First day of Novel and Script Course

First day of the 10-month Novel and Script Course. Some talented writers in the room. There is one chap called Nigel who is wearing a sweatshirt that looks like those UV velvet wall hangings of various heavy metal or mythological scenes that were popular amongst the lower classes in the 1970s. The motif on his sweatshirt is a big human skull. And he has a silver ring on every finger, half of them of skulls, and a big chain of silver skulls around his neck, and silver wrist bands with skulls. What can it mean? I want to ask him, but I don’t know how to do it without causing offence. He brought jelly tots to the class. At least he’s interesting. I have this sinking feeling that this class will not be as cohesive or as fun as the Unlocking Creativity Module.

Roland says we will be filled with anxiety and fear about our novel, and the most important thing is “not to project it on Kathleen and me”. (Kathleen is the other moderator/instructor.) Is he speaking to me personally? Is that what I've been doing? Anyway, it’s too late. I hate him already. No, I don't hate him. But he is unable to finish a single sentence he starts, and he doesn’t seem able to explain anything so that people in the class understand what he’s talking about. It's irritating, but maybe I'm projecting...

Can I be cloned?

Spent way long time today working on my humorous short story about a struggling writer, to whom God reveals himself. But God proves to be, well, insane and really not very pleasant. And now God is thinking of revoking mankind’s free will, because he thinks he made a mistake. I had hoped to come up with an ending, but instead I spent a good four hours revising the completed half of the story (i.e. getting absolutely nowhere), and messaging back and forth on Gaydar, an internet sex line. I want to clone myself, leave one of me to play around, go out for lunch, cruise boys, go to the movies, lie on the beach, while the other me sits at my laptop and works all day.

How stress gets in the way of writing

Back in Sydney. Thank fucking God. But admin and other tasks drowning me, and I haven’t done any real fresh writing or even any revision of my short stories. And I have gas. Yesterday I spent a shitload of time trying to coordinate a meeting of the group of writers from the Unlocking Creativity course, and sort out flights to Europe this summer, and … shit, I just had to go take a valium…I'm freaking out...

We had a little party on Saturday night in Aukland,but I'll spare you the debauched details, except to say that the swimming pool was very very warm. So no writing yesterday, not even journal entries, though I watched some good movies and TV (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Crash and four episodes of Kath and Kim). Plus I read a goodly chunk of Berbinger’s Window’s on the World, a novel about 9/11. God, burning to death, must be the worst. The images of the jumpers continue to swarm in my mind. They still don’t know how many jumpers there were and the media have never shown images of the horror of it. The collapse of the towers obliterated the evidence.

I bought a fucking fierce pair of snakeskin boots, for $800. Ok, New Zealand $, but still. I think it’s compensation for the fact that I’ve pulled my back out at the gym, a way to counter the fact that age advanceth. I also spent a buckletload of dosh on other clothes. A way of compensating myself for the fact that I can’t write worth shit.

The time has come to make headway on revising my short stories. I am debating whether to register for the four-week genre and myth short story course. Only $100, but I have to write a little short-story each week. That shouldn’t be too hard. I’m going to tell Roland I’ll do it. Sounds fun.

Have you read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead?

Finished reading Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Gilead last night. I loved it, loved it, loved it. It’s a posthumous letter of a preacher in Iowa to his son, a lyrical meditation on the beauty of life, the relationships between fathers and sons, and the manifestation of God everywhere. It’s the kind of luminous novel that comes around once every two or three years; it’s why I read fiction.

And it was kind of – well, no actually it was totally - depressing to read, because I realize how utterly and insurmountably far I am from being able to write anything good. Gilead is a sun. At best, I can produce a candle. Truly, it makes me want to give up, go wrap my lips around a crack pipe and fuck my brains out. To obliterate my pain, you understand.

Stroke my fragile ego and I will purr, purr, purr

The final class of the Unlocking Creativity module two nights ago was good. I wrote a little conflict resolution story off the cuff, and then was asked by Roland to read it out to the class. It came out very well, and it got widely praised in class. Lisa said again that she was blown away by my stuff, when we were sitting outside on the steps during break. Kathleen said that she hated the ending of my Sadness, Anger and Peace story too, so I’ve rewritten it (below).

After class, Roland quickly showed me the steps board for the 10 Month Novel and Script course, how it works to plan the archetypal story structure (every story has 8 turning points, made up of four steps, each made up of 8 scenes… etc). Very formulaic. Wouldn’t work for any of my favourite novels. Not 100 Years of Solitude, not Gilead, not The Poisonwood Bible. Nor, it seems for the novel I would like to write, with 5 or so characters speaking from first person pov. Still, we agreed that I would try to explore one character's story-line in the class, and maybe plot the others on the steps board. I'll see how it goes. I'm filled with trepidation.

I'm in New Zealand now, where I've come to renew my visa. I had to get up at 4:45 am on Thursday. It was horrendous. I felt ill all day, like I had the flu. The vibe in Aukland is very dull, not like Sydney. My friends Ian and Jianni went to bed at 8pm, and I was 2 hours advanced in time zone anyway, so I stayed up very late rewriting my Sadness, Anger and Peace story, and finishing my Frustration, Fear and Love stories and my little conflict story. Had some nice story board feedback on them.

Sadness, Anger and Peace

“I should have brought him in ages ago,” Theresa said to the vet, “but I just couldn’t face it.” Theresa stroked Oscar’s grizzled brown head as he lay quietly on the steel table. She could barely breathe in the hot little room. “He whimpers in the morning when he scrambles out of his basket.” She’d had an artificial hip herself. She knew arthritis.
“Ready?” asked Dr Patel.
A hot wet coal lodged in Theresa’s throat so that she could only nod. Oscar looked up at her with worried brown eyes. She bent and whispered softly in his ear. He jerked when the vet inserted the needle, but his body stilled quickly.
“I’ll give you a few minutes alone” said Dr Patel, shutting the door gently behind him. Theresa’s tears fell hot and fast, plink, plink, plink onto the metal table.

Driving home, Theresa thought back some ten years to the day she’d collected Oscar at the Ambleside Dog Pound. She’d been shocked by the stench of faeces and wet fur, overlayed with harsh chemicals. The dogs had barked and howled and hurled themselves against the wire caging when she entered the cement walkway by the pens. A young man with a pony tale and tired eyes had told her that the six dogs in the last pen were due to be put down the next day. “We’re very busy now because Christmas is just 10 days away”, he said. “People don’t want the inconvenience.” A searing flash of rage shook Theresa. “Selfish, selfish barbarians!” she had cried. Oscar was the ugliest of the six dogs in that last pen. The young man had kissed her hand when she the pound. She had been able to hear the howling of the other dogs left behind to their fates all the way to her car.

Theresa put Dr Patel’s bill and Oscar’s red leather collar on the kitchen table. She remembered how Oscar had cowered under this same table for 4 days before shyly climbing onto the foot of her bed one morning. She smiled to think how he’d slept there happily for the next 10 years. The doorbell pulled her back into the present. It was little Natasha from next door, wearing a pink birthday dress and a green paper hat. She was laughing as a small apricot poodle tried to wrestle the leash she was holding out of her hand. “Mummy said I could bring my new best friend Pumpkin over to meet you and Oscar.” Theresa felt the tears well in her eyes, but bent down to stroke the little dog, which licked her hand. “They couldn’t know” she thought, “Really, it was a mercy.” And then she looked at the little girl and smiled.

A little conflict and a resolution

George Browne looked around the kitchen and then at his watch. 9:40am. He would call in 5 minutes. No, 10. He would give himself 10 minutes, time enough for a cup of coffee. And one of those fresh blueberry muffins that Carol had left on the counter. George poured the coffee and sighed. The dishwasher pulsed, but otherwise the only sound was the faint background hum given off by an empty house. Carol had probably taken the kids to karate lessons or something. Through the large kitchen window, George could see chaos, brilliantly illuminated by the spring time sun. Dorothy Crookshank’s pack of dogs had torn through their garbage again, strewing it all over the lawn and driveway. George ate a muffin. And then another. 10:02 am. He sighed again and felt sick.

Suddenly, he reeled in horror. Dorothy Crookshank was advancing up the driveway, swinging her cane irritably at the pieces of garbage in her way. She even lopped the heads off two – no three! – of Carol’s prize nasturtiums. Good Lord! He wasn’t ready to face the old battleaxe in person! He’d hoped to deal with her over the telephone. George felt a groan of mortification escape his throat as he saw the old woman stoop to examine with great disgusted interest some dirty underwear he’d thrown out the night before.

She looked up suddenly, and George jerked back from the window, but it was too late. “Mr Browne,” she called, “Come out here now please. Your driveway is a disgrace!” He felt shaky. Had he had too much coffee?

He opened the door, and tried to say good morning, brightly, but a large wad of masticated muffin lodged around his tongue and he merely mumbled something unintelligible. “Are you inebriated, Mr Browne? At this hour?” She advanced on him balefully. “I’ve called the council about your shocking garbage management.”

George sputtered and sprayed a gobbet of slimy muffin onto Mrs Crookshank’s orthopaedic shoes. She looked down at her feet, and then slowly raised her face. He could see two long black hairs poking out of one of her nostrils. He cleared his throat and said “Dorothy…”

“I never ever gave you permission to call me that!” she interrupted. “How unbelievably impertinent!”
“Mrs Crookshank,” he tried again, “I was just going to call you. You see, your dogs…”
“Nonsense!” she cried, shaking her cane at him. “I’ve had them locked up in the house all night and morning.”

George sighed, and wished a giant flaming pit would suddenly open under the lying old witch and carry her away, orthopaedic shoes and all. Instead, something geological shift shifted deep within himself, and he could no longer hold back the long dormant eruption.

“Listen you old dragon”, he shrieked, “You’ve harassed me and my family for a long time. But just because you’re old, doesn’t make you right.” Mrs Crookshank’s eyes narrowed and George thought he saw them flash yellow. He felt a sudden quiver of fear. And just as suddenly again, the fear disappeared. He knew he wouldn’t take it back, even if he could. “Now get off my property!” Crookshank’s days as the tyrant of Dogwood Crescent were over!

Closing the door, George Browne chortled softly to himself. The dishwasher hummed quietly. He had done it. George had slain the dragon at exactly 10:36am. “Early or not,” George announced to the empty house, “I should celebrate.” He would pour himself a J&B on the rocks, and watch the ball game. And eat the rest of Carol’s muffins. He whooped and high-fived the empty air.

Writing is turning me into a morning person

I woke early with thoughts of writing in my head. I started with this, and in a few minutes I’ll do my journal (where, dear reader, I record intimate details of my sex and love life and other arcana not suitable for this blog). For my final writing exercise this week, I write a piece with a character cycling through Frustration, Fear, and then Love). Tonight is class, where I have to face Roland the Dickhead again.

I provided tons to feedback to the other writers in the class, and pleasurably read several times over the positive feedback I received on my “fear piece” from April 15. One other student said she couldn't really feel my character's fear, and I have to say that I agree with her. Still, I liked the piece, as did Alex, the writing tutor. I logged into the writers' board to read his comments 3 times in 20 minutes. I am so craven.

Frustration, fear and love

I first noticed that Jackson was different from other boys on the soccer field when he was about 7. I remember it so clearly, how his blue and white jersey looked against the green field, how his blonde hair caught the spring sun. You could only see the difference if you watched very closely. Jackson would run up and down the length of the field, shouting but always somehow positioning himself to be away from the action. If the ball came to him by mistake he would quickly kick it away. There have been other signs too. He would play ball with me, but with no great joy, and only if I ask him first. And one afternoon, my wife Marcie shuffled me into Jackson’s room and laughingly showed me how he’d reorganized by colour all the clothes that she’d dumped haphazardly in his cupboards and drawers. She couldn’t understand why this upset me. O Lord, I do not want my son to be gay!

My brother Andrew had a rough time of it growing up in rural Ontario. In the winter, the other boys would spit on their snowballs to make them icy, and then gang up to bury him under a blizzard attack. On the golden summer days, the neighbourhood kids would ride our bikes out through the cherry orchards to the swimming quarry. Andrew was not exactly prevented from joining the troop, but he was not really made to feel welcome. He soon learned it was less painful to simply leave the bike in the garage, but even staying at home can’t have been easy. Our strict Mennonite parents loved Andrew, but they did not understand him at all. What bites hard now is that I know I chose to be neutral, rather than to be on Andrew's side.

As soon as he finished high school, he upped and moved to New York City. That would have been in the mid 1970s. He was dead 10 years later. Whenever I look at Jackson now, images from my childhood with Andrew also come spilling uninvited into my mind. And then I inevitably think of the last time I saw him, skeletal on that bed, barely able to breath and a crust of sores around his lips. Oh God, who will protect Jackson from all this? He is only 12 now. I read that times are different now, but I don’t know. Marcie refuses to talk to me about this. She doesn’t want to know.

It was my 46th birthday 3 days ago. Marcie made her special roast lamb to celebrate, and Lisa, my eldest, baked a blueberry cheesecake. I have to confess that I am rather in awe of Lisa. She is just 15 but she has an ancient serene wisdom about her. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I wonder where she came from. When it came time to open my gifts, she whispered that I should open Jackson’s last. Robert, our middle child, gave me some gardening book, chosen no doubt by Marcie, and raced off back to his Playstation before I’d even finished opening it. Lisa and Marcie gave me clothes; they think my wardrobe needs modernizing. And then Jackson handed over his gift to me, with a shy and embarrassed look on his face. Wrapped in plain white paper, it was a drawing of the family taking a walk down by Challer River. Jackson and I were set slightly apart from the other three. The drawing was very finely done. “Beautiful Jackson, just beautiful.” I squeezed him to me. “The best birthday present ever.” Lisa just watched and smiled, and then helped Marcie take the plates into the kitchen.

A most frustrating day, causing me to eat 3/4 of a wheel of camembert, plus other stuff

A most frustrating writing day. I spent nearly five hours on my writing exercise, which was supposed to be a character who cycles through Sadness, Anger and Peace (SAP). I chose to write about a woman who puts her dog to sleep. Only the first paragraph came out well, and if I’m honest, it came out more as grief than sadness. I hate paragraphs 2 and 3 of my SAP submission, just hate them. So I’m not putting it in here.

My neck and right shoulder ached after finishing the SAP piece, and during the writing of it I consumed ¾ of a wheel of camembert, started well in on a plug of blue cheese, and gobbled a bag of jelly tots. I got up every half an hour to look at my body in the mirror. I feel nauseated, and I'm not sure if it's from the food or looking at my body so often.

I guess part of the problem I had in trying to write about SAP was that I chose to do it from the third person point of view, which was tricky. Also, I was word-count constrained.

Or perhaps the fact that I spent most of Sunday night and all of Monday in a drug-soaked haze of debauchery accounted for my compromised writing abilities. I didn’t even have that good a time going out on Sunday night. Hated the venue, the crowd, and the music. Afterwards, I asked my who-to-go-to friend (who'd warned me in advance that it would be bad) if he could recommend a nice monastery for me to enter. Or maybe he could start one himself and I would be his first acolyte. We could call it the Order of the Brothers of the Seriously Disillusioned.

Easter is not a writing day

Another beautiful day, sun streaming through my window on the 21^st floor of the Elan building in downtown Sydney, warming my back. What can I say? Tonight, I'm going out to get potted at some big dance party. I doubt I’ll do any real writing today. Today is Easter Sunday, not a writing day, after all. Today I will not blog, or write.

Enough about me, let's talk about what YOU think of me

I spend bucketloads of time giving feedback to the other writers on the course. I love giving feedback. Some of these other students do amazing stuff, though some of them can’t write shit. But I still love to see how everyone's imagination takes him in a wildy different direction from the same starting point on our daily exercises. But, if I have to be honest, I will admit that giving feedback also feeds my ego. And even more than giving feedback I love getting it. I keep checking the writers’ board to see if anyone has commented on my pieces that I’ve posted up. When someone says they love a piece of mine, I log in repeatedly to reread their praise. I am absolutely pathetic.

Today’s little exercise was on fear. I write it from a medical point of view; my character is someone who is ill, who knows he’s going to die, but in whom the doctors can find nothing wrong:

Cold metal clenches my gut and jerks sharply, like a hari-kari sword. Something is not right. I can’t help but imagine a yellow acid, seeping into my tissues, corroding my joints, eating away at my body. I’m so goddamn tired all the time, but I’m not sleeping well. I wake short of breath in the middle of the night, with a hot sour taste on my tongue. My blue pillow is cold and slick with greasy sweat. Food smells make me gag now.

Of course, I went to my doctor. He asked if I’d changed my diet (no), been under any unusual stress (no), visited a foreign country (no) or in fact anywhere unusual (no again). He poked me, prodded me, looked into my eyes, my throat, my ears, and stuck his finger up my rectum. Then he drained many vials of blood and sent them all away for 47 separate tests. Nothing. They can find nothing wrong.

And yet I can feel death stalking me from inside. My hair has started to fall out, large mats of it, clotted with soap scum, in the shower drain. And a week ago, out of the blue, I got a huge painful blister on my lip and the skin on my hands cracked and flaked. But by the time I could get in to see the doctor again these weird symptoms had disappeared. He sighed when I entered the room, and tapped his Montblanc pen on his desk all the way through our interview. He doesn’t want to be bothered with me anymore. I can understand this. I mean, what exactly is he supposed to do with my bizarre litany of symptoms, and no other clinical evidence? He asked me if I had a history of mental illness in my family.

I have a deepening sense of foreboding. It’s going for my mind too. Yesterday, I suddenly couldn’t remember my brother’s name for a good three minutes. And shortly afterwards, in Carlyle Street outside the drycleaners, I got a sudden pain in my gut, so searing and sharp that I cried out, doubled over in the street, and shit myself. Liquid shit ran down my leg and bloomed brown on my trousers. The stench was terrible. No one stopped to help me, people scurried away. No one wants to know. Maybe they know instinctively that I’m ill. Maybe they subconsciously fear something contagious. I don’t know anything anymore except that I’m going to die soon.

I write a fun story about a sex change; my depression lifts

My depression is lifting, thank God. I have written a piece that I’m thrilled with, on the subject of someone undergoing an overnight sex change. I have so much fucking fun doing this stuff that I’m starting to understand what writers mean when they say that the joys of publication pale in comparison to the joys of writing itself. When you are working and inspiration descends upon you like the rapture and you channel (from somewhere divine) a cracking line, or image, or simile that just fucking works, well, it’s pure bliss. One good line can make my day.

I wake with vague memories of dreams of alien abductions and strange medical procedures. I stretch and my body feels different, somehow softer. I’m shocked to discover I have two huge squishy growths on my chest. Naturally, I conclude that I’ve had some weird allergic reaction to the three chilli burgers, four El Cabron Cuban cigars and the pint of Dewars that I consumed last night while watching the Grand Prix. I have to get to the doctor.

I leap out of bed, and reach for my boxers. Despite living alone since I divorced my fourth wife – hot as hell but a real ball buster if you know what I mean – I do not like to parade around the house naked like some limp-wristed faggot. So I slide my Playboy Bunny boxers on (a gift from the boys in the poker club) and reach in to adjust my tackle. It’s substantial and I like to hang it on the left. I grope around, but all I can feel is a damp furry hole. “Omigod,” I roar, “Aliens stole my penis!”

Suddenly, I hear a knock on the front door. I look out bedroom the window and see that it’s Celia Morris from next door. I grab my Tuskaloosa Chargers bathrobe from its hook on the bathroom door and wrap it tightly around me. I open the front door just a crack, trying to squeeze my new tits flat under the bathrobe. “Jesus”, I think, “I’m stacked. I must be a 36D. Nice.”

Celia simpers good morning and looks at me with doey admiring eyes. I’m a well-known TV sportscaster, you see, and she’s had hot panties for me for a long time. It seems she wants me to help with her husband Marvin, who has locked himself in the bathroom and is muttering incoherently about castration. Celia’s breathy lament is interrupted by a shriek, followed by a bellowed “What the fuck?” from the Baileys across the road. Then the immigrant house next door erupts in a jabber of Chinese.

Some strange urge possesses me, and before I know what I’d doing I throw open my front door and my bathrobe to reveal all of my feminine glory to Celia. “Dear God” she says as she falls to her knees and raises her eyes heavenwards, “When I begged you last week to please make the men of this street more like women, I didn’t mean this”. Then she faints.

Celia Morris is gone now, and I am alone. My mind is in turmoil. I need to think. I know, a nice bubble bath! I go to the bathroom, turn on the hot water tap and pour a big purple dollop of Lavender Dream – left here by the ball-buster – into the tub. I wonder how WCTR news will react to having a female sports commentator. Would it be legal to fire me, now that I no longer have a penis? I wiggle my toes in the white shag bathmat. Suddenly, a more important question occurs to me: will my toenails look better painted in coral or cherry red? “Hmmm” I think, “Yes, I’ll go with cherry red. Nice”.

I am terribly worried now

Third session of the Unlocking Creativity class last night, “Character Journey/Structure, and Images that Evoke Emotion”. I am terribly worried. It is apparent now from what Roland was saying in class that the format of the upcoming Novel and Screenplay development course is aimed at getting students to write a very classical archetype of a story, where one individual undergoes some sort of personal growth trajectory as a result of facing a series of predicaments and challenges. It's very formulaic: "there will be 8 turning points, each comprised of 10 scenes, etc, etc).

But that's not what I want to write! I want to write a novel with 5-6 people speaking in first person point of view, with their stories intersecting with and reflecting off each other like, say, The Poisonwood Bible or Seven Types of Ambiguity. When I mentioned these brilliant novels to Roland he wasn’t very encouraging. He said he hadn’t read such “experimental” fiction and that he “used to read more widely but now only reads stories that he knows he’s going to like”. This is an extraordinary set of comments to come from the teacher of a writing class, and I feel negative and despondent.

And then, to top it off, this morning Roland rang me to say that I needed to get my head sorted out before the first day of the Novel and Script First Draft course. I think he thinks I’m going to be trouble, that my negativity will affect the other students. What a wanker.

Week 3, Exercise 1, Scene from nature #1

I am sitting on a beach alone. The white quartz sand is so clean and fine that it squeaks when I move. My feet are like burrowing voles, rooting down into the soft coolness. The air around is fresh, breezy, playful. The salt and wind and sun dance on my arms, my face, my skin, reminding every nerve of my tingling body that I belong irrevocably to this physical world. A gentle susurrating roar of wind and waves fills my ears. High in the air, gulls wheel and cry. I can taste the ocean on my tongue. Everywhere the light is revelatory, luminous with salt spray.

At the shore, bottle-green waves hang translucent for a few suspended seconds before breaking and churning into a creamy foam. For hours now, I have been watching God at play: a seal surfing, his dark silhouette arrowing through the tumbling waters. Further out, the ocean turns a dark ancient blue, ruffled here and there, for a moment, with a quill of white. The horizon is an impossibly crisp line between two blue immensities. I feel my awareness open, out into the dark ocean thrumming with life, back into the green hills behind me, full of scurrying, clicking, singing, chirring, and rustling things, and upward into the blue, up into the divine. I am sitting on a beach, not alone.

Week 3, Exercise 1, Scene from nature #2

The plain is a sea of shimmering amber grass, stretching to the horizon in all directions, but punctuated here and there by a little rise or a copse of trees. The grass is dancing, shaking, and undulating in a rhythmic way, as though it were a musical instrument and the wind were God’s fingers. The dark trees look purposeful and sober, like watchmen standing guard over the precious earth. I feel the living breeze roll over me, as if I were just another piece of grass, a tree, a fieldmouse, a mountain – no distinction. Smelling of earth and water and sap, she curls around my ear and sends a million tiny fingers scurrying through my hair.

I see a hawk high in the sky, slowly inscribing its act of watching on the surface of the world. A pair of dark birds skim the amber waves towards their refuge in the trees. Countless insects rise from the fields, their shimmering wings a pointillist miracle. The great creamy white clouds are now taking on hues of rose and turtle-dove grey and lemon curd. The sun hangs low in the sky, and casts its golden benediction on the end of the day. I feel the pulse of the earth, slow and heavy, beneath my feet. I am moving through it all, standing still, just where I am.

I am suffering a total nightmare being on hold to Big Pond, struggling to get my home wireless internet up and running. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been I’ve been running into the local internet centre to do my on-line work (posting my writing exercises etc). I’ve often ended up going in 2 or 3 times per day. It’s been fucking annoying, because Big Pond have been completely hopeless in terms of sending the relevant equipment through, and in terms of their technical support. Bloody useless people. And I haven’t been able to pirate off an unsecured network in any reliable fashion. I calculate that I've spent between 4 and 5 hours on hold with Big Pond. However, I used this as the basis for today's writing exercise: “Welcome to my Nightmare”

Week 2, Exercise 6, Welcome to my nightmare

Welcome to my nightmare. Is there any experience more aggravating, more pointless, more degrading, more nullifying than to be on hold? Knowing that after god-knows-how-many minutes in some listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or some other piece of muzak that makes you want to tear your fingernails out with your teeth, you’ll only get to speak to some minimum wage, call center fuckwit, who’ll fob you off with some utterly nonsensical piece of bureaucracy that you just know won’t fix your problem. Who’ll say, at least six or seven times, “I understand, but there’s nothing I can do”. Is there? I think not.

This time, I’m listening to Pachabel’s Canon, the most sublime seven chord progression in western music, rendered utterly toxic to me. I hate Pachabel’s Canon. And every shitfuck corporate in the world, too. And the bitch who tells me every 2 or 3 minutes that “my call is important and an operator will be with me shortly”. But when, exactly? I have been on hold for 45 minutes now. The voice is automated, of course, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to find the woman it belongs to, grab her by her pretty blonde hair, and smash her face against a brick wall.

Fortunately, I am not without resources, such as my mobile phone. I send an SOS text message. One friend texts back immediately with a lifesaving observation: at least I’m not listening to Maria Carey. Omigod if that automated bitch tells me to please be patient one more time, I will definitely have a coronary on the fucking spot.

So I move swiftly on to resource number 2, taking my cordless lacquer-red phone that looks like a sex-toy from a French brothel into the bathroom. Outside the little bathroom window I can hear the hum of the city going about its daily business. The roar of a bus, the clank of some pile driver on a nearby building site, a man shouting. My life, meanwhile, is utterly on hold. And so I slam open the goody drawer and unscrew the little orange bottle. I break a valium in two and swallow one half. I am practiced, and can do this with only a dollop of saliva. I consider the other half of the valium in my palm. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I swallow it.

Suddenly, Pachabel’s Canon breaks in mid-leitmotif, and there’s a click on the line. Something is happening! I hold my breath for the most important question facing modern man: will I reach a real person, or will I be cut off, sent spiralling down into terrible purgatory?

“Hi this is Andrea. How may I help you?”
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I feel like weeping. And it’s not some Banjit from Bangalore – awfully nice people I’m sure, but I can’t understand a fucking word they say.

“Yes, omigod, thank you, yes!” I blurt. “You sent me a red notice saying that if I didn’t pay my phone bill in one week you’d cut me off and take me to court. But you’ve billed me for 19 calls to Kazakhstan that aren’t mine. I don’t even know where Kazakhstan is.” I am fully aware that I sound hysterical. Because I am.

“Sir, this isn’t the right department for that. I’m going to transfer you.”
“No wait, please, I’ve been on hold for 52 minutes…”
But it’s too late. Click, beep, silence.
“Hello? Hello?”
I want to die. Or kill everyone in the world.

Stealing from friends' lives

I was inspired to write the final exercise for this week from something a guy told me about, when we went on a dinner date. (Well, I thought it was a date; he thought it was just two friends going to see a movie and have dinner. Ho hum.) He told me about a relationship he’d had with a Spanish guy, and I thought “Wow, good idea for a story.” We were supposed to do our exercise based on a song we liked, but this piece came out instead. I almost HAD to write it. Am I stealing from other people’s lives when I do this? Anyway, he loved the story when I sent it to him, so I guess that's OK. But what if he had hated it? What if it made him angry?

Week 2, number 5, "From a song..."

Whenever Carlos asked me if I wanted him to stay here in Australia, I always said “Don’t stay for me, stay for yourself.” Eventually, after a number of such conversations, he left. Mother said to me afterwards, “I guess that was a really important lesson for you to learn.”

She loved Carlos to pieces. Unreservedly. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she saw him as the father of many potential coal-haired grandchildren. But I think she also loved him more generally, just for being such a good man, especially in contrast to my fuckwit drunk of a father. And of course I was crazy for Carlos too. But what I couldn’t abide was my need for him. I desperately needed not to need anyone, and this was a huge battle for me. I guess you could say that Carlos was simply the battlefield and my broken heart was collateral damage.

On the night of my last don’t-stay-for-me declamation, Carlos was wearing that pale green T-shirt that we bought together in Bondi. I remember the way the black hairs on his forearm stood up in a kind of ruff and silver glint off his watch. He was the sexiest man I have ever known. I still dream about having sex with him again, usually in kitchen, for some odd reason.

Something subterranean shifted that night, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. Three weeks later Carlos announced that he was going back to Spain. In response I was all solicitous concern and mature understanding. Now, I can’t think of this without cringing. His eyes that night were those of a serious little boy, dark and speculative. I could have saved us, even then. But instead of begging him to stay, I hung him out to dangle in the cold, where I was also freeze-drying my heart.

I had an email from him four months ago, telling me that he got a good job near his parents in Alicante. I hear on the grapevine he’s got an English girlfriend with big tits and red hair. I wonder if she asks him whether he wants her to stay in Spain. I wonder what he says in return.

Concerns about self-discipline

I’m concerned that I’m not being very disciplined at setting aside enough time for my writing. That said, I am managing to finish my writing exercises, and give lots of feedback on the other students’ work and in fact, I seem to be more active of the writers’ board than nearly all of the other students. But given that I’m not working (unlike I would imagine most of the other students) I should be able to accomplish a lot more. Gaydar and the temptations of promiscuous sex get in the way. Maybe I shouldn’t disclose this. Simone de Beauvoir said that she felt strongly that her decision to write about her life had been a rash exercise. Oh well, perhaps I’m being rash. Wrote a great piece from the point of view of a dog, despite my shocking lack of self-discipline.

Week 2, number 4, "Life sucks...."

Life sucks. The man left and now its kibbles all the time. No more cheese or beef jerky. And the squirrels are taking over the garden and I have to do patrol all the time. And she is always sad now. Where is the man? One day, I felt the connection to him suddenly snap, and he never came home that day. And then she became sad.

PATROL! Squirrels in the garden! I bolt through the dog door and race around the lawn. “Arf, Arf, Arf!” The squirrels always scramble up the old cedar fence into the pine trees before I can catch them. Life sucks. I really want to catch one!

I come back inside to where she sits, looking out the window. What can I do to cheer her up? Maybe she'd like to play ball. I'm not really fond of ball. It's a lot of work for me, and kind of pointless. But it used to make the man happy when he came home stressed from work. So I go to retrieve the orange ball from under the old brown armchair. It's lying beside a dead moth. I eat the moth to get the taste of kibbles out of my mouth. Then I go to her and drop the ball by her feet and suggest that she might feel better after a small game. “Arf!”

“Don’t bark Felix,” she says. “Let’s go for a run.” Life sucks. I hate running, but I can’t say no. She runs until the exhaustion of her body causes the ceaseless whirr of her thoughts to stop, like a ceiling fan turned off. But then she runs in that trance for ages! And it’s hard on me. My legs are so much shorter than hers. I'm getting old.

I prefer to mosey gently along, stopping to smell the world. Who was here, and how long ago? Which lucky dog got fed lamb for dinner, instead of kibbles? How much longer the old orange tom cat's failing kidneys will last? A dropped ice cream cone. My amour fou with the brown bitch from down the road. A dead bird. Delicious smells, the tantalizing world of the pavement. All this is denied to me now.

MAIL! I go to the door and take the envelopes gently in my mouth and bring them to her. Seeing this, she smiles and strokes my ears. Joy, what joy! But then I can feel her mind start to slide away as she opens one of the white envelopes. She begins to cry again. Life sucks. Sometimes life sucks even more than the fish-flavoured kibbles. Nothing comes from these white envelopes other than unhappiness. I resolve to bite the man who brings such tragedy to our house and to destroy these terrible things before she ever sees them. Perhaps then she won’t be sad. I look at her and tell her these things. I tell her that I know the man loved her, that he would never leave us. I tell her that I know he will come back. I tell her that I love her, even if she does feed me kibbles. “Arf! Arf! Arf!” She wipes her eyes and looks into mine and smiles and says “Oh, Felix, what would I do without you?”

Biting off more than I can chew?

This time I choose an aboriginal boy as a character for my writing exercise. Maybe he will feature too in my novel, though I’m daunted by the challenge of trying to write from his point of view in a credible way, of getting into his head. How can I possibly ever understand that sensibility? Am I biting off too much? Have I set myself an impossible challenge?

Week 2, number 3, "Standing in the rain..."

Standing in the first rain of the season Igawoor could feel the red soil open like a young girl. He was on a place of increase, a sacred place where life multiplies. Nearby in the Dreamtime the ancestors first came out of seas to sing the earth into existence. His creature spirit was the snake or joorr. Its tail scoured the earth and left many river valleys between here and Ngarlan, the home of the Nyulnyul, his people.

Now they were staying near the white mans mission camp. There was food at the mission camp, but the whitefella was deaf to the dreamtime songs, and the Nyulnyul sickened to be near him for long. As the rains quickened the earth there would be so much bush tucker plump tubers and lazy goannas and bush bananas and wallabies glutted on sweet grasses his people would melt away from the mission like a puddle evaporates in the sun.

Six moons ago some whitefella brought him and his brother Ngoordinyboor here to dive for pearl shell. Igawoor didnt know why the whitefella collected pearl shell. The Nyulnyul used it in sacred ceremonies; pearl shell was the essence of water. Perhaps the white man wanted to control the rain too.

Igawoor had learned some whitefella words like tobacco, tucker, water, hunger, boat and shark. On the second day of diving Ngoordinyboor had been eaten by a shark. The water turned red. But there was no escape from the purposes of the whitefella. If you didn’t collect a pearlshell, you had to bring up sand or seaweed from the ocean bottom to show you’d been there. If you stayed too long resting on the side of the boat, the white man would smash your fingers with the oar. Igawoor learnt it was best to go back inside to the songs and dreams of the ancestors, to wait.

Second class, emotion and detail

Second class last night of the Unlocking Creativity course, aimed at “Emotion and Detail”. I didn’t really understand what the moderator/teacher Roland Fishman was saying; he never completes a sentence, gets lost half-way through his sentence. I was also suprised to find that I was irritated that I wasn’t chosen to read my work out loud; how desperate I am for some outside approval or validation of my writing. But I got it at the end, when Kathleen, the other course instructor, dragged me aside as we were leaving and said how much she’d enjoyed my pieces on the on-line writers’ board, how impressed she was by the quality and variety.

Still, even though I got this validation, it didn’t really slake my thirst. I am so insecure about my writing. My only consolation is that I know a lot of writers feel this way. Focus on the writing though, that's a relief. I just love doing the writing exercises. So much more rewarding than promiscuous sex. When I write something that I think is OK, I practically cream my jeans for joy. Two exercises, both of which I loved writing, the first on "what I want to write" and the second on a "strong emotion". I chose grief, anticipatory grieving. I was really proud of this one, particularly the description of the old mother as a "unbearably delicate, like a cosmos flower at the end of the summer season, petals ready to blow away in the wind".

Week 2, number 1, "What I want to write"

I want to write something that pierces the skin of this world. Something that I can seize like a life raft in the waters of my life and say, “So it is. I have written this, it is something. Something a girl will read while sitting under the boughs of a linden tree. Something that when she closes the book she will feel an urgent need to read some of its lines to her grandmother.”

I want to write about how each life sings a song, be it a fado or an aria. The mother in the endless suburb, drinking coffee laced with scotch, waiting for her teenage children to come home. The child-soldier crouched in the African bush, cleaning his gun. The psychiatrist on Wimpole St who wants to hit his patients. The man whose days in the munitions factory in Topeka are spent thinking of breasts. The gaucho on the pampas, who loves his horse and the grasslands more than his family. The ladyboy on Patpong Road, looking for another 100 baht trick, dreaming of the day when she can afford to have her penis cut off. The zoologist, studying nematodes in seagull guano in the Keregulen Islands, hands blue with cold. All the lives, one truth.

I want to write about the connection between you and me and everyone we know. I want to write about Max, about when he first called me his Popo, the heft and heat of his hand on my back at night. I want to write about my father, lost in a bottle, and about my mother, finding her first love at age 77. I want to write about the smell of salt and wild sage and pine in the Capetown summer air, as I cycle down the long hill to the bay. I want to write about the first time I heard Kate Bush sing Eat the Music and what it felt like to leap around that fisherman’s cottage over and over again, dancing to the music, and how good it felt to be alone for those two weeks. I want to write a novel about how the heart exiles itself. I want to write one sentence, one idea that is beauty itself. I want to write.

Week 2, number 2 "A strong emotion"

My mother is so old it seems impossible, unreal. She has a red sore on her shin that won't heal. The doctor here at Hollyoaks Care Center says, "Why worry about it? I don't like the sound of that, but he is a kindly man and I think I understand what he means. Hollyoaks smells of disinfectant, boiled vegetables, rosewater, with a faint overlay of urine. It is the exact smell of people waiting to die.

Mother thanks me for coming to see her, graciously, as though I've done her some sort of favour. The light streaming through the window of her room sets the white nimbus of her hair aglow. She is so unbearably delicate now, like a cosmos flower at the end of summer, all the petals ready to blow away in the wind. Yet her green eyes remain preternaturally bright. It's as though all the vitality that once coursed through her is now somehow consolidating in her eyes. Neither I, nor my sisters, nor any of our children, have her green eyes. I cannot bear the thought that one day fairly soon they will be gone forever.

A wash of grief overwhelms me like a flash flood when I notice that one of the mother-of-pearl buttons on her cashmere cardigan is missing. She always took such exceptional care with her dress. She put lipstick on even to go to the Save-on-Foods.

"Would you please help me up, dear? I need to use the restroom.I take her hand, with its tracery of ancient blue veins. The effort of rising from the brown armchair where some Filipina has deposited her hours ago is visibly draining, but her pride will not allow her to stay in bed or to use a bedpan. She would call it a chamber pot, and say that chamber pots are for people who can't manage.

When I'm with her, I feel tectonic forces folding my heart, an igneous pressure behind my eyes. I have this urgent need to seize her and to press her scant body to mine until all her bones break and our flesh merges. I confessed this ridiculous and disturbing urge to Rose one night over a bottle of pinot grigio. She threw a strange fierce look at me from under her pale bangs, grabbed my hands and said "Oh my fucking God, Alice, what are we going to do?" and started to cry.

The sound of my mother on the toilet is frailty itself - a delicate tinkle, followed by a huff of pain as she pulls herself up on the steel handrail. I am not allowed in the restroom with her. She says that there are some things a child should be spared and assisting a parent at toilet is one of them. This argument gets nowhere with Rose, who bosses mother around terribly. But though I have to hold my breath and though I'm rooted to the spot with visions of a fall and the splintering of bone, I respect the closed door. Each single day the scope of her privacy shrinks enough as it is. I offer up a wish that she dies in the silent dark night, when no one is looking.

A character - perhaps - from my novel?

For the final writing exercise of the week, based on the tagline “I don’t feel”, I’ve chosen one of the characters – perhaps – from my prospective novel, a Japanese fisherman. I like the mood of this piece.

Week 1, Exercise 6, "I don't feel"

I have lived here nearly all my adult life, but it's not home. Instead, I feel the pull of Japan, of Wakayama prefecture. Fragments of uninvited memory swarm my mind, and I forget this hot red alien land. Instead I see the rain, cold and grey, plonking in the water barrel outside my father's cottage. Yukiko and I, playing hide and seek in the green forest and rocky coves. The mists that smell of brine and kelp.

Mother and father were poor fisherfolk, and my older brothers were drowned when the starving village sent the fleet to slaughter a cow whale and her calf and the outraged ocean spirits responded with a violent storm. So I came here when I was 15, to this land of red soil and pearls, of burning heat and cyclones.

Now, I am tender on one of Mr Rubin's ships, the Eliza. I feed the air hose to the diver Nakamura, who is captain of the Eliza, and interpret his tugs on the life line from 25 fathoms down. One tug, go left. Three sharp tugs, bring me up quickly. I tell the crew what to do. I am a god, holding life in my hands. I have been tender for Nakamura for six years now. He is a good diver, strong but not foolish. Last season he collected six tonnes of pearl shell.

Mr Rubin is an Englishman, but different. Something called a Jew. This sets him apart from the other Englishmen, but I don't know why. He has a lovely daughter, Lida. She is six, and named after one of the white man's ancestors. Rubin has sad eyes, but when he looks at her, his smile softens into something soft and private, like the Buddhist monks in Wakayama prefecture.

It's all about how I feel, baby

I was super inspired today. For the fifth writing exercise, based on the tag line “I feel”, I posted three separate efforts on-line. I am particularly fond of the last one, which was pretty much inspired by thoughts of my lovely Mum, and by the azure crystalline beauty of the autumn weather right now in Sydney. I sent it to Mum, told her it was my poem to her. She was pleased.

Week 1, Exercise 5, "I feel"

I feel the prophecy; it is a dark fate. I do not take my meds, for I cannot afford to be sleepy. At first I hid the pills under my tongue, but the nurses got wise, and now after swallowing I must open my mouth and say “Ahhhhh” and lift my tongue up and down. They stick a silver penlight into my mouth. I do all this quickly and obediently to get the bitches out of my room, and then I go into the toilet and quietly vomit up the contents of my stomach. Dr Kleinfeld looks at me suspiciously, though. He knows something’s wrong, but he can’t go outside protocol. Still, I have to be careful. Unlike those bovine nurses, you can’t rely on the consistent stupidity of the doctors, especially when they are young, with something to prove, like Kleinfeld.

The other inmates here shy away from me. It seems to be instinctual; I doubt whether tangible news of my great feats outside has filtered in. These broken humans are no more aware than beasts. An early death is the best they can hope for. The nurses and the orderlies and the doctors here at least know the deeds for which I am imprisoned, though they understand nothing of my purpose here on earth. I tried to tell them in court that the forces of the universe are in chaos. That the angels are in retreat. That demons stalk them. That two dark spirits were trying to transmigrate into the human form to build a portal from the earth to an apocalyptic nightmare. Those little girls were the foundation stone. Their bodies meant nothing. The important thing is to prevent the demons from obtaining anchor. I must be strong and quiet and clever. I have a plan. Nurse Mustafa is showing signs of transmigration. She is on duty tonight.

Week 1, Exercise 5, "I feel", second submission

I feel the quickening of my people; the three moons are moving into alignment with the sun, and the time of the Great Tides is near. The pod-mothers are beginning the cull of their brightling flocks, and in two cycles of the little moon, the great clans shall swarm through the deeps and shallows of the world to gather near me for the spawning.

I have been Andrigath, or seed-father and guardian of this world, for some 700 cycles of the king moon. Now, I must persuade my people to ignore the tidal pull that enthrals their very bodies and minds and to pierce the skin of our world. For strange things are happening. A brightling-polyp in the southern ocean encountered an object of manufacture, but not something secreted by one of our protofactories. The brightling reported that it made a sound, somewhat like the crumpling of the skin of the world or the grinding of the ocean floor, but rhythmical and organized, but not like one of our water songs. Instead, an utterly alien sound.

And half way around the world, another brightling reported something similar, except this one said that it also sensed a mind, but with no clan identification. It said that the mind was remote and fragmented, but with some strange purpose. This brightling became deranged after the encounter, and had to be destroyed by its pod-mother. It would seem there are Others amongst us. We must decide what this means. There is much unease amongst my people. What do they want from us, of our world, these Others?

Week 1, Exercise 5, "I feel" third submission

I feel like my mother is near and she’s singing softly, like she used to when she gave me a bath, hum-dee-dee-dum my little love, gentle fingers soaping my head and blue, blue, blue eyes. Ah, the love, I carry it with me always in the top-most pocket of my heart. I want to break the world open to eat it like watermelon, juice running down my chin.

The sky is zinc-blue, blue like my mother’s eyes, like the blue of a packet of Extra gum. The air is fresh and crystalline, so that you just want to skip down the street. Skip and sing. This world is so ineffably beautiful. It’s as though the air and light and sound and objects and bodies in this world are just a skin and behind are great coloured skeins of truth and love, connecting me to you, and to everyone we know.

I read my book of Billy Collin’s poetry and have to hold my breath, because I think the beauty of his words will crack me open. I want his words tattooed on the hollows of my body. That night, I lie with Max in the soft cotton sheets, and think. This is all I ever wanted, I have this moment with him, I have not been cheated. It is enough to have lived and to have had this moment. I smell truth at the nape of his neck. He sleeps still. My best friend calls at 3:30am; she never gets the time right. Cup of groggy laughter, crackling over the dark.

Love overflows, soaking the dark earth. You can feel the world turning on its axis if you are quiet enough. The floor is a blessing to my toes, as my fingers dance their percussive jig of joy on this keyboard. The window is open and I feel the breeze on my skin, so cool, so light, so soft, I am reminded of my mother’s blue eyes as she smiling brushes a soap sud away from my eye. Hum-dee-dee-dum, my little love.

I am writing good stuff! Oh, the pure fucking joy of it

Went out last night and partied a little at The Shift, so I’m feeling thin and washed out in respect of the writing. I’m tired, my eyes are sore, my soft bed calls, despite the ugly sheets (must get new linen!), my life feels transitory and provisional (how to fix that?) and I’m dying for a good root. But I’ve written some good stuff for my daily writing exercises, so all is well in my world.

Week 1, Exercise 2 "I don't remember"

I don’t remember what Sarah was wearing the day she was killed. Of course, I know what she was wearing from the police reports and the photos afterwards (a yellow T-shirt, green glass beads around her neck), but what I mean is that I don’t actually remember, I don’t have a visual image of her on that morning before Mrs Carson picked her up. Nor do I remember what she said to me when I kissed her goodbye, though I do recall that her hair smelled of smoke. She had been helping Alex burn leaves in the garden the night before and now that smell of autumn mixed with young life is all I have and I hold onto it as though it will save me. Because I cannot remember anything else.

I had been distracted, thinking of Tom’s poor grades and noticing on him too a smoky smell, and wondering if he’d been smoking pot again before breakfast and what to say to him. And so when Sarah kissed me that morning I just said bye-bye darling or something like that and all I have left is the scratchy feel of her brown hair on my cheek - where did those extraordinary curls come from? - and that burnt leafy smell. It’s been three weeks, four days and a few hours and I am already losing her. I remember her broken body more vividly than I remember her alive. I have taken down and put away all the photos of her because I want to remember her and not some photo image, but already I am forgetting. I try to remember every thing she ever did and said and felt and thought but I’m trying so hard its squeezing my heart into a dense little ball of nothing and I cannot remember a thing.

Week 1, Exercise 3, "I think"

For Otto’s 50th birthday, I have organized something magnificent, a huge party, a veritable homosexual Anschluss: well over 200 queens and a handful of attendant women descending on the Hotel Gut Issing near Salzburg for a Sound of Music weekend. Otto’s best friend Jeremy will be there from LA with a new Latin Limpet clinging tightly to his arm, and spitting at anyone under the age of 40 who comes too close. Few of our friends will be able to resist dressing as nuns, so the weekend promises to be surreal, but then Austria itself is kind of strange. After all, its only two famous products are Adolph Hitler and The Sound of Music.

I’m also thinking that I’ll give Otto a blowjob for his 50th birthday, though I certainly won’t be doing the honours personally. No. At 28 years together and counting, we are far past that. Frankly, I find sex beyond the first decade a distasteful concept, even in the abstract. So instead, I’ll find some young Slovak who can say something passably literate about Otto’s music, fawn a little, and then drop his trousers. It shouldn't be too hard to organize. These days you can hardly turn a corner without running into some young Bulgarian or Pole or what have you, who’s more than happy to get a blowjob and then get paid a few hundred euros for the pleasure. All the money goes back home, I’m told. Otto need never know a thing. He’ll be floating for days. Though if he calls me his ‘little blancmange’ in public one more time the whole thing’s off.

Week 1, Exercise 4, "I don't think"

I don’t think the old snake is listening to me. Yes, there it is, that darting eye movement, away from me onto someone else in the room. “Darling, enough about me, let’s talk about what you think of me!” She says it with a fake little laugh to show she’s joking but she’s so self-absorbed that she doesn’t even notice that we weren’t even talking about her in the first place. I know just how to get her attention though.
”Dad’s seeing someone new. She’s 28. One of his grad students.”

Mother’s head snaps back to me, and for a moment I have 100% of her attention. Her eyes are like the cross sights in a sniper’s rifle. “Bloody pathetic!” she barks. She’ll find out soon enough I’m lying. She’s already fingering her mobile on the table, itching to make a call so I douse the fire before it engulfs me and tell her I’m kidding. For a moment her eyes narrow but then she laughs. It’s easier to save face than to talk about the reasons why she and I meet every month in Daphne’s restaurant to exact the most exquisite torture on each other.

The food arrives. I’m having salmon en croute, and mother the quail. She eats with gusto. I think she likes the crunching noise of the small bones. The waiter comes back and she snaps “Coffee, black, no dessert, hurry,” without looking at him. I don’t want dessert, but I know her appetites all too well, so I order the chocolate ganache, and then eat slowly without offering her any. She’s too proud to ask for a bite, but she picks up her spoon and edges it over to my end of the table, as if she thinks I won’t notice. I slap it away. “Get your own if you want one”, I say. “It’s a bit late to be watching your weight, anyway”. The waiter brings the cheque. “Lovely to see you darling”. We kiss air. “Same time next month?”