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?
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California 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 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.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 4 | Collegiate
The USA is unlike France in every way but one: when you’re there, you can’t help but keep thinking about the fact that you’re there. You’re not just drinking a coffee – you’re drinking a coffee in Paris. You’re not just eating a burger – you’re eating a burger in America. This knowledge alone, with all its fabulous, glamorous connotations – those accumulated over a lifetime of books and stories and songs and late-night Wikipedia trawls – shunts the mundane towards the mythical. I’m blowing my nose – in America!
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 3 | In ‘n’ Out
The ‘bomb cyclone’ beating up the west coast intensified on the second day of my visit: silver sheets of rain coming down, pooling on street corners and running rivers around the wheels of parked cars – leaves and newspapers and single flip-flops floating by forlornly, coming to standstills halfway up driveways or plastered across kerbs. The greens and reds of traffic lights and headlights blurred over sodden asphalt, drawing down buildings and billboards into long strange reflections.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 2 | Artificial Impertinence
I’m always sheepish when I see friends for the first time in a while – and it wasn’t even that long of a while! But I don’t know; I’m not very good at hellos, and I’m atrocious at goodbyes. I think as I get older I’m increasingly wary of sentimentality. A cautious counter, I think, to the oversentimentality of years gone by – of alienating people, weirding people out with my emotional intensity. I’ve learned, quite subconsciously it seems, to say less. Maybe that’s what happens to a lot of boys when they’re little – maybe that’s why so many men are so stoic and silent and struggle to know what’s going on in their own heads. For some reason it happened to me much later on. I never know how much emotion is appropriate, so it’s safer to just be pragmatic.
Continue readingCalifornia Pt 1 | Scaredy Cat
Before I went to California there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing over whether it was a good idea. There were a few factors: after Colombia I seem to have developed some sort of post-shitshow travel anxiety, plus at 31 I was unsure whether I’d be able to keep up with the debauchery I felt sure Annie would have planned for her birthday.
Continue readingItaly | Serenità
Italy in autumn – hills that roll with the regularity of those back home, but rise a little higher, sink a little lower. Tall cypress trees looming from the mist that sits in the mornings like water in a basin. A cemetery on a lone hilltop at night, flickering in orange candlelight. Deer in the fields, roaming in pairs. Hunters in camo gear, also in pairs, loading rifles onto quad bikes and sipping from flasks. Hares in the forest. Porcupines too – as big as a dog, fans of white quills like monsters.
Continue readingOh Just Chatting Away Really
I’ve started writing on my hand again – I used to do that when I was a teenager. I also did it in my early twenties. Then I stopped for a while. Not sure why I stopped – I just did. And now, at 31, the back of my left hand says ‘Call Vic’, because I need to call her, along with a hastily added ‘+ Dad’ underneath, because I need to call him too.
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