Dust.

Wind.

Dude.

---

This time next week, I’ll be back home.
This time next week, I’ll be eating properly. This time next week, I’ll be driving on the right side of the road. I’ll have a job, I’ll finally be getting a haircut, and I’ll be sleeping in an expensive bed with a cream duvet, suede inset, and matching pillow set. This time next week, I will step out of my house and – knowing now what ‘cold’ really is - revel in the relative clemency of an English winter. This time next week, everything will be back to normal.

This time next week, I’ll be very sad.

So this is my last blog. Not only because this is the literal end of my time in the States, but also just because I feel it’s run its course. So there’s a happy kind of synchronicity there. I'll try adding some pictures to the gallery before I go. And all things considered, I’m pretty impressed. I did a cut and paste job the other day, and it (the blog) now exceeds my dissertation by over 5,000 words (I have to say, there’s also been a certain disparity in effort between the two. Perhaps social conscience in the selected works of Arthur Miller would have been a more approachable subject after the occasional glass of dandelion wine). But as the saying goes: if you’ve enjoyed reading it half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it… then I’ve enjoyed it twice as much as you.

I’m in a funny (funny weird, not funny ha-ha) mood today, in light of my imminent departure. Also, during my Thanksgiving absence, some mercenary bastard purloined three of my Cokes. Doesn’t help. He knows who he is, and were the time of my departure not so quickly approaching, recompense would be swift and brutal. But Thanksgiving itself was a blast. I went up to Appleton with Jeff, and had an excellent night on the town as he introduced me to his returning friends of yore. I should add at this point that if you are a male acquaintance of Jeff’s, and he ever extends an invitation to go visit, then for the love of God, take him up on it. If only for the fact that beyond the general ambience, sprawling house, inexhaustible supply of string cheese and first rate sofa bed, Jeff apparently went to school in a Whitesnake video. Go figure, gents…

---

So, here we are. Endgame. And what have I learned from my time here?

Well, to recap:

- If you find yourself lost in a foreign city, and somebody with a bandaged hand and runny nose tries to engage you in conversation, ignore them. Statistically speaking, in the bad part of a town numbering over 2.5 million people, he is unlikely to be one of the three that you actually know.
- When engaging other people’s girlfriends in conversation, even innocently, be judicious. The average US Marine can strip and assemble an M-16A4 assault rifle in little under a minute.
- You do not dislodge a blockage of toilet paper with more toilet paper.
- A shot of Jagermeister is not advisable as “one for the road”. Unless of course you want to wake up on one.
- Do not publicly insult Coldplay. It’s just not worth the inevitable, hefty recriminations. After all, there are clubs and societies for this sort of thing, where you can at least be amongst your own – shadowy, feckless freaks, clinging grimly to that archaic notion that pop music should be halfway entertaining.
- Cruise control maintains the speed of your vehicle. It does not steer it.
- Always pack a cummerbund. You never know when some officious migrational dictat may require an impromptu wedding.
- One layer of Dr. Jekyll’s Halloween Krazy Kreem will usually suffice.
- Sometimes, you just look really gay.

I don’t know what to begin to make of this experience. Someone asked me this weekend what I’d take away from it all, and I’m still not sure. Last night, I read parts of the blog back to myself, and it struck me that there wasn’t much of any actual… well, substance, for want of a better word. Insight. But then this is a travel diary, I suppose - nothing more, nothing less. I don’t think my ham-fisted efforts towards self-analysis and introspection would have allied themselves too smoothly with stories of waking up sandwiched between two twins and needing a big poo.

Having just moved to Paris, and struggling to write about it, Ernest Hemmingway once said that it’s hard to explain something you’re living. If you’re experiencing anything of real significance, then you tend to lack the clarity at the time to rally your thoughts into something coherent and worthwhile. Any attempt to the contrary, and it seems to come off – a lot of the time - as meandering, existential bollocks.
To try and infuse the everyday with a moral - a meaning and a purpose that isn’t necessarily there - it shows a lack of perspective. It’s a forest-for-the-trees type of thing. It’s very hard, for example, to write about being in love with someone, and much easier to explain in hindsight what you loved about them. But at the time, everything has to be meaningful. Everything has to be vital and urgent and superior to whatever’s come before. These are my last days and this is my last post, and I don’t really know what to say.
I admire anyone who can appreciate a person, a place or a situation for what it as at the time, let alone begin to explain it. The key point being ‘for what it is’. Not everything has to be profound and far-reaching in consequence. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of cool stuff that happened.

My point (and there is one, bare with me) is this. When I arrived, I had this undeniable sense of a need for change. I figured that if I could get my shit together enough to get here in the first place, that things would logically – in some big, karmic orgasm – all start falling into place. And they have, I guess, just not a way I would have imagined. I thought the change would be inherent in just being here, being somewhere else, far from home. But then dissatisfaction comes mostly from within. Don’t imagine that just by going somewhere else you’re sorting your life out. It doesn’t work like that (unless, of course, you’re in a house and it’s on fire. Then your problems will be solved by moving, and you should do so, quickly). But if the move sharpens your focus and allows you to address that dissatisfaction, then the solutions – whilst not as immediate – may have begun to arrive. So I guess it does work. In a way. Sort of.
To that end, the same person asked if I’d consider my time here “a success”. And as I said, time will tell. In the most immediate, clinical sense of the word, probably not… insomuch as I came looking for work, and a means of establishing myself here. That hasn’t happened. If, however, time dictates that this whole experience gave me some focus, and got me shifting, then yes, absolutely. But like I said, I’ll wait for things to even out again before I come to any definitive conclusions.

One thing’s for sure, though - I’ve loved every minute of my time in the States. I was going to include a list of all the things I’ll miss. But the list is too long, and the separate points, in isolation, all look a little dumb. In truth, it’s this half-baked jumble of thoughts and observations and feelings that I’ve acquired over the past few months, developed, the kinds of things that flash through your head a thousand times over in a day. It can be anything from a chain link fence, yellow school buses and octagonal red stop signs, to Andrew making a pan full of Mac n’ Cheese, taking two spoonfuls and leaving the rest to congeal into some frightful Martian landscape, to the fall sunsets on State Street and the wet cherry glaze that always seems completely exclusive to this part of the world. All these charming little idiosyncrasies. All these incremental puddles of character.

And I will now return to Nottingham. I will enjoy the company of my friends and family over Christmas. I’ll get to play with my cats again. I will go back to work and check that no one’s found that data enhancement I stashed down the back of the filing cabinet. And if they have, I’ll blame it on Pykett. I will go out into town, and I will drink overly-priced vodka and lemonades. I’ll watch a girl hemorrhaging with the cold and screaming at her boyfriend (Darren) that someone, somewhere, isn’t worth it. I will probably, at some point, tread in sick. But I’ve rediscovered my feelings, too, for a city that helped raise me, and I’m going to enjoy it to the fullest (at least until that one crucially misplaced wine bar sends the whole town crashing down into the Earth’s core).

I had four New Years’ resolutions. As things stand, on the evening of November 29th, 2005, I’ve achieved two of them. I had a nice relationship, and bought an electric guitar of such appalling magnificence that the Devil himself shrinks away from it. Unfortunately, I have as yet failed to divorce myself from the willful masochism of a life supporting Nottingham Forest. But the fourth and final resolution, as those who were present will testify, was to celebrate the coming New Years somewhere different than my mate Mike’s house in Rise Park. And I got so close. Just a few weeks. But then come to think of it, Mike’s moved to Strelley now. So I’m counting that as a technical victory.

So there you go. Three out of four. Not bad. Christ, if we lived in a society that got everything 75% right, we’d be laughing.

Ta-ta.

I’ve had a circumstantial breakthrough in my war against the kindergarten.
Our house is on top of a hill. On Tuesday night, we were battered with snow flurries, and one massive gust dislodged a chunk of fence that borders the nursery. Therefore, I’ve now got unrestricted access to their play area, and am poised - next time one of them decides to wake me up at the arse-crack of dawn – to unleash frightful, snowy blitzkrieg upon them. We ran a simulation last night, and assuming the kids have as much trouble throwing their snowballs back up the hill towards me as Jonah did those fenceposts and frozen chickens, victory is a formality (see the gallery, soon). As Sun-Tzu says in The Art of War, “The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat.” As Rage Against The Machine said, “know your enemy.”

Anyway, I’ve received a lot of e-mails since my last blog, many of them raising the point that if one wishes to avoid the awkward matter of ambiguity in their sexual orientation, one does not typically include Cher as a constituent part of their ideal woman. Now in my defence, you have to understand that the video for ‘… Turn Back Time’ was a formative part of my sexual education. But be that as it may, I am replacing her with Juliette Lewis. Save a ceremonial, teary-eyed burning of the white slip-ons (a la Return of the Jedi), there’s not much more I can do.
The other e-issue, I won’t even get into. Suffice it to say that no, Simon, The Jam were not a punk band.

---

As per the ‘gay’ story, it is becoming rapidly apparent that there is an underlying element of self-sabotage that I really do need to address. A few nights ago, for example, I attended a house party. Much of what transpired that evening was (and remains) a blur, as I was busy toasting another of Forest’s heroic 1-1 away draws in the league. But things snapped unerringly into focus the next morning, what follows being as practical an example as you will find of why I will one day die alone.
When I woke up the following morning, I was staring at the ceiling. And this is strange, because I’ve always slept on my left hand side. Not a big thing, granted, but enough to throw you off guard. Furthermore, I had a headache to contend with, which was blossoming with every dreadful second, and was also a few slender moments away from soiling the bed. And it was at this moment that I happened upon the first problem of what would develop into a rather bittersweet day.
I couldn’t move my right arm.
Specifically, I couldn’t move my arm because there was a girl’s face on it.
And this raised a number of very interesting questions. Like who is she? What’s she doing there? Is her being there in any way attributable to something I may have previously said or done? And if so, will she remind me what it was, so I can do it again in the future?
If not, am I in any kind of legal bother?
I decided to levee myself free, as my arm was blue from the elbow down. And it is at this point that the next problem revealed itself.
My other arm was trapped. Beneath another girl.
I was pinned against the mattress. Girl number two, I noticed, looked an awful lot like girl number one. There was a reason for this, but with the gathering risk of compound kidney failure, I didn’t have the luxury of time to think things through.
I finally sidled my way out of bed and located a bathroom. When I came back, the two girls were sat up in bed.
No point in tip-toeing about the issue.
“Hello. Who are you? What am I doing here?”
“We found you last night, walking up and down the hallway with a bottle of wine,” says right arm girl, wiping the sleep from her eyes. The pauses, gathers herself. Giggles. “You were singing a song about these two guys. What were their names?” She frowns for a second, deep in thought. “Darby, that’s right. Darby and Lester.”
“Yeah,” the other one chips in, “about how you hated them.”
“Two songs. It was really funny. You started bleating in one of them.”
See, there are three reasons why I never drink red wine. Firstly, it never fails – in any amount – to give me all the benefits of a vicious hangover, without the fleeting pleasure of actually being pissed in the first place. Secondly, the precipice of dreadful, massive, belligerent drunkenness is – for me – always that much thinner on the claret. Which ushers forth the third reason, namely that at such times, my dislike of Derby County and Leicester City Football Clubs becomes an urgent and very vocal matter of national concern.
“Oh God. I’m so sorry.” Hazily, the pieces were now starting to fall into place. “I didn’t sing the one about the eagle and the crow, did I?”
“Yes!” they squeal, together. “Only once. But that was the best one!”
So in my capacity as a shambling football lout, I’d been pacing the hallways with a bottle of Merlot in hand, doing sheep impressions. It was at this point I came across the girls, who were two of the four residents at the house. They were sisters, and had decided to sleep together to save room for the other guests. They then (so I’m told) asked me where I was sleeping, and I said the sofa. They insisted that they had plenty of room, probably patting the mattress in that inimitably playful, girlish manner that sisters always do (in my head, usually in the aftermath of some frenzied pillow fight). And it was only right, given that I’d “come all this way.” And hey, if you and your sister can’t invite complete strangers into their bed for the night… well, the terrorists have already won.

They say you should never meet your heroes, or - by the same token - explore your fantasies. It will lead, inevitably, to recrimination, jealousy, and an inability to look a nun in the eye again. Frankly, though, it’s a risk the public schoolboy in me has always been willing to take. And in this case, with two nubile American sisters bedecked in floral nightshirts inviting me into their bed, standing proud at the very zenith of male fantasy and knocking at the door of boundless sexual possibility, I took full advantage of the situation.
I crawled - fully clothed - between the two of them, kneed one squarely in the jaw, screamed “YOU REDS!!” at the top of my lungs and passed out for eleven and a half hours.

Oh, if I could turn back time.

So, in just over a fortnight I’ll be heading home.

I’ve really enjoyed my time in America. Whether in any real quantative terms you could call it a success, I’m not so sure. I mean, I came over here to find work, perhaps settle down, and in that respect things haven’t worked out. But it’s been an unforgettable experience, and there’s not a whole lot I’d change, even if I had the chance to (like in Flight of the Navigator). Change is a more organic process that we generally give it credit for, and some times true perspective is just as valuable as something tangible or immediate. As Mick Jagger once said, “you can’t always get what you want / but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.” Granted, he was singing about heroin, but the principle’s still the same.

My thoughts have been wandering increasingly towards what I’ll do when I get back to my former life (like in Flight of the Navigator). There definitely needs to be a direction of some sort undertaken. I’m drifting back towards the idea of doing a Masters, but if I’m not accepted onto any courses, then I need to make some kind of professional progress. Tie in the existential malaise of working life with some kind of financial reward. Perhaps I should give Chris a call and try getting myself hooked up with some sweet marketing gig. Or maybe I could bite the bullet and form that Golden Earring tribute band I’ve been talking about, Rusty Hoop. Failing that, I could try following in the footsteps of my mum, and chance my hand in the frenetic world of amateur psychotherapy. To be fair, I should say that she’s by no means an amateur – she’s very, very good at her job, has a room at Nottingham Uni and a substantial client base, has trained exceptionally hard and shouldered no small amount of sacrifice along the way. But really... how hard can it be? Just insulate the garage, swing a sheet of tarpaulin over some lawn chairs, and hang up a couple of cheap Venetian watercolours. Three or four important looking books, a box of hemp tissues, and I’m good to go. As for the actual theory… you just separate three saucepans into ‘adjectives’ (swollen, obsessive, Oedipal, naughty etc.), ‘names’ (Cuthberts, Terence, Bradley…) and ‘conditions’ (disorder, complex, ‘…morphia’…), and surreptitiously draw from each at the end of a session. A failsafe plan if ever there was one… at least until you’re asked to chair a conference on the menace of Distracted Geoff Syndrome (by Proxy).

Talking of Geoffs, or rather my friend Jeff, I will be off to celebrate Thanksgiving with he and his family in Appleton next week. In case you’re reading this and you don’t know Jeff, he is a wonderful, wise and charming young man. He’s also an Ultimate Frisbee player, but don’t hold that against him, as Jeff is a notable exception to the stereotype of Ultimate Sports - a halfway tolerable human being. He, and another ‘Great Man’, Peter… although his ultimateness has been dampened somewhat by the fact that he keeps getting hit by cars (probably on account of crossing the road is an ‘extreme’ manner… eyes closed and howling like some frightful Lycra dervish). Top lads, though, and nary a needlessly elaborate handshake or derivative Californian punk album between them.

So yes, it’s a very kind offer, and one I’m looking forward to… although to be fair, he owes me big for the countless hours I’ve spent listening to him feign pitiful disinterest in his current – and very lovely – girlfriend, Annie. So there you go… usher forth your friends down the path of true love, and you’ll be rewarded with a turkey dinner. There’d better be cauliflower cheese, that’s all I’m saying…

Anyway, best go and think of something to be ‘thankful’ for. Arena rock and boobs won’t cut it three years on the bounce.

To begin with this week, a seasonal haiku. I call it ‘Fall’.

Crisp, November air
Cold and meaty autumn breath
I’m still unemployed

---

My perfect woman, she’s a cross between Kiera Knightly, Cher, and Margot Kidder in Superman II.
A heady amalgam of every diverse and maddeningly desirable facet of womankind. In my mind, she’s a brunette. She’s an angel. She’ll embody in every flick of her hair, in every tender bite of her lower lip, that most sensual and instinctive kind of femininity. She’s soft, disarming, and yet… the consummate challenge. An enigma, effervescent and willfully complex. A puzzle, to be considered and eternally mulled. And she’ll also deliver rock ballads astride a giant navel cannon.
A woman like this is hard to find, though. Where this is an abundance of emotional depth and cultivated mystique, there is, usually, a lack of breast implants. And where there are fishnet stockings, it is rare to find – say – a central nervous system. Once upon a time, I had a thing with a girl who was a plucky, fiercely motivated young journalist. She just couldn’t hold a tune. But I retained these exacting criteria, alongside every broken heart, in the unwavering faith that this girl, somewhere, someday, would reveal herself to me. The closest I ever got was Jet from Gladiators.
Let me set the scene. It’s a Friday night in Madison, and I have monopolized the jukebox with a procession of songs by The Jam. I am drinking a large glass of white wine and embarking upon a loud and enthralling monologue as to why they weren’t actually a punk band.
And thar, so suddenly, so sweetly, she blows.
A billowing vision of pastels, in the ugly neon glaze. Denim mini-skirt and boots. Head tilted to one side, a perfect arc of auburn hair tumbling, pouring down across her eyes. Eyes touched with an infinite, wistful vigor. She is standing amidst a group of friends and making them all look like fat, ugly men.
And it is as if, in this very bar, at this exact moment, every fist-shaking inequity in the universe has aligned itself in this immaculate, unobtainable image of perfection. The kind of hopeless excellence that will drown anyone you meet and anything you achieve, for the remainder of your life, in total, hungry obsolescence.
And she’s walking towards me.
I have stopped talking. There is an empty seat next to me. As the assembled Gods are my witness, if anybody tries to sit in it I will slit their throat and bugger the corpse. This is important. Even more important than The Jam.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” she breathes.
“Of course not.”
“That’s a nice shirt.”
That’s a nice… breasts.
“Thanks,” I say. “It’s brown.”
If ever there was a time to indulge the bumbling Englishman abroad routine, it’s now.
Her name is Penelope, she drinks Negroni Martinis, and we talk. Gloriously, endlessly, of nothing and everything, we talk. Her name is Penelope, and it evokes images of purity and propriety, of womanhood distilled painstakingly down to its purest, most undeniable essence. I am living every REO Speedwagon song ever written. I want to live behind her ribs.
The minutes melt effortlessly into hours, and we are immersed in each other. Just fixated. The drink flows, the conversation whips back and forth. In the name of fair play, I’d hoped she’d have a lisp, or at least some kind of mental deficiency. But no. She is one of the funniest, most charming and intelligent people I’ve ever met. And as this glorious exchange continues she begins, with the most indiscernible, languid grace, to slide towards me.
Even for someone like me, who has the most abject inability to read ‘the signs’, it’s time to bump things up a notch.
Stifling the urge to scream “I WANNA BE ON YOU”, I ask her if she wants to meet up for a drink the following night.
She flashes a pinball smile and says she’d like that. She gives me her number.
Our heads are inches apart. I once was lost, and now am found.
And she looks me in the eye. Melts me. And slipping one impossible, perfect hand up my sleeve, she says;
“You know, I’m kind of embarrassed saying this.”
And I ask what.
And she says it sounds stupid.
And I tell her she couldn’t be stupid if she tried.
And she says she doesn’t want to overstep the line.
And I tell her the line is a dot.
And she smiles.
And she looks up.
And she says, “I just… I just love talking to gay guys.”

---

They changed the visit count on Blogstream during the week, and I discovered that I’d lost about 1,200 hits overnight. With the kind of paranoid zeal that’s become a proud trademark of mine these past few years, I could only rationally conclude that forces beyond my control were working to suppress my words and deeds. What with that, and my inability to get a proper job, I’m beginning to understand what Jesus felt like.

Talking of jobs, I’m not entirely sure if I’ll still have one by the time I get back. Technically, I’m on unpaid special leave until January. I work – or rather worked – with a very nice group of people on a Civil Service scheme in Nottingham, that’s since been disbanded by our erstwhile Prime Minister, Mr. Blair (that’s right, he’s not just Bush’s translator, he’s got his own country to run and everything). It was a proposed Council Tax revaluation that would reconcile rates in line with current house prices. Apparently, this whole scheme was scrapped because Tony feared a “revolt amongst the middle classes.” And to be fair, who wouldn’t be deterred by an arsenal of jangling Lexus keys, and four million gallons of pressurized Cappuccino froth? With that imperceptible rise in Council Tax rates abated, I only hope my friends who’ve lost their jobs have the good grace to understand that though they may now be unemployed, some simpering Home Counties twat can at least keep their Shogun on the road until the next election.

But I digress. Back to the subject of jobs. I received an e-mail from my friend Chris the other day, and it had me smiling all morning. In fact, I was so impressed, it inspired me to introduce a new section to the blog, which I’m calling:

JOBS THAT MY FRIENDS HAVE

This week: THE MEDIA EXECUTIVE

Say ‘media executive’ to most people, and it will conjure certain images. I know it does for me, these clichés and ideas, and I’m proud to report that of all my friends who work in marketing, not one of them has ever failed to endorse massively such stereotypes. Let’s look at Chris’ e-mail, and step – for a few turbulent seconds – into the high-pressure, bell-ringing, Machiavellian snakepit that is corporate sales. Strap yourself in, it’s a bumpy ride:

Morning, how's you? I'm just finishing up at work! Maxim Party last
week, black tie ball tomorrow, another ball next Wednesday (which is
apparently white tie - tho I ain't hiring a suit!) in fact I've at least one party every week till xmas (sometimes I love my job) I've just had a big falling out with my porn client tho, looks like I won't be peddling filth for much longer (I can hear my CV weeping already - not!)

Chris Pollard
Media Executive

Maxim? Parties? Filth? Christ, it sounds like the fall of Rome! I have made a mental note to beat Chris brutally about the head with a blunt instrument should he ever have the temerity to complain about his job in my company again.
As I mentioned in a previous entry, many of my friends do fantastic work. I hasten to add that this is not jealousy on my part. I wallow, by my own choosing, in a state of professional inertia: for you see, whilst the likes of Chris are mingling endlessly with fashionistas and catwalk models, I very much doubt he has the time to sort boxes of Lucky Charms into marshmallow and non-marshmallow pieces in giant saucepans. And if that’s the case, you have to ask yourself: who’s really winning?

If you’re a parent dreading Christmas, because your child has been whipped into some kind of mongoloid frenzy, chances are Chris - or someone of his ilk - has something to do with it. His kind have this glorious, brazen amorality that’s an absolute pleasure to behold. I may not have seen much of him these past couple of years, but whenever I do, it’s invariably to hear tales of domain and empire, the cut and thrust of executive life, the swish of passing deadlines and working hours that border on the outright Japanese.

My point is this: if you’re reading this and trying to decide what to study at uni, then for the love of God pick something useful. DON’T do English Literature. Waste of time. At best, you’ll look good at parties (for about two minutes, until everyone decides you’re gay). Pick something practical. Something marketable.

Read the summary below of an average day in the life of a media executive, as I understand it, and see if it appeals to you. If so, you too could be ready for a career in marketing:

7:20am: Sink a putt into overturned coffee mug. This is your fourth consecutive day without sleep.
7:25am: Kneeling down by your window, whisper the Marketing Prayer: “Please Lord, let everyone be as fucking stupid today as they were yesterday. Amen.”
7:26am: Bury face in mountainous tray of cocaine, laugh.
8:10am: Call Tarquin about the Fleischer account. Check your phonebook and realise that all bar three of the seven thousand people in it are called Tarquin.
8:40am: Wonder who left the enormous tray of cocaine on your desk. Remember it was you. Take hefty self-congratulatory snort.
9:15am: Attend ball. Something or other about awareness. Cancer, maybe? AIDS?
9:37am: “I’m just so… I don’t know, what’s that feeling when you haven’t slept in 105 hours?”
11:30am: Laugh uproariously for seven full minutes at how brilliant your life is.
11:37am: Dab away tears and return to Su-Doku, completing each square with smiley faces and pound signs.
12:30pm: Lunchtime. Fancy an Italian. Head down to the canteen, an exact replica of the Piazza San Marco.
1:30pm: Realise Christmas is on the way. Pleasure self beneath desk with fistful of ₤50 notes.
1:45pm: Energy waning. Wonder absently if department’s casual attitude towards recreational drug use will extend to Heroin.
1:47pm: Scrub frantically at bloodstains on sleeve.
2:00pm: Reject latest designs for Christmas-themed Chocolate Jesus Dildo: “I said I wanted sexy. Sexy and respectful.”
2:15pm: See if blank-cheque paper aeroplanes can make it across the road to adjacent law firm.
2:20pm: Probably attend another ball or something.
3:50pm: Chew thoughtfully on pen. “Widows have lots of money these days. How can we get it?”
5:10pm: On to the crystal meth. Decide that NSPCC advert needs more dogs acting like people.
6:30pm: Hear on the news that British city has erupted into bloody urban warfare. Too busy to find out where exactly.
6:31pm: Wonder what all those explosions are outside.
7:00pm: Embark on marathon squash orgy.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Yes, it’s a moral vacuum, but a very profitable one. Better that than discussing post-colonial readings of Dracula beneath a single lightbulb into your late forties. So if anybody wants to learn more about being a Media Executive, just go into the middle of Manchester and scream for Chris at the top of your voice.
I’m sure he’ll hear you. It’s not very big.

Call it the onset of darker evenings, or the chill autumnal winds, but I am not in a writing mood today. Normally when this happens I sit in a state of spastic inertia for a couple of hours, then go and listen to the Rocky IV soundtrack and drink five cans of Coke. What follows is blur, but I usually wake up on the floor hours later in a pair of ripped purple shorts with the words ‘message posted’ blinking happily on the screen. I may be beyond redemption this evening, though. But I have (finally) posted some pictures in the gallery

I’m pleased to report that Halloween was an absolute blast. As previously mentioned, I decided that I’d go as Paul Stanley from Kiss. This, despite the not inconsiderable array of costumes afforded to me, including sexy angels, sexy devils, sexy nurses, sexy zombies, sexy vampires, sexy Frankensteins, sexy drowning victims, sexy serial killers, sexy blacksmiths and sexy nihilists (I was going to go with the last one, but I couldn’t be bothered).
As a costume, any member of Kiss is good, because it’s readily identifiable. However, it’s also a double-edged sword. I mean, make-up. It’s not really for the lads, is it? With the possible exception of obtuse provincial teens, and rotund accountants found dead with oranges in their mouths, we don’t tend to carry it off very well. Nor do we have any real grounding in the practicalities of make-up, which is why I had the foresight to take a girl with me when I was stocking up.
“Let’s get this.”
“No. You want eye-liner. That’s nail varnish.”
“What about this?”
“That’s eye-shadow.”
“This?”
“That’s… Oh God. Put it down.”
But for a modest price, I got my stuff, and spent most of Friday counting down the minutes until I could disappear off to the bathroom. Andrew and Jonah had their costumes, too. Andrew, in the joint spirits of self-promotion and abject poverty, went as himself, simply attaching a nametag to his shirt that said ‘God’. Meanwhile, Jonah went as Bob Vila, a TV handyman (see gallery). We were also joined by our friend Aaron, who came as a Greek God. So as Andrew got started on his nametag, Aaron oiled himself, and Jonah began deploying 18 pounds of fake hair about his face, I spread my weapons over the bathroom counter and locked the door. Showtime.
At the risk of being disowned (having failed to cultivate any kind of a taste for real ale, and only being able to bowl under-arm), there’s something… well, enormously fun about putting make-up on. Very rewarding. Deep inside the engendered, guilt-ridden depths of the male psyche, there lies a shadowy kind of hinterland; a sliver of ambiguous possibility, somewhere between cheap novelty and outright transvestisism, that appeals – unfailingly - to even the most ruggedly heterosexual of us.
This generation may be criticized for its withered sense of male value, but rest assured, almost everyone’s dad will own a weathered Polaroid of an office party in the dim and distant past, where he’s decked out in a policewoman’s uniform and suggestively wielding an inflatable baton. And this is because men in make-up, like the grumpy, retired Major in British sitcoms, and like the wealthy dowager taking a pie to the face, trigger a glorious kind of Pavlovian gut humour.
Here’s how the costume developed:

STAGE 1 – THE WHITE UNDERCOAT.
The first – and hardest - stage. If you’ve ever seen a picture of Kiss (and if you haven’t, how is life in Botswana?), you’ll see that the stuff goes everywhere. Eyelids. Nostrils. Ears. And in hindsight, I now understand why Paul Stanley is pouting in every single photoshoot he’s appeared in… it’s not rock star posturing, it’s the incapacitated reality of doing anything else when your mouth has been cemented into place, and your nerves are deadened. The poor sod.
I have to wonder how exactly Kiss have stuck this ceremonial nonsense out for so long. It’s painstaking and painful. Although having said that, Kiss probably don’t buy bulk from the Halloween Store at $1.99 a tube.

Number of vowels I can still pronounce at this stage: 3

STAGE 2 – BLACK STAR OVER THE RIGHT EYE.
OK, so far, not convinced. To be fair, it’s less rock God mystique, more bathtub woman from The Shining. Just with nicer boobs. In fact, staring into the mirror, and with the full extent of this ordeal finally revealing itself, I’m given to wonder just what was wrong with the plethora of sexy possibilities the Halloween Store had to offer. I look and sound like a zombified stroke victim.
Things start looking up with the star, though. Given that I am nowhere near skilled enough to attempt the precise application of make-up in reverse by a mirror (at least not until my vagina arrives in the post) my friend Erica draws on the outline with black lipstick, amidst a (not entirely encouraging) array of winces and grimacing. It looks good. Back in the bathroom, I fill in the rest. It doesn’t matter how the costume progresses from hereon in, as I am now doing a very passable impression of Pennywise, Clown of Death.

Number of vowels I can still pronounce at this stage: 2

STAGE 3 – THE PERIPHERALS
And here’s what I’d been waiting for… a legitimate excuse to put on lipstick. Not just any lipstick, either. This is hurricane proof, whoreoriffic red. ‘Warning,’ it says, ‘may cause leprosy, impotence, and cancer of the arse’. On it goes.
And then the eye-liner. Tricky stuff. Anything held up close to your eye, I discovered, seems somehow longer and far, far pointier. I battle through with the long, continuous squeal of impending blindness, until the whole nightmarish thing is complete.
By this point, my respect for womankind has reached its zenith. Only when you’ve tried applying eye-liner yourself can you imagine the difficulties a woman must face doing it in a mirror, on a motorway, whilst methodically explaining everything that’s wrong with you. ‘Nuff said.

Number of vowels I can still pronounce at this stage: “eeuuuuuuhhhh”

STAGE 4 – THE HAIR
Wig goes on last. Just like the real Kiss.
And damn, I look gooood.

Number of vowels I can still pronounce at this stage: “YOU WANTED THE BEST, YOU GOT THE BEST…”

So there I was, ready to rock and roll all night, and party ev-er-ee day. We had a great time. True, I was drinking wine through a straw, and Jonah’s tool-belt gave him an impacted bowel every time he sat down, but we still had a blast. It was during the party that someone asked us if we were going down to State Street (Madison’s main city centre road) for the extended celebrations. And also, to “enjoy the riots.” You know, celebrate the cultural traditions of your country by setting fire to it.
I didn’t want to be in a riot. They do not, by all accounts, have the most pleasant implications. I’m a watcher, not a fighter. I mean, it’s not like I’m a coward or anything. I’ll be the first one to make “come on, then” hand gestures to someone at a football match, on the (limited, and sensible) conditions that there’s at least 40ft, five policemen and adequate segregation between us. That’s just common sense. You keep your knives and flare-guns, I’ll stay here in the corner with a judicious sense of pragmatism.
I woke up the next day with the eyes of a heroin addict, turned on the TV and heard that after a successful police operation in the area, they’d ‘limited’ the arrests to 450 plus people, with another 107 sent to prison. This was complimented by some wonderful footage of Huggy Bear, Richard Nixon and Jason Voohries scaling a fence, and Julius Ceaser being pepper-sprayed.

---

Andrew comes bounding through the front door yesterday with eyes like dinner plates and a puppy-dog grin plastered across his face.
“I’ve got some great news,” he pants. “You can stay.”
I look up at him from my book, and try to quell the enthusiasm. This is not the first time Andrew or Jesse have had ‘a plan’. In fact, I’m still drying out the ski-mask from the last one. Nonetheless, he is an intelligent and proactive young man, and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“I have found you,” he says, with an aura of achievement, “a wife.”
What followed was one of those sweet silences born not of spectacle, not of sorrow, but of utter disbelief. I would imagine Jack was greeted by something similar when he proudly showed off his handful of magic beans.
“A what?”
“A wife.”
More silence. Andrew continues to radiate that sense of proud accomplishment.
“Her name is Abigail!”
“Oh, well then, what are we waiting for? Have we still got that priest?”
“It only has to be for six months.”
“It’s two years. And no.”
“She wants to marry an Englishman.”
“Tell her to go to England, then. There’s millions of them.”
“It’s the perfect solution.”
“No. Absolutely not. Now please go away, lest this hysteria be airborne.”
Undeterred, he continues.
“She’s an English Literature graduate. You’d have something in common.”
Which, I suppose, is a plus. I mean, conversationally speaking, I’d hate to rely solely on our joint willingness to undermine the whole institution of marriage during that first difficult winter. Perhaps we could offset the massive blasphemy with a Samuel Beckett discussion group.
Hello mum, this is my fake wife, Abigail. We got married to sidestep migrational bureaucracy. Her favourite writers are Emily Bronte and Bukowski. Please stop crying.
“Is she pretty?” asks Jesse.
“Oh, God no,” says Andrew, strengthening his grip on the mantle of World’s Worst Salesman. He looks over at me, sees the dawning horror. “I mean, no, there’s nothing wrong with her. If we’re being biologically definitive. In fact, out of 10 – 10 being very attractive, 1 being basically unmarriable - I’d give her a 6. A solid 6.”
“Andrew,” gathering my book and blanket, “I am going to take what remains of my pilfered wrestling goodies, and leave the room. And when I return, I hope you will join me in pretending that this conversation never happened.”
It’s not looking good, folks. But honestly, as if I need another entry on the long and storied scroll that St. Peter will unveil, narrow eyed and purse lipped, on my arrival at the Pearly Gates...

It’s happened once before. Today it happened again.
I’ll set the scene. We like next door to a kindergarten. I am awoken, for the forty-seventh consecutive day, by the yammering nonsense in the playground. I pull on a T-shirt, stagger out of bed, and go downstairs for a drink.
Thanks to these insufferable little bastards - coupled with my complete inability to fall asleep before 3am – I am now teetering on the very brink of hellish, full-blown insomnia. Hence the confusion when I walked back into my bedroom with a glass of water in one hand and a magazine in the other, knowing that one of them was to be thrown onto my bed, and the other placed neatly on my bedside table.
As I write, the duvet is still drying.
I really am blossoming into quite a stupid man, you know. In fact, I’m beginning to think that my degree was actually just a hallucination, induced by the years of institutional buggery and sub-Arctic cross-country runs at the High School (note: only one of these actually happened. As if I’d run anywhere). But there is a definite dulling of the senses. I try to remedy it by drinking coffee, but it just makes me do stupid things faster.

It’s the kids, I tell you. I just don’t understand it. Only children (and conceptual artists) can vomit, steal or cry for public reward, as if having stumbled across some hitherto undiscovered realm of nuclear physics. This is a wonderful house in a wonderful place, but I would staple my balls to a soldering iron before I ever knowingly took up residence next to a kindergarten. They are just… insatiable. Forty fluorescent, amphetamine-charged Energizer Bunnies, hurtling about the yard with massive, irrepressible glee. Were it not for Advil and earplugs, I would have been in the papers by now.

I’m in a bad mood, because I’m still profoundly unemployed, and fast running out of options. It’s been suggested (by a surprisingly large number of people) that I apply for a male escort agency. And whilst this is a very workable idea, and would solve at least two of the ongoing problems in my life, I’d like – for once - to get a job on the merits of something other than my body.
Actually, I did notice the other day that someone was advertising for cowpokes. Surely that’s not as easy as it sounds?

---

So, Andrew and I took a trip last Friday to his hometown of Barren. It’s a small town about four hours north, and his reasons for going back were twofold:
- To touch base with his assembled family, whom he misses dearly.
- To get his Kansas album.
Having only discovered on the Thursday that everyone was going away for the weekend, and not exactly relishing the idea of watching Rocky IV for the third time in a week, I accepted his invitation. And all was well, until I woke up on the Friday to the customary shrill of irrepressible youth. I was on my way to undermine their confidence through the fence slats when I saw Andrew, deathly pale and swathed in blankets, slumped in the recliner. Turns out that a troublesome neck injury had blossomed into outright paralysis when, during the previous night’s three hour ping pong marathon, an elaborate passing shot had left him crippled from the neck down. I had a lunch date to be attending, but left him with some pills and the very specific instruction that were he not better on my return, we wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Well, by the time I got back, three hours later, Andrew was - to put it mildly - ‘gangster tripping’. He was sat in the same chair, still huddled in blankets, but surrounded by discarded pill bottles and wearing an unnervingly euphoric grin.
His neck still hurt, he explained, although he was by all accounts feeling “much happier”. He then proceeded to explain to me, calmly and in fleeting detail, how I was going to drive us to Barren.
I should explain something at this point… namely that I can’t drive. The main reason being that the people who encourage me to – my dad, good friends like Steve and Claire – are so massively, psychotically intolerant of other drivers that the very prospect of sharing a road with them (and they are by no means the only examples) lassoes my bowels with a kind of icy, unmanageable dread. My father is a kind, benevolent and charming man. The perfect gentleman. Having said that, anybody who’s had the misfortune of sharing the shortest of car journeys with him will know that a certain transformation takes place when he’s behind the wheel. Have him giving way at a junction, for instance, and anyone unfortunate enough to miss an index finger raised imperceptibly from the steering wheel (in the dark) will be subjected to a squall of vicious, apoplectic abuse. “COME ON THEN, NOBHEAD!!” he’ll scream, hammering on his headlights 37 times per second, as I sink quietly down into the upholstery, the radio drowned out by the sound of his arteries clanging shut.
And the same for Steve, who – to his eternal credit - can turn any leisurely city drive into the Monaco Grand Prix (whilst rummaging under his seat for a tissue to stem his 16 year cold).
So no, roads are not for me. They are a snakepit of passive aggression, one-upsmanship and jabbing fingers, and I am not – by and large - a confrontational person. And I explained politely to Andrew that the chances of me driving unlicensed and without any real understanding for four hours on the interstate, at night, were beyond anorexic.
“I guess I’ll have to drive, then,” he said, turning his entire body to look at me. I was ot confident.
Somehow, we made it. Andrew even found the time to deconstruct the whole theoretical basis of Christianity for me on the way, which took about an hour. Granted, there were a few hairy moments. For one, he couldn’t look over his shoulder. As ‘blind spots’ go, an entire lane is a significant one. And is if this isn’t enough (in America, where driving habits are based loosely on a very casual Rome, and crossing the road is a baffling lottery), he kept my heart in my throat for a good ten minutes, steering with his knees whilst doing air cow-bell to ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’.
I was crawling up the insides of the car by the time we were within thirty minutes of Barren. But he’d saved his best trick for last.
“I hate this bit of road,” he says, as we hurtle through the night.
“Why’s that?”
“Hunting season. The deer get a little spooked. They run out onto the roads.”
I see.
“It’s a pain.”
I would suggest that hitting a 220lb animal at 70mph would qualify as slightly more than ‘a pain’.
“I guess. Y’know, there’s really only one thing worse than hitting a deer.”
“And what’s that?”
“A bear.”
“There are bears out here?”
“Yep.”
“Dangerous bears?”
“No. The other kind. The thoughtful, introspective ones. They write haikus.”
The final leg of the journey we completed in silence, bar the quiet whittling motions of thumb and forefinger across the bridge of my nose.

The next day, after some welcome hospitality from Andrew’s family (very sweet people), we were driving back from a hearty lunch in the adjacent town. Andrew had found his album and was in the middle of trying to explain just why listening to ‘Dust In The Wind’ and driving past endless acres of ruined corn was so inspiring, when he pulled over to the side of the road.
He explained that I would be driving. On the lonely, isolated straights of County Road M, I concurred. What could go wrong? I’d always assumed I’d drive one day, and now that day was here.
After a shaky start, we got going. I doubt anyone in the world has made harder work of driving an automatic. Andrew had fixed the most purposeful smile to his face, and was managing to speak whole sentences without moving his lips. He had the look of a man watching his autistic nephew play with a Ming vase. I, meanwhile, was barreling merrily down an unmarked country road, sitting on the ‘wrong’ side of the car, driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, struggling to understand why holding the wheel straight on a straight road does not make the car go straight. I think we had a shared realization, as he asked me for the fourth time if I wouldn’t very much mind moving his car away from the ditch, that we should maybe have tried the carpark of an Aldi first. Good fun, though.

---

Saturday night marks the Halloween celebrations. We are going to a party, and I am beyond thrilled to be resident in a country that actually acknowledges and celebrates this Great Day. I have been mulling my costume, and after much deliberation, and taking into account my predisposition to class, decorum, and historical integrity, I have decided to go as Paul Stanley from Kiss. I applied eye-liner last night for the first time, and can describe it only as a horrific and draining experience. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but something about the whole episode tripped my irrational and longstanding fear of jamming a pencil into my eye.

Hopefully it’ll go better on the night. Failing that, we have liquid eyeliner. Or, as I believe it’s also called, creosote.