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“What the fuck are you doing?” demanded Niall. “Are you fucking insane?” He was probably hurting me, but I was too far from myself for it to breach the numbness of my skin. “Well, yes. I have a note from my doctor.”
I didn’t like being naked with strangers, which was awkward because I rather liked fucking them,
Anxiety and depression had conspired to render me a lifetime member of Insomniacs R Us. But, somehow, on a bare mattress, in a strange house, with a strange man sprawled over me, I was slipping into sleep.
“A homosexual is for life, not just for Christmas.”
Amy was the sort of woman who occasionally made me wish I weren’t gay and clinically insane.
I opened up Google and stared blankly at the search box. With nothing to lose, I typed in “how to make a very easy salad in order to impress a man you want to fuck.” It was unhelpful.
The first hit was complete tat, the second was a list of fourteen things every guy should (apparently) know how to cook, but none of them were a salad, and the third was an article on how to tell if a man was gay. I was moderately certain Darian was gay. Fucking me had been a fairly subtle clue, but I was onto him. It seemed I’d found the one thing that wasn’t on the internet.
I’d lost so much of that time due to an extravagant combination of recreational drugs, mania, and electroconvulsive therapy. A title for my autobiography, possibly. Or an epitaph. The ECT had sort of worked, but it had fucked my memory inside-out and upside-down. Nearly everything had come back, in time, but it had left my life a jigsaw. I had the pieces but I didn’t know what the picture was supposed to be.
“It’s a salad. It doesn’t need a safeword.
“It’s on my to-do list,” I said. “Right after ‘stick a fork in my eye.’”
Are you like allergic to fun or summin?” “Yes, I’m in a programme. I have my five year token.”
I’m English, I have some self-respect left to me, and we’re in my kitchen, not a heart-warming American sitcom where people do that sort of shit because they are quirky and free-spirited.
“On the contrary, it’s because I’m quite good at maths. Scrabble isn’t a game about letters, it’s a game about numbers. There’s no poetry in it at all. If you’re looking to make beautiful words, you’re looking to lose.”
My entire life subsumed into the act of waiting: waiting to be ill, then waiting to be better, the one consuming the other.
“’Ow d’you know what’s your fing ’til you’ve tried it?” “I don’t have to stick a tarantula up my arse to know I wouldn’t enjoy it.” “This’d be better than that, babes.” “Wow, you’re really selling it.”
“Wait, just this?” I said. “It’s a cardigan.” She gave a horrified shriek. Suicide and self-harm were something this girl could take in her stride. But cardigans were beyond the pale. “It’s not a cardigan,” she squeaked.
“Do you fink just cos ’e’s ’appy ’e ain’t nevva ’ad summin bad ’appen to him?”
He flopped down as though he didn’t have a single bone left in his body. Well. Maybe one.
“That tie says one of two things. It either says, ‘I’m a wanker,’ or ‘I’m mentally ill,’ and, though I am both, I have no wish to broadcast it.”
“Did you just draw a direct comparison between you being a bit rude at a wedding and Peter’s denial of Jesus Christ?” “I…might have gone too far there.” “You think?” “Well, I’m an atheist. They’re both just characters in a book I haven’t read.”
Darian had been the only one to ever take to the field for me. And when it had been my turn, I had simply fled like the coward I was. All I’d had to say was yes. Yes, he is my boyfriend.
Today is a day in which I will not want to die. Today is a day in which I will want to get out of bed.
On the mantelpiece sat a flourishing spider plant overspilling from a misshapen clay pot, clearly made by a child’s loving hands and daubed with the legend World [sic] Best Nan.
“You ’ave no idea, babes. I’m like Britney, me.” “In what regard?” His eyes gleamed. “Not that innocent.”
