18 January 2001
18 January 2001 “I don’t think I’ll ever understand this, these long hours of sorrow-stabbed friendship I feel here.” Patrick Jones, ‘This Terrible Honesty’ He said overkill. Childlike, I copy her, and take up the knife. It’s Tom I need. Blood and tears stain the beige, and, dispassionate, you should put some antiseptic on that. I would never forgive him. Andy. I’ll never meet anyone who could be you so wonderfully. Tibbles. You are not like everyone else. They told me I’d sold them out, and there’s bleak humour in the fifty quid it costs to flee this hell. Shivering on stations, waiting for that band, almost throwing myself beneath the wheels. She’s celebrating her suicide attempt, and I have to leave. Holden Caulfield knew freedom lasts less than a week. Laddish Mancs cheer coarsely that they’re home, but the Big Issue is Thom Yorke’s stare. Brazennose Street, a BNC-plated Merc gliding by. Hotel Piccadilly and the Britannia, red-lit Portland Tower my star; lugging a violin and thick volumes of Beethoven, a skinny adolescent with a black satchel and weary smile. Oh Ria, you know the power of that smile. Now, Malcolm my most precious load. A Bret-esque poster reminds me that innocence is no longer protection, but when I go back to reread the words, they are no longer there. The night I met him, took Glamorama for my own; in is out, and walking past the Princess Hotel its neonbulb i and n had blown. It’s more than chance. I have faith in this man. He took me to the Ritz excitedhappy I took his hand and he took it too seriously Tamar calls me a slut pretty fucking virginal slut and it is only because he thinks he is in love ‘Mark’ befriends me, tries to take me home. Wary of strangers, I take his number and promptly lose the phone. He talks of football, night school science, the education lost when his mother died. He doesn’t look at me with sex in his eyes. *** I’m outside City Hall when midnight strikes. Standing on the monument under the dirty transparent moonface of the clock, singing ‘Black and Blue’ and thinking of Brett. A cinema usher smiles. They reserve indifference for tramps, but here, in dirty fur and ninety-year-old eyes, I’m treated to patronising curiosity. Huddled in a marble doorway, drunk teenagers drop coppers in my drink. A scene straight from American Psycho. Smiling I’m alright, the genuine concern in their eyes. *** Trying to keep warm, I pubcrawl through hamburger joints. Simply Red intoning real revolution and there is no longer any fucking point. I only wanted to be loved. For someone to hold me tight enough that the pieces wouldn’t shatter to the floor. They called me sexually manipulative. Catching myself in a greasy mirror – cheekbones flushed and high, a steely look in dead blue eyes – truly beautiful for the first time. This violently deposed queen of hearts. Sexual power? I wouldn’t know what to do with it. The cold setting in, I turn to home; she screams at me and I’m forced to hang up the phone. Alone, in a city I later learn was too cold for snow. It hurts, at first, then numbs, and with no socks and a low-cut top I’m oblivious to how near approaching death has come. The only person who texts that night, to check I’m alright, is someone I have spoken to three times in my life. Are you alright no one has seen you all day, Patrick, 2.29am. My watch stops. It’s getting colder. *** This dead time between two and four, when if you screamed no one would hear. Waiting for the city library at ten, its sculptures a pulverised mass of flesh; men and women runny and pulped, torso invariably glued to breast. This intellectual distrust of sex. Grecian pillars tower above me, hands swollen and red. I can’t do this twice more. It’s only half past four. *** Fingers so swollen the ring won’t come off. The spectrum ring, the ring I acquired in a Washington gallery with Kirsty at my side, the ring I will hear hit the ground running and drunk, so hysterical at the loss that I can only be soothed by Chris’s kiss. At home, my beloved father pushes me away. I can’t stand to be touched, but despite everything he has done, I need Andy. I still need him. Disaffected, beauty finding refuge, gorgeously relevant. Please come home. Golden globes, Bret’s confetti, gold shoes falling through the sky (satanic verses, these satanic verses) and gold lipstick and those baubled ears and her skin and the colour of her hair
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves
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Just seventeen - 17 March 2004
Roads to freedom - 25 February 2004
Confessions of a failed self-harmer - 25 February 2004
Manchester, united - 25 February 2004