Well I woke up and it was my thirty third birthday – a few texts from friends, a couple of cards to open I’d brought with me, and when Annie woke up we had breakfast and I watched TV on the sofa while the girls got ready.
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New York Pt 5 | MoMA
Now, at this point in these dairies I couldn’t blame you if you’d quietly begun to wonder whether we got drunk every single day of the trip. Well – more or less, yes. But not really on day five, which is the day I’m writing about now. No: day five was one of culture. With just a smattering of boozing.
Continue readingNew York Pt 4 | Crowd Work
Two months have now passed since the trip I am attempting to describe, because life, as it is so wont to do, got in the way. But I hate to leave anything unfinished – so let’s test how good my memory is.
Continue readingNew York Pt 3 | The Middle of Little Italy
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.
Continue readingNew 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.
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