Short Story: Lemmings

Disclaimer: Not necessarily funny.

Tuesday 28^th May 2012

David stood up.

“Here's a list of things that I'm NOT expecting of you-”

“Buh-” she'd wanted to interrupt, but wasn't given the time of day.

“Ready? One, no sympathy. I have absolutely no need for fellow-feeling, whether it be yours towards me, or some old guy standing in the park, trousers round his ankles towards the kid he's just paid 20 quid so suck his old dangly balls.

“Secondly,” he paused, checking her eyes to see whether they had drifted at the balls-bit, but when he found they hadn't yet, he felt he could do without the rhetorically cute repetition of the word, but since he was on a roll anyway, he decided to go for it, raised his chest and repeated, with a higher cadence this time: “Secondly, I don't want you to try and change my mind. You're not the most convincing person I've ever known. No, wait, no-no-no-no-no! Wait.” A breath. “Thirdly, no pity. There is no reason – well” he interrupted himself, sneaking a look at her to see whether she'd grasp the opportunity to interject, which she let fly. “I actually meant no love.”

A shattering pause. He tried to keep his voice steady, which he wasn't fully in control of anymore. “You've shown to me that this is perfectly possible, over a number of years- running nearly into double figures now- No Alice don't even try-”

But his refusal was empty. Alice sat, her dark brown hair cascading over her shoulders, focussing her eyes on a flowerpot in the middle distance and fixing her mind, trying to think very hard about egg cups. She'd always preferred them orange. She also thought about Nick. In her vicinity. Naked, the hairs on his chest and forearms bristling with excitement and the magnetism of her and of what they'd just been engaged in. His smell, the taste of the inside of his mouth, his sweat streaming in canals along the ridges of his spine as he thrusted into- “ALICE!”

Her reverie was broken by David, who appeared to be having one of his moments of misplaced grandeur again. That she could deal with. Him no more. Not for nine years. After all the- Not the- she-

“Alice, I...” a broken David addressed her now. She could obviously see his grand oration failing miserably, so without sympathy, pity, love or even much interest she -having bored herself on the subject of the colour of egg cups- asked him the 10.000 dollar question.

“So what IS your plan, David?”

He raised his shoulders, which had been forming the left side of the hypotenuse with the doormat and his feet in a Euclidian triangle, over-back, as if he were the base of anti-aircraft machinery, erect, very much like the ones you get in packs of plastic green toy soldier; catapulting unbidden truth in the direction of his girlfriend: “I'm going to do a bike ride.”

Alice spat out some biscuit crumbles over the kitchen table. “You what?”

“Yeah,” he said, as he was building himself up again from that salvo. “I'm going to cycle, and I'm going to go end up in the mountains. And I'll live off the land.” Just then, he realised that he should have demanded that she would address him without ridicule, which was a late realisation of Homeric proportions. He was going to feel the full blast of her ridicule. He bit his lower lip and closed his eyes to narrow slits, as if he were trying to avoid salvos of archers firing from the back ranges of the front, all the while preparing his fragile ego for the Howitzer of mockery that Alice was about to deploy.

In the meantime, she cleared up the biscuit crumbs off the table and dropped them into the bin, before taking offensive position number 24: left arm akimbo, hips out, right foot over the other -toes uncurled and straight-, right arm leaning into the door frame, her head ever so slightly sideways. All he could do now was prepare for the assault. He knew there was no way he would be able to cope. No way.

She then began. A sigh. “Ok,” she looked at the tiles, at the floor, as far away from the man she used to love as she possibly could. “So! Cycling!” she tried, with the drag of feigned optimism in her voice. “Whereto exactly may I ask?”

That was it. He had been defeated. His great, heroic plan was noting more than dead shit in someone else's garden. He tried to suppress his tears. “Highlands. The Highlands.” he blurted out, surprising Alice, in that he still had some sort of faculty of speech, not to mention not having desintegrated before her very eyes.

“There I will cycle to. All the way up to the mountain top. And then-” he raised his shoulders one last time. “I want to jump off. I want to jump off the highest mountaintop and fall. I want to fall and fall until nothing is left and my bicycle bell will be found by a fucking seven year old in fucking Dundee for all I care.”

As his lungs tried expanding outwards for air, they hit so many physical blockades that they eventually had to find some spare space in his neck which then expanded and retracted, making him look even stupider than the words he had just spoken. The term 'unattractive' would never carry the full significance of exactly how repulsive David then was.

“Because Alice, I would die for you.”

Alice sat down, took a sip of tea and turned her thoughts to where Nick might leave his stuff as the main obstacle to their relationship had apparently gone the way of the lemming.

“Alice I will.” He started to undress. A hideously unflattering lycra pair of shorts and bicycle shirt unveiled themselves. All of David's bodily flaws, faults and bumps (of which Alice could draw the Michelin maps blemish by idiotic useless blemish) were more visible to her than if he had stood naked in the kitchen before her.

She said: “I don't know what to say anymore. You denied me giving you love, despite all the arguments against and how you seem to have turned into a fat lemming in lycra. By the way, who's sponsoring you? Gregg's?”

David was as ever silent. Alice looked up at his face for the first time in five years. “So what you need from me is – forgive me if I get this incorrectly- some kind of blessing? Is that it? So you can chuck your sorry self off a mountaintop?”

She paused, feeling her anger rising, and looked at that man there, clad in lycra, 38 years old. Infertile, jobless, on lithium since October.

“David, I'm telling you this as a friend. Ok? Go and, you know. Take a break. No. Listen to me David. Pack your things (he'd started to silently weep by this point) and go. Take these fucking things off first, you look ridiculous. No! Don't fucking look at me like that, I'm not taking you back.” She made an attempt to leave the room but felt she couldn't yet. “I deserve a life of my own too. I'm not just there to deal with your shit. I refuse. If it were, fucking if it even were washing a wannabe lemming's disgusting lycra shorts. I still would not. David I cannot deal with you any longer.” She inhaled with force now, but started her exhalation before she even commenced to form her words: “Now leave.”

So he did. David left Alice, who couldn't even bring herself to kiss him goodbye anymore as he boarded the train to Aberdeen. The highland streams were tainted that year. The water under the bridge coloured red at places. A stone in Pembrokeshire was now illegitimately used as advertising space for Gregg's the baker's. It took Alice a week to stop feeling guilty and two years to stop thinking about him every day. She never taught her and Nick's children how to cycle, which always puzzled Nick. He would have to forget about it too.

DAY 1, Tuesday 2nd August 2011

I got up early for the big trek up North, drawing a picture for my no-longer housemates on a piece of paper. I hung it on the fridge, got my suitcase and bags and set off. The luggage was quite heavy and, remembering the two excruciating treks up the hill I made not even a month before, I was pleased I could now relax and let the downhill gravity pull me towards the busstop. This wasn't as easy as I imagined, especially as it started raining. Luckily, I was nearly at the busstop by then.
More trouble came in the form of cancelled trains from Brighton to London, since South Croydon station had been flooded. I still cannot understand how. I got the train 45 minutes late, and arrived at the station, lugging my bags through the building site that is King's Cross. There I found my friends who I would be living with for the next month (and teching their show) Politically Erect. Ben and I went out for a MacDonalds across the road and when we came back, the train was ready for boarding. Unfortunately, I couldn't reserve a seat near my friends, so I had to get my bags into another carriage and sit there for the full 5 hour trek (not including the delays that would happen). The people were relaxing and settling into their seats in that way that people do when they know they're going to be travelling for a long time. On a 5-minute to 3 hour journey, people tend to be more serious, hiding behind free newspapers and texting. I had 15 minutes of free wifi and I was going to use them!
After a 5½ hour journey, we trekked into the new town with our luggage, until we got to our flat. It's a lovely, but small accomodation. I'm sure we're going to have a lovely time.

This year, apart from teching and random open spots (so far: not many) I've been talked into writing reviews for an online publication called Fringereview. This means I've got a press pass, scaring performers on the Royal Mile and getting admiring glances from offensively young-looking flyerers. Hmm. Maybe I should abuse this power. Surely Brian Logan and Kate Copstick get loads of fanny thrown at them during the fringe? Hmm? SURELY? (tenuous). I had been invited for the C Venues launch at the Carlton Hotel. Free drinks and schmoozing journalists, it was a world that had been strange to me, having been mainly a performer or just pleb at arts festivals, gigs, theatre shows and the fringe. There was, however, also a showcase, featuring a lady wearing a Ukelele on her head (Tricity Vogue) and a Scottish comedian who had to work a cold room, without adequate mic and in front of journos who obviously weren't going to find time to listen to him. Still, I met some nice people, and it's interesting to see what it's like on the other (some would say the dark) side.

I met up with a friend from Sussex, who's in a play called Coal Head and Toadstool Mouth at the Spaces (go see. I saw the Brighton preview and it's funny, stylish and cool), and we had pie, pints and a very amusing yet animated conversation about why he thinks evolution is wrong, because he can't believe life arose from dead matter, chemicals, amino-acids and electricity, back in the day. And by back in the day, I mean back in the days of the Precambrian era, when days were about a third shorter then they are today. Just saying. So it was a lot of days. I respect his opinion but he is, of course, fantastically wrong. His point, that you should not let people (and children, specifically) believe something that cannot be proven to be 100% true is however, more understandable. Yet as we know, the scientific method requires that we find out what we DO know (or think we know) and try to disprove that. If we do, we (and by we I mean scientists, not me) can take babysteps closer towards what IS empirically true.

But he is completely right in saying that I am most likely wrong too. Science can only be an approximation of the truth and by necessity, never the whole, all-encompassing truth. We only know what we CAN know, and science doesn't ever give all the answers. In her book Being Wrong – Adventures in the Margin of Error, Kathryn Schulz talks about the fact that people CAN be wrong (and usually are), means that if we become aware of our errors, we can move to a position that is 'more right' than the one before, but usually doing this in full conviction of their own rightness. I, personally, enjoy being a hypocrite, because that means I can be right at least twice. By this time, I'd started gesticulating and drooling and we'd gone round Assembly Hall twice. And, er -people were starting to stare.

Still, good convo.

I had a milkshake with him at McDonalds (bad habits start here) and he got chatting to a Scottish guy who complimented me on my accent but also immediately informed me of the fact that I was gay. I wasn't aware of this.The accent I have chosen to use in English may be poncy (giving me the idea of doing a show called 100% Ponce about -obviously- identity), but to immediately make assumptions about what kind of person I may be is a bit odd. It might have something to do with the feminisation of the English by the Scots. Not that I would have had any problems with that, I'm just a ponce. Why can't I not be that? Ah well. We've been together ever since.

DAY 0, Monday 1st August 2011

On Monday, with my packing and cleaning done, and having gone to Sussex campus one last time (to buy Sussex University-emblazoned clothing for my Dad and my brother) I basically had two options. Either I could write a maudlin, self-indulgent blog about my year in Brighton (suffice to say it's been good) or I could get pissed with friends, which is exactly what I did.

I also figured out how I could receive Radio 4 on my phone. Because that, ladies and gents, is EXACTLY how I roll. Bring on You and Yours. Acecakes with Awesomesauce. Woman's Hour! That's what I'm talking about.

I met up with the oft-besuited ringmaster of Casual Violence comedy, Mr. James Hamilton. We had a couple of drinks and later ate Japanese Food on the lawn of the Pavillion Gardens, in the sunset. This could be described as romantic, were it not for the fact that I, at every slightly heartfelt word he uttered, laughed in James's face. He has to learn. I then tried to scare away a seagull by shouting at it in a once-competent Australian accent. I did this to make sure no-one would suspect me to be the culprit. James then reminded me that everyone could, you know, see me and my attempt at a disguise was a flimsy ruse. That was Brighton, then. See you some time next year!

EDINBURGH BLOG FROM HELL

Hello. I'd been planning to restart the blog for a while now, but I was either far too busy or my life was too uneventful (as in: got up, went to Crawley, worked for 8 hours, went back home which constituted pretty much all of July). But now I'm at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I thought I'd better keep you all abreast of what I've been getting up to. Mainly walking around, obviously.

There is also another reason for the recent lack of blogs, My blogging-routine is possibly not the healthiest in the business. The ones that are good either start with a good idea or something I just have to get off my chest. I then write about this, possibly 800-1000 words. That's all fine (although I've been hearing from people who tell me the blog – does go on a bit-). The ones that are ok, I really have to work hard at, fighting off boredom and wireless internet, or get so bored I can do nothing else than write a blog, if only to torment myself. Those last ones, ironically, tend to be the best ones. But recently I've not had that opportunity, so expect this cavalcade of catch-up blogs to be faintly amusing at best and rambly twoddle at worst. But you did get the word twoddle. So don't complain. Enjoy!

Pre-Edinburgh Preview - PONCING AROUND ON SOME COBBLE

Just a short message, to let you know I'm starting up this blog again in time for the Edinburgh Fringe. It will contain amongst others: some moaning, more self-promotion, slightly less self-deprecation and loads more cobble. See you there!

Sunday 19th June 2011: Hermit-age #4 (Revenge of the Hermits)

Hello, I'm back.

I haven't had weekends like this in a long time. I have evaded human contact and am pretty much back to hermit-mode. This will not last long, since I've got loads of work to do tomorrow, including a gig in London which or may not be able to go to (rehearsals for this play I'm doing may run late). The rest of the week is also pretty much booked, and after that loads of things will be happening as well. But now I am here, alone. In the past eight months I've made so many new friends and, doing Stand-up as well as Uni, and being involved in theatre productions- I seem to have something we may even be able to define as – a life –. Not much room for vain, futile asceticism there, you'd think. But no, I still get to be quite hermity sometimes. And I don't like it. Not a jot. This stems from my belief that hermits are fundamentally more rubbish than me, a person with a proper social life. This is an acceptable belief system, one of the very few I live by, the steady social life. Confidence in social capabilities is therefore important. Only, a social life is never a steady thing. People leave, people make other friends, and people realise that obviously, meeting you was a mistake and one that they will learn from in the future; never trust the Dutch. If you're unlucky, this will happen over and over again until there's nothing left but the memory of friendship and the feeling that if something's wrong, it's you. That is the time to break open the yogurt and join the International Hermit Society with all the other oxymoronic losers.

Are people ever truly alone in this age of social networking? Is solitude ever achieved? Can hermits live in the 21^st Century? Not really, if you're into the idea of social contact via likes, RT's, babies and cats. Because they don't want to be losers, or, hermits. You could say these things keep those who are rubbish at social contact off of the street (you know what I mean). Those who oppose these views (Luddite idiots, the old and Kate Bush) say: ooh! 'Don't do social networking! You'll die, or never leave the house again, or get curvature of the spine or become a famous tweeter or, worst of all, turn into a hermit! (shocked, sharp intake of breath)' Now you now precisely what my views on hermits are and I'm not prepared to repeat them (Why not look back at my November entries about hermits? Give you something to do). Hermits are sad. Even if I do sometimes resemble them. But I am better than them, for I have social networking. Which in itself only serves to make me a sad, hermit-type person, rendering this entire quandry an absurd Paradox of Zeno. Good. You can't touch me, Zeno of Elea! I got you on the paradoxes, bitch! (This is quite literally picking fights with the dead). The notion of solitude is changing. Do we expect more from it, or does it expect more from us? I think it may be the latter?

I sometimes wonder how well I would have coped on this exchange on days like this, say, twenty years ago, not having the internet. How would I cope? Would I have had read more? Would I have gone insane? Would I have been in the Tiddlywinks society? Would I have been dragged away and abused by a scary old man in the pub who then performed bodily reconstructive surgery on me, making me walk like a donkey? Probably not.

On the whole, I love social networking sites. This entails that I must also see their dark sides and thus I also believe that they are fundamentally shit. Skype tends to ravage my computer, rendering a reboot necessary and making my mother unfathomably angry. Facebook annoys me. I lose entire days on it. I try to make amusing comments but am, especially when I'm bored, rubbish at doing so. I also hate facebook chat since it reminds me of MSN messenger which was a waste of the 2000-2005 period. I despise most things on there, but -like- them anyway. I don't want a dislike button, I need one that says -burn this to the ground in Hellfire for all eternity and let the urine spout from a dying Narwhale's breast, all warm and yellow and surprisingly viscous, over this rotten, stinking idea, dreamt up by only the most vile mind who since this punishment, has drowned in hot piss-. Maybe it's a good thing Mark Zuckerberg didn't accept my friend-request. I like twitter but it doesn't have a like-function, making me feel like I'm shouting into the void. That this may be because I've got the mental age of a four year old and basically need attention every other second should not change this observation.

Tonight, on facebook, I was shown a Youtube-clip of The Room, which was both funny and quite unnerving. Have you ever seen something that is so utterly and completely wrong that it makes you doubt yourself and your facilities of perception? Well I think that The Room does that. It is so bad it makes me doubt my ability to process film and all forms of visual stimuli. Now I'm scared of leaving the house. Good. Thank you to the Award-Winning Angela Barnes.

Yesterday, all I did was to go into town, where I bought an external hard drive and some books including Howard Jacobsen's The Finkler Question (because I'm unoriginal and cheap) and Natalie Haynes's The Ancient Guide to Modern Life. I've bought the last one because, in Literature seminars, I felt I lacked a basic knowledge in Classical texts. I do know a fair bit about Greco-Roman culture, although I admit, this is mostly derived from Astérix. For someone who tends to rely on other people's conception of my own knowledgeableness, I needed some help. Badly. I didn't know my Zeno of Elea from my Zeno of Citium. I do now. Come at me, seekers of wisdom. I have biscuits.

Although the books I bought didn't add up to more than15 pounds, I had a hugely powerful urge to suddenly run out of the shop, stealing the books. I started making a massive Ocean's 11-style plan on how I would do it, which would involve a winch, several accomplices, a travelling circus and me running away very fast. In the end I cut that down to just the last bit -the running away- as I imagined what it must feel like running away from the alarms and getting beaten down by the police before giving back the books with apologies and -I don't know what I was thinking-s. Just before I'd gotten into the straitjacket, I was snapped out of my daydream by the guy behind the till asking me type in my pin. Still, odd. I know I'd never do it, but sometimes crime is just too wonderful. It is good to be evil.

But I seem to have drifted a bit. To come back to the question, does real, absolute solitude still exist in this age? Of course it does, for anyone who isn't rich, or is infirm, or homeless. But we, the moneyed, internetteyd classes, we can escape solitude and can create a whole new world for ourselves using artificial friendships, as deep and as rewarding -although not as socially well-regarded- as real ones.

In other news, after a laptop reset and format, my virus scanner has taken on a new voice to tell me it has updated. It's like I've made a friend!

I do live a ridiculous life.

X

And now, to watch Horrible Histories!

Saturday 28th May 2011: Yes, I Know...

It's been a month. But there are things more important than you and your constant confirmation of my existence through the reading of my blog... Actually there aren't. I love your and your clicks (as I've been confirmed they're called) more than I love myself and I hereby offer my deepest regrets (which isn't much to be honest but hey, that's how I roll).

To be fair, reading back the last couple of entries, I was attempting to finish writing a dissertation and apparently at the end of my tether mentally. It was very tiring, but it's now finished and handed in. Never have I ever written anything for any kind of educational thing I was doing, which had such an emotional on me. It was weird. The moment I handed it in to the lady who, scanning my Student card, took hold of my baby and dropped it in a box. It was like I had cut a piece from my soul, handed it to her; only to have it plonked, lonely, crying tears of toner through its lone, perforated eye - into a purple plastic crate. It cried: Why have you left me father? A-why? WHY? I could not answer. As I left it, to be judged, all alone, on the coffee-stained desk of this or that academic somewhere or other, far away from the OpenOffice file that had once created it, I felt the cool, detached relief of the now moneyed farmer- just having brought his best bull to the butcher's, for he lacked finances and the beast was old and ready for the knife- thankful for the joy it had provided him, and in need of a good, stiff drink. Yet, in a quiet moment of reflection, the gentle sway of his country ale mixing with the bitter, salty tang of a single tear, tumbling slowly to the bottom of his pint glass- like a droplet of mercury sinking gently to the ocean bed- tasted like a long-lost love.

I'm over it now.

Really, I am.

I've been reading Nabokov -I don't want to use the proper title, in case it attracts the wrong audience. Come to think of it, you probably are the wrong audience. Ah well- this morning. I really like it- no, not in that way! What I'm basically moving towards (in an awkward fashion) is that sometimes things that are good have a certain reputation. It is very easy to fit in to either conforming and liking the thing without really thinking about what that thing may be- or adapting the knee-jerk reactionary response that it will likely be overrated shit. In a sort of relativist way, both of these options can only be conceived of as right, for the people espousing these opinions have (by definition) the right to say what they think, however ill-informed their brain-vomit may be. But why do I feel that I have to take some early Woolf with me when I borrow Lolita from the University Library? (Oh, fuck. I've said it. How now, Google perverts!) Why, when using the automatic scanning machine to borrow them, do I hide it between Woolf and Tristram Shandy, like the machine won't be able to see it? Do I seriously think that the screen will change into a giant tutting head telling me what a pervert I am for borrowing this book? And why do I feel like I can't read Lolita in the café? What makes me feel uncomfortable? I mean, it can't be that bad! Have people actually masturbated at this book? In a library café, ordering carrot cake, cappuccino and some extra tissues if it all gets a bit much? The book can't be THAT good, surely. It's a bit too detached and funny for pornography. Especially highly respected 20^th century literature about 12 year old girls. I think I found the reason why. It's the yellowy, overexposed picture of a teenage girl on the cover. That does intensify the pervert-factor. Shit.

Yeah, liked that? It's about 20^th Century Literature, yeah. But about wanking, too. So something for everyone.

This is actually quite a good way to get more blog-hits from the discerning pornography fan. Fellow bloggers, take note. Next week, Marquis de Sade.

In NEWS (which you probably might like to know), I didn't stop doing gigs throughout the last month. I had five gigs to be exact, which may not seem much (it wasn't) but I did get the chance to work up some new material and I now have a completely new 5 minutes, which I've been trying out in Brighton and London. I like this material and it likes me, which is quite pleasing. I've been getting good reactions and I feel like I can get loads of mileage out of it, which is good. The new performance style I'd been thinking/talking about has also been quite successful, apart from the times when I couldn't put the mic stand up high enough and I just had to tell the audience what it would have been like. This, oddly, worked quite well. Show them the device and they'll fill in the rest. How lovely audiences are.

In other stand up news, I'll be (un-?) ceremoniously poppin' my compèring cherry at the SUDS Variety night, at Falmer bar this Thursday. Some students doing stuff. But it will be fun though. And a good experience for everyone involved. Hopefully. On Friday, the compèring duties will fall to the lovely (DID YOU HEAR THAT INTERNET? LOVELY!) Sophie Buijsen, and I'll be ending the night. If the roof doesn't catch fire with all the hilarity in the room before. In other words: please come! On Saturday next week, I'm in a Casual Violence fundraiser (self-deprecatingly called 'Casual Violence Have Friends', as if to prove it to an unseen playground bully, before he kicks it in the dust, with its strange, awkward hair) at the Caroline of Brunswick.

One more thing before I go, I was finishing an essay the other night in the library, and I asked my twitter-followers (why not become one? I am interesting!) to shout me into doing some work. Two of them obliged, one of which (@jessdux saying DO WORK YOU USELESS PROCRASTINATING DUTCH MAN) got retweeted by @The_Netherlands. I would love the Netherlands to unilaterally declare tweet-war on @jessdux, who was surely only telling the truth.

So now, with, deepest love and dedication (about once a month), I must leave you. By-ee!