The Invisible Girlfriend

Well that'll teach me - I like millions of shiftless yet restless folk have started a blog, and now thanks to the 3 people I've got following it (thanks, thanks, I mean that - see you in hell) I now have to continue to bare what part of my soul hasn't been sold down the River Styx. Worse, I feel, egad, that I have to amuse, educate or at least open myself open to heartless ridicule without leaping into the tear smeared puddle of self pity that laps at the soles of my old MBT's that are going as bald as my head. How's that?

The soundtrack is, appropriately NO MEANS NO and last night I found myself actually buying and eating ice cream. £4.50 a pot (Strawberry cheesecake), which is £1.50 more than the dago red (apologies but I'm an advocate of John Fante). This meant I couldn't buy more cigars even though I keep saying I won't buy more cigars. So no matter how tasty & creamy said pot was, I say was as it was so bloody hard my spoon did a Uri Geller trying to get a sample to my mouth, I still don't get ice-cream. Which is still in the freezer. A shame as it's supposed to be balm for the troubled soul and if I would have eaten more of it maybe I wouldn't have drank another half bottle of wine and spun into bed at 8pm only to be woken at 3 a.m. be well meaning folk offering me gifts of wine and cigars. These I metaphorically shook my first at while the other hand grabbed the blue plastic bag of loot and I tottered off back to bed cursing these night demons, only to mildly chastise myself for unwarranted grumpiness as the bedside clock informed me that in truth it was only 9.15 post meridian and I'd only dreamt I was in such a deep sleep that it was the wee hours of the morning.
Do i digress?

Why the wine and even ice cream? We shall play the gentleman and say a slight romantic hiccup had led to me believe I should be a tad maudlin, tho I don't even believe I was, and leave it at that. Misled men tell no tales.

It is true tho that I do find romance a problematic little beast that has a set of teeth at each end that also function as bum-holes so one gets bit and then shat on in unison.
Take a little tale that happened 18 or 19 years ago when I lived in a shared house opposite a bread factory which had an atomosphere so uniquely and ambiently noisy that on the day the factory took a day off from spewing out those rubber packaged white sheets that supermarkets term 'loafs', the ensuing silence was so unusual it was like the world had ended until one's ears twigged what on earth had happened.
Anyway I lived in the shared house with some maggots that infested the kitchen waste bin, a dead bat in the understairs cupboard, a trainspotter of a man so boring that eveyone would flee the TV lounge as soon as his Burberry slippers crept over the threshold, a city guy who played, or in fine tradition merely owned a banjo and wouls re-roll the stubs of cigars in newspaper. Also an indian girl who over time got more and more disturbed that eventually, when her tape player broke and started to play the ever, ever present 'Best of Areosmith' tape on double speed she didn't even notice. She was the only one. Me? I was a paragon of virtue, drank Becks by the case, wrote lots of bad poetry (and one book, mind) and pretended I was, of course, Charles Bukowkski.
And then I did something very bad.
Drunken, desperate, girlfriendless, drunken, I prowled the carbon dioxide streets of West Croydon, found the shabbiest off-licence cum corner shop I could (and oh! the choice!). Toeing open the wired up door, as attractive as a teenager's teeth I stepped inside and spent hazy, courage gathering minutes in front of the magazine shelves, until after minutes of trepidation my sleazy hand snaked out, and before you know it, I had spat my coins upon the counter top and snaked out of the shop with my loot. A copy of 'Loot'.
For those of you not in the know 'Loot' is a buy/sell magazine, the London particular version of Exchange & Mart, and pink, like the FT, so assumedly only suicidal bankers sell stuff in there.
But the dreadful thing...They also have a Lonely Hearts column, and gripping Becks in right hand and biro in left I filled in my humbling request. Took a long time finding the right words, the right balance of eagerness, humility, sexiness (ha!) and forthrightness. And all this in about 26 words. And then I did it all again, as they insisted it had to be in black ink.
In the mists of time I have forgotten exactly what I wrote, but the essence of this overlong amble is 2 weeks later a reply flopped upon the doormat, gasping and pursing it's envelope flap.
Well, the awful truth, the long and short of it - it was a rejection. It's one thing sending off bad poetry to small magazines and having them flung back at you, as they are of course weevil brained ignoramuses who will never understand your fledging yet towering talents. But to be rejected by the Lonely Hearts. Spit on me why don't you from the Editor down to the lowliest coffee vending machine filler.
And why? It seems my passage mentioning 'a girl to kick his arse', meaning obviously a girl to encourage me out of my rut, and enthuse me and make me at last hear showtunes and understand the simple majesty of the sunrise and all that, well, it has been slightly misinterpreted in the way that puts me in a leather dungeon with some vicious horror blowing on my balls with the 'dead hot' setting of a Braun hair-dryer.
Yes. I've always found romance a little problematic.