Monday, September 27, 2010

The End Of Time

It's not every day you can say your lover is leaving you to join an apocalyptic cult. But I can.

The Brazilian is back. He's had a lovely time in Wiltshire. He went to work in a cafe and ended up running guided tours of crop circles  ("For some they are shit, but hey, they may be real."). Now he's back in London for a very few days, and then going back to Brazil... to rejoin the weird cult that he left.

They've phoned him. Apparently, the end of days is near, so they need him back. They've even offered him a slight payrise. With winter coming on in London, he's figured, what the hell. Also, the great thing about belonging to a cult is the lack of long-term planning. "They think it all ends in 2012. If it doesn't all go to shit, then yeah, maybe I'll need to think of what to do next." This is probably how Boris Johnson greets every morning.

The tiny downside is that it's in the middle of nowhere. With no booze. No cigarettes. No boys. No coffee. I look at the Brazilian in horror. He shrugs. "It's not so bad. It's peaceful." I admire him. But selfishly, I'm thinking "Typical. I've turned one man straight, now another would rather live in a monastery."

He has, at no point, suggested I join his cult. I don't know whether to be relieved or insulted.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Monday, September 13, 2010

Upstairs, Downstairs

The gays upstairs had a splendid fight yesterday. You could tell it was gays - they'd been lobbing things through the window and amidst the shattered pains of glass, the courtyard was littered with tealights, potted plants, and DVDs with titles like "Raw Beef" and "Skaterboy".

Today one of them moved out. While he was loading the van the other one was throwing wine glasses from above, cooing "whoopsie". I suspect it had something to do with him taking their small dog with him.

So there we go. On the one hand, a sad end of a chapter. On the other hand there's a vulnerable, freshly-single gay upstairs. And he's clearly nuts.

*grabs a bottle of cava and best cardigan*

In other news, fiddled with the comments and spam-filtering, trying to make it a bit easier for people to comment. The result was an inbox clogged with emails about using pivot tables in excel. What? Now I'm 36 do I no longer count as a target for pen1s enlargement? I also discovered that stats button, which is quite striking. Apparently the single most popular post on here ever is "Russell Howard Topless". Humph. I dunno, over seven years of rubbish dates and that's the best I can manage. Russell, if you're still reading this blog, can we hook up? It's not for me, it's for the traffic. Honest.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Where the nuts come from

I meet the Brazilian in a bar. I've gone out for a drink and as I sit down, I realise two things:
1) I'm surrounded by transvestites
2) They've announced those fateful words "Two minutes till Sandra comes on stage".

The trannies aren't proper glamorous trannies. These look like mildly frumpy people who get their fashion tips from Les Dawson. They are almost all of them clutching the handbags you find at jumble sales.

Sandra is, if you've not seen her, well... it's just one of those awful moments when you think "Have I really seen that same act for ten years? Oh lord."

There's a bar downstairs. "Oh, the ladies are just finishing." I'm told. I see a sign up that says something like "Shirley Valentine's". There's clearly some kind of transvestite gathering. I'm oddly reminded of The Witches convention in Roald Dahl.

But actually, inside it's okay. A large man in a small frock rushes past me into the night, and I'm at the bar. And it's empty. Well, almost empty.

When I was a kid I used to imagine the world was made for me. You know - that only my house was real, that all the others were fakes, that people were as real as the newsreader on television (that episode of Willo The Wisp has a lot to answer for). I wonder at what point you stop realising that the world revolves around you and you revolve around the world? Thinking back to some of my exes.... Anyway, the point is that sometimes, the people in a bar just appear to have been hired in for the evening by a casting agency. They just can't have a real existence elsewhere, can they?

I'm not talking about the large man in the corner, sipping a pint and looking miserable. I'm sure he's got a home, a dog, and may even be called Barry. Only he rarely goes home, hardly sees the dog, and never uses his name. He just sits in the corner of that pub, of every pub.

Nor am I talking about the incredibly athletic black guy who, even though it's been a damp summer has come out in short shorts. They're red and covered in glitter but hey - he's probably just nipped in for a quick drink on his way home from choreographing the 1970s.

But... but I am talking about the guy who is wearing a doublet and hose. Actual, proper, secondary school Romeo costume. He's drinking a J20, so he must, actually, be real. But and yet.... he can't be. He just stands there in a corner, watching one of those insane PubTV flat screens (why are you advertising your bar in a bar? I mean, we're standing in it). He looks insoucient - he is eyeing up everyone shamelessly. It's not so much cruisy as predatory. As though he's waiting to be challenged to a dual.

And that's when I realise I'm not the only person trying not to laugh. For there's a handsome man, and we're both pointedly not laughing at the last of the capulets.

So we go outside for a cigarette. His name's Phillip and he's from Brazil. "Not Phillipe?" I ask. He glowers at me. We walk back to the station and he arranges to come round at the weekend.

Amazingly, he does. He teaches English, he's moved to England on a whim. Well, he says a whim, but...

His story is complicated. He's a vegetarian, which isn't so easy in Brazil. So he moved out of the city, and taught in a vegetarian community. I ask what this is and he winces. It's complicated, but the stews were nice and eventually... they got a little mad. So he moved to England.

How mad? I find out when he asks me what I do. I try and explain. He looks suddenly nervous as though a secret society has caught up with him, plied him with cheap cava, Camel lights and sexual intercourse to try and win him back.

"You work with.... Aliens?" he asks. I nod.

And then it all comes out. The community he went to work for got increasingly less about vegetarianism and ecology and more about the aliens. Specifically The Old Ones who lived before mankind, an ancient and wise race who slept in their underground cities and were awaiting the signal of return, a signal which had never come. However, the community had worked out how to bring about this signal by reuniting 13 discs of power. When he'd been there there'd just been the 12, but then someone had apparently unearthed the 13th and he'd hotfooted it on the next plane out.

"Goodness," I say, "That alien race sounds just like the..." And then, seeing the haunted look in his eyes, I shut up.

He is trying to escape an imminent alien apocalypse by working in a cafe in Kentish Town. He's probably not the first.

The next day he texts to say he's moved to Wiltshire. Or does he?

Friday, September 03, 2010

Tales of the UnExPected: Fancy seeing you here

"It's been a while," he says.
"Yeah."
"How've you been?" he says.
"Good thanks. You?"
"Fine thanks."
"You've put on weight."
"Thanks. At least I'm wearing clothes." I say.
It's one of those bars where the dress code occasionally varies. Madly, this means I don't see him for two years and then suddenly bump into him at the bar and he's wearing a pair of pants. I'm not sure if this gives me the advantage or not. I am conscious that, were I in his position, I would be the only person in the bar wearing Bugs Bunny not Aussie Bums.
There's a pause.

"Why did we split up?" he says.
"I dunno. We kept missing dates." It was one of those odd... nearly clicking, not quite clicking, nearly clicking things. But here we are. Face to face. A couple of silver spoons. Where is that from?
Anyway, here we are. Two years on. It's odd. I nearly typed "it's all a bit mad", but don't you just hate people who say that?

So he gives me his number and I have no idea what to do with it. Do I call him? Do I not call him? So I leave it in the back of my jeans and pop them in the washing machine. My fate is in the hands of Daz. If the number's still legible afterwards, then maybe I'll give him a call.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

The Pandorica Opens

Camden Lidl not yet open. But soon.... soon... soon my precious, soon...