Slipping

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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.

Deafbo

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I have only been driving in Los Angeles for a few months when the roadside motorcycle police office holsters his LIDAR gun with undignified haste and kicks his bike into life or whatever they do.

“You’re fucked,” Jeff tells me.

“He might be after that sports car,” I say, pointing rather hopefully at the convertible that I am still speeding past in the next lane.

“Not likely,” Jeff scoffs, clearly unwilling to indulge my pathetic straw-clutching. “Seeing as she was driving within the speed limit and you were doing at least fifty.”

“It’s a dual carriageway,” I say in a whiny voice.

“Well, I guess we’ll see,” he says, folding his arms in an unnecessarily smug manner.

Jeff is the closest thing I have to a friend in this country. We met, predictably enough, in a bar when he was waiting for his friend and pool partner to arrive. I agreed to play a game which turned into two then three then a dozen when his friend failed to show up. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that he didn’t have any friends either and the whole thing had been a ruse. Which was fine.

I know very little about him and never bother asking questions because I suspect there is nothing more of interest to discover. He appears to have reached a similar, accurate conclusion about me. Once every couple of weeks or so we take turns to pick the other up to play pool and drink heavily. The only positive I can cling to as I wait for the siren to blare is that we are on our way to the bar rather than from.

When the cop zooms up needlessly close to my rear bumper, lights flashing and a mechanical-sounding “Pull over” coming from somewhere, I smile and wave him past, a spur of the moment plan that fails to have any effect.

“He wants you to pull over,” Jeff helpfully points out.

“Oh really?” I say in my sarcastic dullard voice before remembering that Jeff is immune to sarcasm, which is unfortunate as it is almost exclusively my only form of communication. Then I continue anyway because I can’t help myself. “We don’t have policemen in England.”

“Whaaat?” he says. “Don’t be ridiculous. Sherlock Holmes was English.”

“Sherlock Holmes was a private detective,” I say, turning into a side street and stopping.

“Pull into the alley,” the cop orders over his amplification system.

I click the gear stick back into Drive and do as he says. “Why does he want us in the alley?” I ask Jeff. “Is he going to shoot us?”

“Possibly,” Jeff says, seemingly seriously.

I watch in the rear-view mirror as the cop stays on his bike and makes some notes. There is a brief thrill of excitement at the novelty of being stopped by someone straight out of ChiPs which is replaced almost immediately by the dread prospect of informing Lydia of this encounter.

When we lived in London I thought of my speeding tickets as just another part of modern life; something unavoidable like petrol and tax and insurance and I paid them without worrying unduly about them. It was my country and my car and I wore the trousers.

Now the situation is reversed and Lydia is firmly in control of our marriage and my life. As I am essentially unemployed I am subservient to her in most ways, and would definitely be unable to hide a sudden increase in our insurance premiums.

This ongoing situation was compounded by a rash action on my part two days ago which Lydia has not yet fully recovered from. During a (nowdays) rare and generously selfless sexual act she had suddenly decided to treat me to because I had (probably accidentally) done something that made her feel pretty or special or the like, I had become distracted by something sparkling in the sunlight steaming through the living room blinds and mindlessly reached down and plucked a gray hair from the top of her bobbing head. Unsurprisingly, after a brief, fraught discussion, I was forced to finish myself off.

“Okay, switch the engine off and put your keys on the roof,” Jeff says.

I frown at him. “Why?”

“It just shows compliance. That you're not going to drive away or anything. Puts him in the best possible mood.”

“Fuck him,” I say in a tone that is meant to hint at dark menace and past criminal troubles and leave Jeff silently re-evaluating everything he thinks he knows about me.

Instead he merely blows air out of his mouth and shakes his head. “Whatever, man. How are you going to talk your way out of a ticket with that attitude?”

“I'm not going to talk my way out of it. Why should I give him the satisfaction of crawling and pleading like he's above me or something? Look, I'm not one of those idiots that hate 'pigs' on sight. I think most of them do a good job. Probably. But I'm not going to indulge his teenage fantasies by treating him like he's better than me because he's wearing a uniform and a badge. Anyone can be a fucking policeman. Fair enough, I was speeding and he's caught me so he's going to give me a ticket. That's the way it works. But I'm not going to sacrifice my dignity to inflate his ego. It's like how captured soldiers used to be back when people were brave. Name, rank, silence.”

“You're an idiot. I could talk my way out of this.”

“I'm not the kind of person who can talk my way out of things,” I say. “I'm not...appealing. People don't want to give me a break. So...fuck him.”

Jeff is looking past me so I turn to my open window where the policeman is leaning forward and waiting patiently. He clears his throat and then asks for my licence and registration and over the next two minutes I receive a speeding ticket without saying one word to the officer, maintaining at all times a purposeful, stoic stillness that largely involves awkwardly avoiding eye contact with him.

“Good evening, sir,” he says before walking back to his bike with no mention of the actual offence having passed between us, and I realise as I study the ticket that I am merely his perfect bust. A model sucker citizen who quietly accepts his fate without wasting the cop's time or making his life difficult in any way.

Jeff is incredulous. “Why didn't you at least do your English thing?”

“What English thing?” I ask numbly.

“That bumbling Hugh Grant charming shtick. People here love that shit.”

“Maybe I should practise,” I say.

“Or perhaps you could try driving within the speed limit,” Jeff suggests.

“You’re right,” I say, nodding my head. “I'm going to change. I’m going to be more responsible.”

“At any rate, after a few beers you won’t care about any of this until tomorrow.”

“Especially if we match those beers with shots,” I say brightly.

“Let’s roll,” Jeff says without irony, and we do.

Men Need War and the Women Need to Suffer

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I have a different story in every bar in Los Angeles. At least, the five or six in which anyone knows me. I don’t really know why, except to say that during the first few weeks of moving here, when I was exploring the area on foot and working up a thirst, I didn’t feel cool enough to walk into a bar by myself, hop onto a stool and order a drink. Somehow I needed to be someone a little more interesting.

In the Cinema Bar on Sepulveda, my latest find, I arrived from London three weeks ago and I do nothing but drive around the city all day. I don’t have a job or a visa and I don’t intend to attain either. I am somehow independently wealthy (I have been extremely vague on this point) and I aim to just stay in the country for as long as I can and if, when I leave, they decide never to let me back in, well, I just couldn’t care less. I am totally apathetic to almost everything. I live purely in the moment. The bargirl is gleefully appalled with my attitude and when the bands take a break and approach the bar for refreshment, she never fails to tell them all about me with an admiring shake of her head.

In the nearby Joxer Daly, I am a truck driver who, for some reason, has to drive right through Culver City every few days. I tell the staff and patrons tall tales of my life on the road, most of them involving loose women picked up in seedy roadhouses in Mid-American states followed by chases involving their husbands or pimps. I don’t think anyone believes these far-fetched stories, but they believe that I drive lorries. One time someone in the industry started asking me questions about my rig. I just told him that I didn’t like to talk about my job. It didn’t make much sense but it shut him up.

At the Backstage Bar and Grill behind Sony Studios I am a writer researching my new novel. My first book was a major success in Britain but wasn’t considered marketable in the US. The publicist, therefore, has sent me out to LA to gather inspiration for my second effort which either has to be set in America or feature an American in the lead role. I have a few ideas but I’m keeping them to myself because the publishers seem happy to bankroll my holiday indefinitely. I have wasted a good story here because, although I plead cash poverty and get drink after drink bought by locals and the staff, I don’t much like the bar itself.

In Saints and Sinners on Venice I am in a moderately successful band in Britain which is semi-permanently touring the States in an effort to crack the market. My band is called Men of the Cloth and the four of us dress up as priests, which can get hot under stage lights. We had a top thirty hit single in the UK charts called ‘The Fear’ because every band has a song called ‘The Fear’. The rest of my band is always too tired to come out drinking so I venture there alone.

In the Irish Times on Motor I am a man of mystery. Having failed to conjure up a decent story before first entering, I was coy about my occupation, suggesting that I wasn’t allowed to reveal details about myself. At first they were intrigued, then amused, and I am sure that I am now merely a figure of fun for them. They call me 008 and openly mock me by recreating the opening titles of a traditional Bond movie, but I just smile enigmatically and say things like ‘If you only knew…’

The truth, or at least a truth, is some combination of the lies I tell when drinking. Ten months ago I moved from London to Los Angeles with my American wife Lydia. She travels a lot with her job and I…do very little. Very occasionally I will work a freelance day as a camera operator somewhere or other in the city. Mostly, though, I get up late and laze about, reading books and playing with the garbage disposal unit, listening to music and watching terrible TV until the evening comes and I venture into the night.

I had a sci-fi novel published in Britain last year but it didn’t sell. I covered the process in a blog in which I hid behind my pen name Christopher Hardy and referred to my wife as Cheryl. In fact the only real name I used was my agent’s, Sid. He was always concerned by this, which in my view only added to the cowardice of the whole enterprise. But no more. It is time to stand up and be brave. This blog will use all real names. I just won’t tell Lydia.

My main motivation is to fill the time in front of my computer when I am pretending to finish my follow-up novel (vital in fooling Lydia into thinking I am still writing and therefore not forcing me to apply for jobs in supermarkets). The keen interest I’ve developed in Internet amateur pornography can only fill so may minutes a day. Writing is utterly pointless in this day and age, of course. No one reads anything longer than a hundred characters and certainly nothing printed on paper. Even the Queen doesn’t send telegrams on hundredth birthdays anymore. She just Tweets.

Anyway, maintaining these bar facades becomes increasingly challenging as the night wears on, especially if I decide to switch venues during the course of the evening. Several times I have taken my place at the bar, greeted whoever is on staff, then realised I haven’t the first idea of who I am meant to be or what I am meant to do, if anything. What should be fun, relaxing evenings have become quite stressful. Last week I couldn’t face any of it so I found a new bar where I could just have a quiet drink and switch off. When I found myself informing the barman that I was a trainee astronaut, I knew I had a problem.

It affects Lydia’s life too. When she is in town and I take her out, she is forced to go along with my awkward fabrications. Although she can see how popular I am as people other than myself, she likes them a lot less than the real me, even though the real me wouldn’t have made it through thirty seconds of conversation with the bar staff in any of these places without boring or alienating them.

She doesn’t come out with me very often, but when she does she has a role to play. In the Cinema Bar she is just some floozy I pick up occasionally. In Joxer Daly she is my wife and everyone is forced to tip-toe around her for fear of letting slip something about my endless infidelities (or my compulsion to make them up). In the Backstage she is a fellow writer, a poet. In Saints and Sinners she is my LA groupie and in the Irish Times she is an enigma.

And this, so far, is my life in Los Angeles.










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