We lived in a tall, sweaty house on the outskirts of a grey town; we kept a cod called Moriarty in a scratched lobster tank on the kitchen windowsill, and I grew sweet peas on the balcony to disguise his wet odour. Michael periodically cried with Moriarty. He said he felt as contained and by his thoughts as Moriarty was by us and he felt like a hypocrite. The drinking left Michael blanched and his eyes reflected what fermented in his guts. When he drank, he drank cheap bourbon, and his eyes became full. Full of sadness, full of confusion, tears, hatred. When he was sober, his eyes were dry and empty as two green highball glasses, waiting to be full again. I loved Michael because despite his drinking, his was the nature of boyish wonder and innocence. His friendship with Moriarty had been the first thing that attracted me to him, because it seemed so pure. He sighed when Eileen on the floor below us would scream at her dogs and call them bastards, and I loved him for it. He didn’t love me back. He claimed he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and was unable to truly love anything. I knew he was fond of Moriarty, but I wasn’t even sure is he was straight if he could be classified as anything at all. After all, his bleached white hair and high cheekbones were the envy of many of my female friends, and he was known to favour velvet leggings and dusty red cowboy boots. He held the same contempt for girls with too much makeup as he did for boys with hoop earrings. The closest thing to sexual attraction I ever saw him display was a fascination with a white stone statue of a water nymph in our local park. It basked in the brassy circle of a fountain, elfin limbs and pre-Raphaelite features perpetually glistening with filmy water. With the shoulder length curls and lean figure it was impossible to decide which gender it was, which in retrospect was probably what attracted Michael to it. He sat by it intently, as if waiting for it to speak to him. The way he looked at it was the way I wished he would one day look at me; with beatific fascination and lust, and all those things women want to be looked at with. I would sit by him knitting scarves or tying blankets together out of strips of old bed sheets and curtains. When angry confused teenagers stuck chewed gum to the statue’s face or spray-painted luminous symbols on it in some mysterious code, Michael would sulk the whole day. I followed him constantly, watching him and slopping milky coffee from Cuppa Joe’s down my front. Cecilia-Delia scorned our living situation when I asked her if she thought he could fall in love with me. ‘He’s above love’ she would say, ‘the only things he loves are himself and hating everybody else.’ Of course she was right, but loves makes fools of us all. I worked at a cheap DVD rental shop, and while I scanned membership cards and ate stolen chewy popcorn, I’d pretend that I’d go home to those highball glass eyes full and wet with intoxicating love for me, and that I’d feel as wonderful as the statue in the fountain.
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Sunday, 11 September 2011
lkjkjsdhsd
one morning she woke up, and her life slid out in front of her like a silk gown. one morning she felt like a sock, moulded to fit something living and real and protect it but empty and pointless without it. there was no meaning to anything anymore. veronica twisted and coiled on her bed in her cold room feeling like a naked model on a circular revolving stage. the absense of anyone visible left her feeling like a hundred million silent eyes watched from every corner. head arched backwards like a koi carp, veronica lit a cigarette, because she thought that was what the eyes would want to see: girl so dishevelled, so disaffected, so ennui and chic.
the dinner had been a mistake. not that it's a dinner when it's at a restaurant that brings you a plastic bib with your lobster and sugar sachets with your coffee, but to all intents and purposes it was an evening meal. same difference she supposed. the transition into adulthood in the kessler family was marked with an event, a party or a meal. veronica's eighteenth birthday had been such an occasion. her parents and siblings had presided over a table laden with pots of relish, paper napkins, casual insults, rude questions. for a table that sat seven it seemed like six against one. one of veronica's elder sisters, diana, had spilt her plastic goblet of corky red wine across the tablecloth and the stain had spread like fire down veronica's white dress. the event, though minor, was representative of the whole evening.
veronica looked up at the clock; nine eighteen a.m. since moving into her university halls she had rarely slept through a whole night because of the surrounding post-adolescent cacaphony of dull bass, testosterone roars and general drunken howling. but last night she had lain straight down on her bed and soundly slept for ten hours. surely not to happen again, but pleasant. the sticky wine stain on veronica's dress peeled from the duvet while she twisted again to accustom her eyes to the hesitant morning sunshine. like shirley temple as a child, the world apppeared to be hidden behind a fine sheet of gauze that blurred the edges of everything. whether it was the skyline pulsing gently or veronica's head, she didn't know.
the dinner had been a mistake. not that it's a dinner when it's at a restaurant that brings you a plastic bib with your lobster and sugar sachets with your coffee, but to all intents and purposes it was an evening meal. same difference she supposed. the transition into adulthood in the kessler family was marked with an event, a party or a meal. veronica's eighteenth birthday had been such an occasion. her parents and siblings had presided over a table laden with pots of relish, paper napkins, casual insults, rude questions. for a table that sat seven it seemed like six against one. one of veronica's elder sisters, diana, had spilt her plastic goblet of corky red wine across the tablecloth and the stain had spread like fire down veronica's white dress. the event, though minor, was representative of the whole evening.
veronica looked up at the clock; nine eighteen a.m. since moving into her university halls she had rarely slept through a whole night because of the surrounding post-adolescent cacaphony of dull bass, testosterone roars and general drunken howling. but last night she had lain straight down on her bed and soundly slept for ten hours. surely not to happen again, but pleasant. the sticky wine stain on veronica's dress peeled from the duvet while she twisted again to accustom her eyes to the hesitant morning sunshine. like shirley temple as a child, the world apppeared to be hidden behind a fine sheet of gauze that blurred the edges of everything. whether it was the skyline pulsing gently or veronica's head, she didn't know.
Friday, 2 September 2011
self q & a: does my life suck or rule?
kate, i see you're up at three in the morning on the internet in bed again. are you happy about this or ashamed?
well, i am both starving hungry and ashamed of myself for not being able to have regular sleeping patterns (becoming a bat person) and also defiantly proud of myself for doing exactly what i want when i want no mum i don't want to etc. etc.
ok... well, in general how is your quality of life?
there's nothing i enjoy more than spontaneity, and that to me means a complete lack of structure. some days i will eat nothing except toast and cheap olives. somedays i will buy myself a chinese meal for two because i can. fluctuating my sleep cycles and staying up past my sleepy period at ten at night to at least three in the morning are really what keep my life spicy.
do you actually try and take any care of yourself?
i had some fizzy vitamin c today
do you do anything with your time except be a worthless bum?
i start uni again on the 19th which i am looking forward to because i get my best friend back, but i also get the other forty odd arseholes on my course, most of whom hate me anyway. and there's reading and stuff. and i'll probs be working at hmv again because let's face it, it's an on again off again love hate relationship.
do you have any friends?
pass
will you be pleased to finally have something to do when the 19th comes?
probably for about a week then i'll want to go straight back to waking up at two and watching jersey shore all day and eating ready meals
you're pathetic
i know
well, i am both starving hungry and ashamed of myself for not being able to have regular sleeping patterns (becoming a bat person) and also defiantly proud of myself for doing exactly what i want when i want no mum i don't want to etc. etc.
ok... well, in general how is your quality of life?
there's nothing i enjoy more than spontaneity, and that to me means a complete lack of structure. some days i will eat nothing except toast and cheap olives. somedays i will buy myself a chinese meal for two because i can. fluctuating my sleep cycles and staying up past my sleepy period at ten at night to at least three in the morning are really what keep my life spicy.
do you actually try and take any care of yourself?
i had some fizzy vitamin c today
do you do anything with your time except be a worthless bum?
i start uni again on the 19th which i am looking forward to because i get my best friend back, but i also get the other forty odd arseholes on my course, most of whom hate me anyway. and there's reading and stuff. and i'll probs be working at hmv again because let's face it, it's an on again off again love hate relationship.
do you have any friends?
pass
will you be pleased to finally have something to do when the 19th comes?
probably for about a week then i'll want to go straight back to waking up at two and watching jersey shore all day and eating ready meals
you're pathetic
i know
lkjhdldkjas
home. home again. home, always humid and sweaty, home, always with glassy slick pavements and coursing throughout with a heartbeat of people. the train spat sunny out onto a station platform so familiar he slipped right out of it like a sleepwalker on a terrain of their own creation. the city drew him into its current, letting him pulse gently around the corners and down the steets in the great heartbeat. home was so silent and so warn after the weekend in the other city. sunny let the unfamiliarity run out of his skin with his sweat in the summer ooze, and let his muscles unclench for the first time in two days.
conrad had been cheated on and dumped again. the latest perpetrator had also been the latest 'one'. she was half-dutch and snapped her gum against her teeth so loudly you would think it hurt.
'you were only together for two months con, let it go.'
'imagine the most beautiful thing you can.'
'what.'
'do it, imagine something so beautiful that it's... perfection.'
'fucks sakes.'
sunny had imagined a young deer careering through a pine forest. he didn't know why because he didn't spend any time thinking about what he thought was beautiful, and the first thing he thought of was nature. behind his eyelids the deer's pelt glistened and the sun caught on it's dewy antlers. haunches rose and fell in sync as it pounded through the deathly still green.
'are you doing it?'
'...'
'are you?'
'.. yes.'
'what is it?'
the desperation in conrad's voice had broken sunny away from his creation, and he turned to conrad no longer prostrate in grief on his bed, but twisted towards sunny in agonising anticipation. his face was contorted hysterically and veins surged violet purple in his temples.
'it's a deer or something. i don't know. i think i saw it on dad's nature programme.'
'ok...'
conrad had sighed all of the air out of his body like it hurt him to speak.
'now imagine the deer looking around, for a stream to play in. it hears something. it's heartbeat quickens. the inertia drains from it's legs. it starts, ready to take flight, to run. and then an arrow hits it right in the eye, through to the brain. it's dead. and it'll rot on the floor, and never see another sunrise, or feel deer happiness again.'
imaginary deer felled, sunny had let his head rest backwards onto conrad's bed. conrad's infatuations were fast, intense and painful, like grease spatters from a frying pan. his emotional hyperbole varied from girl to girl, and depending on the quality of the girl. marlene with the cherry hair had been a car crash where the drivers hit each other head on and burst through the windshield, realising only in their last seconds who the other was and kissing each other into death in the air. susan holly, never just susan, was a luscious garden of poisonous blooms. petra with the ceramic horse collection and mysterious counselling books was every christmas you had as a kid, except every single present you ever open was a knife to the stomach.
the metaphors were due in part to conrad being a sensitive poet with a chest willingly left open so that his heart could be reached in seconds, and also to his undertaking of a degree in drama and performance art. every heartbreak was immortalised in monologue form, complete with accompanying tears and wretched hollow beats upon the chest, and performed to a workshop of fellow amateur dramatists.
'con this has happened too many times now. when are you going to get to be the heart breaker?' sunny had thought that mocking might be the only antidote to the affliction of grandiose emotional spiel.
'sunny, it's not in my nature to turn away from love. i open myself fully to it; i turn towards the sun like a blossom. i let the warmth kiss my petal face, and equally i let the rain dampen it.'
'and you let bees eat your face.'
'sun, don't be stupid, come on.'
'and if she's the sun and you're the flower then you're different species. and that's like beastiality.'
'beastiality is between a human and an animal!'
'you would know.'
'look, you just don't understand yet. you've never been in love, little sun. one day soon you'll be stung by love and you'll feel just like i did, before...'
'wait, i'm a bee? i thought if i was in love i was a flower? wait, why would a bee sting a flower?
'i genuinely don't know why i bother.'
conrad had been cheated on and dumped again. the latest perpetrator had also been the latest 'one'. she was half-dutch and snapped her gum against her teeth so loudly you would think it hurt.
'you were only together for two months con, let it go.'
'imagine the most beautiful thing you can.'
'what.'
'do it, imagine something so beautiful that it's... perfection.'
'fucks sakes.'
sunny had imagined a young deer careering through a pine forest. he didn't know why because he didn't spend any time thinking about what he thought was beautiful, and the first thing he thought of was nature. behind his eyelids the deer's pelt glistened and the sun caught on it's dewy antlers. haunches rose and fell in sync as it pounded through the deathly still green.
'are you doing it?'
'...'
'are you?'
'.. yes.'
'what is it?'
the desperation in conrad's voice had broken sunny away from his creation, and he turned to conrad no longer prostrate in grief on his bed, but twisted towards sunny in agonising anticipation. his face was contorted hysterically and veins surged violet purple in his temples.
'it's a deer or something. i don't know. i think i saw it on dad's nature programme.'
'ok...'
conrad had sighed all of the air out of his body like it hurt him to speak.
'now imagine the deer looking around, for a stream to play in. it hears something. it's heartbeat quickens. the inertia drains from it's legs. it starts, ready to take flight, to run. and then an arrow hits it right in the eye, through to the brain. it's dead. and it'll rot on the floor, and never see another sunrise, or feel deer happiness again.'
imaginary deer felled, sunny had let his head rest backwards onto conrad's bed. conrad's infatuations were fast, intense and painful, like grease spatters from a frying pan. his emotional hyperbole varied from girl to girl, and depending on the quality of the girl. marlene with the cherry hair had been a car crash where the drivers hit each other head on and burst through the windshield, realising only in their last seconds who the other was and kissing each other into death in the air. susan holly, never just susan, was a luscious garden of poisonous blooms. petra with the ceramic horse collection and mysterious counselling books was every christmas you had as a kid, except every single present you ever open was a knife to the stomach.
the metaphors were due in part to conrad being a sensitive poet with a chest willingly left open so that his heart could be reached in seconds, and also to his undertaking of a degree in drama and performance art. every heartbreak was immortalised in monologue form, complete with accompanying tears and wretched hollow beats upon the chest, and performed to a workshop of fellow amateur dramatists.
'con this has happened too many times now. when are you going to get to be the heart breaker?' sunny had thought that mocking might be the only antidote to the affliction of grandiose emotional spiel.
'sunny, it's not in my nature to turn away from love. i open myself fully to it; i turn towards the sun like a blossom. i let the warmth kiss my petal face, and equally i let the rain dampen it.'
'and you let bees eat your face.'
'sun, don't be stupid, come on.'
'and if she's the sun and you're the flower then you're different species. and that's like beastiality.'
'beastiality is between a human and an animal!'
'you would know.'
'look, you just don't understand yet. you've never been in love, little sun. one day soon you'll be stung by love and you'll feel just like i did, before...'
'wait, i'm a bee? i thought if i was in love i was a flower? wait, why would a bee sting a flower?
'i genuinely don't know why i bother.'
Thursday, 25 August 2011
life tips
as you can see, that cat is wearing a bow-tie, and i know that you're now thinking 'how can i be as fancy as that cat?' you're consumed with jealousy, shame, and feelings of inadequacy.
well, i think it's times i taught you how to be fancy, because i am a ridiculously well organized, clean, charming member of society and i have decided it is time i devote my time to helping others to become more like me. here is proof that i am successful:
here i am featured with vic reeves, at my job that i lost
also apparently i am not qualified to clean a hotel, because my degree just isn't clean enough or something, i don't even know.
ANYWAY
i am going to impart some wisdom up in this shit, that i learnt from my mother/friends/television etc. (mainly television) so that yall can learn how to be more like me, a success e.g. crying yourself to sleep every night
1. do not, under any circumstance, get a job. jobs are for fat people. if you're valuable in any way you can find a way to make money without working for it. i am NOT talking about prostitution by the way. no, i mean basically, you're young and pretty right? so scoot that sassy little behind on over to the ucas website and apply for a student loan because for some reason people will give you money to study via drinking homemade frappes and watching tv all day. or bug your parents or something if you're too stupid for uni
2. even if you are shit poor despite having a student loan, there are ways to look like you're loaded: carry a starbucks cup around with you at all times, it can be re-used and filled with water/ gin if you are having a hard day, wear a lot of black because everyone knows black is cool ditto smoking and sunglasses (but not indoors unless you're a dick) having an excessively big purse/wallet, saying 'sweetie' or 'darling' a lot, touching peoples arms etc.
3. take vitamins that have 800% of your recommended daily allowance of every vitamin available to humanity. my great-grandmother told me when i was five that the RDAs that the government use are way way under what they should be and that if i didn't get way more vitamin C i would get something called 'polar bear's liver'. suffice to say that terrified me into taking ten times the RDA of my vitamins for probably forever.
4. if you are fat, order a live tapeworm off ebay and eat it
5. don't have facebook, no-one cool has facebook. go on something useful like a dating site so you can feel your self-worth somewhere around your ankles while you're stripping on webcam for a stranger
6. i got kind of side-tracked what am i even doing again
7. oh yeah, being successful: read shit tons of books. like all of the books. everyone likes a well-read person, i think. i wouldn't know, i am well-read and everyone on my literature course hates my guts
8. be good at cooking basic things e.g. bread, soup, bolognese etc. it gives you a sense of accomplishment. and keep jars of sauce and packets of noodles and stuff stashed in your cupboards so you don't accidently starve when you miss food-shop day.
9. take care of your eyebrows, they can make or break your face. you can spend hours applying perfect eyeliner and have ten-feet eyelashes but if you've got manky eyebrows then you'll just look shit regardless.
10. have a desk. it gives you a sense of purpose and a potential place to write if you're ever actually going to be an author like you promised yourself/gives you a place to keep your nail varnish
11. regularly check news websites and keep up to date with politics. no-one can resist a well-spoken and political-type person. i assume.
12. develop a manageable and quirky disease, maybe it'll make people like you
13. most importantly of all, keep hydrated. drink water all the time, ALL THE TIME. it makes you need to pee a lot, so people will think you have a coke problem, which is chic, and it keeps your sleep patterns and stuff regular. i cannot advocate keeping hydrated enough. it is my main beauty tip. just keep a bottle of water on you at all times and maybe one day you can be as successful as i am. i'm not promising anything but the chance is always there.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
happy barfday
i woke up this morning (every morning for a month) with an impending sense of doom. why? because in exactly 20 days time, i turn 20 years old. inbetween my suicide attempts and hysterical bouts of sobbing i've been making a birthday present list, tearing it up because it makes me greedy, and then making a new and longer one. it's been fun.
THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT MY TEEN YEARS:
1. my formative years consisted mainly of black hair dye, being dumped by a chubby boy with broken front teeth over msn (#criedmyheartout) and my chemical romance. what will my twenties bring me? probably a mild lust for jumpers and the need to watch ER.
2. being legit skinny
3. being able to get away with murder (coming home drunk from parties, actually having a social life etc.). nobody cares anymore because i live alone and no-one buys me food or makes sure i'm bathing, hence i am starving with BO.
4. actually having to go to high school even though it was shit. at least i had things to do.
5. going to the skate park and hovering trying to pick up skaters and never actually succeeding
6. looking like this:
#thinyetroundfaced #adorable
7. watching nothing but teen dramas. i'll still do it when i'm twenty but it'll be incrementally creepier
8. everything about being a teenager is better i'm going to kill myself now
Thursday, 2 June 2011
kfdhfdlkd
WHY YOU SHOULD HIRE ME:
1. i am good at reading and thinking and stuff
2. if i am not bored i work very hard
3. i make a conscious effort to shower at least every other day and hardly ever have B.O anymore
4. i am a quick learner and good with computer systems
5. i can be good at customer service if i know what i'm doing/ aren't upset
6. i can do monotonous tasks for hours and hardly notice
7. i can make paper fortune tellers
8. i always remember to say 'happy birthday!' and smile when it's someone's birthday
9. i have a really good memory e.g. mention something that happens in buffy and i will tell you what series and even what episode if i am not hungover
10. i watch so much CSI that i'm fairly sure i could competently solve a murder
11. i can buy a bus or metro pass to get to a job if i have to
12. i sound posh and thus will not scare posh people
13. i have job experience and have been proven to be good at remembering the prices of games, accessories, hardware etc.
14. i once did a really hard a level maths question in year 11 and the teacher was impressed because usually i was really bad at maths but not that day
15. i have my own phone, teeth, passport and laptop so i am evidently proficient at life
16. i do not mind scutwork and i will get coffees or sweep hair or put make-up on dead bodies or whatever you need me to do
17. i know how to make friends with cats really well dogs don't like me though
18. i am really good at cleaning and am probably borderline obsessive compulsive sometimes but you can use this to your advantage
19. i am not afraid of vomit, spit, pee, spiders etc.
please hire me
1. i am good at reading and thinking and stuff
2. if i am not bored i work very hard
3. i make a conscious effort to shower at least every other day and hardly ever have B.O anymore
4. i am a quick learner and good with computer systems
5. i can be good at customer service if i know what i'm doing/ aren't upset
6. i can do monotonous tasks for hours and hardly notice
7. i can make paper fortune tellers
8. i always remember to say 'happy birthday!' and smile when it's someone's birthday
9. i have a really good memory e.g. mention something that happens in buffy and i will tell you what series and even what episode if i am not hungover
10. i watch so much CSI that i'm fairly sure i could competently solve a murder
11. i can buy a bus or metro pass to get to a job if i have to
12. i sound posh and thus will not scare posh people
13. i have job experience and have been proven to be good at remembering the prices of games, accessories, hardware etc.
14. i once did a really hard a level maths question in year 11 and the teacher was impressed because usually i was really bad at maths but not that day
15. i have my own phone, teeth, passport and laptop so i am evidently proficient at life
16. i do not mind scutwork and i will get coffees or sweep hair or put make-up on dead bodies or whatever you need me to do
17. i know how to make friends with cats really well dogs don't like me though
18. i am really good at cleaning and am probably borderline obsessive compulsive sometimes but you can use this to your advantage
19. i am not afraid of vomit, spit, pee, spiders etc.
please hire me
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