Hey you! Yeah, you! Ever listened to a pop song?! Yeah! Pop songs! We all love pop songs! Sometimes we turn on the radio and listen to the radio! Don’t we?! We do! Yes! Songs!!!!
Heeeeee! Songs. Something you may have realised during all this radio-listening is that roughly 100% of all songs are about Love. True Love. Lost Love. Unrequited Love. First Love. One Love. Fast Love. Burning Love. Tainted Love. Yeah? Noticed that? YOU HAVE. Shut up.
Think of a song, any song. Got one? No, don’t tell me. It’s about Love isn’t it? YES IT IS, don’t lie. And don’t say something stupid like ‘The Birdie Song’. Because when Mike Rae recorded that touching ballad to his recently deceased wife, so overcome by emotion was he that he couldn’t even pronounce the words properly and was only able to emit little squeaks and honks. It wasn’t even called ‘The Birdie Song’, it was called ‘Oh God, dear God, I loved you so much, I think I may have to literally tear my still beating heart out of my chest using nothing more than the weight of my own grief’. But the record label insisted.
Now listen to me. I have become slightly suspicious that some or all of these songs are spouting dangerous nonsense. If you listen to the pop song then you will reason that it makes Beyonce crazy, Leona Lewis bleed and Bryan Adams a cunt.
Tootle tootle, sing the singers. Bumpity bump, go our hearts.
Only Love can break your heart, Love will tear you apart again, Love is the rhythm and you are the dancer.
This tyranny cannot continue.
‘I wanna know what love is‘, synthed Foreigner. And despite the fact we don’t all contain an internal Casio keyboard, we spootle a clammy and hopelessly sincere agreement to this pathetically facile statement.
Love. Most of us have never felt it, some of us don’t believe in it, but we all want to experience it. You know, just once. To see what it’s like. Like cocaine. Thing is. THING IS. I think it don’t exist. Ah yeah. I said it. It don’t exist. Ahahah! Pcchnnwwrara! (sound of your bubble bursting, BTW - short for ‘by the way’, by the way, Mum).
I refer to Love, not cocaine
But what is Love? If the great philosopher Haddaway didn’t know, then what hope for the rest of us? NONE. J Lo claimed that ‘Love don’t cost a thing’ but she’s a money-grabbing whore, so what are we to think? The Bee Gees enquired as to the depth of your Love, suggesting that it should be measured and monitored with a yardstick, like a river on a floodplain. Personally I’m glad one of them is dead.
And on it goes… These singers waffling sentiments of Love. The Power of Love (in horsepower?), The Caravan of Love (Love is not a gypsy), I’d Do Anything for Love but I Won’t Do That (I assume he means anal). There’s no escape. It’s like death by a thousand Love ballads. I can’t turn on the radio anymore thanks to the knowledge that my horrendous, single, loveless life is about to turned into song.
Ok. So. I’m drifting out towards 30 like an exhausted swimmer in a riptide, so maybe I’m not the best person to judge. After all, most of the music I’ve written would cause the modern under-25 to roll their eyes and say ‘oh my days’ or whatever else it is they do at the moment. So, let’s get modern, y’all. Woooo, whoooosh, we fly into the 21st Century. This is great, this. It’s like the Time Traveller’s Special Nephew.
So. I point you all in the direction of the modern Love song ‘I Wanna Love You’ by the modern rapper man Akon and his modern rapper friend Snoopy Dogg. It’s a touching ballad in which our hero, Akon, sees a young lady on a dance floor and instantly falls in Love with her. It’s like Romeo and Juliet! Only shit! Ok so, Akon really Loves this girl and… hold on, why don‘t I let Akon tell you himself. ‘Baby you got a phatty, the type I’d like to marry’. Aww, shucks, Akon, looks like you’re really smitten. His fascinating friend, Snoop Dogg, can only agree that Akon has found the woman he is going to settle down with - ‘Pussy is pussy and baby you’re pussy for life.’
Quick note to women - you can end men like this. You have the power. STOP HAVING SEX WITH THEM.
Oh, hold on. What’s that, Akon? You’ve got more to say? Ok… ‘I’m lovin’ the way you shake your ass, Bouncin’, got me tippin’ my glass, Normally don’t get caught up too fast.’
HEAR THAT, SWEETHEART? AKON DON’T USUALLY FALL IN LOVE SO QUICKLY BUT BECAUSE YOU’VE SHOOKEN YOUR ARSE IN HIS GENERAL DIRECTION HE THINKS HE MIGHT LOVE YOU! SERIOUSLY. YOU GOT A PHATTY! THE TYPE HE’D LIKE TO MARRY!!!! YOU!!!! WELL FUCKING DONE!!!!!! DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE THE VOTE?????!?!!?!??!!!!!!
Can I die now?
EIGHTH DATE REPORT - 04/08/09
Oh who the fuck cares anymore?
So I met Kimberley. You know, in a bar. And. Er. Even I’m bored now.
It weren’t a good ‘un. We met. She was a perfectly decent human being. We had a drink. And, er, talked and stuff.
Hmm.
No. That’s it.
We met quite late (for a school night) and I was knackered. I’d been preoccupied at work (like a real human person!) and the last thing I wanted to do was go on a date. So. I went into it with a fairly negative frame of mind.
No amount of Taurine based drinks were going to salvage this situation. Kimberley and I forced conversation for the evening but it was clear after about 77 seconds that a second date was as about likely as the Democratic Republic of Congo calling Brussels and laughing off the Belgian occupation. This isn’t likely, by the way. The Belgians committed all kinds of atrocities and…oh fuck off and read a book if you’re that bothered.
Kimberley. This is for you. I’m sorry. I am truly sorry. This was your first date on Match.com. And it wasn’t great. Was it? No. But I want you to know it won’t always be like this. You’ll meet people you’re compatible with. People who aren’t so exhausted that they fall into deep comas of silence every 4 minutes. People who’ll find you attractive.
I can’t tell you how guilty I felt knowing that this was Kim’s first Match.com date and that I was, single-handedly, destroying her belief in internet dating. Don’t worry, I wanted to say, it’s around the fifth date when you realise once and for all that the whole system is a sham. You’ve got ages.
To be a bad first date for someone is a genuinely unpleasant experience. You feel like the thorns on a rose, a trompe d‘oieul, a liar, an empty pop song.
Sorry, Kim. You deserve better. Don’t give up on the Match. It’s not you, it’s me. Me and You. It’s mainly you.
Ah, look, I give up on Love. You should all give up too. Why don’t we all give up? Together. What’s the worst that could happen? Ok, Foreigner (the band, not all people who aren’t British), you wanna know what Love is?
Here we go. It’s the one emotion we all crave despite the fact we’ve never felt it before. Despite the fact that our emotional base is developed between the ages of two and seven, we all believe that in our adult life we can shove another one, Romantic Love, into our greedy gullets.
Hey hey! And when we’ve done that we’ll look under the bed for the Holy Grail and check if Atlantis hasn’t fallen down the back of the sofa! Grow up. Mr Darcy had financial obligations to meet, Jane Eyre was a munter who wanted children and Romeo and Juliet were prepubescent. Financial reality, biological imperative or childish naivety. Take your pick. T’ain’t Love.
Most of us don’t believe in it, less of us have felt it and I personally see more genuine affection in Debbie Does Dallas than your average romcom. So. Let’s go to war against Love. Until we have the evidence, we won’t give in. We’ll be like Richard Dawkins! That’s right, smug and self-satisfied.
In the meantime, lovely singers, please stop writing songs about it. We’ve got enough. Write about something else. Something tangible. Something we can believe in, something we can all experience. Something that, actually, is all around us. Like cancer or gum disease.
So come on. Let’s celebrate our lack of romantic Love. Let’s embrace it.
People! I implore you! Turn the radio off. Be unLoving. Be unLoved. Be unashamed. Go! Now! Run out into the street and tell someone you don’t Love them. Don’t waste time, life‘s too short! Stop reading this ridiculous blog, pick up the phone, call someone you don’t Love, and tell them that you don’t Love them. Call everyone! If you are in a relationship with someone you don’t Love, find them and tell them you don’t Love them! Even if you’ve told them you Love them. No! Especially if you’ve told them you Love them. What have you got to lose?
Regain your honesty. Wipe the slate clean. And forget about it.
And know this - it’s ok. It really is. Most of us aren’t in Love. Most of us have never been in Love. And most of us never will be.
Seriously. It’s ok.
Say it LOUD.
Say it PROUD.
I don’t Love you.
Not yet.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
We have lost the first of the ebb
SEVENTH DATE REPORT - 03/08/09
The husky, mid-shadows of the East End boozer, a place neatly straddling modern excess and faded decency, was as snug as any other place for our group. The landlord was an affable sort, if a little coarse, and we always found the other clientele too busy in their own business to notice ours.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of sitting about in pubs. It held our hearts together and made us tolerant of each other’s yarns. Each fellow was good enough in his own way, even Romeo, though he had the habit affecting thoughtful poses (you know, like a prick).
‘And this also’ said Romeo suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth.’ He was the only one of us who had ever ‘followed his heart’. The worst that could be said of him was that he was a short, whinging Welsh hedge-botherer. His comment, unremarkable to us, was met with silence. Not even a grunt. After all, we hadn’t the foggiest what he was biffling on about.
He continued without need for invitation. He does that.
‘I was thinking of the very old times, when man first went in search of Love. Man’s course to the centre of the heart, from the caveman’s club to it’s pinnacle, Kenneth Williams’ performance in Carry On up the Khyber, has been littered with casualties. But men still went, oh yes, though they fell like flies.’
We knew this would be the beginning of a great yarn, equally as long as it was impossible. How did we know this? It was his round. ‘I’ll get them in then’ sighed someone, sadly but not really as any one of us would have gladly taken a nail-gun to our perineum at that point to avoid hearing the torrent of bullshit that would soon be filling the pub, slowly but horrifyingly surely, until we were all mere sailboats bobbing about in a wild ocean of utter shit.
‘But these men were nothing but brutes, grabbing what they could, regardless of anyone else’s feelings. And we’ve done the same of course, of course! But what sets us apart from these philanderers is our honesty. Taking advantage of the weakness of others does not constitute strength. The conquest of others is not a pretty thing when you look at it. What redeems it is the idea only. Not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…’
He broke off. Of course he did. His pint had arrived.
‘As a youth it captivated me. Mills & Boon, Blind Date, even the insufferable Chris Tarrant vehicle Man-O-Man. From those first stirrings of desire as I became irrationally and confusingly obsessed with Jet from Gladiators, to one failed relationship after another, I kept looking. But I never found it. The heart. The one place I longed to go, the one thing I longed to possess. As I mapped my life there was always one blank, one huge uncharted territory. But as I grew others filled in that blank, charted the maps, replaced my ignorance with scraps of knowledge and half-truths. I swore I’d never go, its reputation now sullied to me.’
‘But I found myself one day sitting in front of my computer, staring, yes staring! like a madman! at a website that had captivated me. I tried to fight against it but it all that desire came flooding back - Jet, late night soft porn on Channel 5, Khyber - and, dash it all!, I couldn’t help myself. The snake had charmed me.’
‘Forgive me, gentlemen, I was young, I still had dreams and, damnit, they promised me the earth; meeting new people, new experiences and excitement and, yes that one that I had so long craved yet fought against - Love. In six months. Yes, fellows, in just 6 months. I should have known it was doomed to failure, fated to be one galling blow after another. One particular incident happened just up the road from here.’
He took a pull on his lager and stared down the long expanse of the eastbound road, towards another over-priced fuckshack that calls itself a pub when it is, in actual fact, a meeting hall for cunts.
None of us looked with him. We had completely lost interest.
‘I met my companion for the journey not too far from here, a small young lady, named Nadine. She was somewhat younger than I but I had been assured that she had charted these waters before and would be a befitting attendant for my quest. Plus, she was quite fit. The road was long and straight and relatively tranquil but as we neared our destination I felt uneasy. It was a gradual change. I don’t know when I first noticed the trousers getting skinnier, or the haircuts becoming more and more asymmetric, but I suddenly found myself, with a jolt, an alien. They had warned me to expect this so I felt some comfort in a familiar sense of uncertainty.’
‘We chatted amiably but I couldn’t help thinking about the words of the website, nagging away. After all I was promised Love. We were a good match. I was to believe that I would find Love on this very journey. My companion, of course, did not know this. Whilst we were, in a sense, aiming for the same destination, we were taking very different routes. I had had my orders. Find Love. As soon as I saw the pub my hackles rose. All around it the natives sprawled, some sitting on the floor, yes!, even in the gutter. They seemed possessed by something entirely unearthly, something I did not, no, could not possess. They had a togetherness, a clan identity and mentality. It chilled me to my core. Most of them looked like Agyness Deyn. Even the men. In fact, especially the men. Love, I had been lead to believe, lay inside. I was to find it. I had gone on far enough, I had been promised, and I was to seek out Love here. Some of the natives had taken to worshipping it, coupling off into duos of androgynous terror, all hips and collars, unaware of the fact they were being tricked. You may be here now, I muttered, already embittered by my surroundings, but mark my words in five years time you’ll all be accountants or regional reps for a telecommunications company. Some of them lolled, eyes glazed with aching cool, others were simply twats.’
‘Yet, emboldened by my companion’s ability to fit in with these curiosities and her touching enthusiasm for the edifice, I strode through the door with renewed vigour. The sight I was greeted with will live with me until my dying day, gentlemen, until my very dying day. Once my eyes had adjusted to the repressive gloom, the room lit waveringly by only four Ikea tea lights, I realised the scene outside was nothing more than a precursor for the desolation and inhumanity that lay inside. The chairs were scattered at seemingly random angles (some were not chairs at all but bean bags - BEAN BAGS), carpets hung from the walls in some kind mockery of normal societal rules, things dangled from the ceiling, it was impossible to tell who was staff and who wasn’t. If this is what Love had done, I had to find it, and quick, before it’s terrible influence could be exerted on any more recent graduates.’
‘We sat at what I suppose was meant to be a table and I ventured, stepping over limbs and on fingers (teehee!), to the bar. Gentlemen, in our days together we have seen some torrid things. Things we shall never reveal to our wives and children. But this bar, seriously, took the fucking biscuit. There wasn’t a soul behind it. Three of the impossibly young ghouls hovered nearby, to one side, waiting, I assumed, for service, like souls stuck in purgatory - only in this case purgatory looked like the menu screen of a Mighty Boosh DVD. I inspected what was on offer. Oh these poor souls! Only one decent beer and selection of spirits that I suppose seemed funny at the time. I stood for what seemed like minutes but was only, I later realised, minutes. Eventually one of the small children in a cheque shirt enquired to my health. Extraordinarily, when I told him I was waiting for the bar staff to return he informed that he and the other two from Skins that had been desperately louching (yes, I’m using that as a verb) to one side of the bar, were, in fact, the bar staff. I responded in the only way that I’ve been trained to under these circumstances. Oh, I said, and ordered my drinks.’
‘If I was to find Love here, I understood, Love must be in a very bad way indeed. In fact, I soon became concerned for it’s welfare. Perhaps Love was not responsible for this debacle, perhaps it had been rode roughshod over, trampled into submission by winkle-pickers and limited edition Converse. I made conversation with my companion but I understood that she too was lost. She, like the rest of them, were in thrall to whatever captivated them. Whenever we made contact with one of the natives, she responded naturally and, occasionally, warmly. At one point I thought I may have incited a deadly riot when I asked if the lights could be turned up a little as I wasn’t sure whether I was actually dating anyone at all. Did Love crave this atmosphere? Did it demand the darkness, the half-light into which we were plunged? I decided to accept it, to let it smother me, let it take me away to another place, like a holiday in Geneva.’
‘I did as they do and tried to think as they think. I tried to imagine they were free-spirited, open-minded, unfettered by the usual conventions of society. Perhaps they had, with or without Love, found another way of being, a better way of living. Was it possible that I had been living in the dark all along and that these people, so strange to me, were actually right? As I embraced what their idea of life, of Love, might be, the closer I got to it. The barrier between my companion and I fell and, even though I couldn’t actually see her, a warmth, engendered by mutual understanding, developed. I had been wrong all along to judge her by her choice of surroundings, her possible choice of friends, the cover of her book. And, hey, maybe my jeans could be a little tighter.’
‘Feeling rather grand that I had opened my mind to new, younger, cooler avenues, I bounced off to the toilet, suspecting that Love did indeed live, and wield power, within these gloomy walls. I even began to think that the wearing of ironic NHS specs was not only acceptable but desirable. But as I weaved my merry way through the building I was grasped by a sudden realisation. Love was not in this public house, this once proud East End local. The new settlers, these invaders, had set up their own law. Not Love, no, but Youth. The New. The Future. This was their Idea. This is what they had set up, what they bowed down before and offered a sacrifice to. The belief in this idea was what redeemed them. Inside the toilet, just in my eye line in the mirror as I peed, someone had written two words on the wall, repeating them twice.’
‘The horror, the horror.’
‘No, seriously, they had. Do you think I started this pathetic pastiche for a laugh? The point being, this was not my place, my heart could never be found here. Love was found wanting, it couldn’t survive here. The excess of cool and studied indifference and mass-produced individualism had made any level playing field for Love impossible. It was a status battle which I could never win. This was her place, not mine. It wasn’t Nadine’s fault. It wasn’t mine either. We went on a completely impossible journey together, the surroundings simply serving to further highlight the gulf between us. The pub was, in fact, a handy architectural marker for how badly suited we were. My efforts to cross this chasm had merely allowed me to look down into it; and as I did the chasm seemed to me to lead to an immense heart of darkness.’
And with that Romeo said his goodbyes, taking his weak, overlong and, frankly, unworkable literary allegory with him.
As we made a start for home later that evening I looked back down the road towards the place that Romeo had spoken of. And it struck me that he was right all along. It is a shit pub.
The husky, mid-shadows of the East End boozer, a place neatly straddling modern excess and faded decency, was as snug as any other place for our group. The landlord was an affable sort, if a little coarse, and we always found the other clientele too busy in their own business to notice ours.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of sitting about in pubs. It held our hearts together and made us tolerant of each other’s yarns. Each fellow was good enough in his own way, even Romeo, though he had the habit affecting thoughtful poses (you know, like a prick).
‘And this also’ said Romeo suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth.’ He was the only one of us who had ever ‘followed his heart’. The worst that could be said of him was that he was a short, whinging Welsh hedge-botherer. His comment, unremarkable to us, was met with silence. Not even a grunt. After all, we hadn’t the foggiest what he was biffling on about.
He continued without need for invitation. He does that.
‘I was thinking of the very old times, when man first went in search of Love. Man’s course to the centre of the heart, from the caveman’s club to it’s pinnacle, Kenneth Williams’ performance in Carry On up the Khyber, has been littered with casualties. But men still went, oh yes, though they fell like flies.’
We knew this would be the beginning of a great yarn, equally as long as it was impossible. How did we know this? It was his round. ‘I’ll get them in then’ sighed someone, sadly but not really as any one of us would have gladly taken a nail-gun to our perineum at that point to avoid hearing the torrent of bullshit that would soon be filling the pub, slowly but horrifyingly surely, until we were all mere sailboats bobbing about in a wild ocean of utter shit.
‘But these men were nothing but brutes, grabbing what they could, regardless of anyone else’s feelings. And we’ve done the same of course, of course! But what sets us apart from these philanderers is our honesty. Taking advantage of the weakness of others does not constitute strength. The conquest of others is not a pretty thing when you look at it. What redeems it is the idea only. Not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…’
He broke off. Of course he did. His pint had arrived.
‘As a youth it captivated me. Mills & Boon, Blind Date, even the insufferable Chris Tarrant vehicle Man-O-Man. From those first stirrings of desire as I became irrationally and confusingly obsessed with Jet from Gladiators, to one failed relationship after another, I kept looking. But I never found it. The heart. The one place I longed to go, the one thing I longed to possess. As I mapped my life there was always one blank, one huge uncharted territory. But as I grew others filled in that blank, charted the maps, replaced my ignorance with scraps of knowledge and half-truths. I swore I’d never go, its reputation now sullied to me.’
‘But I found myself one day sitting in front of my computer, staring, yes staring! like a madman! at a website that had captivated me. I tried to fight against it but it all that desire came flooding back - Jet, late night soft porn on Channel 5, Khyber - and, dash it all!, I couldn’t help myself. The snake had charmed me.’
‘Forgive me, gentlemen, I was young, I still had dreams and, damnit, they promised me the earth; meeting new people, new experiences and excitement and, yes that one that I had so long craved yet fought against - Love. In six months. Yes, fellows, in just 6 months. I should have known it was doomed to failure, fated to be one galling blow after another. One particular incident happened just up the road from here.’
He took a pull on his lager and stared down the long expanse of the eastbound road, towards another over-priced fuckshack that calls itself a pub when it is, in actual fact, a meeting hall for cunts.
None of us looked with him. We had completely lost interest.
‘I met my companion for the journey not too far from here, a small young lady, named Nadine. She was somewhat younger than I but I had been assured that she had charted these waters before and would be a befitting attendant for my quest. Plus, she was quite fit. The road was long and straight and relatively tranquil but as we neared our destination I felt uneasy. It was a gradual change. I don’t know when I first noticed the trousers getting skinnier, or the haircuts becoming more and more asymmetric, but I suddenly found myself, with a jolt, an alien. They had warned me to expect this so I felt some comfort in a familiar sense of uncertainty.’
‘We chatted amiably but I couldn’t help thinking about the words of the website, nagging away. After all I was promised Love. We were a good match. I was to believe that I would find Love on this very journey. My companion, of course, did not know this. Whilst we were, in a sense, aiming for the same destination, we were taking very different routes. I had had my orders. Find Love. As soon as I saw the pub my hackles rose. All around it the natives sprawled, some sitting on the floor, yes!, even in the gutter. They seemed possessed by something entirely unearthly, something I did not, no, could not possess. They had a togetherness, a clan identity and mentality. It chilled me to my core. Most of them looked like Agyness Deyn. Even the men. In fact, especially the men. Love, I had been lead to believe, lay inside. I was to find it. I had gone on far enough, I had been promised, and I was to seek out Love here. Some of the natives had taken to worshipping it, coupling off into duos of androgynous terror, all hips and collars, unaware of the fact they were being tricked. You may be here now, I muttered, already embittered by my surroundings, but mark my words in five years time you’ll all be accountants or regional reps for a telecommunications company. Some of them lolled, eyes glazed with aching cool, others were simply twats.’
‘Yet, emboldened by my companion’s ability to fit in with these curiosities and her touching enthusiasm for the edifice, I strode through the door with renewed vigour. The sight I was greeted with will live with me until my dying day, gentlemen, until my very dying day. Once my eyes had adjusted to the repressive gloom, the room lit waveringly by only four Ikea tea lights, I realised the scene outside was nothing more than a precursor for the desolation and inhumanity that lay inside. The chairs were scattered at seemingly random angles (some were not chairs at all but bean bags - BEAN BAGS), carpets hung from the walls in some kind mockery of normal societal rules, things dangled from the ceiling, it was impossible to tell who was staff and who wasn’t. If this is what Love had done, I had to find it, and quick, before it’s terrible influence could be exerted on any more recent graduates.’
‘We sat at what I suppose was meant to be a table and I ventured, stepping over limbs and on fingers (teehee!), to the bar. Gentlemen, in our days together we have seen some torrid things. Things we shall never reveal to our wives and children. But this bar, seriously, took the fucking biscuit. There wasn’t a soul behind it. Three of the impossibly young ghouls hovered nearby, to one side, waiting, I assumed, for service, like souls stuck in purgatory - only in this case purgatory looked like the menu screen of a Mighty Boosh DVD. I inspected what was on offer. Oh these poor souls! Only one decent beer and selection of spirits that I suppose seemed funny at the time. I stood for what seemed like minutes but was only, I later realised, minutes. Eventually one of the small children in a cheque shirt enquired to my health. Extraordinarily, when I told him I was waiting for the bar staff to return he informed that he and the other two from Skins that had been desperately louching (yes, I’m using that as a verb) to one side of the bar, were, in fact, the bar staff. I responded in the only way that I’ve been trained to under these circumstances. Oh, I said, and ordered my drinks.’
‘If I was to find Love here, I understood, Love must be in a very bad way indeed. In fact, I soon became concerned for it’s welfare. Perhaps Love was not responsible for this debacle, perhaps it had been rode roughshod over, trampled into submission by winkle-pickers and limited edition Converse. I made conversation with my companion but I understood that she too was lost. She, like the rest of them, were in thrall to whatever captivated them. Whenever we made contact with one of the natives, she responded naturally and, occasionally, warmly. At one point I thought I may have incited a deadly riot when I asked if the lights could be turned up a little as I wasn’t sure whether I was actually dating anyone at all. Did Love crave this atmosphere? Did it demand the darkness, the half-light into which we were plunged? I decided to accept it, to let it smother me, let it take me away to another place, like a holiday in Geneva.’
‘I did as they do and tried to think as they think. I tried to imagine they were free-spirited, open-minded, unfettered by the usual conventions of society. Perhaps they had, with or without Love, found another way of being, a better way of living. Was it possible that I had been living in the dark all along and that these people, so strange to me, were actually right? As I embraced what their idea of life, of Love, might be, the closer I got to it. The barrier between my companion and I fell and, even though I couldn’t actually see her, a warmth, engendered by mutual understanding, developed. I had been wrong all along to judge her by her choice of surroundings, her possible choice of friends, the cover of her book. And, hey, maybe my jeans could be a little tighter.’
‘Feeling rather grand that I had opened my mind to new, younger, cooler avenues, I bounced off to the toilet, suspecting that Love did indeed live, and wield power, within these gloomy walls. I even began to think that the wearing of ironic NHS specs was not only acceptable but desirable. But as I weaved my merry way through the building I was grasped by a sudden realisation. Love was not in this public house, this once proud East End local. The new settlers, these invaders, had set up their own law. Not Love, no, but Youth. The New. The Future. This was their Idea. This is what they had set up, what they bowed down before and offered a sacrifice to. The belief in this idea was what redeemed them. Inside the toilet, just in my eye line in the mirror as I peed, someone had written two words on the wall, repeating them twice.’
‘The horror, the horror.’
‘No, seriously, they had. Do you think I started this pathetic pastiche for a laugh? The point being, this was not my place, my heart could never be found here. Love was found wanting, it couldn’t survive here. The excess of cool and studied indifference and mass-produced individualism had made any level playing field for Love impossible. It was a status battle which I could never win. This was her place, not mine. It wasn’t Nadine’s fault. It wasn’t mine either. We went on a completely impossible journey together, the surroundings simply serving to further highlight the gulf between us. The pub was, in fact, a handy architectural marker for how badly suited we were. My efforts to cross this chasm had merely allowed me to look down into it; and as I did the chasm seemed to me to lead to an immense heart of darkness.’
And with that Romeo said his goodbyes, taking his weak, overlong and, frankly, unworkable literary allegory with him.
As we made a start for home later that evening I looked back down the road towards the place that Romeo had spoken of. And it struck me that he was right all along. It is a shit pub.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
Romeo is Bleeding (whinging again)
I have written an open letter to Match.com to help fill you in on how I’m feeling, nearly midway through my quest to find Love. A quest, incidentally, I am beginning to realise is a little bit like trying to stroke a moth’s wings. However, having read it back I realise this letter is nothing more than the fist you bite to choke back the sobs.
Dear Match.com,
Please don’t take this the wrong way but I suspect you may be ruining my life.
Like the depressed commuter who feels most alone on the packed rush hour tube, I am suffering something of an allergic reaction to that which I crave. This dating business is not only making me believe that Love is a club I’m not allowed to join but it’s also grinding my confidence down into a fine powder to be sold on the Chinese black market as a cure for children with ADHD. Every date (even the good ones) is like a cannonball to the flimsy bow of my ego.
Rejecting someone is nearly as depressing as being rejected (though the frightening psychological scars fade euphorically quickly) and that’s what Match.com is. One long marathon (as opposed to, you know, those short marathons) of rejection. If it’s not you then it’s them, rejecting away bafflingly like a hungry baby who's bored of chewing. When you walk down the street you can be fairly certain that 99% of the people trundling about would have no romantic interest in you but you are saved the indignity of having to have this confirmed. Well, thanks to you, Mr and Mrs Match, this nightmare can become the bucket of cold water that greets you each and every day.
It’s starting to affect my everyday life. I admit that I always thought the chances of finding Love using your services were slim. But I still held out a belief that Love and I would bump into one and other at some point in my turgid life. But. No more. You’ve kicked me to such a low ebb that I’m fairly certain that I will spend the rest of my life with no romantic interludes or physical affection at all. Not even a drunken fumble in a dark disco.
To put it another way - being involved in Match.com is similar to being intravenously fed a Richard Curtis film 24 hours a day. Look! It shrieks. Look at all this Love! Look at all this happiness. Look at all these people who are happy because they have found Love. Love exists! It’s real, you can touch it, you can taste it. Gnam. You can have it. And for a while this is an experience of giddy joy and elation. But the longer it goes on the louder that nagging voice at the back of your head gets. ‘Hmm’ it twitches, ‘It seems Love really is all around us. And. Yet. Here. You. Are’
And yet.
In a country overflowing with Love, in a city filled with millions of lonely hearts, in a world of quickening pulses, of furtive glances, of stolen kisses, I remain unwillingly, intractably and sickeningly unloved and unloving.
The worst part about this is meeting someone outside of your website who I am interested in. Having to think about dating people you’re not that interested in all the time, meeting someone you (naturally, organically, healthily) are attracted to pulls the rug from under your feet. I am now so confused by it all I can’t make sense of real people anymore. I’ve been rejected on your website so many times that I now automatically assume that all women find me faintly repulsive.
I am tired. Can I have my Love now please? I can’t take three more months of this.
Yours, as ever
Romeo
Chin up. You’ve got three new dates in the next few days.
Ah yeah.
Settle down, you lot. I’ll get funny again next week.
Dear Match.com,
Please don’t take this the wrong way but I suspect you may be ruining my life.
Like the depressed commuter who feels most alone on the packed rush hour tube, I am suffering something of an allergic reaction to that which I crave. This dating business is not only making me believe that Love is a club I’m not allowed to join but it’s also grinding my confidence down into a fine powder to be sold on the Chinese black market as a cure for children with ADHD. Every date (even the good ones) is like a cannonball to the flimsy bow of my ego.
Rejecting someone is nearly as depressing as being rejected (though the frightening psychological scars fade euphorically quickly) and that’s what Match.com is. One long marathon (as opposed to, you know, those short marathons) of rejection. If it’s not you then it’s them, rejecting away bafflingly like a hungry baby who's bored of chewing. When you walk down the street you can be fairly certain that 99% of the people trundling about would have no romantic interest in you but you are saved the indignity of having to have this confirmed. Well, thanks to you, Mr and Mrs Match, this nightmare can become the bucket of cold water that greets you each and every day.
It’s starting to affect my everyday life. I admit that I always thought the chances of finding Love using your services were slim. But I still held out a belief that Love and I would bump into one and other at some point in my turgid life. But. No more. You’ve kicked me to such a low ebb that I’m fairly certain that I will spend the rest of my life with no romantic interludes or physical affection at all. Not even a drunken fumble in a dark disco.
To put it another way - being involved in Match.com is similar to being intravenously fed a Richard Curtis film 24 hours a day. Look! It shrieks. Look at all this Love! Look at all this happiness. Look at all these people who are happy because they have found Love. Love exists! It’s real, you can touch it, you can taste it. Gnam. You can have it. And for a while this is an experience of giddy joy and elation. But the longer it goes on the louder that nagging voice at the back of your head gets. ‘Hmm’ it twitches, ‘It seems Love really is all around us. And. Yet. Here. You. Are’
And yet.
In a country overflowing with Love, in a city filled with millions of lonely hearts, in a world of quickening pulses, of furtive glances, of stolen kisses, I remain unwillingly, intractably and sickeningly unloved and unloving.
The worst part about this is meeting someone outside of your website who I am interested in. Having to think about dating people you’re not that interested in all the time, meeting someone you (naturally, organically, healthily) are attracted to pulls the rug from under your feet. I am now so confused by it all I can’t make sense of real people anymore. I’ve been rejected on your website so many times that I now automatically assume that all women find me faintly repulsive.
I am tired. Can I have my Love now please? I can’t take three more months of this.
Yours, as ever
Romeo
Chin up. You’ve got three new dates in the next few days.
Ah yeah.
Settle down, you lot. I’ll get funny again next week.
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