Applauding Our Own Turds

It’s ridiculous the things you attempt in order to escape your humanity. In order to simply regain a bit of identity - to separate yourself from the general boring, monotonous, doomed for death, 9-5, miserable masses. To think of yourself as better than that. We’re all audacious and idiots in our own special, unique way. All chasing our own dicks. All laughing at our jokes. Applauding our own turds.

Doesn’t everyone think they can out-fuck, out-love, outrun, out-drink, and generally out-do their own humanity? Racing Death and escaping him past the finishing line? That we’re nowhere near as pathetic as our neighbour. That our wanks are far more sophisticated and our pussies sweeter smelling. What a joke. Come Friday night we all become equal. The banker with 50 grand more in the bank than the builder will become the same blithering, gibbering, erectile dysfunctioning, gawping, alcoholic, pissed soaked mess as the bloke he looks down upon for acting in the exact same fucking way.

But we try and escape it. We try and build up an ego - a weird kind of pride based upon a mental shelf of trophies we’re rewarded ourselves with in due course of successfully doing something that someone somewhere has no doubt done before and far, far better. That is all we amount to, really.

And it’s for this reason that I felt sorry for Peter. He had a kind of arrogance about him that only a man of great success, charm, beauty, money, power and kindness could possess. Peter didn’t have a great deal of any of these things. He had a body full of half finished tattoos that he could never afford to get completed. Japanese flowers grew colourless, empty petals out of vibrant green stems. The upper stubb of a mermaid sat incomplete and finless on his bicep. A set of cartoon characters were living half-lives on his fore-arm. Colourless and blank, they’d failed to reach their only reason for existence. One of them didn’t have a mouth or a smile or a smirk or even a grimace. Just a pair of eyes above a muted chin. Gagged.

He had the word H A T E tattooed on his right fist. He’d got it done when he was a teenager and thought it was badass and rebellious, when in fact it was tawdry and cliched. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t have the word L O V E tattooed on the adjacent fist to balance it out, as all the other tawdry, cliched, ridiculous tattoo casualties seemed to have. It just seemed to fit him. After all, you never punch someone with Love do you?

He reminded me of a rodent. He was 26 and already his hair was thinning, and it always seemed to be either greasy or wet with a nervous sweat. He had bulbous, exhausted looking eyes which always seemed to be simply melting off his face. The kind of eyes that the face struggled to carry. So heavy were they that lines upon lines of bags had formed underneath them. He had a smile like a frog.

It seems redundant to me now to even attempt explaining how I met him or what we spoke about in those unmemorable moments between being strangers and communicating with each other. Perhaps he did possess a great deal of charm then? Perhaps I did even, God forbid, find him attractive? But whatever opinion I had of him then has since been white-washed and voided. Everything about him has changed. Maybe before everything that happened between us, he had complete tattoos. Beautiful, colourful, vibrant, artistic tattoos. Maybe he had big, bright, soulful eyes and the sort of smile teenage girls self-combust over. I would love to think that we judge a persons looks on their actions and their behaviour and their personality.

Why did I sleep with him? Why did I sleep with him? Why did I invite that vile little prick into myself and my life? Most people - and it is most people - want to be better and do better things than the average person. They want the best for themselves.

I didn’t.

I found it exhausting. Pretending that my shit didn’t stink and that I was talented at everything I did. That I was kinder, prettier, more charming, better in bed. That I attracted only the coolest, most interesting, best-looking people. Perfection was unachievable and yet I was reaching out for it.

I think I was out to prove a point. I didn’t need to do great things. I didn’t need to go out with the most eligible men, if anyone. I didn’t need to look good - physically or by reputation. I didn’t need to pretend that I felt good about everything that I did. I just didn’t care. My shit stank and wanted to share the stench.

I wanted to declare to everyone - I’m a fucking human being and I am just as pathetic as the rest of you fuckers – just stop giving so much of a shit.

And so I got drunk. Terribly, awfully, degradingly drunk for what might have been months, but who was counting? Who knew? I got terribly, awfully, degradingly drunk and I fucked Peter. I fucked Peter, woke up in the morning and couldn’t especially remember anything.

Once the hangover had worn off, so had the sheen of the night previous. But I was curious about the boy. Interested in the boy. Bad for me. Wrong for me. Had scattered little thank you notes of bruises all about me. Was rough and vicious like no-one else I’d ever had. I found out that he had a fiancee. I saw photos of her online - she was a local artist, and very successful. But she wasn’t very attractive. I was just as pathetic as everyone else. I embraced my humanity.

And so I slept with him again. Two months and three e-mails later. I don’t know why. Despite everything I’ve just said - I can remember meeting up with him, sitting at a bar with him, drinking with him and not feeling anything for him. An alarm setting itself off somewhere about me - a fire door opening and a whole bunch of common sense fleeing. I felt cold and terrified. I felt a looming disturbance. Everything was wrong. But I just didn’t know how to get myself out of the situation. I drank all my fear and my doubts down. I just thought about how satisfied I’d feel when I was naked and smothered in his sweat. When I’d have every piece of my own flesh that I abhorred being hammered into a quiver. The cellulite, love handles, beer gut and bingo wings all jiggling into a silent mock. Maybe some of that humanity would get drilled out. Knocked out. Gouged out.

I was somewhere else by last orders. Someone else. Slurred and distant. Starry eyed. Putty. I can remember agreeing to go back to his flat. I can remember tripping over outside the bar. I can remember him feeling me up in the taxi. I can remember slapping him and how it only spurred him on. That I liked his reaction. That a part of me welcomed his hand in my knickers. His dirty, calloused finger tips groping about my pussy.

I remember him trying to fuck me in the middle of the street. I didn’t let him. Wanting to be sick and wanting to just go home and be in my own bed. Looking at him and wondering what the fuck I was doing. His face had changed. His smile. His eyes. His tattoos. He was a threat, not a cohort.

Going back to his flat. Getting changed into his pyjamas. Dozing off on him on his couch. Being woken up by his hands rubbing my tits together . Downing some vodka. Alarm. Panic. Being able to smell myself. Retching.

I didn’t know who this man was. I didn’t know how to get out.

My head banging against the frame of the couch. Him slamming himself into me - saying something. I was dry and sore and probably that only made my snatch tighter for him. I couldn’t talk to stop him. I remember my arms having just enough strength to keep my head from hitting the couch too hard.

Waking up on the couch. Alone and naked. Fucking freezing. Throwing up in his toilet with his fiancées toiletries fucking scattered merrily about the fucking place.

Crawling into his bed and resenting it. I didn’t know where my clothes where. I hated myself.

Being woken up by him fucking me. His cock slipping itself in and out of me with such selfish speed and such vitriol - one hand on a tit and the other shoving my face into the pillow. I stared at a picture of him and his fiancée. I decided to participate in the act. I didn’t want to be a victim. I didn’t want for what was actually happening to be fucking happening.

He didn’t kiss me back.

He didn’t look at me.

He came in my mouth and went back to sleep.

Getting up sometime around 7 and finding my clothes. I didn’t smile or scowl. I didn’t skip or slump. He got a shower while I sat on his bed. We didn’t talk when he got out, got dressed and returned to his bedroom. He shooed me off the bed and poured some peppermint fucking fragrance on the sheets.

“I’m sorry” he muttered, not looking at me. “I’m not very good in the mornings”.

He turned his computer on and put his music library on shuffle. I insulted every song that came on. Every musician. I broke my silence in a loud and abrasive manner, and it was probably misconstrued as flirting.

I was late for work somehow. I turned up and didn’t talk to anyone. I had to make 500 fucking sandwiches that day and serve them to 500 men. I took great relish out of the thought that I hadn’t washed at all. That all that abuse and it’s vile residue was all being digested in 500 bellies. 500 cases of food disease was caused by my bad experience. That was shared humanity.

I didn’t eat. I didn’t think much about anything. I was like those people who find a loved one dead, very suddenly, and don’t tell anyone for days. They get on with their business. They go to their jobs or to school or to pick their kids up from the nursery and no-one has any idea that anything’s wrong.

I went home after my 8 hour shift was finally over. Drank a glass of water and then threw up in my kitchen sink for half an hour. Sobbed. Found myself on the floor - awake finally and wondering where the fuck I’d been and what I’d done and with whom.

And like I said, I feel sorry for Peter. That was a trophy for him. That was a medal. That was a proof of ego. That was a high-five. Maybe his sorry little year didn’t get better than that. So unaware was he of his weakness - his animalistic desire to dig up bones and piss on territories. His pathetic and predictable sense of humanity. Want and take - another flag on the fucking ship. Woooo!

I, on the other hand, saw the low; felt the low. Was tasting the grit of the barrels bottom. Had been pissed into, beat onto, shit upon, used up, shot up. Could only start again. Clean slate, sentiment and clichés. Could exist comfortably beside my fellow man and his failings and could trump them.

Peter still couldn’t finish off a fucking tattoo.