I Never Ordered This - part 30

While I was waiting for Pootle to boot, I wandered around my room, peering at stuff. Nothing looked different. My resolutely pink room. No matter what the fuck I do to it, it stays a girly-pink room. A middle-aged, girly-pink room. This was a room with a bouffant perm and a twinset and pearls. Actually... I peered at the flowery cartouches... maybe it was a bit more hippy than that. It was a somehow spinstery room, though. Not necessarily an unmarried woman, but a lonely one.

Apparently, Freud calls this ‘projection.’ Bah, bloody pink room, anyway. Bastard.

The boing, boing, boing of Windows starting up heralded a ceasefire on the meaningless self-flagellation. I double-clicked on the shortcuts for Hotmail and Word in quick succession, and swiftly switched Messenger to ‘appear offline’ in case some insomniac, American, or fervent ex could ambush me with laden hellos.

So, what were my most recent documents? A letter to my Auntie Rachel; a letter typed for Doris downstairs all laid out business-like, complaining about her hi-fi; I’d clearly been peering at, if not tinkering with my CV; and... oh, right...

A naughty story for Dan. “I picture you...” it started, then went into explicit and slightly poetic detail. By God, I can write such lambent porn sometimes, I really can. I stopped reading, cheeks tingling, head skin buzzing with tiredness, confusion and... embarrassment? What did this mean? Well, it was a good thing, right? I mean, I can’t have been feeling all resentful and anti-boy if I was writing him porn, huh?

Or maybe it was a mask for my true feelings, a vehicle for denial?

I sighed and held a hand up to my inner debators. Look, there’s only one real way to find out, isn’t there?

Halfway through and I was none the wiser, only uncomfortably aroused. I slipped my jacket off. Oh, crap. Why had I chosen this week to shed my writer’s block and get all horny?

Crap, crap, crap.

Well, that was going to help precisely nothing, eh? Maybe LJ, emails or conversation logs would be more useful. I log all my conversations - something you probably need to bear in mind.

For quality purposes, all calls will be recorded. People sometimes ask why - not like I need it after all, is it? Coz I’m too lazy to type it out new, I always say, and besides -

I peered at the screen: a dialogue box saying:

What?! When and how? I sighed. “Pootle, auld fella, ya gettin faw tiw innapennant, sonn.” I squinted at the screen, trying to decide which would be more irritating - waiting for the reboot, or pressing “restart later” every 5-10 minutes. And while I was at it, what was it with the squinting? Anyone would think I needed glasses... like... glasses... like... it’s...

eyes glow from within the strobe like a blind woman’s.

I’m fucking choking. Throat and eyes stinging and a thin cough like when you fall asleep heavily on your back, throat dry, breathing temporarily stopped, like those jolting dreams to fall awake that are, apparently, mini system stops, tiny heart attacks or epileptic fits, depending on who you believe.

I blinked and shuddered, shook my head, pulled my face into a wincing yawn, feeling my dried throat stick and crack.

“Bleuch,” I muttered at the screensaver, “I must have fallen asleep for a second there. Getting old.” I picked up the water reflexively.

As I sipped, Ping! I cursed and fumbled for the volume control, scrambling to mute Pootle’s enthusiastic exclamations about people trying to talk to me.

Hold on a second...

“What the fuck?!” I grunted at him. “I thought I’d...” and then nearly spat my next mouthful of water over the screen as the joggled mouse revealed:

Bollocks. There was my culprit.

But... when...?

...

Fuck’s sake!

Fuck’s sake!

Holy fucking shitfuckdamn...

Ping! Again. Okay, first things first. I made Pootle entirely silent, then gazed in mute and rising anger and amazement at my memory of the last seven minutes (according to Pootle), which included Another Bloody Flashback, only slightly more comprehensible that the last one.

And Pootle continued to flash the ongoing efforts of transatlantic or insomniac conversationalists to keep me up even later. I sighed and peered at the taskbar. Jesus, my eyes were tired. Carl. aka Birdman. There are very few people I tolerate messaging me at close to four in the morning. Carl is definitely high on the list. When my fabulous life (sorry: “glittering career”) takes off and I have money to burn, he will be the first Canadian I go and bother. Oh yeah.

My brother gives me grief that some of my closest friends I’ve never met in the flesh. I’ve retorted that this way I get emotional support but never have to clean up their kebab sick. This usually stops his mickey-taking. Well, on that topic, anyway...

It’s an old joke, don’t ask.

then

I smiled ruefully and started to type.

I sighed. Everyone’s a comedian tonight.

pause

I sighed again. And smiled. Because, despite his irreverence for the shift key, his nationality, his taste in music and his gender, Birdman’s a pretty good listener. Watcher, reader, whatever.

pause

There was a longer pause at this point. I didn’t blame him. I mean, I’d’ve paused at this point.

comes at last

There was another long pause. I drank some water and fiddled with my wrist rest. I never know what to do in these situations - when the IM conversation is boring or I’ve little to say myself, I see no harm in alt-tabbing (what? I’m old-fashioned!) away to something else I’m parallel-processing and waiting for the Taskbar to flash or beep a warning that the next thought has come along but when it’s like this, especially if I’ve ranted or asked someone’s advice, somehow it seems impolite, like staring away when someone’s talking about something.

Oh, I dunno.

After a while:

Sometimes, when face-to-face (monitor-to-monitor, you know what I mean) with Americans, I find myself exaggerating my Britishness, in some appalling fake-Cockerney thing that reads almost Australian.

I’d started to type, then deleted it and wrote:

I’d thought: no, but I do like to broadcast my tightly-written thoughts for all to marvel at my insightful prose on a regular basis... and fired up the browser, cursing Pootle’s cheap-arse supermarket broadband to greater speed.

Bollocks.

The last time I’d blogged (Thursday) was to paste in a bunch of links to stuff I deemed worthy of consideration and embed a YouTube clip of U2’s With or Without You.

Now, why the fuck had I done that?

Wednesday’s pre-lash was a rant about fashionistas. Almost good, but hey - at least I remembered writing it and why.

Shaking my head, I moved rather belatedly onto emails. Here, at last, once the spam was shovelled out, were some clues:

“I should fucking well hope you did mean it, whatever the fuck it was you meant by good luck!” I found myself muttering. I was frowning. It was as if various people I trusted - Lucy, Simon, Dan - were all conspiring to know what the fuck had happened on Friday and were waiting for some big reveal.

Bastards.

Which made me feel much worse

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