Among the stranger conversations I’ve had in the past few days was one with my former boss, when I asked how things were going with her (relatively) new boyfriend.
‘Good, thanks’ she replied. ‘Except he’s a moody bugger and I can’t so much as do the washing up without getting smacked on the arse with a tea towel.’
I have *no* idea how we got there.
I don’t think of myself as a massively determined person. Goals that I think are within my reach, sure, I’ll stick at them, but when I don’t think I have a hope in hell of achieving something, I’d rather just walk away.
I say walk away. In reality, I’m not that calm. Take cross country in PE at school as an example. This is my total idea of hell – not only are you asking me to do something that I’m going to find incredibly difficult, you’re asking me to compete against, and to be watched by, other people. The result in this particular case was usually complete meltdown: I could work myself up into floods of tears and hyperventilation in what I’d now recognise as a panic attack, but at the time even I kind of assumed was just teenage melodrama.
Mentally, I sometimes think I never left my old job. When I come back to visit, so much is still the same – my Charlie & Lola mug is still in the cupboard, I’m still not brave enough to carry a round of tea up the stairs and there’s still a note on the biscuit tin that says ‘Reminder: gingers must be segregated.’
I *loved* that job – it was my first job after uni, and I got to play with words and make stuff in a way that my job now, working in ‘real’ publishing, just doesn’t allow. My colleagues were genuinely close friends (hence why I’m visiting this weekend), and the drive in every morning was through some of the UK’s most beautiful countryside.
So, why did I leave? Yep, you guessed it: because of a boy.
The boy revealed what aftershave he wears this week, and I have to admit, I was a tad disappointed. The way a guy smells is one of the things that draws me to him initially, and in this case, perhaps because we see each other so infrequently, it never loses its impact.
In this particular case, I’ve witnessed other girls mention it too, so I know I’m not the only one lured in by it. He smells amazing, but not of a fragrance I recognise, which kind of makes the whole thing more alluring – it’s specific to him, like an invisibility superpower or the ability to fly (ok, this analogy worked better in my head than it does in type.)
So finding out that, predictably, you could pick up a bottle of it in any good branch of Boots? Not gonna lie … it takes the shine off a bit.
I was going to title this post On Beauty, but then I realised that Zadie Smith got there first. Dammit.
Anyway. There were years and years of my life when I longed for boys to tell me I was beautiful. I’ve written before about the impact that my early nightclub experiences had on my life, and wanting to feel pretty was a massive part of that. As a teenager, I wasn’t particularly interested in fashion, but I was precociously interested in sex, and I wanted to be kissing boys. What did the boys want from me? Someone to do their homework.
4.40 a.m. and I wake up, in huge post-drunkenness need of water, to find out I won this.
I’m thrilled, for two reasons. Firstly, because, just as I understand the grudgingness at having to hand over £25 to a friend for essentially no reason, I get to be the smug friend on the receiving end of that grudgingness, which is awesome.
Secondly, because the other entries were damn good. I’ve not read them all, because not all were made publicly available, but I have read all of those which were. I too, loved Anna Sky’s closing line, the butterfly pinned to the board, probed ‘…until the novelty wore off, bright colours fading.’
When it comes to writing erotica, I tend to stick to things that turn me on personally. Hence, certain themes crop up time and again.
Strangers. Non consent. Anal.
But recently, my heroine seems to be branching out, which, given the above, probably means that I am too.
Me: This is great. It’s like when you’re on a flight, the engines sound reassuringly normal, the food is good, the booze is free, you’re *really* excited about where you’re going and no one has tried to flog you a promotional scratch card.
My neighbours: Why, oh why, do we live on the fucking flight path?!
My report from my A-Level French teacher said I ‘wasn’t a natural linguist,’ which was unfortunate, since by then I had six university offers to study languages and had therefore somewhat shut down my other options. I know all about the cringiness (sp.?) of getting to grips with speaking a new language, though, which is what inspired this piece, although it is fiction, and a bit of a half-hearted entry for this.
In recent advertising, national hunt racing has been calling itself ‘the original extreme sport.’ I disagree – sex is the original extreme sport, surely?
Ah, but I do love racing. Or, more specifically, I love Festival Week at Cheltenham in March.
Sex blog (of sorts) 