The girl who's the heroine in this story sent me this a long time ago. It was one of the earlier emails we exchanged. She'd have been twenty-one at the time, still at university doing a degree in English Lit. We were involved in the rituals of getting to know one another and exchanging our first sets of emails. We'd talked about books and films and visions of escape from where we each lived. She'd have been in a rented house in those days; I was living in a house that I'd inherited and kept briefly. We'd flirted just a bit, and I was trying to get a feel for who she might be involved with, and what her adventures and past had been like. One April morning I did find this in my in-box:
I have been on the rantan lately. In the space of 8 days I had sex in an alley, I had a threesome in a hotel room, went home with a Maori forklift driver and was generally drunk & debaucherous.
I'm not usually like that. I'm in a very, very close group and it's not usual that I'd stray from it. But something happened a few weeks ago that threw me off. It was a man. But of course. A man who I've never written back about, never really talked about. There's nothing particularly special about him, or about me. Except I think we might be in love. A tragic, doomed kind of love. He told me he loved me. And all I wanted to do was be with him. But I know we can never be together. So I ran. But I'm sick of sad stories.
Tell me about when you were 21...
Years later, we talked about her adventures again. By then I knew what rantan was, and what it meant. Years after that first email arrived, she laughed and remembered this:
I remember that so well! I remember sitting on the Maori forklift driver's face while I took swigs of Jack Daniels from the bottle. I remember breaking into the hotel pool with the two much older men I was with, and swimming naked after they had taken turns fucking me, bent over the hotel bed. And I remember the alley, the grazes on my hands and knees the next morning.
The two older men, yes, I'd like to know more about that. One I think was the (married) owner or manager of the little hotel where the threesome happened. She did make one further comment on the event:
Wow! Good memories. Yes, I still remember that week! The threesome was actually with the married man I was talking to you about today, and a friend of his. Whenever I saw his friend after that, which was usually every Friday night, he'd give me one of those metal cigarette tins full of weed. I did sleep with him again, but never in a threesome. I think my married man liked the idea of it more than the reality. I remember the Maori forklift driver too...he loved me sitting on his face. The part I can't remember is whatever (really, whoever) inspired this particularly debaucherous week...I shall have to browse my old LJ to try & figure out who exactly had broken my heart.....god, 21.
There are still stories left unexplored there. I wish I knew more. I wish I knew more about her life at twenty or twenty-one. I wish I knew who in fact did break her heart and send her off on her rantan, her "debaucherous week". I want to know about the alley, too. Grazes on hands and knees--- I want to know about alleyway sex positions.
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Two One Four: Formation
I've very probably written about this before, but since I am posting archived tales, I'll post this again as one of the best memories a lovely girl has ever shared with me. It's certainly a story that leaves me jealous, envious, and depressed. I do wish I could mean this much to the lovely girl in question, and I wish my own life could yield up stories with this much power. This story makes me all-too-aware that there isn't likely to be anything in my own life to ever match her story--- and certainly not in what's left of my future.
My lovely friend sent me these stories--- her darkest secret, she averred ---a few years ago. She told me that she's tried to cut clear of the man in the stories, but somehow she ends up on the phone or on web chat with him far too often. I don't know if she's seen him in the flesh these last three or four years, though it's possible. She calls him B. That could be anything--- Brian, Bob, Bill. The name doesn't matter, of course. It's the power in the obsession and the stories that matters.
Her first discussion of him, in an autumn a few years back---
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification - he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
And again, the next April---
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty-odd years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihalates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I feel deeply jealous, of course. Always that. I want her drinking Sambuca in my bed; I want her flying to spend weekends in rented beach cottages with me. I want to mean that much to someone, to have that kind of obsessive value to someone.
I will archive stories here, though I suppose that's a painful thing. Still, I was trained to create and maintain archives. There's always the chance that in a few years I'll read these again. I wonder what I might make of them then. There's always the chance, too, that some unknown reader will find this--- a ghost blog, abandoned on the aether ---and read this and tell herself stories in her head about the tales I'm saving here.
My lovely friend sent me these stories--- her darkest secret, she averred ---a few years ago. She told me that she's tried to cut clear of the man in the stories, but somehow she ends up on the phone or on web chat with him far too often. I don't know if she's seen him in the flesh these last three or four years, though it's possible. She calls him B. That could be anything--- Brian, Bob, Bill. The name doesn't matter, of course. It's the power in the obsession and the stories that matters.
Her first discussion of him, in an autumn a few years back---
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification - he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
And again, the next April---
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty-odd years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihalates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I feel deeply jealous, of course. Always that. I want her drinking Sambuca in my bed; I want her flying to spend weekends in rented beach cottages with me. I want to mean that much to someone, to have that kind of obsessive value to someone.
I will archive stories here, though I suppose that's a painful thing. Still, I was trained to create and maintain archives. There's always the chance that in a few years I'll read these again. I wonder what I might make of them then. There's always the chance, too, that some unknown reader will find this--- a ghost blog, abandoned on the aether ---and read this and tell herself stories in her head about the tales I'm saving here.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Two One Three: Prologue
Read along with me for a while.
What I'm quoting here is the beginning of something, a prologue. It's from the spring of 2012. The girl who wrote it is...well, names don't matter. And these days she's no longer the girl who wrote this. This is from a previous life, a previous iteration.
But read along with me.
I can't explain this accurately or in a way that makes sense. I only meant to tell you I'm obsessed with pageantry. I choose my running routes or the tube carriage I sit in because of the men. It's like, I orbit around them or they're orbiting around me and the gravitational pull increases the closer I get. I'm approached and talked to and whistled at all day. All day. All day. All day. It exhausts me and fuels me and then I exhaust myself...
Now I'm teeth biting the concrete.
Now I'm face shoved into the pillow.
Now I am back against the alleyway wall.
Now I am ass-up and torn.
Now I am searching for my next hit.
No room for love.
I'm not the kind of girl you'll be seeing in the morning.
Nobody controls me, but I am under control.
No one writes like this any longer. The girl who wrote this erased seven or eight years of her life, erased her life from something like 2007 to 2014. She's someone else now, someone whose life is about upward mobility and professional-class domesticity. She doesn't write like this any more; she doesn't recognise herself in her stories.
No one writes like this any more. There's no dark allure, no sense of late-night confessionals, no sense of the power of desire and dark exhilaration. I really have no idea of what stories are being told late at night these days.
Read along with me. Tell me about what's being confessed in the dark nowadays. Tell me about what the nighttime city is like these days. Tell me what happened to the stories from other times and other lives.
What I'm quoting here is the beginning of something, a prologue. It's from the spring of 2012. The girl who wrote it is...well, names don't matter. And these days she's no longer the girl who wrote this. This is from a previous life, a previous iteration.
But read along with me.
I can't explain this accurately or in a way that makes sense. I only meant to tell you I'm obsessed with pageantry. I choose my running routes or the tube carriage I sit in because of the men. It's like, I orbit around them or they're orbiting around me and the gravitational pull increases the closer I get. I'm approached and talked to and whistled at all day. All day. All day. All day. It exhausts me and fuels me and then I exhaust myself...
Now I'm teeth biting the concrete.
Now I'm face shoved into the pillow.
Now I am back against the alleyway wall.
Now I am ass-up and torn.
Now I am searching for my next hit.
No room for love.
I'm not the kind of girl you'll be seeing in the morning.
Nobody controls me, but I am under control.
No one writes like this any longer. The girl who wrote this erased seven or eight years of her life, erased her life from something like 2007 to 2014. She's someone else now, someone whose life is about upward mobility and professional-class domesticity. She doesn't write like this any more; she doesn't recognise herself in her stories.
No one writes like this any more. There's no dark allure, no sense of late-night confessionals, no sense of the power of desire and dark exhilaration. I really have no idea of what stories are being told late at night these days.
Read along with me. Tell me about what's being confessed in the dark nowadays. Tell me about what the nighttime city is like these days. Tell me what happened to the stories from other times and other lives.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Two One Two: White Lines
More archive materials from the past. I am posting these as messages-in-a-bottle, as memories from other days, from times when I was regarded as a good listener, as an interlocutor for lovely, sometimes self-destructive girls.
These notes are from a girl named Alessandra, someone I knew in another world, someone I knew when the century was still young. Some of the notes are about her friend-and-lover Alys--- yes, Aless and Alys. Red Alys, if I remember, with striking red hair. I have no idea where she is now. I'd heard that she finished university, taught English for a couple of years in Japan, and went on to law school and an MBA. I have a vague sense that she's doing something corporate these days, something in a high glass tower near open water, something that sends her overseas a lot. I have no idea what she remembers about her past. The last time we spoke, we talked about Heath Ledger's death and a film Ledger had once made about drug life in Australia, a film from an Australian novel called "Candy".
I remember these stories, though, remember them from another, better summer long ago.
Oh, I wasn't happy with where my life was taking me in 2007. I spent half my time dreading going to class when I wanted to change universities anyway, and the other half actually in class and miserable. I was isolated and doing tremendous amounts of coke alone-- in my private dorm room, in changing rooms at boutiques, in cubicles at the school library. I was in my first serious relationship with a girl, one who had previously mainly been my best friend, and it was long distance. She (Alys, obviously) had been in a relationship with some Russian pre-med, eight-language-speaking genius, and I broke them up/she left him for me. She had a pretty bad coke problem at the time as well, and I was entirely emotionally dependent on her-- this accounted for MONTHS of being at one another's throats.
While physically thrilling and fascinating to many, our relationship was beyond emotionally tumultuous, whether it was our age/immaturity, the distance, or the fact that we were two people who were already prone to anxiety who were strung out on coke 24/7, I don't really know. But it was a series of mind games and changes in voice tone resulting in both intentional cruelty and despair on both sides. I remember one night when we were actually together in bed, her becoming cross with me about something and saying that she wished her Russian genius boy would love her again-- I promptly took an x-acto knife and put gashes in my inner thighs. I hadn't been a cutter before, and I haven't been one since, but it was practically an automatic form of release.
My behavior lost that bit of exhilaration at being young and pretty and turned into a very bitter, very deliberate form of destruction that took its toll quickly. One acquaintance commented that when he saw me in Toronto in December '07, I was "electric"-- I hardly weighed anything, but was mercurial and alive, my eyes were huge and always darkly lined, and I was just burning with frustration. By the end of my freshman year in May '08, all of that had taken a toll. I no longer looked electric as much as I looked completely haggard-- completely drained.
Also, that particular highly-charged emotional restlessness made me emotionally dependent on others in a way that I generally try very hard to avoid. I'll always be a little reckless, I'll always be a little too daring, but I find joy in the balance of being those things as well as self-contained. I prize my ability to detach and withdraw more than anything.
Alys and I are still very good friends-- best friends, actually. She has a tendency to spoil me wildly, and we only recently (well, I say recently, but within the past, I guess, 6 months) have actually begun sleeping together again. It's easy to fall back with her--- it's easy and it's not fruitless, because I care about her more than anything else, and she's bright and very powerful in her own way. We just work at keeping things separate--- and who knows how well that goes, but so far (recently) we've managed.
Those notes are almost a decade old now. I have no real idea where she is now (Toronto? Vancouver?), and only hints that she's very corporate and flying to take meetings in cities filled with silent glass towers. I'd love to sit with her over drinks in some neutral city and listen to her tales of her life over the last dozen years. In the last exchange of notes we had, back years ago, she noted that Alys was returning to Halifax from Bermuda aboard a racing yacht with one of her father's friends, following up on the inappropriate glances she and her father's friend had been exchanging since Red Alys was in high school. I have no idea how that played out or whether there was any truth in it. I'd like to think it was true. Sailboats and posh girls and inappropriate affairs are perfect ingredients for stories.
These notes are from a girl named Alessandra, someone I knew in another world, someone I knew when the century was still young. Some of the notes are about her friend-and-lover Alys--- yes, Aless and Alys. Red Alys, if I remember, with striking red hair. I have no idea where she is now. I'd heard that she finished university, taught English for a couple of years in Japan, and went on to law school and an MBA. I have a vague sense that she's doing something corporate these days, something in a high glass tower near open water, something that sends her overseas a lot. I have no idea what she remembers about her past. The last time we spoke, we talked about Heath Ledger's death and a film Ledger had once made about drug life in Australia, a film from an Australian novel called "Candy".
I remember these stories, though, remember them from another, better summer long ago.
Oh, I wasn't happy with where my life was taking me in 2007. I spent half my time dreading going to class when I wanted to change universities anyway, and the other half actually in class and miserable. I was isolated and doing tremendous amounts of coke alone-- in my private dorm room, in changing rooms at boutiques, in cubicles at the school library. I was in my first serious relationship with a girl, one who had previously mainly been my best friend, and it was long distance. She (Alys, obviously) had been in a relationship with some Russian pre-med, eight-language-speaking genius, and I broke them up/she left him for me. She had a pretty bad coke problem at the time as well, and I was entirely emotionally dependent on her-- this accounted for MONTHS of being at one another's throats.
While physically thrilling and fascinating to many, our relationship was beyond emotionally tumultuous, whether it was our age/immaturity, the distance, or the fact that we were two people who were already prone to anxiety who were strung out on coke 24/7, I don't really know. But it was a series of mind games and changes in voice tone resulting in both intentional cruelty and despair on both sides. I remember one night when we were actually together in bed, her becoming cross with me about something and saying that she wished her Russian genius boy would love her again-- I promptly took an x-acto knife and put gashes in my inner thighs. I hadn't been a cutter before, and I haven't been one since, but it was practically an automatic form of release.
My behavior lost that bit of exhilaration at being young and pretty and turned into a very bitter, very deliberate form of destruction that took its toll quickly. One acquaintance commented that when he saw me in Toronto in December '07, I was "electric"-- I hardly weighed anything, but was mercurial and alive, my eyes were huge and always darkly lined, and I was just burning with frustration. By the end of my freshman year in May '08, all of that had taken a toll. I no longer looked electric as much as I looked completely haggard-- completely drained.
Also, that particular highly-charged emotional restlessness made me emotionally dependent on others in a way that I generally try very hard to avoid. I'll always be a little reckless, I'll always be a little too daring, but I find joy in the balance of being those things as well as self-contained. I prize my ability to detach and withdraw more than anything.
Alys and I are still very good friends-- best friends, actually. She has a tendency to spoil me wildly, and we only recently (well, I say recently, but within the past, I guess, 6 months) have actually begun sleeping together again. It's easy to fall back with her--- it's easy and it's not fruitless, because I care about her more than anything else, and she's bright and very powerful in her own way. We just work at keeping things separate--- and who knows how well that goes, but so far (recently) we've managed.
Those notes are almost a decade old now. I have no real idea where she is now (Toronto? Vancouver?), and only hints that she's very corporate and flying to take meetings in cities filled with silent glass towers. I'd love to sit with her over drinks in some neutral city and listen to her tales of her life over the last dozen years. In the last exchange of notes we had, back years ago, she noted that Alys was returning to Halifax from Bermuda aboard a racing yacht with one of her father's friends, following up on the inappropriate glances she and her father's friend had been exchanging since Red Alys was in high school. I have no idea how that played out or whether there was any truth in it. I'd like to think it was true. Sailboats and posh girls and inappropriate affairs are perfect ingredients for stories.
Monday, June 4, 2018
Two One One: High-Functioning
A summer's evening here, warm and hazy. One more archived note, written originally almost sixteen years ago, drunkenly sent to a friend overseas in the austral summer.
The girl who wrote it reminds me that this is
an email from [me at 16], drunk and so stupid...
jim was an older, high-functioning-ish alcoholic that I fell in love with at sixteen...
The email is to a friend of hers, who was in China with her fencing team. So...let's go to a beach house on an austral bay in December of a lost 2002:
heyyy
wat the hell how come u sent Sarah 2 emails and me only one? that's so mean. i'm so drunk already its like 9 o clock here. it's my birthday tomorrow. ive had like 12 gin and tonics. i feel kinda out of it. we were having drinks and i got so upset i started crying. i was real gutted Christmas is so upside down ya know like spending Christmas with people that i never fucken see like my dad and his girlfriend but im not seeing the poeple i really love, its so gay. but jim looked after me and we had mad drunk sex. good to know. haha. Sarah just rang me and shes at a party at Telfords or something and Bradley Jacques is there and last week i went to Woolsworth and bought smokes and condoms off him and he's like real religious and shit and he didn't look to impressed with my fakey but he still sold to me. haha i dont care. so how is the Far East? how is the fencing? ya know its my birthday tomorrow. i'm 17 tomorrow like not a kiddo anymrore. by the way i had such a cool time last night me and jim picked me up and went in his car to Petone Beach and we just sat there for ages just talking and shit it was fucken rad. and i sucked his cock in the front seat ;) then we came back here cos im home alone and shit. Well i was last night and we just hung out, did lines and danced in the kicthen. he is so cool. ur like my best friend ya know and i'm not just saying all this shit cos i'm drunk. you are actually really cool. like not a cardboard cutout like Jingan and Juliana the Asians. You have like a personality. personalities are good. it will be so cool when you get back and we can go the Hummingbird and you can come to the Angus with the boys. oh my god, i keep having weird dreams about Fat Tony like i want him real bad but don't think i really do ya know. i can't believe you have not yet met jim. jim = light of my life, fire of my lions, my sin, my soul. ha ha just kidding that is Lolita. so what the hell loser EMAIL me!! why you email Sarah and not me? that sucks babe ya know. im a bit drunk so sorry if i upset you. you are rad as fuck.
hVAE A good christmas in case i don't talk from you before then. i'm going to town tomorow for my birthday its tomorrow but jim's not going coming, i'll see him in morning instead. i wish he was coming i wish you were coming too. i know you think i just use jim and he just uses me but maybe it was kinda a little bit of that at the start but now i really quite love him a lot and he's cool as. He even knows about the venting and is a-ok. i've gotta go now. email me back or i'll be so gutted. tell your sister.
laterhh
Sloppy drunk the night before she turned seventeen. I suppose I wish I'd known her then, just as she was launching out into her Bad Girl years--- her Bad Girl decade, really. I like her sloppy drunk, for whatever that's worth. She's a fun drunk, though prone to tears out of both sadness and happiness. I've no idea what became of Jim, though "high-functioning alcoholic" isn't something anyone sustains for long. How much older was he? Hard to say--- old enough to have a car in a country that tries to keep anyone under eighteen from having a "full" driving license. I also have no idea how long the affair lasted. Long enough for his inevitable collapse into being the non-fun kind of alcoholic?
Still...I've always envied her her past. Posh parents, inevitably divorced, money and precious little adult supervision in her teens, a life by the beach, a life in posh neighbourhoods where long-legged blonde girls were given a great deal of leeway. She's a successful professional now, with a lovely reno'd house of her own and three rental properties providing her with a private income. A girl who flies to island countries for long weekends and takes her long weekends in elegant little retreat cabins by the shore in hilly wine country. Someone to whom I will always feel de bas en haut, forever and always.
I do envy her all her teen adventures--- envy, not jealousy. That says nothing good about me, but then I'm not likely ever to be described as "high-functioning" in any way whatsoever.
The girl who wrote it reminds me that this is
an email from [me at 16], drunk and so stupid...
jim was an older, high-functioning-ish alcoholic that I fell in love with at sixteen...
The email is to a friend of hers, who was in China with her fencing team. So...let's go to a beach house on an austral bay in December of a lost 2002:
heyyy
wat the hell how come u sent Sarah 2 emails and me only one? that's so mean. i'm so drunk already its like 9 o clock here. it's my birthday tomorrow. ive had like 12 gin and tonics. i feel kinda out of it. we were having drinks and i got so upset i started crying. i was real gutted Christmas is so upside down ya know like spending Christmas with people that i never fucken see like my dad and his girlfriend but im not seeing the poeple i really love, its so gay. but jim looked after me and we had mad drunk sex. good to know. haha. Sarah just rang me and shes at a party at Telfords or something and Bradley Jacques is there and last week i went to Woolsworth and bought smokes and condoms off him and he's like real religious and shit and he didn't look to impressed with my fakey but he still sold to me. haha i dont care. so how is the Far East? how is the fencing? ya know its my birthday tomorrow. i'm 17 tomorrow like not a kiddo anymrore. by the way i had such a cool time last night me and jim picked me up and went in his car to Petone Beach and we just sat there for ages just talking and shit it was fucken rad. and i sucked his cock in the front seat ;) then we came back here cos im home alone and shit. Well i was last night and we just hung out, did lines and danced in the kicthen. he is so cool. ur like my best friend ya know and i'm not just saying all this shit cos i'm drunk. you are actually really cool. like not a cardboard cutout like Jingan and Juliana the Asians. You have like a personality. personalities are good. it will be so cool when you get back and we can go the Hummingbird and you can come to the Angus with the boys. oh my god, i keep having weird dreams about Fat Tony like i want him real bad but don't think i really do ya know. i can't believe you have not yet met jim. jim = light of my life, fire of my lions, my sin, my soul. ha ha just kidding that is Lolita. so what the hell loser EMAIL me!! why you email Sarah and not me? that sucks babe ya know. im a bit drunk so sorry if i upset you. you are rad as fuck.
hVAE A good christmas in case i don't talk from you before then. i'm going to town tomorow for my birthday its tomorrow but jim's not going coming, i'll see him in morning instead. i wish he was coming i wish you were coming too. i know you think i just use jim and he just uses me but maybe it was kinda a little bit of that at the start but now i really quite love him a lot and he's cool as. He even knows about the venting and is a-ok. i've gotta go now. email me back or i'll be so gutted. tell your sister.
laterhh
Sloppy drunk the night before she turned seventeen. I suppose I wish I'd known her then, just as she was launching out into her Bad Girl years--- her Bad Girl decade, really. I like her sloppy drunk, for whatever that's worth. She's a fun drunk, though prone to tears out of both sadness and happiness. I've no idea what became of Jim, though "high-functioning alcoholic" isn't something anyone sustains for long. How much older was he? Hard to say--- old enough to have a car in a country that tries to keep anyone under eighteen from having a "full" driving license. I also have no idea how long the affair lasted. Long enough for his inevitable collapse into being the non-fun kind of alcoholic?
Still...I've always envied her her past. Posh parents, inevitably divorced, money and precious little adult supervision in her teens, a life by the beach, a life in posh neighbourhoods where long-legged blonde girls were given a great deal of leeway. She's a successful professional now, with a lovely reno'd house of her own and three rental properties providing her with a private income. A girl who flies to island countries for long weekends and takes her long weekends in elegant little retreat cabins by the shore in hilly wine country. Someone to whom I will always feel de bas en haut, forever and always.
I do envy her all her teen adventures--- envy, not jealousy. That says nothing good about me, but then I'm not likely ever to be described as "high-functioning" in any way whatsoever.
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