Eddie Don't Like Furniture

I did consider today a Serial Killer Sunday post about the killer the papers are calling "The Suffolk Strangler", it's not very often you will get the opportunity to write about a serial killer while they are still active. But this feels different: I can't explain it, it just feels sad, instead of fascinating.

Last night was another one of those sorts of nights. The kind of Saturday night where you find yourself at a boat club at the end of a very long and very dark country road, in a very small town. At a Christmas disco, DJ'd by the half-deaf, semi-retarded older brother of a boy you once went to school with but with whom you were never friends.

His whole family are moving -- although the boy I once went to school with now lives in a trailer somewhere in the Midwest USA -- and it was to be the last ever disco this guy would ever do. Jon has to work with him, and despite saying we were going because there was no excuse not to go, I think we all went because we knew how much it would mean.

The boat club was like one of those extended family gatherings, but instead of your family the room is filled with badly-ageing strangers.

We stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, since all the chairs and tables had long ago been taken. Aware of people looking at us and wondering who we were. The bar was cheap, but deservedly so -- the pints of lager tasted strange. The first pint of Stella tasted decidedly like pineapple. My friends switched to large measures of house vodka, I drank bottles of Spanish lager.

At one point, a lady I'd never met came over to me and asked if I would like to sign this card she had. A card for the guy who was the DJ: it was his birthday as well that night. I might have bought him a card had I known, but more likely I would have thought about it and forgotten anyway. But sure, I said, I'd sign it -- and followed her over to a table to lean on and sign it.

We got talking; "How do you know John?" she asked "Are you a friend of his? I don't know who is and who isn't, here"
"I went to school with his brother", I told her
"How old is Paul now?" she wanted to know, and I told her he was 25/26
She started asking me questions about school, about who my tutors had been and mentioned who her daughter was.

Vicky. Pretty, but quiet is how I remember her. We sat next to each other in our French class, and I don't think we had a single conversation, ever. I once asked her out on a date, and she said no. That might have made conversation uncomfortable, if we'd ever spoken to each other. Vicky is now apparently living in LA and has just passed her law exams. And here I am on a Saturday night, at a Christmas disco in a boat club in the middle of nowhere, making conversation with her Mum.

Later her Mum came over to me again and asked me my name, she said she was texting her daughter and wanted to tell her she'd met me. I told her my name, and shouted after her: "She won't remember me"

I mentally prepared myself after that for what I thought the inevitable question would be; "So what are you doing now?". I considered my options: I work in insurance, which is true. I work in marketing, which is no longer true but I would rather it, and consider this just a temporary set-back. Or just be more economical and say "I'm an artist".

I do consider myself an artist. I'm a writer and a photographer. Although I do neither professionally, and neither is likely to ever be profession, that doesn't make them less true. Last night, however, I was going to say I was a sculptor. I don't know why this idea is lodged in my subconscious, I've had dreams before where I've been at parties or whatever and told people I'm a sculptor. I guess I just really want to be an artist. Some people tell me to "just do it then". But you can't just decide to be a sculptor -- especially if you already know you suck. I would paint watercolours, but I can't draw worth shit -- and sculpting things, actually making them? Let's just say there are children who would laugh at my efforts.

I'm still going to tell people I'm an artist, though.