Journal Entries
GAYDARS AND JEWDARS
Posted Jan 19, 2006
I can spot a homo a mile off, me. I can look at any crowd of people and go: "gay, straight, straight, gay, in the closet, undecided, straight...," and so on.
Gothly asks me how I can be so sure when I haven't actually asked any of them about their sexuality. Well, I don't have to ask, do I, because I *know*. My gaydar is infallible.
My recent train jourey to see my family was a point in case. Somewhere behind me in the carriage, I could hear a gaggle of camp Scousers. They were playing disco music on a laptop, much to the disgruntlement of the other passengers, and were chattering in voices reminiscent of the drag queen Lily Savage. Fragments of their talk reached my seat:
"See, I'd never think to do that, because I'm yer best mate, I'm yer man. I'm not gonna go, 'well, 'e's more 'andsome, so I'll go off wi' 'im;' whereas for wimmin it's..."
"I love yer Ma, acsh'lly--I thought she were like a princess, all sorra..."
"Yer Da can look out fer 'isself, but yer've gorra look after yer old queen, I always say..."
Yup. Camp as a row of tents, and gay as they come.
I wandered off to the toilet during a lull in their chatter. Two men emerged from the cubicle, and we all sort of smirked at each other. They had been smoking a sneaky fag in there, something which, normally, only women do together in Britain. When I got back to my seat, someone had nicked it, so I took the vacant table opposite the camp Scousers. I had assumed there were four of them, but they turned out to be the two men from the toilet; it's just that one of them had been talking enough for three guys, interrupting himself and talking over himself with real flair. He reminded me of Shakespeare's Mercutio: he was gaunt and graceful, foul-mouthed and jocular. The cups of lager at their elbows went some way towards explaining the state this Mercutio was in. His companion was a quiet and deliberate man, whose drunkenness was evident only by the broadness of his smile. I later learned that he was a member of an elite Army corps; he looked like the sort of guy you see in those posters, covered in engine oil and holding a tyre.
I was taken aback when Mercutio's first words to me were to suggest that I had sat there in order to chat them up and to decide which of them I found most handsome. I denied it, of course, so Mercutio noisily told himself off for thinking such things, and introduced himself and Tyre Guy--first names, surnames and nicknames, and some stuff about how they had met and moved in together.
"But we're not a gay couple or anythin'," he added.
"Are you sure, now?" I asked.
They laughed, in a couply way.
It transpired that Tyre Guy had a girlfriend ("an' I'm 'is best mate," interjected Mercutio), and his interests were literature and endurance training. ("'E lives on top of a mountain, an' 'e's got this great big bedroom in the attic, an' we kip there, don't we, Tyre, with it all open to the stars an' everythin'.")
"So tell me, Sweetpea," said Mercutio to me, "why've you got such long 'air in a plait like that?"
Lately I've had a lot of anti-semitic comments about my long plait.
"I hate hairdressers," I told him.
He cracked up laughing, and shook me by the hand. Then he said, "I take it yer a Jew, what wi' the hat."
"No, I'm not a Jew," I said. They both gawped at me in open astonishment.
"You're not a Jew?" said Tyre Guy, in a fetching Welsh lilt.
"Yer pullin' our legs, aren't yer?" demanded Mercutio.
"No," I said.
"Yer really norra Jew
"
"No."
"Worrar yer, then?"
"Atheist."
"ATHEIST" they cried in unison.
"Yes."
"He's a Catholic," said Tyre Guy wickedly, gesturing at Mercutio. Mercutio denied, vehemently and at length, that his religious upbringing had anything to do with his beliefs, and he told me, "I don't mind if yer a Jew, anyway."
Ho hum.
I pointed out that it's male Jews who wear the brimmed hats. Mercutio considered this, then said, "Yer absolutely right. But I thought you was some kind o' mad hippie Jew... And listen, Sweetpea, don't get me wrong, yer a lovely lass, like, but yer need some conditioner on that 'air o' yours."
He interrupted himself to launch into an account of Tyre Guy's dad thinking that he, Mercutio, was gay because of his long hair. I smiled pointedly at Tyre Guy's close-cropped head and said, "I thought the current gay fashion was for really *short* hair."
Tyre Guy grinned back at me, and Mercutio declared, "'e's not gay. 'Is Dar'd knock 'is block off if 'e thor' 'e was gay."
"You shouldn't wear ripped jeans to Caerphilly," Tyre Guy chided Mercutio; "they'll tear them to pieces."
He hooked a finger into a hole in Mercutio's thigh and tugged gently at it to illustrate his point. Mercutio babbled some slurry protestations.
"Looks like you'll be carrying him home," I observed.
"In a fireman's lift," agreed Tyre Guy. Mercutio began to wax lyrical about how Tyre Guy was sure to heroically defend him against jean-maulers in Caerphilly, and then sling Mercutio over his shoulder and carry him up to the house on top of the mountain, "'cos Tyre cares about me, 'e does, 'e's my man!"
He draped an arm across Tyre Guy's shoulders and gave him a squeeze as the train pulled in to their station. They switched off their disco music, and an audible sigh of relief floated around the carriage from the other passengers. Both men shook my hand warmly as they said goodbye.
"I don't mind if yer a Jew."
And I don't mind if you're straight.
Maybe I am a Jew and I'm just in denial; but to be on the safe side, I got my sister to give me a makeover. My hair is now fully conditioned, and styled, and I've had about six inches lopped off the bottom. She did a brilliant job. Now to find a milliner...
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Latest reply: Jan 19, 2006
TWELFTH NIGHT
Posted Jan 5, 2006
Twelfth Night, and still no sign of the decorations coming down. We are knee-deep in tinsel, and the cards' parasitic tendency to multiply is really worrying me. Where do they all come from? We've only got three friends.
I should take heart from the fact that Gothly's 'Proper Christmas' was understated compared with that of our neighbours. Most of them covered the outsides of their houses with faux icicles, Santas, sleighs, reindeer, inflatable snowmen, roadsigns saying, "SANTA STOP HERE," flashing lights, ropelights, neon animated displays... you get the idea. Our house stood quietly amid this plastic jumble, adorned only by some roses that had bloomed in our garden overnight. The roses reminded me of Ivan, and so I spent most of the day thinking about parrots.
Gothly's gifts to me were in two identical lidded boxes, of the sort that contain posh jewellery. I smiled politely, and opened one, feeling inadequate about my lack of femininity. The box contained a 400-million-year-old ammonite. The other box held a trilobite, from the same era.
What girl doesn't like to be given rocks by her beloved?
My hints about bath ducks had also borne fruit: by the end of Christmas Day, I had four of them. Baths haven't been the same since.
Gothly went to great lengths to roast a sumptuous gluten-free vegetarian Christmas dinner. My recent dental work made eating it an uphill struggle, but a meal such as this deserved to be eaten, especially since it had been prepared using the murderously sharp eight-inch chef's knife I probably shouldn't have given Gothly for Christmas. But with the aid of a lot of painkillers, I managed to enjoy every sparkly, pulsating mouthful.
All in all, I've changed my mind about Christmas. This one has been very cosy, what with the tree and everything. I think I'm beginning to understand what people see in the whole business. Nevertheless, twelve damn days of it is quite long enough.
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Latest reply: Jan 5, 2006
A TALE OF TWO DENTISTS
Posted Dec 24, 2005
Before I found an NHS dentist in London, I tried to find one in Wales. I went through the Yellow Pages, phoning dentist after dentist, but even the private surgeries had full patient lists. Wales has roughly three dentists for every 20,000 people. I eventually got myself onto the list of a private dentist an hour's drive away, and went to see him with my excruciatingly sore tooth.
The surgery was grimy, its waiting-room tiny. On the receptionists' desk was a rusting tray holding a grim assortment of red-stained instruments. Feeling nervous, I visited the toilet, which had a broken seat and no soap or towels. The dentist returned from his lunch a little late; he slouched into the waiting room with huge bags under his eyes, his off-white surgeon's coat full of creases, and beckoned me to follow him. He wore no mask when leaning over to examine me, and his breath reeked. His gloves smelled as though he had been eating tuna with them.
"Need root surgery," he informed me in broken English. He injected me with one of those long, long needles that feel as though they'll come out through the back of your head any minute, then drilled away the enamel on the top of my tooth.
"Can you feel?" he asked.
I said I could still feel my tooth, but my tongue had gone numb. I explained that Novocaine doesn't always work on me.
"If you can't feel tongue, is worked," said the dentist, and drove a metal spike deep into my root.
"HUUUGGHHH! UH-UH, UH-UH!" I informed him, pushing his arm away and writhing around in the chair, snot and drool and tears dribbling copiously out of their various orifices. I swear to God, I'd never felt pain that even borders on that before. Even an abcess doesn't touch that kind of pain, and they say an abcess is worse than childbirth.
"Maybe we wait a few more minutes," said Sweeney Todd. We waited a few more minutes. "Okay now?" he asked.
It's said that the human brain has a poor memory for pain. This may be true, because even though I could still feel my tooth, I thought to myself, 'sod it; it'll only hurt badly for a minute, and I'll be prepared this time.' I certainly didn't want to return to this surgery a second time.
"Go for it," I said, and braced myself. He drove the spike into my root, and twisted.
"HUUUUHHH-GGH UH-UH HAAA!" I observed, repeating my previous behavior somewhat more wildly than before. I found myself leaning out of the chair, clinging to the dentist's leg, sobbing messily but unable to loosen my muscles to let go. The dentist was embarrassed. His assistant was totally taken aback. She didn't understand about the anaesthetic. She thought I was a nervy patient.
The dentist said, "I'll give you injection to kill nerve in tooth. Come back in three week when is dead."
He stood there awkwardly until I released his leg and lay back in the chair and opened my mouth for him. He injected my tooth three times with some foul-tasting fluid laced with the scents of tuna and gingivitis. Then I wobbled back into the waiting room, where Gothly's mum was waiting to drive me home. She was surprised at my pallor.
Three weeks later, he carried out the root surgery. It wasn't too painful this time, and Sweeney Todd looked a little less hung over—but he still had bad breath and no mask, and his gloves reeked of other people's mouths. Also, his nurse failed to turn up and he had to enlist the help of his receptionist, who knew nothing about dentistry. As she gawped, fascinated, into my mouth, Sweeney Todd one-handedly hooked out my root nerves with metal spikes, cauterised the broken blood vessels with more metal spikes, and spent ages packing my tooth with heck knows what and covering it over with a white filling—all the while breathing open-mouthed directly into my mouth.
He ground the filling into shape with an industrial sander, while rinsing it with what tasted like raw fish-water, then said, "Bite."
I bit.
"How that feel?" he asked.
"Yup, feelth great," I lied, and got up and emptied all my savings into his till, and left. The filling was piled a bit high, but one more moment of that fish-water and I wouldn't have been able to stop heaving. Gothmum and I drank hot chocolate at the nearest cafe, but the taste of raw fish lingered in my mouth for nearly two days.
It was not long before the high filling loosened the filling of the tooth above it, finally dislodging it, causing the tooth to snap and crumble apart, with bits of it falling out gradually over several days. I decided to seek a dentist in London. The first one I phoned said brightly, "yes, we are taking on NHS patients. Would you like to make an appointment?"
So off I went to stay with brother Deswald for a few days.
As soon as I stepped into the surgery, I was reassured by the warm, clean smell of the place. The waiting room was spacious and carpeted, with padded leather chairs. The dentist himself, a Dr Jatan Patel, was youngish, bright, and well-spoken. He listened carefully to everything I said, and responded informatively. He wore a Persil-white, freshly-ironed coat and mask, and he smelled faintly of sandalwood (my favourite aroma). He gave a cheerful commentary as he examined me with his top-of-the-range machinery and sparkling tools. When he told me that my only option was to have my tooth removed, and that if he couldn't do it I'd have to be referred to the hospital, I wasn't fazed. I trusted him already.
Two days later, I returned to have my tooth pulled. After competently anaesthetising me, he went to work on my tooth with a variety of spikes and cutters, removing it chunk by chunk. He drove a spike painlessly into each root, but the pressure of my head against the seat, combined with the sharp cracking sounds, worried me. "It's not easy to break the bone around the tooth, is it?" I ventured hopefully.
The dentist tapped his maxilla and said, "I have to break the bone around here: it's the only way to get your tooth out."
I relaxed. As long as it was *supposed* to be broken, I didn't mind. I let him get on with it. The dental nurse described to me the pain I was likely to feel afterwards, so I'd know what to expect. She was spot-on. I'm glad she was there.
My roots were removed easily, and Dr Patel placed the bits of my tooth into a plastic bag so that I could take them home and photograph them for my ghoulish Internet friends.
http://public.fotki.com/Snailrind/for_illustrative/
I'm pleased at how well the pictures have come out, with the blood catching the light, and bits of flesh sticking to the roots in all their glory.
I'm going back in February.
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Latest reply: Dec 24, 2005
STRAW POLL: THE STUPID YEARS
Posted Dec 20, 2005
I've just been having an argument with my stupid, stroppy brother who seems to think *I* am the stupid and stroppy one.
When am I *ever* stupid or stroppy? (Don't answer that.)
Brothers. Don't have 'em.
But I'm gonna drag you lot into the argument anyway, with a quick straw poll.
1. Do you know what a hyphen is?
2. Do you know what a dash is?
3. Do you know what an en dash is?
4. Do you know what an em dash is?
5. What, in your opinion, is the difference (if any, to look at) between a hyphen and a dash and a minus sign?
6. Why the blithering hell can't I do em dashes on h2g2--or can I?
Ssassnfrassnhassn....
Discuss this Journal entry [41]
Latest reply: Dec 20, 2005
MY LIFE AS A CRIMINAL
Posted Dec 15, 2005
Some days, you're better off staying in bed. My latest day of teaching was just such a day. I could tell it wasn't going to go well right from the train journey up (sitting opposite a Texan who earnestly informed me that not all Americans are like the ones on TV
), when I realised I'd left my packed lunch at home.
I'd spent all week painstakingly preparing my session, and when I got there, the weather was bitingly cold and only one person turned up. And he didn't want to do the public speaking exercises I'd prepared, and preferred my hastily-knocked-together 'Plan B' writing exercises. All that work for nothing.
I missed the train home and sat shivering on the platform in the gathering dusk, waiting for the next one. I took out my sudoku book to distract me from the cold. It slipped from my hands and, when I picked it up, it and my fingers were covered in thick yellow phlegm from someone who had been spitting there before. I wiped it all off with a tissue, then looked around for a bin. But all the train station bins in North Wales have been removed, because of the Terrorist Threat: I guess they're afraid that a suicide bomber might decide to climb into a bin on some deserted Welsh station and blow a hole in the platform.
There was no way I was going to put the phlegm-soaked rag into my pocket, and I reasoned that, if the bins had been removed, there must be someone who comes to clear the station of litter every day. Besides, tissues are biodegradable. As is phlegm. Feeling a little guilty all the same, I dropped the tissue on the floor.
Two heavily-built policewomen appeared from nowhere.
"Excuse me, I think you'll find that's not a bin," said one, aggressively.
I was mortified. I blushed to the roots of my hair. I'd never dropped litter before, and here I was, caught in a criminal act. I felt like I'd just been caught performing public acts of obscenity whilst mugging a pensioner.
"There *are* no bins," I tried to explain, indicating the space on the wall where the bin used to be before the London bombings.
"Then put it in your pocket like everyone else, and take it home with you!"
I eyed the gloopy tissue. I looked around me at the scads of litter blowing around the platform. The policewoman leaned in close to me and said, "I'd pick it up now, if I were you. I'm sure you don't want a £50 fine."
"No, I don't," I said. I ventured an ingratiating smile. "I'm sorry," I said. I lifted up the tissue by its one dry corner. Satisfied with a good job done, the police officers left the station. Had I been mugged at that point, they wouldn't have known about it. All the same, I was afraid to drop the tissue back on the floor, in case they magically reappeared at my elbow. I had to leave the station and wander down the road until I found a public litter bin.
I missed my connecting bus and had to take a taxi home. My tooth fell out while I was eating soup.
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Latest reply: Dec 15, 2005
Snailrind
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