Day three started with a mean hangover – nausea and general slug-brained pungence, obviously, but twentyfold worse was the beer-fear. I never got post-alcohol anxiety when I was younger, at all. I could take my top off and whirl it above my head, stun everyone around me with a loud and crass story about my own ass, twirl around a stripper pole and wake up in a hedge, and at 9am I’d open my eyes, dust myself down and go about my day. With each creeping year, however, my ability to shrug away such buffoonery diminishes. These days I’m riddled with guilt if I forget what someone’s job is.
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New York Pt 2 | NYPD
Annie wakes up late – always has. Due to the jet lag I was up at the crack of dawn, and lay on my sofa bed looking at my phone for, oh, a good two hours before I heard the usual high-pitched stretching yawn-screech that signifies Annie is awake. She stumbled through to the living room in a baggy black tee and tartan boxer shorts, her platinum hair mashed into a high David Lynch wave by her pillow.
Continue readingNew York Pt 1 | The Counter-Surprise
It was to be a surprise visit. On the seven-hour flight over, that’s all I thought about, even as I sipped free red wine in plastic cups and watched a succession of films on the back of a headrest – the surprise. I imagined it any of fifty different ways, planning my entrance, my opening line. I’d thought briefly about opening with “Miss Kissiah, I presume,” but when I workshopped it with friends the week before flying out, nobody got the reference so I dropped it.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 11 | Sea Lights
We said goodbye to Annie’s parents in the morning, and I wrote them a letter to say thank you for everything: thank you for the food, thank you for the hospitality, and thank you more than anything for creating the rare delight that is my friend. We set off back to Oakland in the morning, full of breakfast and with a clear sky overhead. First, however, Annie wanted to show me Las Gatos and the area she grew up (which was news to me because I thought we were already in Los Gatos but whatever).
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 10 | Thanksgiving
Next day was the big day: Thanksgiving. I’d never experienced a real Thanksgiving dinner before, and I felt happy and a little nervous. Happy, obviously, to eat a gigantic mound of food. Nervous in case I said something fucking stupid at the dinner table and ruined everything.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 9 | Wicked
I woke up the day after the oyster disaster feeling pretty fresh, all things considered. I still wasn’t entirely over the jet-lag, though – and to be honest, I think I never really got over it the whole time I was in the States. How’s your body meant to realign its sleep cycle when you’re pumping it full of chemicals and making it run around the streets all night?
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 8 | Oysters
On the morning of Annie’s actual birthday, I taught a lesson or two with my laptop (needed to book a few in while I was away to ensure my income didn’t grind to a halt completely), then went for a stroll along Oakland’s main drag for an hour at the request of Annie, so that she and Taylor could have a birthday shag in peace.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 7 | Vesuvio
I hadn’t expected Kerouac Alley and the bookshop to move me so much; the emotion of it all took me by surprise. Truth be told, I don’t often think about Kerouac these days. I read other authors, other genres, and when I write I don’t try to sound like him anymore; I feel I’ve found my own style, more or less. I had my phase and I moved on – left it behind, along with all the other stuff I left in my twenties, voluntary or otherwise. But despite all that, being there did something to me – something visceral. It felt exactly how watching the Lion King on TV feels, even after all these years: it felt like nostalgia, it felt like loss, it felt warm, it felt like a hug.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 6 | City Lights
I’d written off the 25th of November long before I ever got the plane to California. The day after Annie’s birthday party, I’d imagined, would be an empty one: spinning heads and groaning and human duvet-mounds shuffling back and forth between sofa, bathroom and fridge.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 5 | Stork
Because of my tendency to roam around, I have only celebrated one of Annie’s birthdays with her since we met: her 23rd. That birthday party – which involved acid tabs, public nudity, rooftop falls, a dildo covered in glitter, leather harnesses and quite a lot of blood – was, it’s safe to say, the reason for my anxiety on the morning of her 30th birthday party in Oakland.
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