Selling Out

Go To The Mirror, Boy!

I did have a lot to talk about for this blog, but it's been a long day and it's all just slipped my mind. Oh well, as Fleetwood Mac once sang.

So let's talk about my love life instead.

Come on, you know you want to. Anyway, the only interesting thing I've seen at the pictures recently was the wonderfully disastrous Spirit, by Frank Millers to have sunk without a trace, perhaps not undeservedly. It's a bad movie. There's a lot to admire about it, and it's hideously enjoyable, but it's a bad movie all the same. To criticise it for being overblown would be missing the point entirely. Its lunacy is one of the key factors in its favour (along with a wonderully hammy performance by Scarlett Johansson) and Eva Mendes once more proving that she is foxy, a fact which so many of her movies recently have been in denial about. What it is lacking is a strong throughline - the plot, such as it is, is so perfunctory that it could have been written in large print on the back of a postage stamp - and a charismatic hero. Just because all the women in the story tell us the Spirit is appealling does not make him so. At the centre of the film is a vacuous gap that really needs a Tobey Maguire or a Ron Perlman, hell, even a Nicolas Cage would do.

So, now that's out of the way. Me and Debra. Yes, we're still split up, unfortunately. We're going out this Friday though and there's a big part of me that wants to break down in her arms, beg her to take me back. We haven't seen each other since that awkward night in November when we went to Fitzy's in Sunderland together. Sent her a Christmas card over Facebook, got one back. Sent her a text New Year's Eve, got one back wishing me a happy new year. So, at the urging of Andrea, among others, I got in touch with her again (and this is the part that bugs me, it's always me that does the chasing - it would be amazing if she would just get in touch with me and want to see me for a change - and I'm worried that I'm starting to feel a bit like a pest, but then, hopefully, if I was being a pest in Debra's eyes, she would tell me so. Right?) and ask her if she fancies doing something sometime. She does, but she's skint. So we're waiting till payday (this Friday - this month, despite it being 5 and a half weeks since we got paid last is just flying over) and then we're going to the pictures to see the new Underworld film (not starring Kate Beckinsale, not directed by the same guy that did the first two but by a special effects gadge - and we all know how well that turned out for Starship Troopers 2 - so it could be awful but there's in built entertainment value, it's vampires versus werewolves for fuck's sake how could it not be entertaining?). Hopefully we can have a drink beforehand, catch up, have fun. Part of me wants it to be like that magical first date we had when we went to see The Dark Knight. Everything just clicked that night and, yes, it was the start of a period of my life (a very brief period, but a period nevertheless) when I was actually happy. Another part of me knows that it'll just be like Fitzy's and nothing will happen and I'll come home feeling like shit.

It has been getting me down lately, you know. Shaun has recently embarked upon a relationship and despite the fact that his new boyfriend looks like a complete twonk, Shaun seems overly happy. There have even been proclamations of love from both sides on Facebook. Natalie, despite various incidents is still with Simon. Even Kayleigh is with someone (and again, very happy). So what's wrong with me? I'm going to be twenty eight in little under six weeks. 28. Ten years since I left 6th Form. Twelve years since I wrote Cold Heart and started on the path to the writer I am today. Eleven years since Sarah. And that's the thing that hurts the most (actually, it's not, the thing that hurts the most is how completely fucking oblivious everyone is to it and how they have always been) in that eleven years, including Sarah, I have spent something like four months in relationships. Four months out of a hundred and thirty two. Like I'm sure I've said before, I've probably spent more time in those years watching Star Trek. So, just what is it about me?

At school everyone was in relationships. Jav seemed to alternate between Lorna and Tasha on a regular basis, and no ill will seemed to be spent; Emma went through an unbroken stream of boyfriends. Actually, not everyone was in relationships. But those who weren't (Amy and Blades, mainly) didn't seem to want to be with anyone. It's like they didn't feel the need to latch onto someone so early in their lives. Like they were too busy deciding who they wanted to be to decide what they wanted in a partner. Or maybe they were just scared. I have a feeling that's what it was on Blades' part.

But me? I wanted someone. I've had the (mis?)fortune to have erected a pretty solid sense of self at a very young age and I know what I want. It's getting it that's the had part.

Forsaken, Almost Human - I Sink Beneath Your Wisdom Like A Stone

You see, Emma claims that I was fickle as a precocious teen. But I wasn't. What Emma doesn't understand is that I was constantly dealing with rejection. I would make a few moves towards someone, get rebuffed and - instead of embarking upon a Dan-like bout of obsessive behaviour - I would move on to the next person. It's not the most sound way of going about things, I grant you, but in my defence, I was young and didn't know any better. Plus, if you don't give it a go, how will you ever know? That's how I ended up with both Sarah and Anne (well, let's not count that one shall we?) and also two of my non-relationship fumbles. You never know. So maybe that's why I'm going out with Debra on Friday. Maybe I'll get some signal that she's prepared to give it another go. Maybe she's decided she does like me in the right way. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this. Maybe she's just taking pity on a pathetic little shit. But she always asks me what I've been up to. The postive side of my brain thinks she's fishing for information to see if I'm seeing someone, the proof of the pudding being whether she's asking because she's interested in getting back with me or whether she's asking simply out of polite curiosity.

And, sidenote to Emma here, the two people who I - well, fetishised is probably the best word - in the 6th Form, who I knew well enough to still be friends with even now, I still have very strong feelings for. Gilli in particular, I would still drop almost everything for. So, eleven years (more in the case of Gilli, I can first remember fancying her in Year 10) and my feelings haven't changed. That's fickle how?

Past Prologue; A Man Alone

So that's pretty muct it. Christmas went well, or at least as well as can be expected. I got wonderfully drunk on Christmas Eve (two bottles of wine will do that, but in my defence, it was hardly my fault that no one else was drinking white wine) and offended Jan (like I care, she makes a big deal about it, but she manages to offend me every week and I manage to keep my mouth shut) but I had a big cloud of foreboding over me for most of that week and when it didn't turn to shit it was a pleasant surprise. New Year went well too, the best New Year since we stopped having them at Gilli's, I think. Well, there was the party at Emma's a couple of years ago when I groped Jennie which didn't suck entirely (but again, you've got to look at it from my point of view - me and Haz used to have a lot in common until he got with Emma and now he's forgotten what it's like to be single and to suffer from complete self-loathing, he's settled in to middle-class middle-age and my desperation/loneliness isn't as important to him as decorum). But it was good. Blades had to leave early to spend it with his dad, which was a bit sad, but perfectly understandable. We played SingStar (I acquitted myself surprisingly well, although the high-pitch I tend to sing in provoked guffaws) and fooled about on the Keerswell's new Wii (and that name still hasn't improved over time.

Oh, and my Playstation 3 broke. I got a new one swiftly though, as I was still covered by my HMV warrantee. The disc-reader portion broke and it was either send it off to Sony to get fixed (up to a month) or take it to HMV and get a new one. I took it to HMV. I got a better model (the 80 Gig harddrive, as opposed to the 40 my old one was, with the new Dualshock 3 controller and a free Blu-Ray of I Am Legend (not the greatest film - the first half is magificent, the second half is perhaps the worst vampire movie ever made, and that's saying something) and going through the MetroCentre, I also managed to read practically the entirity of a Doctor Who book, The Pirate Loop, which was fun. The only downside is that I lost the save data from Oblivion and GTA4. But I can cope with that.

So what am I up to now? Well, before Christmas I embarked upon (I'm fond of the word 'embark' today aren't I?) a bingy viewing of Stargate SG-1. Well, I had the DVD's lying around for ages so it was time I got round to watching them. Since the beginning of December I've managed to get through three seasons (and it would have been a lot more were it not for my enforced hiatus when I discovered that my Volume 25 had the wrong disc in and the first second hand copy I managed to track down on Amazon when delivered turned out to be Volume 51). I'm halfway through Season 7 now, the first season which I never really got round to watching on first broadcast. It's fun. It's a lot better than I remember.

And boy, Amanda Tapping is foxy...

Peace out.