she can tell me what to do, what I think? I’m still seeing that girl, and I told her the story - she actually seemed to care, rather than acting all like it was something that I was just going to do anyway because I have a big mouth or something - and it paid off for both of us.
I hate this concept of stories, of people having to have something to say, something interesting about themselves. Every single place I’ve ever worked people exist in three-minute bursts of either boasting or diatribe, just these little vignettes about who they have fucked or what film they saw. And nobody questions them, nobody even thinks about them; they are just the way it gets done. People don’t bother actually connecting anymore: they just tell these insipid little tales.
So, unless I get apologies, I suppose that’s that for those two friendships. Incidentally, if you are reading this, and this blog disappears, it’s because James has cut me off. I assume it’ll happen sooner or later. And then I’ll spring back like a phoenix, possibly friendless.
Boxful of Letters
September 24, 2007 – 6:50 pm
I find it insane to think that my family history can be reduced to a pile of letters and deeds. There’s so much here. I sat for a while this morning with my mother just looking through the stuff, and it’s astonishing. No photographs, which is shame - there’s a fragment of one which shows, mom reckons, a section of Coney Island - but nothing of my grandfather, which is annoying. Apparently I have an Uncle as well, which nobody ever told me. Mom won’t talk about him - she keeps referring me to Maynard like a librarian.
I spent hours on messenger to that girl today. We’re chatting a lot. She’s a couple of years younger than me, and she’s never been to America, so I get to tell her all the things that are great about it that she won’t see from the movies. I get to tell her about how dirty the restaurants on Times Square are, and how you never pay box-office prices for tickets to shows, and how nobody lives in Manhatten anymore, not really, not real people. She asked me if I would take her to the US one day. I told her I’d take her on the bus ride from NY to NJ, show off the countryside.
Cool Enough To Not Quite See It.
September 23, 2007 – 10:32 am
I am still seeing that girl. (I just removed a hyperlink here that I had put in to send you to her facebook page, then I realized that she might not like that if she ever reads this. So I took it out.) It’s going really well, and it means that I don’t have too much time for anything else. I am meant to be starting some sort of employment on monday with this friend of my mom’s, over at TVU, but I have no idea if I’m actually going to make it down there or not. I’ve got a date with her again on Sunday, and it’s the third date, and I’m assuming that the rule stands in the UK. So I’m not going to bed early.
Also, James sent me a package yesterday with some of my family artifacts in. Apparently, he’s “off the project for good”. Good fucking riddance, I say.
Stuntman Jonah.
September 9, 2007 – 10:54 am
I watched Death Proof the other day. Great film. I don’t understand why people are up in arms that it’s being released on DVD separate from Planet Terror - it just allows it to stand on its feet a little more individually. Which is surely a good thing? I recommend that you hunt it down. I watched it with this girl I’m sort of seeing that I met at that damned Singstar party. I won’t say her name here: I don’t like to publicize.
Just You And Your Idol Singing Falsetto.
September 4, 2007 – 11:26 am
I went to this party last night. I met these girls in my new work - which is for a large insurance company, answering phones and trying to fob people off when they seem to have a legitimate claim to what they’ve lost. We all started the same day, which is great, as we have that common ground of not knowing the other lot. So, we all got lunch together, and they invited me to this party with them after work. I said sure, because, really, what else am I going to do? The party was pretty quiet - a few drinks, chats, etc - but they had this thing for the PS3 called Singstar. One of the people at the party worked for Sony, and he had a pre-release version of it, and let me tell you, that shit is off the hook. Srsly. I spent all night singing Weezer’s Buddy Holly, trying to get that “OOh-wee-ah” bit right. I’m not the best singer in the world, but that song makes me excited. Srsly.
James and I aren’t talking at the moment either, which is odd, given that I am still using his webspace. I keep wondering if I’m going to check this and he’s going to have booted me. He seems oddly spiteful, which isn’t much like the him that I’m used to from before. I don’t know what it is. He says he’s close to finishing his PhD, and yeah, I get that it’s stressful, but he’s totally ignored our website. And fine, it’s not like he has a reason to keep it updated - it’s not making him money and it only eats at his time - but a deal was a deal. I did a load of research into some stuff he was pestering about - yeah, I know! - and he hasn’t posted a thing. He says he’s shutting the project down. Spoilsport.
I’ve also been working on some stories for you all, just little things, and some poems and lyrics. I might put them up somewhere.
That’s it. Oh, the funeral went okay: everyone did the whole ‘remember the good, forget the bad’ thing, and then we ate this cake that my mother had made, and these little glazed sausages. Maynard nearly choked on one.
I Usually Wear Black Anyway.
August 27, 2007 – 11:41 am
My mother’s old employee, Ursula Mandlebraum (of Mandlebraum Industries), died yesterday. Apparently she was instrumental in bringing my mother over here in the first place - she pestered her husband for a nurse for the kids so much he finally relented and voila) - though that also makes her responsible for me being born in the UK, and therefore for my kidnapping, which is really annoying and makes me slightly bitter.
I don’t see why it shouldn’t.
Her funeral is tomorrow - quickie, cremation, tea and biscuits at the estate - and my mother took me shopping this morning for a suit. It’s a bank holiday here and town was stupid, full of idiots in football hats and wife-beaters. (PS - If I ever wear one, fucking kill me: I forgive you in advance.) We ended up in a shop called, astonishingly, Mister Byrite, which was vile and full of more of those stella-drinking idiots, and I ended up trying on these nasty cheap suits. All my good suits - I have three - are back in NY, and I wasn’t going to spend any money on a nice new one - if I could actually find one here. I tried on this nasty one that was made from some polymer that I can’t even describe (but it looked like dyed sackcloth and felt like thin plastic wicker) and then, when I refused to get it - it looked fucking awful, really - my mother stormed out of the shop. I found her found the corner by the Barclays Bank crying. She pretended that she wasn’t. I went back and brought the suit.
Stuff & Nonsense…
August 22, 2007 – 2:22 pm
… as my mother says.
I’m in the UK at the moment staying with my real mom, and she always spoils me, so life is pretty easy here. My father (another story entirely) is really ill at the moment, so Mom’s spending most of her time looking after him. I’m checking out the bars – it’s what (probably) passes for summer here, and there’s some good places down along the river in this place called Richmond, so I’ve hopped down there the last couple of nights. It’s alllll-right.
One of my facebook friends, this girl called Holly who I met whilst she was in New York a few years back – she now lives back in the UK, but nowhere near London, unfortunately – has been bugging me the last few weeks to tell her about how I was adopted. Personally, I’m sick to fucking death of the story – I’ve had to tell it to so many people – especially for this tv show a few years back where I was reunited with my real mom – I couldn’t care less if I never had to think about it again. But she’s bugging me, so I’m trying to work out how to tell it to her.
My therapist (and it always made me laugh, that job title) used to make me do these exercises where I had to talk about what happened as if I was outside my body, tell it like a story, so that might be what you get, sooner or later. Or maybe I’ll hit you all with one of my lyrical bombs (read: poems) so you can really feel my pain. Whatevs.
A Nightmare.
August 15, 2007 – 4:47 pm
It’s my adopted father’s birthday this week, and I am sort-of duty-bound to go up to the Hamptons and visit him. Their house is really green, and they have more dogs than I can handle (they added two when I left for University and two more when I met my real parents). I have no idea what to buy him - we’ve drifted a bit over the last few years, and whilst I know the sort of stuff that he likes - he’s a photo buff, and he likes astronomy, and he likes dogs (obv.) - but I don’t know what he’s got and what he will or won’t appreciate. I downloaded this cracked version of some expensive photo software for him, but he hates illegal software - he’ll install it, and as soon as I am gone order it from amazon. Next time I visit he’ll be using it and won’t ever tell me, and then I’ll find the box one day, and we’ll both pretend that it never happened.
Anyway, so I got that downloaded for him and I think I’m going to buy him this map thing I saw - it’s sort of a star-map, but with dates and times and degrees for when to point your telescope etc, so that you catch all the cool stuff.
And my mom is clearly going to ask about Lia (who is my real mom), and I’ll have to tell her everything else I know about her. She’s crazily suspicious because of how I was adopted (though the fact that they essentially got me black market was something I used in an argument with her a few months back over the phone, telling her that I should be suspicious of her). Anyway. I’m away for a long weekend. Message me on Facebook if you need me.
Blind Cat.
August 7, 2007 – 11:21 am
Here’s a story from when I was little. Warning: It’s not a happy story.
I’m adopted, which is fine - I’m now back in contact with my birth-mom, and there’s this whole crazy kidnapping story (!) to do with my childhood, which is both awesome and fucking terrible - but my adopting-parents always had a slight issue with the fact that I was. They loved me etc, but they both come from what I can only describe as Latin descent (apparently they are related to some old Mexican Wrestler who everyone know about but me, called The White Wolf or something). And I don’t look Hispanic. But they got through that fine - I have Italian blood in me.
[I should explain: they didn’t tell their relatives that I was adopted. They lived in San Diego, and all their relatives were some was further south, and they only really saw each other once a year. So, when they heard they were getting me - and that is all related to the kidnapping story - they told the relatives that they were pregnant. Sure enough, that Xmas I popped out, apparently. When the relatives saw me they told them I was three months younger than I really was, and I didn’t actually find out my real birthday until I was 16. Madness.]
So they passed me off as theirs, and the third or fourth time I met the relatives - as I say, we saw them once a year or so, unless they journeyed North, which they really didn’t do - my gangy (on my Mom’s side) noticed that I still had blue eyes. Now, my parents both had brown eyes (though my Mom would describe hers as being black, which she was weirdly proud of), and their parents both had brown eyes and their parents all had brown eyes and so on. So we had this dinner where they spent the whole time talking about my eyes and where they could have come from. I didn’t get, of course, that eyes were inherited, and so I assumed that they meant that I had stolen them, as you would. So I got really four-year-old-terrified that my eyes weren’t my real eyes, and that someone else had given them to me, and I might have to give them back, and I decided to barricade myself in the bathroom (and by ‘barricade’ I mean lock the door and sit with my back to it, like my 4-year-old frame would stop my father forcing it). And in the bathroom I saw the cat.
They had this tabby thing, a tortoiseshell (which, I am reliably informed, made it a girl). Anyway, this cat didn’t like me - or anyone else - and so she sort of hissed a bit when she saw me there. But it had these brown/green eyes. And I’m fucking terrified that my eyes arn’t mine, and someone’s put them in, so I decide to go for the cat.
I won’t detail what happened next, but that cat had to go to the vets, and ended up blind in one eye. My parents asked me why I had done it and I told them that I was scared they were going to send me away for not having my own eyes. No-one in the family ever mentioned it again, and the cat, for some reason, got on with me a lot better when I next saw it. I think he maybe respected me (or, as my Dad joked, just couldn’t see me coming as fast).