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?”