02/10/04 - Going with Girls
I've contemplated the notion of going with girls. Several women I know have offered to show me the way, but I've always declined. I've never had any persuasions in that direction, apart from I quite like looking at other women's breasts, but only to compare them with my own. And I did once have a fixation on a girl at school called Stacey, who wore a black lace bra when everyone else was still in white cotton.
I'm straight. But self-ascription doesn't get me very far. To most people, actions speak louder than words, and I'm a contradiction in terms. To anyone who doesn't know me, I'm a lipstick lesbian. I hold hands with girls in public. Not because I like it but because, when I'm out and my heels are high and I'm in a bar and I can't see, holding hands with a girl is more glamorous than falling over.
I once had a job in a poster shop. Our bestsellers were 'hunky man holding small, wide-eyed, vulnerable, look-after-me baby' and 'topless straight girls in short skirts engaged in passionate kiss'. It's a look that now, by no choice of my own, I am forced to exhibit in public on a regular basis.
I wouldn't really mind. Only, if you walk around hanging from the arm of a gorgeous girl, there's a tendency to attract only the type of man who's looking for a two-for-the-price-of-one deal which you don't actually want to accommodate.
09/10/04 - Falling Over
Life is good. But sometimes things happen that make it crushingly bad. My friend asked me to her boyfriend's gig in town. She said there'd be eligible boys and told me to make an effort. I had some spray-on 'Barbie' jeans that needed to see the light of night, and some rubbishy white 80s PVC slingbacks that made my friends weep with disgust.
They came from a jumble sale and were a good size too small. I liked them, though. They had a nice heel and reminded me of the things I wanted when I was eight but was never allowed. Admittedly they looked cheap and somewhat nasty. They sliced my feet. But I didn't care. I hoped they'd attract a 'Ken' with a revivalist penchant for trashy birds. They didn't. Instead they caused me to fall over on the Charing Cross Road.
I was walking to this club, alone in my ill-fitting heels with no one to laugh it off with. There's nothing dignified about a girl in secondhand shoes taking a tumble. It doesn't pack in the admirers. I know it doesn't. It's happened before. It started about four years ago. So I blamed the shoes. But really that was like blaming the lost game on the racket; an empty attempt at shifting the onus when it's you who's at fault.
The shoes were high and too small. They did hurt and I couldn't walk in them, but the real reason hurt way more. I didn't see the kerb.
17/10/04 - Seeing Again
When part of your body goes wrong, other stuff starts to happen, too. Things that used to matter lots, matter less. Maybe you become a nicer person, or maybe you just see your existence for what it really is.
After all, in the end, everyone loses everything. There are no second chances. Or so I always thought. But then I met an American eye doctor who reckoned that, while my sight will worsen, I will one day see again - so long as I live to 80! A tidal wave of 'what ifs' swelled in my mind.
What if there are second chances? What if looks cease to matter? What if I go blind before I meet 'the one'? What if I fall in love with the sound of a voice and the touch of a faded face? What if I marry a man I have never actually 'seen'?
What if we have years of companionship void of the frivolities and vacuities of visual aesthetics? What if all this happens and then I see again? Then what?
What if on my 79th birthday I wake up with my doddery husband next to me?
I'll open my eyes and see his crinkled face for the very first time. What if I think he's an ugly git and the restoration of my vision also restores my nasty, shallow judgmental persuasions and I leave him, after enjoying years of his support and solidarity, for a better looking model?
23/10/04 - Advent of Autumn
The advent of autumn makes me feel quite sad. The nights draw in and the seasons run away with my ailing eyes.
I see less in the dark than I do by day. The clocks turn, and suddenly there's less light to do things by. I know that I'll see less this winter than I did the last, but still that's more than I'll see the next.
Everyone I know seems to have a birthday at this time of year. And, for me, it's a paper anniversary of the most sensationally farcical dumping of my entire life.This time last year, I attended an autumnal birthday bash that ended in tears. I'll never do fancy dress with quite the same innocuous revelry again. I adored him, but the relationship had never been short of complications. My future hung heavy. I wanted the promise of open space and the joys of a new generation. He saw children as burdensome. There was no middle ground - he had to go.
I was dressed as a 1950s majorette, sparkling in rhinestone. He was a Frenchman complete with cheap felt beret and nasty nylon stick-on joke-shop moustache. But there were no jokes that night. He got drunk, we rowed, and when we got home he declared 'the end'.
One year later, as the leaves began to fall again, we met and he said sorry.
30/10/04 - hare lip
I once had a boyfriend with a harelip that I loved to lick. It felt different on my tongue. We'd meet before class to exchange declarations of love and snatch inexperienced kisses as the school bell tolled. Then he moved to America and shattered my teen heart. Ever since, I've found men with similar oral imperfections devastatingly attractive. I can't help it; it's a fetish cast from the mould of my first love.
People get off on all sorts; wife-swapping, skat, hamsters ... Conjure up the most obscure practice or desire that lingers latent in the depths of your imagination, and someone somewhere likes it lots. Unbeknown to me until recently, to some blokes I am the personification of perfection. Not for my body, but for my ailing visual function. I found a bunch of blind fetishists who'd bonded in their obscurity on the internet. I didn't hang around for long, but I guess the fantasy (or reality, if any of them is lucky) is something to do with doing 'it' in the dark, only with the lights on. In that, they can see you, but you can't see them.
Either way, it's slightly more questionable than my comparatively innocuous penchant for harelips. But at least I am now safe in the knowledge that should the world ever seem void of offers and I suffer a fallow period seeped with the stench of desperation, I can always tap into a ready and willing resource for which I have that certain je ne sais quoi.