Lucy's Bedroom

Fruit Bats

I'm packing, which I enjoy immensely since the introduction of regulations relating to the carriage of liquids. There's something about decanting liquids into special less-than-100ml bottles and lining them up in a zip-lock bag no larger than 1 litre capacity that makes me happy in a dolls house kind of way. I have a travel kettle, a collapsible umbrella and a secret stash of tea bags. Why yes, I am English, how could you tell?

No time for blogging tonight. Instead, here are some fruit bats.

Virtually Retarded

I imagine the man sitting next to me on the aeroplane wasn’t actually William Shatner, but his eerie resemblance to him put me in mind of that episode of the Twilight Zone where he sees gremlins on the wing of his aeroplane and ends up being carted away in a straitjacket – you know the one. I had a quick look out of the window just to check for gremlins but only noticed that the tips of the wings were curiously pointing up. I’ve never seen this before; is it aerodynamic or were they just pleased to see me?

I’ve been taking advantage of some odd days when work doesn’t need me and I’ve been on a flying visit to see my dad in France and on Saturday D and I are off to Venice. I took history books with me to France but I don’t think I’ll bother taking them to Venice. I just got back to about the worst mark I’ve ever got for anything, ever. And I worked hard on that. Plus, I’ve got no idea from my tutor’s comments exactly what it is I did wrong, I think he’s been on a feedback course because his comments are vaguely encouraging to the point of meaninglessness, which is no help when they’re sitting next to a big fat 60%.

Maybe…and this is a radical idea but stick with me…maybe, if I didn’t have a job and two holidays and a blog and a cocktail of mood altering prescription drugs and a boyfriend who’s leaving the country and a very demanding cat…then I might be able to edge my score up to the giddy heights of, say 62%?

Oh for fuck’s sake, I’ve never scored lower than 83%, and I was furious about that; 60% is virtually retarded.

D’s hiding downstairs watching football, which he hates, so I must be crosser even than I realise. I think I’m going to feign sleep to persuade him it’s safe to come to bed.

The Night We Went To Paradise By Way Of Heston Services

Off to see the Franz Ferdinand late show in Brixton tonight so no time to tell you anything about D’s car breaking down on the M4 and me having to drive to Heston Services to rescue him. I arrived so late and we were both so tired that our grand ‘back together after a week’ dinner was at Burger King and then we booked into the Travelodge.

Still, the one thing you can say about Travelodge is that its bland anonymity lends itself nicely to really filthy, pornographic sex. D overcame his tiredness sufficiently to fuck me from behind with his left knee on the bed and his right foot planted on my cheek, pressing my face into the bedclothes. I wriggled furiously as his cock slammed at an angle into my cunt and he whacked my arse hard with the flat of his hand, hissing “Stop wriggling!” which of course made me wriggle more.

Finally he clambered off me, and I lifted my head blearily to look back at him. He stood, a couple of paces away from the bed, stroking his cock slowly with one hand. Then he clicked the fingers of his other hand and pointed at the floor. “Bad dog! You know you’re not allowed on the bed.”

Stretching my stiff limbs, I climbed down onto the floor, crawling slowly towards him, craning my neck and stretching my tongue out to flutter against the tip of his cock. Just as I was about to curl my tongue around the underside of its head and coax it into my mouth, he stepped back. This is an old game. I looked up at him and the corners of my mouth twitched into a smirk. He looked stonily back at me and whispered, “Crawl.”

I crawled, bobbing my head down to lap slowly along the underside of his shaft and then press my lips firmly against the head of his cock…

He took another step back and I crawled towards him again and spat on the end of his cock, slowly swirling it round and then sucking its head firmly into my mouth…

He took another step back, his back against the wall now and I crawled towards him, kneeling up, gripping his thighs and plunging my mouth onto his cock, rubbing its head against my bulging cheek…

“Look at me,” he whispered, and I gazed up as he twined my hair around his fingers. “Don’t swallow.”

His spunk pooled in my mouth, I tipped my head back and opened wide to show him. He murmured, “Good girl” and slithered down the wall, sitting on the floor with his back to it as I ground my lips urgently against his, letting his cum ooze from my tongue to his and feeling the tiredness in his body as it grew heavy in my arms.

As a very special reward, we didn’t have to go back to Burger King for breakfast and I was allowed to finish all of my Costa Coffee Blackcurrant and White Chocolate Muffin without him even attempting to steal any. I know this may not sound like much, but it represents a breakthrough in respect for my personal food space. Plus, he’s bought me a key ring that says I ‘heart’ Heston, so don’t let anyone tell you romance is dead.

Five-A-Side Bukkake

Today’s study avoidance technique has been signing D up for Movember. This is a charity event that takes place in November when men are sponsored to grow moustaches for Prostate Cancer. And obviously this is a good thing in itself and not just an excuse to see what he’d look like with a Zapata moustache (though I have simulated the effect with felt tip on a photo of him and stuck it to the fridge).

I’ve started my new job in the evenings and it doesn’t seem very taxing so far, just basic administrative stuff in a big empty office with a view of the Barbican by night. Some of the cover I do will be in the daytime and I expect that’s when most of the real work happens. On my way back to Old Street I freaked myself out a bit when I was followed by a man jingling keys in his pocket. I’m not sure why that was as I’m normally a confident ‘walking around at night on my own’ sort of gal. I had to stop suddenly and pretend to be examining something in the middle distance to let him walk past me. Then I convinced myself he was deliberately slowing down so I would catch him up. Poor man, I expect he hadn’t even noticed me.

I’ve got a mysterious text message today. It reads, ‘hi sweetie, u up 4 jetlag @ 9 xxx’ This is puzzling in many ways. I think it’s probably a wrong number and after staring at it for a long time I’ve decided ‘jetlag’ must be a club or bar. I’m very tempted to accept but I can’t tell if the text is from a man or a woman.

Oh, I’ve just Googled ‘jetlag’ and it seems to be a fairly wanky-looking Japanese sports bar, so perhaps not. Unless of course the Japanese sport in question is five-a-side bukkake, in which case I’m missing out big time.

Sex Addiction

As promised, here are the answers to the survey questions. Why not play this game yourselves at home?

Do I have a problem with sex addiction?

Why not read through the statements below to see if any of them relate to you?

1. Have you ever tried to control or cut down the amount of sex you have? Only really when D becomes possessed with overwhelming boredom and starts trying to put his hand up my skirt in the middle of a BBC adaptation of a Jane Austen novel which I’m actually trying to watch, thank you very much!

2. Have you ever had sex with someone you didn't want to have sex with? They all seem like a good idea to begin with but I have occasionally lost interest part-way through and only continued out of politeness.

3. Do you need a sexual relationship to make your life bearable? No, but just making my life bearable seems like a lowly ambition. I was hoping to make my life unpredictable and flamboyant and the subject of a number of conflicting biographies following my death (or disappearance in mysterious circumstances).

4. Do you become anxious or even desperate when you are away from your partner? Only if we’re in a crowded place and I’ve mislaid him, when I instantly revert to ‘four year old lost in a department store’. I do become curious about what he’s up to in weeks like this one when he’s away and that’s sometimes vaguely unsettling.

5. Do you engage in sexual practices that bring you discomfort or pain? If you’ve been reading the blog I think you already know the answer to that one.

6. Do you feel that life would be meaningless without a sexual relationship? In a ‘biological imperative’ sort of way, yes of course it would. I sense the hovering threat of a twelve-step programme behind this question. One of the steps of twelve-step always seems to be God. Oh, they don’t call him that, they call him ‘a spiritual dimension’ or ‘a higher power’ but they mean God. Why should I assume I’m entitled to a meaningful life? That’s the sort of egocentric twaddle religions peddle. There’s no evidence that anyone’s life is meaningful other than for biological reasons. Life is random and I’m unimportant and those are not bad things.

7. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about sex? Other than the time I spend having it, scheming to have it, dealing with the repercussions of it, writing about it and buying unsuitably high-heeled shoes, why no, it hardly crosses my mind.

8. Do you feel uncomfortable about masturbation? I used to a little bit when I still lived at home and had a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the bedroom wall watching me do it. He’s not watching any more though, so it’s OK.

9. Have ever had an important relationship ruined through affairs etc? Not ruined, but I’ve dented it a couple of times.

10. Are you unable to concentrate on other aspects of your life because of thoughts of sex? Isn’t this true of everyone? If you’ve, say, dismantled your food mixer in the spirit of enquiry and then attempted to re-assemble it before anyone notices using only the line drawings in the instructions leaflet as a guide (and I’m not suggesting anyone here has done that, it’s a totally random example, right?) then you’ll know that this is a task that is significantly impaired by daytime fantasies of being tied to the kitchen table with clothes line by burglars and brutally assaulted with the contents of the veg box.

11. Do you feel that you lack dignity and completeness? Completeness? Is that like wholeness and oneness? Is it something to do with positive thinking and healing energy? My only lack of dignity comes from having to live in a world where people bang on about nonsense like completeness.

12. Would your quality of life improve if you were not so driven by sex and romance? Where did romance suddenly come from in a survey about sex addiction? Isn’t that like saying, “the trouble with alcoholics is that they’re driven by an excessive devotion to the intricacies of the distilling process”?

In summary, sex addicts cause distress to themselves and their loved ones by being self-centred and mercenary. They can overcome this by spending a lot of time thinking about themselves and what they could be getting out of life if they weren’t sex addicts. Did I miss out any irony here?

Lazy, Unprincipled And Impatient

Odd day yesterday; I went Japanese speed-dating. Not, you understand, in my own capacity but as my friend Itsuko’s speed-dating buddy. Not quite everyone there was Japanese but enough of them were for me to have bumped my head twice doing the ‘bowing-on-greeting’ thing.

I have no small talk so I found it all quite hard work. I also find it very difficult to answer questions like ‘what are you like’. At first I wrote ‘lazy, unprincipled and impatient’ which is true but not much of an opening gambit, so I had to throw that form away and start again.

Each ‘meet’ lasted ten minutes and then a bell was rung and we all swapped round. Ten minutes can be a long time. I threw my list of matches away at the end but Itsuko submitted two names she’d like to swap details with and got an email later in the day confirming that they wanted her details too.

Back home, Itsuko got very stern with me about my hot tub. Apparently I’m doing it all wrong; it’s not polite to just strip off in the garden and jump in quickly before the neighbours see. In Japan, I’d have to sit on a stool and soap and scrub my hair and body first, then rinse it all off and only then get into the tub (and then only in order of family seniority). I tried to distract her by going, “But look, it has coloured lighting…” but she insisted on getting all Japanese on my ass.

In other news, I’ve had an email from another friend with the following questionnaire. If I can tear myself away from thinking about sex for five minutes I might answer it next time.

Do I have a problem with sex addiction?

Why not read through the statements below to see if any of them relate to you?

1.Have you ever tried to control or cut down the amount of sex you have?
2. Have you ever had sex with someone you didn't want to have sex with?
3. Do you need a sexual relationship to make your life bearable?
4. Do you become anxious or even desperate when you are away from your partner?
5. Do you engage in sexual practices that bring you discomfort or pain?
6. Do you feel that life would be meaningless without a sexual relationship?
7. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about sex?
8. Do you feel uncomfortable about masturbation?
9. Have ever had an important relationship ruined through affairs etc?
10. Are you unable to concentrate on other aspects of your life because of thoughts of sex?
11. Do you feel that you lack dignity and completeness?
12. Would your quality of life improve if you were not so driven by sex and romance?

Black Hole

I’m sure the real Holocaust wasn’t like this. I’ve been to Tate Modern to see Miroslaw Balka’s Black Hole, an installation designed to evoke the experience of the Holocaust as you walk up the ramp into a vast metal structure, the ghost of a cattle truck or gas chamber.

Or, in my case, get jostled by 30 schoolchildren with backpacks as they run up and down the ramp and jump up and down on the steel floor, squealing as the noise echoes around the interior. It’s not just children though; a gang of pensioners are noisily agreeing with each other that it’s not as dark as they thought it would be. I expect they wish there was someone to complain to about this. Himmler, maybe.*

It’s not a place to contemplate my Jewish heritage so I sit on the terrace watching the river and eating my sandwich (deep-fried pakora on white bread with mango chutney, because diet…schmiet). My mother was a non-observant Jew whereas my dad was a Catholic convert, so I was baptised and brought up a Catholic but because Jewishness descends through the female line I will count as a Jew if the cattle trucks turn up again (as the old joke goes, ‘I’m not a proper Jew, just Jew-ish’).

I have Jewish relatives in Poland (not as many of them as I should have, of course) who I don’t know at all and my actual knowledge of things Jewish is defined by the content of the early, funny movies of Woody Allen. I don’t even have a recipe for chicken soup. As an essentially non-religious person, I don’t think this is longing for my cultural heritage so much as it’s regretting not having known my mother. She would have been the link with that whole side of my life.

This will be my last weekend before I start work. David’s in Cardiff because he’s doing a week’s ‘exchange’ with another ICU (which sadly doesn't mean I get to swap him for a cuddly Welsh boyfriend) so I’m at a bit of a loose end.

Because I'm always complaining about all the things I could do if only I had a minute to myself, I decided to actually do one of them. Unfortunately, in 'tidying' my wardrobe, I seem to have simply taken all of the clothes out, looked at them, wondered what I could have been thinking of when I bought them, and then put them back in their original places. Except for the black velvet hotpants, purple cape and tiara, which I'm currently wearing.

*And yes, I realise as I publish this that I'm complaining my Holocaust experience wasn't good enough which is, by anyone's standards, an absolute measure of spoiltness, but I'm too tired to re-write it to make me look like a nicer person.

An Apology For Poetry

From where I’m sitting now I can hear you scraping your feet on the ground, avoiding eye contact and sulkily moaning, “But Luuucy, you made us read poems!”

I’m sorry; I had a funny day yesterday. It wasn’t quite true that nothing happened. I had an interview in the morning for an editing job and although there’s nothing I could put my finger on and say, “That was the thing that went wrong,” it all felt a bit rubbish.

Earning some money is taking on a new urgency now that I know D will be gone for at least the first three months of next year. I’ve been back in touch with the sales promotion agency, where I had an interview with Glinda (The Good Witch of the South) who examined my tattoo, sighed and firmly crossed out two items on her list, muttering, “Well, we can’t send you to those.”

One of the effects of the recession is that many organisations are replacing departing permanent staff with agency staff. Although this isn’t the natural territory of this agency, needs must when the world is coming to an end. So to start with at least I shall be respectably, if sporadically, employed as a receptionist for an orchestra.

I’m slightly nonplussed by this. Who knew orchestras needed receptionists? What does an orchestra’s receptionist do, exactly? (“May I take your cello?”) What hold music does an orchestra have on its phone line (John Cage’s 4’33’’)?

Having spoken with their admin office it all seems a bit complicated. They have a regular receptionist going on maternity leave. Various other admin staff will spend part of their time covering her role to give them a chance to (a) widen their experience (b) change their working hours (c) recover from nervous breakdowns. My role is to cover all the bits they’re not covering. This means my hours will shift between daytime and evenings and there will be short spells when they don’t need me at all, however this will at least mean I can do it alongside continuing to study, so I’ve said yes. For some mad reason, they’re keen on me because of the time I spent doing admin for a merchant bank. Those of you old enough to remember that will recall I mostly got drunk at receptions ate sandwiches from a Tupperware box and hid in the stationery cupboard, but Glinda says I’m not to tell them that.

All Kinds Of Trouble

Hello

We don't usually do poetry on my blog but as it's been a slightly dull day in which I've mostly watched stuff on BBC iPlayer instead of working, here goes.

If you've got iPlayer, go to My Life in Verse which you'll find here until 16 October. It's the comedian Robert Webb talking about T S Eliot. Doesn't sound very promising so far? Skip to 20.15 and watch him read a poem his wife wrote for him.

For those of you who can't do this because you're filthy foreigners without the common decency to pay the BBC a licence fee, I'm infringing her copyright below.

All Kinds of Trouble - by Abigail Burdess
I’m in all kinds of trouble now
The kind where you wake up on a train and everything
Everything’s strange
And where am I, and when did the season change?
I must have been asleep
I’m sure I must be late

I’m in all kinds of danger
The stranger on the platform is not a proper stranger
“You’re here with me,” he says, “Isn’t it great?”
And he’s right
The kind where there’s too much meaning on the edges of sight
Because he might be there
The kind where you randomly weep

I’m in deep, deep hot water
In a boiling hot geyser
In mists, in the midst of ridiculous Icelandic snow
You know
You should give up the fags and eat fruit
Because life should last longer, this life should last longer if someone like him exists

Everybody, lock away the razors and save your lovely wrists
Because someone like him exists
I’m in every single kind of trouble now
The kind where a kind man could write himself a significant part
I’m in very grave danger of a change of heart

Now Wash Your Hands

It’s veg box day. I struggle a bit with my veg box and have never quite got over the week they sent me beetroot and coconuts. They might call it seasonal; I call it an obscure form of sarcasm. Today we have celery. According to the Vegetarian Society’s website, celery ‘has been used to treat a number of ailments including high blood pressure and has been found to contain a number of anti-cancer compounds’. This is clearly the sort of anti-science guaranteed to turn D into the Incredible Hulk rather than persuade him to eat celery. The Romans dedicated celery to Pluto, the god of sex. Apart from a small frisson of pleasure at the god of darkness and death also being in charge of sex, I don’t think this will work on D either. I get briefly distracted by their suggestion that rubbing mustard on the male genitalia might be a cure for impotence (it would certainly cause a physical reaction of some description) before giving up and making lasagne.

I feel a bit bad about the lasagne and have visions of one day standing by his hospital bed while a machine bleeps and a doctor explains that extensive tests show his arteries are 87% béchamel sauce. Still, in the short term, home made lasagne is a powerful bargaining chip when it comes to demanding sexual favours. I text him at work:

L: I’ve made lasagne.

D: Why?

L: Because I love you very much.

D: No you don’t, you’re up to something.

L: I like to feed my man.

D: Of course. What do you really want?

What I really want, it turns out, is to lounge on the sofa in my fluffy dressing gown, still damp from the bath while he crawls, naked and erect on the floor, sucking my toes and watching me finger my pussy, then finally give him permission to touch his cock, instructing him exactly how to curl his fingers round it, how firmly to grip it, how quickly or slowly to wank it, until his jaw is set, his teeth clenched and his face flushed with the concentration of not cumming. Then I lean forwards, letting the tip of his cock rest lightly on the end of my tongue and rubbing my clit faster until he groans and spurts spunk into my mouth and I rock on my fingers, shuddering as I cum. Then what I want is for him to be the one who goes out into the chilly kitchen to put the lasagne in the oven, making sure to wash his hands first.