Cool Hand Daniel

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By the end of my first day serving the community by attempting to avoid work at my local Goodwill charity store, the experience had become intensely depressing and demoralising. By now, on my last day, I am feeling pretty fucking sorry for myself.

The clothes are wheeled out from the mysterious back room in an endless procession of rickety rails and parked in the centre of the shop floor, designed, presumably, to cause maximum inconvenience to the largely freakish collection of desperate souls that frequent the store. From there the volunteers take armfuls of the clothes and hang them in the correct sections of the shop.

But I find almost immediately that I am unable to tell the difference between men's and women's clothing, or between women's and children's. I am simply incapable of holding up a pair of jeans and judging by its size who it would fit. Even locating and deciphering information from the labels appears beyond my capabilities. This hitherto undiscovered flaw in my analysing skills is a rather large hinderence to my performance. I am therefore reduced to merely guessing, and then shoving each item onto the ridiculously overcrowded rails at random when no one is looking.

One customer catches me putting what I thought was a skirt into the relevant department. “That's a top,” she tells me in some confusion.

“How can you tell?”

She holds up the shirt's spaghetti straps. “It's a top. See?”

“No,” I say mournfully.

While not being the world's best store clerk isn't such a big deal in my general life, its larger implications are worrying. When I try to concentrate on the job I become light-headed, spaced out, and I wonder around the shop in a kind of daze. Perhaps I have been idle for too long, or perhaps I am just no longer capable of functioning in the real world. When Lydia finally tires of my laughable attempts to attain a career in the Los Angeles TV world and the economy has picked up, she will force me to get a real job. (I did manage to make the AP website on a recent job: http://www.apimages.com/OneUp.aspx?st=k&kw=johnny%20hallyday%20in%20hospital&showact=results&sort=date&intv=None&sh=10&kwstyle=and&adte=1260910835&dah=-1&pagez=60&cfasstyle=AND&nextdah=15%2C15%2C15%2C15%2C15%2C15%2C15%2C15%2C15%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX%2CX&rids=feb877c991f94d71ac19fb6fb1946614&dbm=PThirtyDay&page=1&xslt=1&dispname=091214022658%2C%20Johnny%20Hallyday . I doubt anyone has purchased this photograph). How will I be able to fit into this world where people work forty or fifty hours a week and are expected to actually fulfill simple tasks to an adequate degree in exchange for their meager pay? It is totally beyond me how people are able to work full time in this very place.

A guy who has started his community service today has spent the entire morning circling the shop with a feather duster, lightly and ineffectively stroking the glass surfaces of the display cases. I am jealous of this genius work-avoidance move. Earlier, he told me that this was his first day of a hundred and eighty-three hours of community service.

“A hundred and eighty-three hours?” I repeated. “What did you do, kill a kid?”

He merely looked at me with dark eyes, then floated away with his duster.

Another guy, a twenty year-old Hispanic who reeks of pot, keeps sidling up to me to pass on his perverted opinions of the largely female customers.

“Definite lesbians,” he says, nodding at an unattractive pair of middle-aged ladies.

“You reckon?”

“Definitely,” he says again, speaking uncomfortably loudly. “Can't see the appeal, myself. It's too limited. I mean, I like to go down on a girl as much as the next man. Or woman. But to have to do it every fucking time. Must get depressing.”

“Huh. Well, they've got, like strap-ons and stuff, I suppose.”

He shakes his head. “I don't think so,” he says, and sidles away.

I am now one of those clueless dickheads who can't help you in shops. An older man asks me which colour is on sale today.

“They have colours?” I say.

He narrows his eyes. “Yes. They have coloured tags on everything. Every day it's twenty percent off a different colour.”

“Oh right,” I say, trying and failing to remember if I had been told this at any point. “You should ask at the front,” I suggest, gesturing towards the checkout which as usual is unmanned and surrounded by twenty impatient customers.

Another man stops me in the furniture section and asks if we deliver.

“No idea,” I say cheerfully, and keep walking.

I like it when someone asks me if I can open one of the fitting room doors. I don't know why they are locked but I'm glad they are because this is a task that even I am capable of successfully performing. I know where the key is kept and I know how to use it to unlock a door and the whole thing kills about thirty seconds.

There is nowhere pleasant to sit on my fifteen minute lunch break so I squat on a filthy cracked plastic bench in a bus stop by a six-lane boulevard. It is at this moment that I think the most seriously about my life and how this has happened. Then I remember that if I keep drinking I will be dead in twenty years or so and if I can just summon the mental strength to make it that far then it won't matter anymore.

In the afternoon I am exhausted and I have been reduced to taking just one item of clothing from the rail at a time to some distant part of the shop. I keep at it for an hour before I finally realise that someone else is loading the rail with clothes from the shop that are no longer wanted. She seemed as baffled that the rail was not filling up as I was that it never emptied.

I am picking coats off the floor when, just audible over the sex music that constantly pours from the shop speakers, I overhear a woman in one of the fitting rooms say to her daughter, “Look, you're really growing up. You're almost filling this A-cup already.”

I move away and glance at the clock. Twenty minutes of my sentence to serve.

I spot Jeff approaching me from the kids section. He nods at me and stands without saying anything.

“Can't keep away then?” I say.

“Nah. Wanted to introduce you to that guy I was telling you about.”

I notice a man behind him dressed in an expensive-looking cool black suit and no tie over a white shirt. He steps forward and holds his hand out. “Simon,” he says.

“Daniel,” I say, shaking his hand. I look at Jeff questioningly. He just returns my gaze blankly so I look back at Simon. “You're a friend of Jeff's? Or...acquaintance.”

“Simon works on Adult Swim,” Jeff says.

My mouth opens and I glare at Jeff, suddenly unpleasantly conscious of my stupid blue apron. “Huh. I didn't actually expect you to bring Simon in to meet me here.” I turn to Simon. “I volunteer here sometimes.”

“Funny,” Simon says. “Jeff told me you were driving recklessly and you were sentenced to community service.”

I start to stutter an excuse but he grins knowingly and I relax a little. “Why don't I meet you outside in twenty minutes?”

“No problem,” he says. “I need some new suits.” He winks and Jeff follows him to the men's section across the room.

I move to the back of the shop, hiding behind the extensive VHS section, plotting a way of murdering Jeff in a manner that would force him to understand his idiocy.

The Chain Gang

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Due to my virtual lack of employment, Lydia forced me to go to court to fight for a reduction in my latest speeding fine. Even some half-hearted Internet research between online games of Uncharted 2 made it clear that this was unlikely without going to trial (where I would lose because I am guilty), yet over the past three weeks I had diligently composed and recited a hundred times an impassioned speech that touched upon my relative newness to the country, the higher speed limits in Britain and my clean record in my home country. Neither the second or third parts were true, but my hope was for a middle-aged female judge who found my accent charming. And if my rhetoric appeared to be failing to achieve the desired effect, I had an optional, potentially devastating finale hinting at police corruption and government conspiracies.

In the event, a bored Asian man climbed into the chair, blew his nose into the microphone and, without looking at any of them, told the seventy anxious citizens in his court room that he wasn't interested in anything we had to say and that he was merely here to hear our plea and administer fines. Deflated but relieved, I instantly forgot my planned speech and made sure my wallet was in my pocket.

The woman before me (booked for making an illegal U-turn), claiming that she had a low income, asked for and received community service in place of the fine, and in a rush of blood to the head I found myself doing the same. The judge asked me how much I had earned in the past twelve months. Having no idea, I made up a figure. It must have been low, because the judge asked me to repeat it, and a murmuring rose up around the court room (which, when I got home and went through my payslips, made it all the more dispiriting when I discovered that I had in fact, earned less than my estimation).

“Yeah, you qualify,” the judge said with a bemused shake of his head, and sentenced me to forty hours. Which is why, this morning, I find myself wearing a blue apron and carrying a never-ending stream of clothes from a rail to, in theory, their correct spots in the shop. I am almost immediately able to slip mentally away to somewhere else and carry out my duties, incredibly badly, on auto pilot.

By chance, only a couple of hours into my first shift, Jeff walks into the shop. Jeff is the closest thing I have to a friend in Los Angeles, and I have never seen him outside of a bar or in a car on the way to or from a bar. It seems weird that he exists in the everyday world, walking around and experiencing things the same as everyone. But here is the proof.

Because it's only Jeff, I am not embarrassed by my appearance or my location, and I don't try to hide as he unwittingly approaches me in the electronics section which is largely stocked with single speakers. When he eventually spots me, he shows no surprise and merely nods his head and says, “Alright?” as though we have arranged to meet here.

“Hi,” I say.

He scratches the back of his neck. “What's going on?” he mumbles.

I shrug. “Nothing unusual with me. Just a day like any other day.”

“Cool,” he says, looking around distractedly. Already it seems that our conversation has ground to a halt, and I feel justified in blaming him for not asking questions in this situation.

“Fancy a drink this week?” he says eventually.

“Yeah,” I reply.

Jeff picks up a battered copy of a Harry Potter book that someone has thrown on top of a broken cassette player. “J K Rowling has made loads of money off these books,” he says.

Unable to handle this type of stupefyingly banal conversation without a drink in my hand, I stroll away and pretend to tidy a rail of shirts in the kids section. I can sense that he has followed me over.

“I was reading your old blog,” he practically whispers into my ear, and I disguise a shudder by turning to face him. “Have you ever thought about making it into a cartoon?”

“No, I can honestly say that I have never thought about that, Jeff.”

“Huh,” he mumbles.

“What do you mean anyway, a cartoon? I can't make cartoons.”

“You could write a script, though,” he says.

“Yeah, I suppose so. But why would I bother? I'm done with trying to be a professional writer. Besides, I hate cartoons.”

“Oh, just an idea.”

I realise I have been fiddling with the same shirt for a full minute so I step round to a pair of jeans that don't need rearranging and rearrange them. Just to break the silence, I ask him “Why?”

“It's just that my best friend is an executive or something over at Adult Swim.”

It is rare that a sentence uttered by Jeff contains something of interest, but two items of interest is unprecedented. It takes me a few seconds to decide which one to respond to first. “You have a best friend?” I say.

He looks at me blankly. “Yeah. I guess.”

“I thought that I...” I clear my throat, and move to another pair of jeans. “So your friend works at the Cartoon Network?”

“Yeah. Some big shot on those cool Adult Swim things. Not your kind of thing, I suppose.”

“When I said I hate cartoons, I thought you meant, like, Disney things,” I say. “I like the Adult Swim ones. And when I said that I was done with being a professional writer...” I trail off, searching for any possible turnaround. “That was just a figure of speech,” I end up with.

“Oh cool. Cos I sent your blog to my friend and he loves it. Said it has real potential as an animation.”

I stare at him, incredulous. “How can you mention this so casually? I mean, I try to have patience with everyone that crawls through my life but, Jesus Christ. Y'know?”

He just continues to look at me blankly, clearly not knowing. “So, you are interested?”

“Well,” I say, moving to another item of clothing, barely aware of what it is through my whirling thoughts. “I suppose I could give it a try.”

“Alright, I'll introduce you,” Jeff says, for some reason picking up a child's pair of jeans and – hopefully just my imagination – sniffing them. “I'll see you,” he says, and makes his way to the counter with the jeans.

I find it difficult to concentrate on the job for the rest of the day as I try to work out some way of writing in a style I neither admire or understand. But, at least for the moment, I am determined to make it work.

Free Counter

Thanksgiving

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Spending Thanksgiving with Sid and Esmeralda at Universal Studios hadn't been amongst my plans, but an inability to make it to Cincinnati for the Holiday with Lydia's family led to this wretched event.

Sadly, my travel problems didn't spiral into a hilarious, sprawling Planes Trains and Automobiles- style madcap adventure; instead it merely involved thirteen tedious hours in a small section of LAX Terminal Five.

Due to a mechanical fault, the flight was delayed initially for four hours, at which point, if we lived in a better world, the women would have turned to the men, shrugged, and said, “Well, I suppose we might as well pair up and fuck on the carpet.” Instead, this being Earth, we chose to resign ourselves to a morning of lonely, excruciating boredom.

When the replacement plane was also delayed with a mechanical fault, the serious drinking began, and by the time the third plane was finally ready, I was judged too inebriated to enter the cabin. After walking for hours through the dark long-term parking lot I eventually sobered up enough to recall that I had taken a taxi that morning, at which point I essentially forced my way into someone's passing car and got a lift to the exit to find a cab.

Sid has grown a scraggly reddish-grey beard over his three week holiday because his disposable razor was confiscated from his hand luggage at Gatwick - “What am I going to do, shave someone?” he said and has told me about four times – and he has refused to buy another on principle. The beard, predictably, makes him look ridiculous.

Esmeralda insists that we go on the Simpsons ride three consecutive times, and I suspect her of falling against me unnecessarily spectacularly and often, which, although it unnerves me, I put down to paranoia.

But when on the Mummy roller coaster her hand gently rubs my thigh, my suspicions become indisputable. I fail to move her hand, partly through shock and partly because no one except Lydia has touched me so intimately for some years, and, as in the pitch blackness I don't have to look at Esmeralda's face, it actually excites me. Only when she slides her hand onto my crotch do I slap my thighs together and turn as far away from her as I can on the speeding coaster.

I am certainly starved of unfamiliar female attention. I have barely even spoken to any women in Los Angeles that haven't been serving me drinks or food. Last week I took my landlady's dog Cash to a park and sat next to a beautiful woman watching her Labrador. We exchanged a smile and I was about to strike up a conversation when Cash did a big shit in the middle of the park and I was forced to shovel it into a trash can. By the time I returned to the bench, the woman was chatting to a muscly guy with a rottweiler and running her fingers through her hair. Their dogs were sniffing each other and nuzzling.

After some animal stunts show, during which I make sure that Sid sits in between us, Esmeralda goes to buy ice cream and Sid starts to sway around with his hands in his pockets like an embarrassed child. He nods at me as though he is agreeing with my thoughts.

“What?” I say.

“She's great,” he says, as though I have been complimenting her via telepathy. He looks over at her. Even from here I can see that she is trying to flirt with the startled teenager manning the snack booth. “She's just...a wonder.”

“Yeah,” I manage. “She's just...wow.”

“Yeah! This holiday has really brought us together. Things have slotted into place.”

“I think she's feeling that guy's abs.”

Sid glances around. “She's just friendly. She doesn't even realise she's doing it, y'know? Just a bit...over friendly. Sometimes.”

I nod but frown. “It didn't seem like she was doing that two weeks ago.”

Immediately, Sid's smile drops and he grabs my elbow. “No, she wasn't, and I don't know why or how to stop it. You've got to help me.”

I had been planning to ride out my final full day with Sid and Esmeralda as quickly and uneventfully as possible and this sudden unwelcome disturbance of this fantasy makes me physically recoil from his grasp. “Are you kidding? What do I know? I've never helped anybody.”

“Come on. You're a ladies man. You're the most world-wise, coolest bloke I know. Just tell me what to do.”

His desperation and his pathetic admission leaves me sad for the state of his life and even absurdly flattered so I am forced into making him feel temporarily and mendaciously hopeful. “Well, she's worth sticking with. You should be with her and I'm sure she knows that too.”

Instantly he becomes cocksure again, a gleeful glint in his eye. “I'm going to ask her to marry me.”

Instinctively, I glance over to the refreshment stand where she is still talking to the terrified clerk, licking her ice cream in an obscene manner. “No,” I almost shout. “I mean, her?”

He nods confidently. “I know she's the one. And we love it in LA. We're going to move here. We're going to buy a place and get green cards.”

A cloak of apocalyptic dread floats over me. “She touched my cock on The Mummy,” I say.

He is momentarily taken aback, then smiles as he would to a confused, potty-mouthed child. “She was scared,” he says. “She didn't know what she was doing.”

“She told me she wanted to fuck me,” I lie.

Sid gives me a disapproving look. “You're married,” he says, as though that, if it had happened, would have been my fault.

She rejoins us and gives us our ice creams. Mine looks as if it may have been the one she licked, and when they are exchanging smiles, I flick mine off the cone and swear.

“Ohhhhh,” Esmeralda says, and offers hers for me to lick.

I take a shuddering taste and force a smile.

“Let's go on The Mummy again,” Esmeralda says, and we head off again to the terrifying roller coaster.

The Director Shouts

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I am standing in a short, dark tunnel at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada, with a television camera on my shoulder. Six feet in front of me, a world champion boxer is shuffling his feet and tapping his gloved fists together as he waits for the deafening music to dip and an announcer to complete a ludicrously extended recital of his name. Above and behind me, seventeen thousand people are screaming in anticipation of the battle to come.

In a few seconds, a red light will blink on above my small black and white viewfinder, indicating that the image is being beamed live to tens of millions of television sets across the globe, perhaps in high definition, perhaps just in standard def colour, but almost certainly in much better quality than I, its composer, am experiencing. The boxer will be cued to move forward, at which point I will begin to walk backwards, attempting to match the fighter's pace. Someone will have a hand tucked through the back of my trouser belt, and I will attempt to differentiate between his purposeful tugging and accidental hand movements as he guides me between two rows of steel barriers and the huge security guards that line the narrow walkway. I will try to make the shot interesting by varying the focal length, zooming into a tight shot of the fighter's face whilst attempting to keep him pin sharp in the wildly fluctuating light, then widening to capture the entire entourage in the standard 4:3 aspect ratio while remaining vigilant that the widescreen viewer also has a pleasing composition to regard. I will be straining to concentrate on what the director is saying through my headphones, waiting to take in the few relevant words he will send my way amongst the general stream directed at others. Unfortunately, the headphones will be sliding down my sweaty head, threatening to lose their grip entirely and flap about under my feet, creating a new tripping hazard. A spotlight circles the boxer. This is largely for show. The small LED light attached to the top of my camera is providing the illumination necessary for television.

For its last pay-per-view fight three weeks ago, the TV channel for which I am currently working sold two million subscriptions at sixty dollars a pop. They have sold more for tonight's bout. So why, when my senses are already at overload, do I have to worry about the fifty dollar plastic arm that is supposed to hold my LED light in a steady, upright position, but is it in fact sagging against the gaffer tape that I wrapped around its joints as a desperate and failed temporary fix? Just like I did last time. And the time before. It becomes my main concern as the tension builds and the seconds tick down, and I am forced to remove my left hand from the focus ring and hold the light steady instead.

Everything happens in a one-hour stress and adrenaline explosion. Up until this point I have been hanging around backstage outside the dressing rooms, listening to my cable bashers' stories of the LA students who fly to Las Vegas for the weekend to turn tricks to pay their way through college. “Better than the jaded old local hags,” apparently. “And cheaper.”

Every now and then I have to force my way into the dressing rooms to get live shots of the fighters wrapping their hands or shadow boxing. This is usually a last-minute, panicked order over the headphones, requiring immediate action. Earlier this year I forced an old man out of Ricky Hatton's dressing room doorway with a curt “excuse me,” before he spun around and I realised that I had just manhandled Tom Jones. “Sir Tom,” I added with a nod, before moving on.

But mostly we sit and get ready to get ready. Someone else is on 'Celeb Cam' tonight and I am grateful. It is Jason's job to scramble over people with ten thousand dollar tickets to get close ups of the famous who probably got in for nothing. The only time the producer made the mistake of assigning me that position turned out less than favourably, as I was unable to recognise the majority of the American sports stars. When asked to get a shot of Manny Ramirez I was utterly at a loss, and ended up zooming into random strangers surrounding him. With American footballers, I would guess by shooting the biggest men in the general area, invariably choosing their bodyguards and receiving tired reprimands from people in charge. It would be the same, I presume, as someone in Britain failing to recognise Ronnie O' Sullivan or Eric Bristow.

As I take my place for the ring walk, my LED light already sagging against the gaffer tape, I ask my cable bashers for a practice walk. As we start to move backwards, an unsuspecting Arnold Schwarzenegger strides into the tunnel, surrounded by a massive entourage. Spying the shining light and the moving camera crew, he is momentarily surprised, then immediately adopts his politician's smile and waves into my lens as I inadvertently lead him to his seat by the ring. No one in the control room notices that I practice my ring walk on the most famous man in the building.

Just before the fight begins, the director suddenly decides to have me permanently stationed in front of one of the boxer's family. I hold my camera in the air and stumble over the front row's feet to the far corner, kneeling between the photographers and Nevada's Finest and training my camera on what I am told is the relevant party. The bell sounds for round one and immediately a security guard taps me on the shoulder. I ignore him, as though he will go away. These people never go away.

“Sir,” he says. “You cannot stay here.”

I still ignore him.

“Sir,” he says again. “Don't make me angry.” He reaches for his radio.

“I'm with the telly,” I tell him. “We're running this fucking thing.”

He starts to mumble into his radio so I get to my feet and push my way out of the corner, sweating through my shirt and onto my viewfinder. Flustered, clasping my camera, I trip over someone's feet and fall into another's lap, unable to break my fall with my hands. I am pushed upright and I'm staring into Mickey Rourke's mangled face. He is looking at me as though... well, as though I've just fallen in his lap at the start of the biggest fight of the year.

I apologise and hurry on, treading on famous feet. Jeremy Piven pushes me out of the way and his co-star, Turtle, tells me to 'fuck off'.

“You didn't make the celeb montage,” I respond, before clambering out of the posh seats and crawling around the arena towards the fighter's family.

I arrive just in time, getting a great shot of them just before the director looks at my camera. “Excellent, Daniel,” he says. “I'm coming to you at the end of the round.”

I maintain my position, my arms already trembling with the effort of holding my heavy camera pointing upwards from a kneeling position. The family are reacting to the action with cartoon enthusiasm; perfect for TV.

But the fire marshal has already found me blocking the aisle and is ordering me to move. A moment's hesitation and he is threatening to shut the event down. I have to interrupt the director to inform him that he can no longer use my shot. He seems disappointed; angry even.

“How am I a fire hazard?” I ask the miserable marshal. “If there's a fire I'm not going to stay on the floor blocking people. I shall be up and moving towards the exit like everyone else.”

“Move,” is all he says.

Suddenly the fight is over and I am caught in a mad scramble of excitement as I race to get to my post-match position. I literally fight past everyone in my way, accidentally shoving Garry Shandling into the slutty one from Desperate Housewives.

And finally, just in time, I make it to my roped-off corner section with a tripod where no one can move me on or shout at me. I regain my composure and wipe the sweat from my face. I am calm and focused. The presenter faces my camera, smiling. My red light blinks on. The presenter begins to talk to the American audience. I maintain a steady shot. And then the gaffer tape I applied earlier to the dodgy leg on my tripod gives way and my camera slowly but surely begins to sink to the left.

The director shouts.

El Sid

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Sid and his 'lady partner' Esmeralda sit opposite me in the Santa Monica Barney's Beanery. They are huddled unnecessarily close to each other, their heads pressed together so as to be tilted in the manner of curious pigeons.

While separately neither is entirely repellent, their combined effect as a couple in love is somehow entirely disagreeable – repulsive even. The concept of a contented, fulfilled Sid – even in just one aspect of his life – seems entirely unnatural. In a bar such as this, it always seemed to suit him to be peering out from behind a large drink at the waitresses with a frustrated, desperate longing that bordered on anger. This afternoon he has barely acknowledged the slim, sparsely-attired work of natural art that brought him his one beer and salad. It has been left to me to drink recklessly and ogle the staff, a job that, if it is to be done adequately, needs at least two people.

“Is it gay to pet a male dog?” Sid decides to ask.

He and Esmeralda have been droning on endlessly about their new 'baby', a two year-old French Boxer they rescued from Battersea Dogs Home. Due to mistreatment and neglect by his previous owner, Buster has severe abandonment issues. Sid has put him in a Dagenham kennel for the duration of their three week US holiday.

He glances from me to Esmeralda, although as he doesn't move his head away from hers, even with his eyes strained so far to the side that half of his pupils disappear behind his skull, he can surely see no more of her face than a blurry white smudge.

Esmeralda gives his question serious thought. “I don't think so...” she says after a while. “Do you think so?”

“I hope not,” Sid says. “But, y'know, it might be. I wouldn't touch a man that way. So why a dog?”

“Oh,” Esmeralda says. “I've never thought about it. Maybe I shouldn't be touching girl dogs then.”

“I'm talking about when you really get into the petting. Rolling around on the floor with them and rubbing their bellies.”

They both look at me for a response, as though there is anything reasonable one could add to this conversation. But I am forced to try.

“It's only gay if you're experiencing some sexual thrill from the experience. And if that's the case, I don't think you should be petting any dogs. Or any animals. Or anything, really.”

“I don't get a boner, Daniel.” He takes a minute sip of his beer, twisting his lips awkwardly around the glass rim so that he still doesn't have to leave the warmth of Esmeralda's hair and face even for a second. “Sometimes the dog does, though.”

“Where are you stroking this dog, Sid?” I say.

“Just at home,” he tells me. “Sometimes the park.”

I drown a silent scream in my vodka and Sprite and nod at the waitress for another. She doesn't remember me. The girls are far too busy and beautiful for me to have a story here.

After a few seconds, Esmeralda suddenly grins. “Silly. He means where on Buster are you touching.” She looks at me for confirmation. “Right?”

Agreeing with her suddenly feels as if it would alter and spoil the already tenuous relationship between me and Sid, which has always involved a fair amount of confusion and ignorance, and is something I realise I have got used to.

“No,” I say, shaking my head for needless emphasis, and the almost relieved expression that shapes Sid's blank face confirms that I have made the right choice.

“Tell Daniel about our business idea,” Esmeralda says, nudging Sid's head with hers. She looks at me. “Just in case being an agent doesn't work out for Sid.”

I only just manage to stop myself from snorting laughter. I want to ask her if having one unsuccessful client for a year and then nothing for the next eighteen months doesn't constitute a failure, when exactly is the line drawn? But I don't, and I realise again that Sid is the only person for whom I censor myself, which must mean something. With a new element thrown into the equation, things have become more complicated, and, oddly, I am suddenly resentful of Esmeralda's intrusion into my relationship with someone I have never particularly cared for.

“What are you getting Sid into?” I ask with barely disguised animosity that she fails to pick up on.

“It was both our ideas actually,” Sid says, beaming at his own cleverness. “You know how cute puppies are? Everyone likes puppies, right?”

“You're going to sell puppies? I think it's been done.”

“No,” Esmeralda says. “People want cute little puppies but then they grow big and expensive and unmanageable. Especially big ones like those Dulux and Marmaduke dogs.”

“So you know those DVD rental websites where you have a list of films and then you watch them and send them back and get a new one?” Sid says, his excitement building. “Like that but with puppies!”

“Yeah!” Esmeralda says. “You pay a subscription and you get a puppy a couple of weeks old or whatever, fully house broken. Then after a few months when it starts to get big and lose its cuteness, you send it back and we send you the next puppy on your list!”

“You don't need to worry about getting it shots or vet bills or anything. If it gets ill you just send it back and you get another one. Like when the DVD is scratched.”

“It's a big problem of course,” Esmeralda says, “People abandoning dogs or not taking proper care of them because they're too much for the family or people get bored of the same one. Now it's no longer a problem.”

“Hang on,” I say, rubbing creases on my forehead that have been deepening over the last year. “This doesn't solve anything. I mean, I can see the benefit for the customer, but what happens to the dogs when they're sent back to you?”

Sid and Esmeralda look at each other – as best they can – as though they actually haven't thought about this. “Well...” Sid fumbles. “There must be something...”

“Horse food?” Esmeralda says very quietly.

“Huh?” Sid says.

“Well...dogs eat horses. Do horses eat dogs?”

“Hmm...”

“There's no way,” I say, utterly incredulous at their naivety. “What about PETA?”

“Peter who?” Esmeralda says, predictably enough.

“The fucking animal people,” I say. “Those people will kill you. They're fucking insane. They think blind people shouldn't even have guide dogs. How do you think they're going to react to the mass culling of adolescent dogs?”

“Ah!” Sid says, delighted with himself. “Asia. Vietnam, Korea, they eat dogs. Put them on a boat, ship 'em over, make a bloody fortune.”

“Why not just sell them in London?” Esmeralda suggests. “Chinatown, I mean. There're loads of restaurants. Chinese, mostly.”

“Because this way,” Sid says, “We can claim ignorance. 'It's not our concern where they end up in Asia', we'll say. 'As far as we know, they're living in doggy luxury in rich people's mansions'. We'll have international protection. Probably.”

“God you're brilliant,” she tells him.

They roll their heads around until their lips meet and they exchange a sloppy kiss that makes my stomach turn.

“Let's go to the beach then,” Sid says, and when Esmeralda picks her bag up a bikini almost spills from it. I gasp, and order another shot with the check.

Forward to the Past

Having finally accepted that Sid is not going to be able to secure a publishing deal for my original blog, I have put it back up at www.christopherhardy.blogspot.com

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My first thought upon hearing that another of my ex-girlfriends is pregnant, especially one I liked, is invariably, ‘Great, more perfectly decent pussy ruined by childbirth’.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to admonish me for this. I am already well aware of how lousy a person this reaction makes me. I know that a well-reasoned, generous response would probably be, ‘How lovely for her and her husband/boyfriend, they must be thrilled’. But I resigned myself to being something other than well-reasoned and generous a long time ago.

In my defence, I am not being misogynistic. I am not casually referring to womankind as ‘pussy’; rather, I am referring specifically to the vagina. I actually mean that their warm intimate centre, a small, friendly place I once knew fairly thoroughly and - now that I am prompted to - remember with a certain fondness, will be irrevocably sullied by childbirth.

It should be pointed out that I am only really guessing here and, having never knowingly been involved with a woman who has experienced life’s greatest miracle (if you like that sort of thing), don’t actually have much of a clue about the subject at hand. None of which alters the facts surrounding my instinctive reaction to Shauna Farmer’s cheerful, over-long and slightly smug email full of exclamation points announcing the expected arrival of yet another human being on planet Earth sometime towards the start of next year.

Which indicates, I suppose, that I still see women as sexual rather than maternal. That even well into my thirties and married I place more value on pleasure than the continuation of life, and see a clear delineation between the two.

Jeff is staying in tonight, miserably embarking on an antibiotic-enforced ten day confinement of sobriety. He broke the news to me two days ago when I called him to arrange a trip to his local pool hall.

“Thing is,” he said. “I thought I’d at least feel healthy without alcohol but I just feel like shit since I stopped drinking.”

“When did you stop?” I asked him.

“Last night,” he said, sighing, so I hung up.

And since Lydia is away, my brain has taken it upon itself to start asking some serious questions about my place in the world. Questions that cheap Scotch won’t quell. There is a joke in the Patterson family that we peak when we’re fourteen - a joke I always laugh at - but the sad truth is that I actually peaked when I was eleven. That was the year that I got 99% on a year-end maths exam; that I won the Kent cubs cross country race in a course record; that I kissed the prettiest girl I ever have and will; that I bowled out the last man in the school cricket cup.

The next year I discovered that I couldn’t comprehend algebra; I graduated to the scouts and finished fifty-eighth in the district race, thus failing to qualify for the county finals; the prettiest girl I have ever kissed and ever will didn’t recognise me at the athletics club barn dance; I wasn’t picked for the school cricket team.

By the time I was fourteen I was past washed up and was put in the back of the kitchen cabinet next to the mugs no one uses cos they’re all chipped and stained brown from stewed tea but no one throws them away because they hold undeserved sentimental value. Or something. And pretty much the only thing that has changed about me since I became an adult is how I pronounce the word ‘salt’.

Just before she went away Lydia once again brought up the subject of having a baby. Luckily I had prepared and memorised a melodramatic response for just this occasion.

“Darling,” I told her. “The only thing you can be sure of when you create a child is that one day it will die. So the act of conception is also an act of murder. We bring our children into the world knowing they will suffer untold fear and pain and loneliness as we have until it is their time to expire.”

She looked more alarmed and upset than I had planned. “I don’t feel lonely. Do you?”

“No,” I said, backtracking cowardly. “I’m just saying. It’s strange to me to think that when my sister and brother and my cousins and I are dead, no one will remember our grandparents at all. They lived for an average of seventy-five years and yet they made no lasting impact on the world. They fought in world wars, worked in offices, probably had crushes on people other than their spouses and possibly acted on them, made music, stayed up together through personal crises, made and spent tens or hundreds of thousand of pounds, but all is forgotten with the passing of the people who knew them. And even if we have children, the same thing will happen to us when their children die. Unless, you know, my novel gets revaluated and I become a celebrated author.”

Lydia pursed her lips and glared at me. “We’re having a fucking baby,” she said and stood up and rolled her suitcase towards the door. She opened it and hesitated. “Only a very small amount of people make a lasting impression on the world, Daniel. But while we’re here we touch the people around us, and we try to do that for the better. Try to put things in perspective.”

And today I went to the Griffith observatory and watched a presentation in the planetarium that hammered home the idea that we are merely specks on a speck in a galaxy of other specks in a universe of specks and maybe the universe is just a speck in something else and so on and that really it’s a miracle we’re even here. In other words, it's probably not worth worrying about whether your socks match your shoes.

Of course, understanding that our place in the whole scheme of things is of total insignificance is all very well when we’re in the peak of health, drunk at night gazing at the stars with the new Part Chimp album on the iPod. But it’s a bit trickier when we’re on death’s door in bed in a hospice racked with pain, shivering and terrified and unable to draw a satisfactory breath. Or trapped in the mangled wreckage of a car, bleeding from multiple crushed appendages while fire licks worryingly at our feet.

I tell all this to Lydia on the phone after she finishes moaning about her hard day at work. She lets out a long sigh that I suppose it intended to signify weariness. “Jesus Daniel,” she says. “Most people think about this and put it past them when they're still kids.”

“I was too busy playing Fighting Fantasy,” I say quietly.

“Think about the things you have to look forward to,” she says, and then I can visualise her lips stretching into a vindictive grin as she adds, “Isn't Sid visiting soon?”

I decide to diffuse her satisfaction by faking enthusiasm. “Well that's true. Yeah, at least I have that...”

But she doesn't buy it and I am forced to hang up on her mid-cackle.

I finish the evening by writing a short, polite reply to Shauna's email, summoning the right words that I've heard before on TV to congratulate her, knowing that I shouldn't have to be simulating happiness at other people's joy and therefore, somewhat worryingly, feeling more and more like Dexter.