Me and Katyushka

A lot of people said it wasn’t going to work out between me and Katyushka. I think they were jealous. Especially Irish Tony who sat there slobbering over her picture going “It’s a scam, man. A fit bird like that would never be interested in you.”
But she was mighty fine. She had sent me an email out of the blue saying something like “Ukraine girl seek English man. Much love. Gentleman only please.”
She hadn’t filled in much of her profile but to be honest I hadn’t taken much interest in that anyway. I didn’t care whether she liked dogs or was interested in opera or textiles. The pictures are what caught my attention. Ok, she was 24 from the Ukraine and had picked me out of all the men in the world to write to. She included a selection of pictures. A nice one of her in a yellow bikini smiling and bouncing a ball. One with her sitting drinking a cup of coffee, which must have been taken from above because you could see down her top and mighty fine that was too. I’m not superficial, I’m not just interested in what she’s got down her blouse. I like to have conversations with a woman too. I wasn’t sure whether she could speak much English but that could be improved. I even got a book out of the Library called The Retard’s Guide to Urkainian. There’s a whole series of Retards’ Guide books. They are similar to the Dummies Guide but are for stupider people. This one just had lots of pictures and by lesson 8 I knew the word for coffee and the word for dog and the word for Air Conditioning. But I can’t remember that one now.
Soon we would be talking about Shakespeare and stuff and maybe Man U. because she said she was a football fan. I often have to talk about football to make myself seem more manly. I get a bit lost after the initial basics. Women who like football are a bit rough for me anyway.
It was a coincidence but around the same time I got an email from Simona who was 24 from Bogota. She was also hot but whereas Katyushka was blonde she was dark. She also had a picture of herself in a bikini and also lying down propped up by her elbows letting her blouse fall open. Even Irish Tony was amazed at this. He said, “Word must have got round about you among the foreign birds.”
“Like what kind of word? That I’m intelligent, sensitive and sweet and also a talented lover?”
“No, that you spend all your money on birds. You took that ugly bint to the Toby Carvery didn’t you? You sucker. Me, I just buy them a vodka and black and shag them up the alley.”
We all knew Tony was no gentleman. But I couldn’t two-time Katyushka with Simona so I sent her a polite email saying that thanks but no thanks. Her English was also limited – a similar email to Katyushka’s in fact – “English love wanted please. I decent girl. Gentleman only.” Anyway I couldn’t find a book about Bogotan anyway so that was a no goer. I’m obviously joking in case you didn’t get it.
Irish Tony was standing there in his muscle vest. I think he’s quite ugly but the girls go for him. He plays a lot of rugby and has pictures of him tackling people on his Facebook page. Sure he’s got muscles, but that’s not everything. We had a mutual friend who slept with him and said nature had been kind to him that way too, but that’s nothing to me. I’m not in the least bit jealous of him or the fact she slept with him. He also tells ludicrous stories about him in a gay bar, happening to find himself there one night while wandering lost through a hail storm, happening to need to go to the toilet, happening to get into a conversation with a man who was stuck in a cubicle and having to climb over the door to rescue him, and then when he was propositioned making out it was all a big mistake. Mind you he also told me that he had been in Spearmint Rhino and this lass gave him a lap dance and couldn’t resist him so she agreed to meet him out back. Classy. I think he would shag any human being over a certain age to be fair. Legs or none, amputees, bald people, people who have lost part of their heads in freak accidents but can still live with the aid of modern science.
But he has been a source of inspiration in lots of ways. I realized from looking at him that the girls really dig the bad boy thing. So I decided I would re-cast myself from hopeless loser to edgy bad boy. I didn’t have a lot of money so I decided to go to the local Help the Fucked Up charity shop. It smelled of old men’s pants and there was nasty sour faced old woman there in a wheelchair. To be honest I don’t think she was really disabled because she chased a kid out who was skitting her harelip and she could move. No, I think the wheelchair’s for the sympathy vote. It didn’t get mine though because she’s a miserable old bitch, mobile or not. As I went in, after taking a big breath of street air so as I could put off breathing in old men’s pants for as long as possible, she just kept staring at me as if “Buy something or fuck off”. I looked at the mouldy old books that no one wanted when they weren’t yellow and covered in drool and now they are trying to sell them for two quid. As if. Titles like “She Knew She Loved Him” and “Heroes of Navarra” which is clearly derivative of the Guns of Navarone but set in Spain and the First World War. I know Spain wasn’t in the First World War because it was resting. The author clearly didn’t care. I nearly bought that book because of the 70s blonde in a patent leather waistcoat and little else on the cover. But I didn’t because I was concentrating on bad boy.
I bought a brown leather jacket, which was a woman’s but it was the only one in my price range and some jeans which were a bit too tight and has some small stains. I was looking for some clunky chunky hard guy boots but all they had in that style was some roller skates.
After I paid the scowling old misery my three pounds fifty off I went. I decided to wear the jacket there and then. The jeans I would have to try later. I got half way down the street and had to take a right to avoid Mad John who is pretty scary though he never speaks apart from to tell you he likes mutton. I don’t know what that means. It’s maybe symbolic. As I was in a quiet corner I put on the roller skates and tied my suede hush puppies by their laces around my neck. I didn’t get so far before nearly pitching head first over the low wall. I just looked down at myself in roller skates. What was I thinking? They weren’t going to help me pull any birds.
Things were going well between me and Katyushka. She had sent me a couple more emails. Some were pretty basic such as “You hot, big boy” but as time went on sometimes her emails were quite coherent but then they relapsed into being moronic and ungrammatical. One time I even thought a team of people was writing them as they were so variable in style. It was times when I got her shorter verbless emails that I wondered whether there was any future and regretted dumping Simona. Being honest I need a smart bird to have conversations with. I’m interested in all sorts of intellectual things really. I once read the Radio Times rather than the TV Quick for example because it had an article about porridge.
But my interest was re-ignited as Katyushka sent me more pictures of herself. Some of them didn’t show her head but that was ok. I thought in one she had had breast implants because the down blouse shot seemed to show they were bigger. Then in one she had dyed her hair and looked a bit older. I wondered whether she had sent me a picture of her mother by mistake, though that would have been ok as her mother was mighty fine as well. Someone with a more suspicious mind might have thought that these pictures were of different women.
One day I got quite a long email off her by her standards. It said “Dear Desperate (we were on first name terms by then of course), things are not so good for me. I want very much to see you soon but my mother is ill and my car has broken down. Also it is very hot here 38c and humid being so close to the jungle and we have no air conditioner. My brother has a life threatening illness and he needs surgery but we cannot afford it. Perhaps you could send me money? $5,000 will do. I love you.”
I was sorely tempted to help her out but I discussed it with Irish Tony over a pie. He says, “Look Desperate, helping birds out is all well and good, but you need to get a return on your money, right? If you know what I mean.”
I wasn’t really sure but I pretended I did, nodding and laughing in a bad boy manner.
“So, send her just enough money for the flight. Get her over here. Shag her. If she’s any good then help out her dying mother and brother.”
Sometimes I am too soft hearted and I need this kind of worldly advice from bad boys. I finished the pie. Meat and Tatie it was and very good. I wiped my lips. “Rightio, Irish, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m no soft touch.”
So I went right back to the computer in the library, avoiding Mad John and Daisy Carruthers who I remember from infant school from when she got chowed off by miss for doing a tat on the toilet seat. She has never lived that down and has had no friends since we all laughed at her (including miss) and no one would marry her so she went crazy and lives with fourteen cats in a shed and stinks of piss and lavender water. I feel sorry for her but she scares me and I don’t talk to her.
I wrote the email saying something like, “I’d like to help you Katyushka, but first we have to meet to prove our love.”
I got an email back almost instantly. “Yes, I love you Desperate. I will come to see you right away. Please send me your bank details in your email.”
I couldn’t see any problem with that so I sent her my sort code and account number. There was a couple of hundred quid in the bank account from the time I pretended to have an accident falling over a paving stone on the instructions of the bloke who phoned me up saying it would be ok.
Some people, including Irish Tony, who was taking a big interested in Katyushka for some reason and who had followed me to the library - everyone gets out of his way and Mad John and Daisy Carruthers just scatter when he appears in his muscle vest, might have thought that that was the last I’d hear of pretty young Katyushka.
Irish Tony said to me, “Take that shit awful leather jacket off before you meet her Desperate. Scary Mary used to wear that before she went into rehab but I believe she sold it for cider.”
Now, I thought he was trying to undermine my bad boy look because it was proving too successful with the likes of Katyushka and he didn’t want me trespassing on his territory of bad boyness. But I did remember Scary Mary having a jacket something like that. Rehab hadn’t worked for her though and she was back in Weatherspoons every morning and drinking White Diamond 7.5% cider – three litres of which only cost £1.50. Their brand manager should be ashamed of himself for the powerful advertising campaigns that induce alkies to drink it.
But she emailed me back and said she would be flying in next week. That left me with a problem because how would I get to the airport? Irish Tony’s roadster was in the garage because he was fitting new tyres and spoilers and a really big exhaust to go with the pumping sound system. Though he only really likes choral music dating from the time he was a little boy at church, so it does sound incongruous hearing Tallis’s Spem in Allum belting out as he revs it round the car park.
I knew I needed to arrive in a set of wheels that would impress Katyushka but Irish Tony’s pimped ride was out of action. The only other man I knew with a set of wheels was Sixgun Dan. He had a big van with a lilo in the back. I don’t know what the lilo was for but he said he was in the removal business. At times I suspected that meant kidnapping as he was a well-known pervert. The van was white and rusty but he agreed to take me to the airport for a fee. Irish Tony wanted to come along too so I thought I’d bring him along for moral support though I do own up to a twinge of jealousy in case he shagged her before we got out of the airport.
The day came. I was pretty nervous. She hadn’t replied to my emails and I was worried she was going to blow me out, but on the positive side all the money had been cleared out of my account so she had clearly bought an airline ticket.
As I wasn’t sure of her flight number, I waited with Dan and Tony at the arrivals bit. Dan amused himself cat-calling the women arriving back from their holidays still wearing skimpy sun tops though it was pissing down outside back in the mother country. Tony spent the time doing press ups on the floor with one hand and then doing a series of chin ups on the Sock Shop shack, or business façade as they prefer to call it. He got cautioned by airport police but as one was a woman she let him off and gave him her telephone number instead. He promised he would call. He is the sort who always promises to call but never does. Other women would just come randomly up to him and give him bits of paper with their names and numbers on and sometimes their underwear. We were there for all the flights in from Kiev. Well there was only one. Dan made a lot of lame jokes about chicken. Well, again, only the one but he made it a lot. He got cautioned for hanging around the toilet and I was about to give up and leave when a big black man came up to me. He hadn’t shaved and he smelled of alcohol and exotic places.
He said, “Hi, I’m Chiddy Bang. My sister Katyushka apologises but she can’t make it today. She said that I should come and live with you for a while and she will join us later.”
It seemed a pretty reasonable story to me but Dan, who is pretty sharp, despite being disgusting in lots of other ways, confronted Chiddy Bang. He said, “I’m here for my mate, marra and you say you are Katyushka’s brother but I’d like to point out the problems with that a) she is 26 and you are at least 46. A pretty big gap.” I couldn’t help but remark silently to myself that the gap was similar between me and Katyushka but that didn’t stop us being madly in love.

Chiddy smiled, “Ah my friend, our father Big Hector Bamboua, he had lots of love to give to lots of ladies.” He began to rap, smiling all the while.

When I wid da laydeez
I gi’ dem all da baybeez
I is Old Hector
You comin’ on my vector?

I could see Irish Tony starting to move and click his fingers, but Dan wasn’t so easily won over. He is more a Showaddy-waddy fan. He wouldn’t let it rest.

“Whatever, my point 2) is that in case you haven’t noticed you are black and Katyushka is white. How come if you have the same father?”

Chiddy smiled again, “Ah, my suspicious blubbery bald young friend, I don’t see why this bothers you so much when Mr Desperate has no problem with me and my friend in the muscle vest seems similarly taken.” He smiled winningly at Irish Tony who laughed and high fived the air. “But,” continued Chiddy, “I will explain. Our father Hector Bamboua was Chinese but he had very weak genes. So weak that they left hardly any trace and the mother’s genes predominated. So Katyushka’s mother was a wayward Orthodox Nun… (that made me ponder, she hadn’t mentioned any religious background. Would we be able to marry if she was Orthodox and I tentatively affiliated to the Church of the Latter Day saints, though I admit, falling woefully short of their high standards) … and my mother was a Voodoo Priestess of some skill.”

I could see Dan wavering under the power of Chiddy’s explanations, but he wasn’t done yet. “I care, fat boy, because Desperate is my marra and we go back a long way.” It was true: too long for me to feel easy about.

Chiddy sighed wearily but Dan continued. “How come you are passing on messages from this Katty Yushka if you have come from Lagos and she lives in Chicken Kiev?” I noticed he couldn’t resist that same oldjoke but I let him get away with it because I have the same weakness.

Chiddy grabbed hold of the lapels of Dan’s dirty suit. Tony stepped forward, raised a chiding finger and shook his head. Chiddy let go. “I guess you are the fabled Six Gun Dan that Mr Desperate has written so much about to Katyushka, so I will cut you a break and answer your ridiculous question.” He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a gleaming iPhone, top of the range. It looked new. “We are in touch, rude boy, through the magic of Apple MacIntosh technology. Capisce?”

That was good enough for me. “Come on Chiddy, let’s go home.

The first few weeks with Chiddy were idyllic. He didn’t have any money and wanted to break into the rap scene. He asked me to buy him expensive and tasteful gold chains and big gold rings. Also, he wanted to wear expensive trainers with no shoelaces. I wanted him to be happy in his new country so I tried the best I could to facilitate all his demands. For example, the only fruit he would eat was mangoes for some reason and they’re hard to get round here so I had to make trips with him to specialist greengrocers in Manchester. While he was there he wanted to make some contacts so we would go to what appeared to me to be crack houses. Still everyone was very nice to me.

I had to borrow some money from my mother to keep buying him the gold chains and also to finance a video project he was interested in. I came to believe in his talent and he said we had to hold dance auditions for half naked young women to be in his video. I was quite surprised how many used to turn up at the village hall and gyrate around. To be honest they weren’t intellectual enough for me but Irish Tony and Sixgun Dan turned up for the tryouts. Even Chavvy Michael turned up after telling his wife he’d gone shopping to Tescos. If she finds out he and we all know she’ll kill him but he made us rehearse some ludicrous excuse about him saving a poor old man who had a stroke in his car on the Main Street. Chiddy never seemed happy with the girls as he would make them come back and do more stuff around the pole which we had borrowed from Avacado Pete the scaffolder in return for him being able to look through the hole in the girls changing room. That is when he could prise Dan away from it.

Chiddy also wanted me to get out huge wads of cash to throw around and light his cigars with. I had to borrow even more money from my mother. She said that as she loved me she would let me have the cash even though it meant starving the cat. I never liked that cat anyway and I would be glad if it was dead.

Chiddy wanted to borrow a pimped ride. The most pimped I could think of was Irish Tony’s car which was still being fixed but that didn’t matter because it didn’t have to drive anywhere just bounce up and down a bit. I begged Tony to help Chiddy out but he wouldn’t do it. “He’s ripping you off, man. When will you see it?”

“That’s ridiculous Tone, he is an artist and once he makes his successful rap video he will pay me back every penny.”

Tony wasn’t convinced. “And whatever happened to his sister Katyushka?”

To be honest, in the excitement that Chiddy had brought to my life, I had quite forgotten about Katyushka. In fact she had stopped emailing me. I said as much.

“That’s because they are the same bloke, Desperate.”

I laughed. “Katyushka’s not a bloke, Tony. She’s a young Slavic beauty who frolics around in a bikini with a beachball and loves only me.”

“You are a very stupid man, Desperate.”

At this point Chiddy came downstairs in his bathrobe. The shower is on a cubicle on the roof of my rented apartment. And can be quite crowded with pigeons until you shoo them out. To be honest I had noticed myself wheezing with pigeon lung so I had stopped taking showers and I had meant to say to Chiddy but he was pretty hygienic. He looked really well in his bathrobe, open to the waist, and in fact below the waist, unable to disguise the fact that he was a tremendously handsome and athletic man apart from his pot belly. The gold gleamed against his wet skin.

“Yes,” he said, “Desperate is a very stupid man, but…”

I was about to interrupt feeling pretty fed up that everyone was getting at me but he halted my protestations with a smile. I noticed for the first time he had had a diamond inlaid into his front tooth. He took my arm and soothed me. “But, Irish Tony, unlike yourself, Desperate is soon to be a very rich man. Once my rap venture starts to make money, and it can’t fail. I will launch him on my label. We only need to get him a hat and all will be guaranteed.”

This was the first time he had revealed his plans for me and my heart swelled in gratitude. This was going to be worth every penny. I couldn’t wait to tell my old mam. She had so longed for me to make a success of anything that me breaking into the rap world would be beyond her dreams even if she wouldn’t understand what I was rapping about.

In fact we had spent a very pleasant time the previous evening. He had made me do the sounds with my mouth as if I was a boom box and he strutted around in his silver thong. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that I live next to a lingerie shop, which can come in rather handy though the lady who runs it, and who is rather fierce and has a whip, was a bit shocked that they had one in his size. Unfortunately his testicles hang out but as it was only me and him there I don’t suppose it mattered.

I iz da Chiddy,
It make me giddy
To do ma thang
As I like a Kang
I walk out in ma thong
Like I is Kang Kong

That’s roughly how it went and there was a bit about ladies and babies and something about garden tools.

He said, “Go on Desperate, your turn” and gave me a big smile of encouragement and went on with his boom box. I began making the West Side hand gestures he had taught me though I wasn’t sure where West Side was, though I did see the film telling its story one Christmas Eve sitting in my dressing gown and drinking hot chocolate.

My rap was a little tamer than Chiddy’s but we enjoyed it all the same.

What a to-do!
I think I love you!
Give me a sign!
That you will be mine!
Gosh my heart aches!
And my head shakes!
My dearest Sue!
How I love you!

I didn’t really love anyone called Sue but that’s called poetic licence.

The idyllic days of summer went on. It rained most of the time and soon my mother’s cat was dead and she warned me that if I took any more of her money she would have to sit in the dark wrapped up in a blanket for warmth. I laughed at her threat because it was summer and snow wasn’t due for a while. And even if it had been freezing cold and dark, Chiddy needed the money for his break through and his mangoes and he had recently taken to drinking mojitos. I am not sure what they are either but he liked them. I don’t think they are made from mosquito blood no matter what Sixgun Dan says. My mother had to understand that success demands sacrifices.

It was Sixgun Dan who noticed it first when he came round to store some videos he had made. He said he had no room at his house and in any case they were just about farming and I wouldn’t be interested in all the pictures of animals and stuff. Chiddy was sitting eating mangoes at the table and he had been teasing me about my hair and running his hand up and down my forearm.

Sixgun looked at him suspiciously and then back at me and said, “That bloke’s a puff.”

And then I realized that Chiddy had come to love me. At first the signs were subtle, a certain look in his eye. Lingering to talk about nothing much when we met on the stairs. Brushing my arm and laughing at my jokes. Playing idly with the diamond on his teeth while all the while running his tongue enticingly around his lips.

Yes, Dan was almost certainly correct, but that gave him no right to make homophobic comments.

“How dare you Dan! Get out of this house now!”

He shrugged. “I never figured you for a bummer Desperate. You’re not dainty enough and you never work out.”

“Go!” I snarled. “Go now!”

He shook his head, more in sorrow than anger and said, “Fine, but can I leave my videos here please?”

I didn’t want to appear unreasonable so I said, “Sure,” and he was gone.

I turned to Chiddy. “We need to talk.”

Chiddy looked away from me, then stared at his big ugly fingers. The last thing I wanted to do was upset him. “Look,” I said, “it’s not you; it’s me.”

He said nothing, so I tried again, “You see, me and bummers. It’s just not my thing. Stubble and willy wonkas aren’t for me. I love the silky softness of a woman’s flesh, capisce? I have not interest in your hairy arse, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
Chiddy looked at me, I thought he was going to cry. He got up and placed his head in his hands while the tears freely flowed through his ugly fingers and down his wrists, running along his forearms and dissipating in the luxuriant jungles of his hard muscled biceps. “It’s true,” he began, “when I came here I just thought you were another stupid fall guy, whose money I would steal while peddling some lies about a beautiful Ukrainian. A story so ridiculous that anyone with half a brain would see through it straight away.”
I didn’t quite get what he was going on about but I let him continue.
“But I have come to love you. Your stupid, charming ways. Your crooked smile, the way you sleep in your t-shirt and then wear it the next day thinking no one will know. But I know Desperate, and I love you for it.” He was staring right at me now, his deep black eyes piercing my soul.
He reached out to me, the touch of his fingers was electric on my pale, clammy skin. I brushed them away. I could see the anguish in him, but I couldn’t afford to be swayed, I couldn’t afford to become a bummer. It would break my old mam’s heart and the lads who lived down the street would throw bricks through my window.
“Do you think, we could ever…” he whispered. “Do you think you could ever love me?”
I sighed and turned away looking out of the window but I could pay no attention to the scene I saw there of a cat and some bunting, because my heart was breaking.
I raised my hand up. “No, Chiddy, no, no, no.” I was crying myself now.

“You and me;
we could never be.
It could never work.
Don’t you see?”

I rapped to him, communicating in the only language he truly understood. I could see that he was in despair. He slowly put on his toweling robe, which was in fact mine. “Fine, I’ll pack. You won’t see me again.”
“That would be for the best.”
At the kitchen door he turned, hesitated and said, “But let me tell you this, Desperate; you have destroyed something beautiful and I will rue it till my dying day.”

Getting Real about Mermaids

Sometimes reality hurts. It hurts me, it hurts you. It is about time it hurt my small daughters. Sure, I'd hurt them when I left the fatherless and each birthday I forgot the card, the present, that hurt too. But that's life. It was my valuable lesson for them.

Tinny Ninny was always fond of mermaids. I thought it was about time to knock that silly nonsense out of her. Sh was sitting their in her ballerina tutu waving her wand around the Christmas tree. I said to her that it was about time that she considered her future career. God knows I had made enough of a mess of my life; I didn't want her to repeat my mistakes. She was always a dreamy little girl but dreams don't buy any Manhattan penthouses or silver Mercedes Benzes. I hoped she was going to say that she wanted to be an accountant, or an actuary, if accountancy proved too racy.

She said, "When I grow up, I want to be a fairy or a mermaid."

I could barely conceal my irritation with such airy candyfloss ideas. "For God's sake child. Get real. There are no such things as mermaids."

"But what about Ariel?"

What was this kid on? I sniggered. "Ariel's not real. Money is real. Accountancy is real. Investment Banking is real. Live a worthwhile life."

"But, Daddy, I met Ariel in Florida."

"That wasn't Ariel, it was an American woman in a fish suit."

She began to weep and clutch her wand in desperation as her small life cracked open. I thought I would strike while the iron was hot. "And Santa. He's not real either. That's me in a Santa suit with my old work boots on."

"But, no! I remember him coming to my room on Christmas Eve."

I laughed. "Don't you remember him being drunk? Staggering around and being sick in your bed? Do you think the real Santa would do that you little fool?"

"So, it was you? Is that why mummy threw you out?"

I felt myself blushing. "No, not just that. There were other reasons too."

"But what about the Tooth Fairy who came to leave a shiny pound coin under my pillow each time you pulled out one of my teeth with your old pliers?"

"That was me too."

"And the Easter Bunny?"

"Me in a bunny suit."

The tears were running down her cheeks. My heart was breaking, but the world isn't about hope and beauty; it's about money and it was time she knew the truth.

No Love at the Swimming Pool

I went to get my hair cut today and the woman who cut it was a bad tempered bore called Manic Myrtle. I think she must have been called “manic” in a spirit of sarcasm because she was slow and arthritic and kept repeating herself. She cut my hair with scissors which she kept in a glass full of cloudy water full of hairs. I noted this and tried to raise it in a diplomatic way. My concern was that it was not totally hygienic. I said, “Could you please do something about the scissors?”

I repeated myself several times, each time becoming increasingly exasperated with her. But she kept laughing over me and lighting cigarettes. Some of her other customers seemed clearly insane. One man in particular kept talking about petrol prices, which seemed totally unconnected with the business we were there for – haircuts.

Myrtle kept me waiting while she went out to be sick, due, she claimed to the bad pint she had had the night before. That and some pickled eggs which were past their use by date. She charged me eight pounds and told me all about her daughter's problems with her psychotic, drug abusing, alcoholic violent ex who lives just over the road from me. I thought he was quite a nice chap when I interrupted him lighting his bong on my front step the other day apparently he is called Spanish Ramon though he is from Flimby and has no Spanish blood at all.

After the hair cut, I obviously wanted to show off so I decided I would go swimming. I didn't have my contacts in so I couldn't see anything. This incident was somehow before I had my eyes lasered by the kebab shop surgeon, though that is hard to reconcile with the narrative.

Sometimes I remember wrong. I like swimming but there are sometimes problems. One of these was the situation I encountered that day. The pool was full of fat women with babies. I kept bumping into them. I am sick of fat women with babies. But of course with my myopia they could have been seals, or sealions. I can't tell the difference but I understand it's something about the ears. However, being sensible, I don’t think they let seals into public swimming pools. There would be hygiene problems because they would piss in the pool. Of course everyone does piss in the pool but at least we pretend we don’t while the seals would be quite brazen about it, bragging and slapping their flippers together at what they would consider their extremely funny act. This kind of social disjunct is what worries me if we ever make contact with aliens. We just wouldn’t be speaking the same language. That’s why probably if we ever meet aliens we should just kill them like they do in the movies about Los Angeles.

So, the things I had bumped into were probably women and the smaller floating objects probably babies. Babies can swim naturally according to a magazine I read while I was waiting to get my hair cut by Manic Myrtle, so I suppose they could be used as flotation devices and are probably more environmentally friendly than those Styrofoam blocks. All this turns on whether the mother would allow her baby to be lent or hired out in this manner. Something I sincerely doubt.
The other problem I had swimming was the goose grease. While it made the water just drip off me pleasingly I could tell that other people were revolted by my shining and lumpy skin. Some of the blue lint I normally keep in my belly button had stuck all over it too, making me look as if I were a kind of modern textile. People backed off from me and at one point a burly lifeguard tried to get me out of the water with a stick. I was outraged.

“What do you think you’re up to buster? I’ve paid my money and I have as much right to swim here as anyone else.”

“What is that stuff you are covered with? It’s creating a slick in the pool and some of the babies are getting upset by it.”

I could either tell the truth or lie. If I told the truth it could be embarrassing as only people who have something wrong with them mentally would consider smearing goose grease over themselves.

I lied. “Ah, yes. Sorry about the babies. I just have an embarrassing skin disease.”

He seemed to accept that and moved the stick so I could swim on. As a parting shot he shouted, “I just hope it’s not infectious.”

I turned on my back so that I could shout back, “Only a bit!”

And we both laughed conspiratorially. Don’t worry, it wasn’t really a skin disease and the babies are still safe.

When I came out of the pool and sought somewhere to dry myself off, I noticed that they had remodelled the changing area. Either they had been pretty quick about it while I was in the Pool or I had been suffering from a petit mal. The male changing area is now a thoroughfare from the pool viewing area. While the swimming pool changing room area is of course a place that offers opportunities for love, I always thought that people who just go to the swimming pool to watch folk in their swimsuits was a bit dodgy. I saw Sixgun Dan there once watching the junior girls swimming team try out. He was dressed as a gas fitter and gave me some cock and bull story about having to fix the heating. For some reason he was ashamed about telling me the truth – that he is a paedophile.

We all knew it but we all have our particular foibles and that was his. I don’t judge him for it but the world is a better place now he has gone to prison and each day he is beaten by big men who feel good about themselves because they have only raped and murdered people instead of being nonces.

But I must return to the swimming room changing rooms because this is where I am (not really, I am writing this in my kitchen on a laptop, but narratively, I sure am there) This particular day, the goose grease, Manic Myrtle day, as it happened, a fat woman – extraordinarily without a baby (but that was probably because she was too fat for anyone to shag her properly) walked right through when I was blow drying my bits. Apparently at this particular swimming pool, we men are supposed to dry in small cubicles rather than wrestle and flick each other with towels in a large communal room as was my habit in former years. Luckily the blow dryer had warmed me up and promoted blood flow, so I think she liked what she saw. Though of course I didn't have my contacts in so she could have been gesticulating violently and aggressively.

I remember happy days when I worked for the Government and we had a gym paid for by tax payers money at the bottom of the building. We used to parade around there naked for hours, using the blow dryer and grappling manfully. The Ministry of Defence Police were often called because of the loud farting noises we made as a joke. How they would laugh as they saw us cavorting around mostly naked, and sometimes they would join in. But that was in another life, when I was still young and beautiful. I often think of my friends and lovers from former days such as Hairy Anne and Bendy Helen. I don't think they think of me much.

New Pad, New Life.

I moved into a place 9 foot square with a bedroom up a ladder, also 9 foot square. It had no heating and it was December and very cold. Before I left her, my mother bought me a pencil for writing letters and also tried to give me the cat, which I didn’t want.

When newly single desperate middle aged men set up home for themselves there is usually a pattern. They have little money so they live in awful, cold, unsanitary places. They usually have few friends because all the nice people sided with their nice ex wife and therefore they have to forge new relationships among the scum of the earth or sit at home drinking cheap vodka and trying to feel good about internet porn. Eventually even if they don’t smoke, they have to start smoking rollies and buy a small portable television from a charity shop to watch the horse racing on. The highlight of their week is putting 50p on a horse at Doncaster, which they never win. Soon the small room turns brown from their lonely cigarette smoke. Then eventually they die and someone they don’t know finds them when the neighbourhood dogs start scratching at the front door, aroused by the scent of carrion. If these men are lucky, they can avoid this by buying a Thai Bride, if they have the money which they will normally have to embezzle.

This wasn’t going to be my future. I was a poet and a post-modern lover. I would find true love on the Internet, not just a web cam girlfriend or a fat bird from Carlisle.

So there I was in Wilco's buying cutlery for one. And a towel rail. The place was so cold that I figured my real problem would be drying my towels. Because of worrying about towels, and the cold, I hadn’t been sleeping. I had a nightmare that a big green bathsquare, all wet and smelly had come alive and was smothering me. When I awoke I found that some of the wallpaper had fallen in on my face. This was a puzzle because I had imagined that the damp would have frozen, but there it was running down the walls, glistening in the light of the miner’s hat I was wearing. I got up out of the second hand sleeping bag I had borrowed from Sixgun Dan and went over to the wall. The puzzle was solved! It wasn’t damp at all, it was a kind of slime.

When I woke in the morning I realized that I was going to have to do something about hygiene. It was too cold to wash my body. In fact I made a vow not to wash until March. My mother had helpfully given me an armful of self help leaflets to ease me into my new life. I had happened upon one that described how Medieval Peasants had managed their affairs and described in great detail how their techniques could be applied if you were poor, cold and hungry and totally lacking any positive influence in your life. I read that they smeared themselves with a “winter coat” of goose grease and I thought that could work for me. I went out of my flat, nearly tripping up over a frozen old lady who had died in the night because of the cold, on the way home from the supermarket with the few pitiful items which she had bought. I noticed in passing that these were a comb, a button and the core of a maize cob, which I guessed had been intended for her tea.

“Bad luck, old lass,” I said and attempted to close her frozen, staring eyes as a mark of respect. Unfortunately I couldn’t because they were too frozen. There being nothing more I could do, I set off for the emporium run by Bloody Geoff the butcher. On my way there I passed a policeman and I said, “There’s a dead old woman down that alley where I live,” also pointing helpfully.

“Thanks for the information, lad. There’s lots of them about at the moment. The weather you know.”

Bloody Geoff and his staff glowered at me as I entered their shop. All around were carcasses and entrails lovingly displayed on silver platters; sausages and stomachs, blood pudding and brain pie. I wondered if he knew I’d once been a vegetarian because he was giving me a look of pure hate. He didn’t know me, but I knew him. The stories of what he got up to with his carcasses – him and Laughing Jimmy his best buddy – were as legendary as they were sickening.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve just come for some goose grease.”

He laughed and looked at Black Moira, his assistant. He jerked his red thumb covered in blue elastoplasts where he had almost cut if off several times within the past few hours, or so it looked. “He wants goose grease.” His tone was unwelcoming. I thought about leaving.
Black Moira just sniggered.

“Look, I can always get it from Tommy the Tripe if you won’t play ball.”

He settled his bloodshot gaze on me. “Easy tiger,” he said, “no need to be hasty.”

I stood my ground. He wasn’t going to browbeat me about goose grease.

He sucked on his cold sore and said, “Maybe I can help you out. But if I do, what’s in it for me?”

“I’ll pay you.” I didn’t want to seem unreasonable.

Black Moira started raising her eyebrows at me in a sexual manner. She was attractive in a raddled old whore type of way and another time I might have been interested, but I didn’t want to stand on Bloody Geoff’s toes. This was his turf. His butchery assistant.

He was clearly pondering my offer. “Ok,” he said. “Come back in an hour and I’ll have your goose.”

The tension in there between me and Black Moira was becoming uncomfortable. Despite our different social stations we clearly had a sexual rapport you don’t come across every day. I was glad to leave and go to the library to read The Guardian until it was time for me to return.
When I went back, Bloody Geoff stooped and picked up a goose that was naked and struggling unhappily in his blood stained grip. He absent mindedly picked up a raw black pudding and began to munch on it. “Here’s your goose,” he said, spluttering bits of dried blood from the pudding all over the counter and partly on me.

I breathed heavily. At least Black Moira had left, presumably to shave her legs which she had probably seen me look disparagingly at during our last little tete-a-tete. I decided to tough it out with Bloody Geoff.

“I’m not paying you for that.”

He looked angry but more than that- amazed that anyone in this town had stood up to him.

“You said you wanted a goose. Here’s a goose.”

“I said, Geoff, that I wanted goose grease. Not a goose. I’m not paying you for that.”

He looked at me like I was a simpleton. “The grease is in the goose.”

“Yes, I know that. But I don’t even know where in the goose it is, so how can I get it?”

He sneered. “You don’t even know where the goose grease is in the goose? What kind of butcher are you?”

“I’m not a butcher, Geoff, that’s you. I am going to give you an hour. At the end of an hour I’ll come back and you’d better have the goose grease taken out of the goose and ready for me.”

“But what about the goose?”

“I don’t care what you do with the goose once you’ve taken the grease out. Send her back to the farm. Let her live out the rest of her days in peace. I don’t care.”

An hour later the grease was ready. I don’t know where the goose had gone. Maybe he had let her go. Maybe he had a heart after all. In the end, everything was ok. I was happy, he was happy. We were perhaps even friends.

On my way back I noticed they had cleared up the old lady. All that was left of her was a pool of frozen tears. I felt sorry for her. I hoped she had been insured so her family could rejoice in her death, but I doubted it. Women who can only afford a comb and a button rarely carry life insurance.

At home, I stripped naked in front of the full length mirror in the tiny bathroom and applied the still warm goose grease. The leaflet warned me that once I put my clothes back on, there was a good chance that fluff would begin to stick to the grease. But I didn’t care, as long as it kept out the cold. Once I was fully smeared I put on my t-shirt and underpants. It was amazing. The difference in temperature was such that I actually began to sweat. And that was it. Goose grease until March- unless I got lucky and got licked all over by some hot chick. Or a dog, which is more likely as women are not, on the whole, fond of licking rancid goose grease while dogs most certainly are.

Christmas was coming fast. I liked where I was living. I joined in singing with the drunks and enjoyed their brawls when they woke me up at 2 a.m. My front door was in a dark alley about ten yards round the corner from the main street where all the pubs are so it's a good place for pissing, puking and shagging. In fact, if you are doing one of those things, perhaps give me a knock - don't worry about the time, I'll be pleased to see you, but I only have one mug.

Bohemian Rhapsody

So the great night came. It was the Work Christmas Do. I arrived at Weatherspoons at about 6:30 and no one else from work turned up for an hour. I had suspected this might happen as I doubt my colleagues really like me. My reasons for this were that some jibes had appeared, written on the wall of the work toilet in the crabbed, almost illegible handwriting of Handsome Gavin. It said, “Desperate is a loser,” and “Desperate has no chance of ever getting love because of his anal warts.” Though it was, and remains, true that I have never had any anal warts, I had been hurt then, and I was hurting now. How do you get such things? Why would anything think I would have them?

So there I was alone in the pub as large as an airline hanger. I looked around me. There were Christmas decorations everywhere everyone seemed happy. The girls were all dressed like tarts which was pleasant. I saw no vicars though so it was going to be a one sided fancy dress do. Unless it was a “Tarts and shaven headed blokes wearing Manchester United tops” do. There were about even numbers of both those teams. I smiled and raised my glass in salute at a slant browed youth who barked challengingly at me. It seemed that he was upset about something and I was just about to go over and offer to counsel him when my colleagues arrived. They had been somewhere else first for a pre-party and appeared somewhat drunk.

“She” wasn’t with them. I suspect this is because she, as she has quite clearly pointed out on several occasions, has a marked dislike for me.

In the end there were only five of us from work there. The rest had gone somewhere else when they found out that I was coming. Nevertheless I fell into conversation with Hardbody Helen, a female bodybuilder and French Felix, a man whose head resembled a boiled egg and whose mother had been captured by British forces in the Auvergne as a feral child and been brought back to Whitehaven and raised as one of us. They were great fun. The rest of the night followed the pattern of moving from pub to pub drinking until we were lucky enough to find a karaoke pub. There have been many great changes in my lifetime such as the falling down of the Berlin Wall (the wall behind my mother’s house fell down too about the same time) and the establishment of non-racist democracy in South Africa. But one of the greatest triumphs of Mr Anthony Blair, ex prime minister, was banning smoking in pubs. I don’t know whether it was him who actually did ban it but he’s the only one I can remember.

It was a great triumph for public health but now people don't smoke in pubs they stink of fart. This is unfortunate as not many people like the smell of fart, unless its your own which can be nice, bringing back memories of the previous night’s curry – much like repeating food is pleasurable. Though only if you enjoyed the meal in the first place. But other peoples’ farts bore me. Bring back cigarettes. In fact I went outside with the smokers because they smelled nicer. French Felix (the man with the head like a boiled egg) farted a lot and his smelled disgusting. Despite being trained on a diet of Cumberland Sausage and Haigh's Pork Pies, Cheese XL Crisps and Cheeky Vimtos, he still ate French food when he could on the sly, and it showed.

We made our way to the Three Dwarfs, a theme pub known for its carpets that stick to your feet and its filthy toilets. It's a long way from the cheery Disney version. Once we were in, Handsome Gavin tried to fix me up with two girls. He is always looking out for my love interests, either that or he is playing jokes on me. The first time he said, "hey come and meet this girl, she looks like Sloth from the Goonies". Now, I've never seen that programme because I don’t have a TV since Sixgun Dan broke it by jamming it on Babestation, so I thought that looking like someone from TV might be a good thing. It wasn't really.

I tried to strike up a conversation but I am not sure she could speak in any language other than pig grunts. She gestured something that I didn’t understand. Handsome Gavin says, “She wants to go round the back with her.”

I said, “How can you understand her language?” She had begun drooling by this time but I don’t think it was in anticipation, it seemed more because her jaw didn’t fit properly.

Gavin smiled and said, “I don’t understand her pig grunting, but the language of love is universal, Desperate.”

I took a long look at Sloth. She was dressed in a sheet that had once been white but was now a kind of “future gray” and covered in various stains. I recognized one as curry, another as maybe vimto and the spots round her collar possibly as cat's blood. I couldn’t be sure about the cat's blood though. She wore sparkly gold gladiator sandles. Her legs were covered in scaly patches of some dermatological problem and were somewhat hairy which matched the straggly hair from her minge that protruded from the legs of her hot pants.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry Gav, I don’t fancy her.”

She looked voracious like she wanted to do something bad. I was getting scared so I said, “Please make her go away, Gav.” He motioned over to security who, by luck, were looking for her anyway as she had escaped from somewhere.

It was probably just as well that we didn’t make out because she looked like the type who wanted more from a man than I could possibly offer.

The next one Handsome Gavin tried to fix me up with was a tall blonde in a flower patterned leather basque. She was very attractive. I said "hello" and then didn't know what to say. It had been a long time since I had talked to a woman who had such fire in her eyes. She looked at me as if I was a fool and I withered inside so I went to hide in the toilet until she had gone. Later on, when I was singing Bohemian Rhapsody to the karaoke machine, the female bodybuilder, Hardbody Helen, took advantage of me and kept running her hands up and down my body. Then other women groped my bum. I couldn't do anything because I was holding two microphones and singing my heart out so I had to let myself be fondled.

I know that sounds nice, but it really quite was sordid. I am looking for love after all with the woman of my dreams, not some drunken grope fest with strangers in some dingy pub. I sunk into a slough of despond and began to medicate my hurt with lager and Jagerbombs until they stopped serving me drinks. In nice places they say things like , “Closing time now, sir. We hope you enjoyed yourself and we will see you again soon,” but here in the Three Dwarfs they speed you on your way with a cheery “Sup off and fuck off”

I remember when I used to wear glasses before I got my eyes lasered by that bloke above the kebab shop in Newcastle and the staff in nicer pubs than the Dwarfs would say, “Can we have your glasses now please?” I would always offer them my spectacles and giggle saying, “You won’t be able to see through them. I’m blind as a bat.”

How they and I laughed. But pretty soon I realised the true depths of my despair. My life was no laughing matter. I squared up to the four burly doormen of the Three Dwarfs. I was in an ugly mood and someone was going to pay.

I said, “Yeah, you want some?” I am not sure what that means but I heard Irish Tony saying it to a chap once who seemed very impressed and invited him round for coffee.

The three doormen looked at each other and smiled. One of them gestured with his huge thumb over his huge shoulder, just to the right of his huge earlobe. I looked to where he was pointing. It was Sloth, straining on her lead to get me.

I backed off. “Ok, ok, guys. You win.”

They laughed and mocked me as I ran out of the door. When I was a safe distance away I turned back and shouted, “I could have taken all of you pussies.”

The least said about pussies at this point the better. Still reeling from the Jagerbombs and sad at the loneliness of my life, I called in at a franchise of "Rat Burger Inc.". It was late and they only had rat left, the cat always sold out first. I ordered two pieces from the toothless old man who was forced to work there because he had not done well enough at school to become an investment banker.

I then made my way warily to the dismal hotel I was staying in. Back in my narrow hotel room I gnawed away at the battered rat, but it had been cooked hours previously and wasn't very nice.

I feel quickly asleep due to the Jagerbomb induced stupor I was in, but awoke suddenly to the almost religious experience of being hot, fully clothed in an airless narrow room with a searing yellow light coming in the window. At first I thought I had been abducted by a UFO and they were conducting squalid experiments on me. In fact something metallic was sticking in my backside. But then I relaxed and realising it was only a spring, I sighed and knew I was back in my pointless life. I sat up, wiping the rat grease off my chin and knocking the bits of inadequately cooked rat flesh from my sheets. I got up and went to pee in the sink. It was only just that I managed to catch myself, one hand on my studenpump and one hand on the porcelain bowl preparing to steady myself from the anticipated recoil.

“My God no!” I shouted -though no one but the people in the rooms on either side, and above and below had a chance of hearing me and they were probably either drooling drunk with their heads stuck in their bed frames, or fitfully dreaming of cage fights, or rolling around with hideous slappers in their narrow sweaty beds. But even though I had no audience, I was deadly serious. I squeezed my studenpump hard to stop the pee coming out.

It was an epiphany. Things had sunk so low. Not long ago I was a family man. And now I was a potential sink peeer who gets groped by female bodybuilders in dirty run down pubs while singing Bohemian Rhapsody. How low can things get? I vowed then to turn my back on the swamp of moral degradation I was slopping around in, and climb back up the mountain of dignity. It would be a slow journey but as the Chinese say – the longest journey begins with the first step. The first step for me was refusing to pee in sinks, no matter how much I wanted to.

But I was desperate. I thought quickly - I didn’t dare use the shared bathroom on the hotel corridor because I had seen a gay man in there some hours ago and I was frightened he was waiting for me to make me love him.

I considered peeing out of the window but it was nailed shut. My options were few but I would not pee in the sink. With a swelling feeling of pride, I chose positively and filled an empty coke bottle with my steaming yellow urine and hid it under the bed for some maid to find the next time they changed the sheets in a year or so’s time.

A Dog Called Elvis

I went to London to see some old friends. First among equals was Rocking Raymond, once punk rock vocalist in the same band as me in our local town before he had moved to the Smoke and made it big in microwaved popcorn. We realized there was no future for us in music when we were banned from Seaton Scout Hut for singing blasphemous carols. Something I now regret. Rocking Raymond had been my best man. He had always cared about me and he touched my arm tenderly when he met me in an out of the way sandwich bar in Peckham.

“My goodness, Desperate, you are a total emotional wreck and you need to pull yourself together. You always were a freak and I was surprised that anyone ever took an interest in you to be honest. But now you seem to have sunk down into the tarry depths of degradation.”

I stifled a sob. His care for me was overwhelming.

‘What I’m worried about is that you will gravitate to any woman who shows an interest but the truth is that no sane woman could like you. I think you are the sort of man, who in your desperation, will seek love in the arms of bunny boiling psychopaths, and I strongly advise you to keep away from such women.”

I was touched by his concern. I said, “I really appreciate what you’re saying but it might be that maybe only psychopaths will take any interest in me.”

“Indeed, you are pretty unattractive as you sit there in your soiled clothes and pathetic clownlike expression. But surely there must be some woman.” For a while he seemed lost in thought.

Then he said, “Maybe Fat Annie.”

I nodded, he had always been good for me. I was grateful for this suggestion to end my misery. "Fat Annie eh?"

“She lives in a box round the corner. She would help you out in your search to rediscover any shreds of manhood that remain, but it will come at a price. I can perhaps lend you £3.00. The only problem is that I suspect she is currently diseased. Would that put you off?”

I didn’t want to be rude and he was being very kind offering to lend me £3, though I knew with his keen business mind, it would be at a rate slightly above the Bank of England official rate. But Fat Annie in her box behind some furniture shop in Peckham was not for me. I was seeking love not the temporary satisfactions she offered.

We got drunk. At some point he disappeared. I wandered around lost for a while and then stumbled into Subway sandwiches. A strange woman approached me. She was East European, young, not unattractive. She came right up behind me and made me jump. She said, "I frighten you, yes?" She then asked me personal questions and kept smiling and giving me burning glances. I never like people who smile too much though burning glances can be ok. I left hurriedly, and got indigestion from the "Sub of the Day" as I'd eaten it too quickly.

I met Raymond outside. I don’t know where he had been but a young man with a rascally grin was accepting some money from him.

Then a man from Cornwall approached me and Rocking Raymond in a pub, asking us to buy him a drink and giving us the money, which seemed odd. He then started talking about people who were gay and didn't look it and gave me burning glances. He talked about living with his mother in Cornwall. Later Rocking Raymond said this was very sad because the Tin Miner man had obviously been frustrated, living with his mum in some remote Celtic wasteland, when what he really wanted was to go to musicals and shop at designer kitchenware stores. I looked at him long and hard. Rocking Raymond knows I lived with my mother in Cumbria for rather a long time. I pondered, and then I said, "Your point, Raymond, is?"

He smiled mockingly. "Nothing other than to say, should he live here with us in our tolerant metropolis, he wouldn't have to hide his inner self. He wouldn't have to hide his desperate needs."

Was he making some subtle point with his comment? I said, "Are you suggesting I only just escaped from Gayism by the skin of my teeth and no more?"

He gave me a bitter glance. "No, you are clearly straight. Your coarseness proclaims it."

I laughed and gave him a high five. "That's all right then. For a moment there..."

At this point the gay Cornishman put his tongue in my ear. Not in a crude way, but none the less, I was discomfited. I looked at him long and hard. He was dressed like a tin miner, though I understand he also has a fisherman costume - wasn't unattractive but his attentions, and the way he kept lightly touching my arm made me realise that I wasn't gay. I hurriedly asked Rocking Raymond whether we could leave, getting indigestion from the gourmet cheese and onion crisps I gulped down in my haste to escape the tin miner's greedy hands. Rocking Raymond wanted to tarry a while, but seeing my distress, he reluctantly agreed we could go.

The next day I went to see an exhibition at the V&A andwandered the streets. I went to a hummus bar in Soho which was fantastic. I really enjoyed the food but it was in a gay-ish area. I was served by a nice, and attractive, gay American guy who was funny and witty and made me smile. Instead of burning glances he offered me freshly ground chillies, which is his job, though I prefer to consider it a personal favour and mark of respect. As he handed me the tiny ceramic pot, I wondered two things a) whether he was one of the hummus brothers b) whether he might turn me into a gay by stealth.

That night, leaving Raymond to another of his young friends, I went to see an old girlfriend in Farnham. She had been lent to me by her husband, very decently, for the night. It was pouring down and she was late because she had to eat a pizza. It was nice to see her again. She admitted that she had treated me very badly. She said that she had never loved me and that her passion during our sexual encounters was all faked and that she had avoided meeting up with me over the past years because she was worried that I might still fancy her. She explained how horribly possessive and jealous I had been and how she hadn't really liked that. She told me how great her husband was and how, with his stability, reliability and money, he was head and shoulders above anything I could have offered her. It was nice to see her again. She gave me no burning glances, but she did give me some advice about bunny boiling psychopaths, namely "keep clear of them: they are psychoes.” I smiled at her tautology. Then her husband turned up and looked at me more in sorrow than anger. It appeared that he did not consider me in any way a threat. I guess he was right.

I went back to London and me and Rocking Raymond went out to the pub about midnight. There was an American woman with a dog called Elvis that she loved. She was not unattractive, but clearly emotionally unwell - a quality I find alluring. She started talking to me about her dog and giving me burning looks. I'm not sure what she was hinting at. Realising what was happening, Rocking Raymond dragged me out of the pub, spilling my connoisseur dry roasted peanuts.
He said, “That is exactly one of the bunny boiling psychopaths that I have been warning you about.”

The trouble was there was something about her that I liked very much. I mimed at her that I would like her to write down her number on a beermat and give it to me. She smiled saucily but made no move. I realised that once again, I had missed my chance. The iron was no longer hot. She blew a kiss at me as we left. I high fived the air in a maudlin fashion and Raymond pulled me away. When I looked back she was snogging her dog. That made me glad I hadn't got off with her.

The next day at the station as he pushed me onto the train, Rocking Raymond gave me some final advice about bunny boilers. “Just remember that you can tell them by the way they put little smiley faces at the end of their notes and the occasional kiss.”

I said I would be careful but I felt he was overreacting. That was what "she" did.

I was Inexperienced at Kissing

It is probably obvious to you, dear reader, that I am deeply inadequate in many of the techniques and requisites of love. Not only do I have no clue how to love a woman technically, I also look horrid and wear dirty clothes I wouldn’t blame a woman if she reported me to the Police if I went up to her currently and expressed my desire in passionate and no uncertain terms.

The first of the lacks that occurred to me was that I am out of practice at kissing. I can hardly even remember when it is you smack your lips to drive them wild, or when you lick round the corners of the girl’s mouth to make her shudder with, what I think is, joy. Furthermore, I think techniques have moved on since I was last in the kissing market. I had experienced trauma: I had been put off kissing my encountering a woman with rotten gums. If you imagine having your mouth filled with rancid meat and playing with it with your tongue, teasing its putrefaction around your mouth and between your teeth, gargling it playfully in your glottal region, you have the germ of the idea of why I was so distressed; if you imagined necking with an offal scoffing zombie, then you begin to understand. But not the cute kind of Hollywood zombie who, under the hideous make-up, is really a totally fit girl who wanders round her California mansion in her bikini and takes it off in front of various men who come to clean her pool or fix her plumbing. I have seen the movies so I know these things happen in California. But not here where women wander round in track suits, smoking fags and shouting obscenities at their small children called Elvis and Treblinka and don’t have pools for pool guys to clean.

I was so horrified by my encounter with rampant gingivitis that happened one night in a dark nightclub after I had got off my head on alcoholic ginger beer fed to me by Handsome Gav. I was so disgusted by the incident that I vowed never to kiss anyone again. Then after months of abstinence, I wondered whether I had been wholly wise – blaming again my tendency to catastrophise. Kissing can’t really be that bad. So many people do it in films and also on buses and outside supermarkets.

In addition, living next to the lingerie shop made my mind return to such things. I imagined kissing a woman wearing lingerie and I thought, maybe if I can get a normal woman who has at least several teeth and a tongue and no major oral diseases, or large cavities in her mouth, it could work out and I could enjoy it like that time with Loose Amy in the Rugby Club when I was 16 and didn’t know what I was doing but loved it all the same.

I have been practising on my arm. This is ok for the mouth movements that you have to make - the writhing of the lips, the undulating, pulsating ripples where my mouth goes like a leech or a like a love lamprey - some kind of soft invertebrate anyway (though I believe lampreys, in fact have backbones to be pedantic and from an eel's point of view, this is no small matter as it helps them swim and hang together instead of flopping like tube of goo).

The arm is ok for stage one kissing practice, but Stage Two - an important part of kissing – or so I read in a book I downloaded from the Internet for $25 - is how it looks to others. So, I am thinking of getting a mirror to practise kissing on. The only problem is that mirrors do not have a hollow part in the middle to practise putting the tongue into. Perhaps I could get some kind of soft fruit for that and hollow it out? Perhaps a peach, though they are sadly out of season. I know this is advanced kissing (Stage 3 – “The Frenchie”) but the Christmas Party season will soon be upon us and I have to get my kissing techniques up to scratch. It’s not like in my day when any slack mouthed attempt would be acceptable, women are far more judgemental these days than when I was young when there was no Internet and their expectations had not been raised by American Porn so that they now believe they might actually enjoy sex. I welcome the fact they have standards now, but it is double edged in that I might not live up to them.

The second issue is my unappealing looks. I have plans to do something about this though. First, I need to remove some nose hair. I am talking about this in the past but it is actually in progress as I type. I don't mean the internal nostril hair which to be honest is quite easy to get rid of by plucking. I mainly do this in the car when I am alone. Privacy for nose hair removal is certainly an issue as when I have depilated in public I can sense the disapproval of others. No, the inside of the nostrils are unproblematic and in fact I have been shaving the top of my nose for some years now, but solutions often become problems in themselves (consider drink). This has made the stubble on the top of my nose prominent and ugly and I now resemble a warthog.

So, I went to the chemist and when I said I had an embarrassing personal problem the lady walked away and got me a man with glasses and a bald head. She doesn’t like me from the time I bought a lot of Johnnies because they were in the sale as they were out of date. She had shouted out down the shop “Do we have any small Johnnies for this bloke here?” What a cruel and unnecessary joke.

With an oily sneer, she pointed to an ugly, bald man with glasses who also had an oily sneer. It seemed that he had come to help me with my embarrassing personal problem. Presumably on the grounds that he had embarrassing personal problems of his own. I said I needed some kind of cream to get rid of the hair on my nose. I am sitting with a dollop of it on now. If you keep it on for more than five minutes it burns your nose off. Funnily enough the phone just rang then and a woman kept me talking. I had to run to the bathroom to clean this cream off because I felt the first tingling and to be honest having no nose, or maybe a hole where your nose used to be, is even worse than ugly black stubble. Heaven knows how I’d pull with no nose. But someone would like it. Sadly there are all kinds of perverts out there and there will be at least one freak who gets off by making love to people who have a hole where their nose was, unfortunately for me it would probably be a bloke and there is probably even a specialist fetish website for men who like people with holes where their noses once were. They sicken me.

These days I have to be aware of what girls like. This is the field of love marketing and I can probably get a book from the Internet about it. I need to research what my target market (i.e. birds) likes. I have no indication that they like hairy noses, though some are strange. I was at work one day and I sniffed my armpit surreptitiously to see whether I was whiffy. Luckily I was not, but a female colleague had seen me do it and she got rather hot and bothered as we talked about sweat. I went to make a cup of tea to get out of the situation to be honest. When I came back she had gone to the toilet.

Anyway all is well and my nose is smooth and unburnt. Those chicitas better watch out! I plan to play Dungeons and Dragons Online now. This is another thing that I need to keep secret from potential romantic partners.

I have been wondering whether I should buy a cat suit and dress up in order to attract women. It seems to me that a lot of women prefer cats to men. Some men prefer animals too, but I don’t want to say too much about this as I still have bad memories of a man I met in a field in Fife who claimed a sheep had backed into him while he was having a wee. I hit him with a stick and liberated the poor sheep naturally. However, moving back to a slightly smaller animal - I had a relationship with a woman who loved her cat a lot more than she loved me. In fact she still sleeps with this cat, which is more than she did with me. I was going to make a joke about his tiny willy, but that is a) hurtful to him and b) won't make me feel any better. Of course she never slept with the cat in that way, which is illegal in any case. I am going to order my cat suit from the Internet. I won’t wear it on the first date of course. I will wait until we know each other well; until we have promised our bodies to each other. I picture the scene: I and she (whoever she is) are alone, drinking inexpensive but refreshing cider and dancing romantically to Showaddy-Waddy. I say, “Darling, can we do something special tonight?” She smiles, rising one eyebrow quizzically like Mr Spock from Star Trek, “Yes, lover?”

“I was thinking of dressing up for you,” I say.

She looks puzzled, but not unhappy. “I thought it was me that usually dressed up in my Wonderwoman suit?” There is a note of question in her voice.

I reply, “Ah but tonight, I have a treat for you.”

She giggles, the effect of the cheap cider working its magic, “Oh, yes?” she says breathily, hardly able to contain her rising excitement.

I say, “I’m going to dress up as a cat in a suit I got off the Internet.” And she swoons.

I can dream of love. And maybe one day my dreams will become reality.