Torture

Why do we do things to torture outselves? Why when we know things are wrong, or will hurt us, why do we go ahead and do them anyway?

I left my job on Friday, and I continue to be incapable of grasping major events as really happening. It didn't feel real to me, even when I knew that people were secretly signing a card and gathering in an office to say farewell to me, it still didn't feel like it was any different to normal. Even when I cleared my desk, sent emails saying goodbye, and put on my out of office to tell people I'd gone, it still didn't feel real. I gave in my security pass at the end of the day, because this time I really wouldn't be coming back.

The funny thing is though, I can still login to my company webmail and check for any new emails for me. I logged in yesterday to email accounts about some expenses I am still owed, and I logged in today to check for any misguided and belated declarations of undying love from former colleagues.

What there was in my inbox was an email from HR entitled "Welcome". I know these emails only too well -- when someone new joins the company, they get their photo taken and later in the day an email circulates with the picture and a brief bio on them, instructing us to welcome them to the company. I knew I didn't want to open the email. I knew who it would be welcoming. But of course I opened it anyway. Welcome the new account coordinator, this pretty girl fresh out of university with a degree in business studies. Who today will be sitting at what a week ago was my desk, chatting and laughing with my now former colleagues. It feels like being dumped.

Last night I was talking to San about this boy she's seeing. She's been seeing this guy for months. Of course, to begin with she claimed they were only friends but one thing always leads to another -- talking leads touching, and touching leads to sex -- and now she's complaining to me that's confused because she likes him and she doesn't want to scare him off and why does she always fall for friends. I told her that was absurd reasoning, why shouldn't you fall for someone you like? It's not like they have been platonic friends for years and years. And I kept berating her to just tell him how she feels -- especially as apparently he's been making suggestions of the same thing, about how spending time with her makes him happy. I think I did get through to her, eventually -- made her see that he won't very well and tell her he doesn't like her "in that way" or isn't ready for a relationship if they've been sleeping together for however long. I told her she'd got things in the wrong order, but couldn't criticise because she and I did exactly the same thing. And if he now turns around and says she's alright as a fuck buddy but not a girlfriend, then she shouldn't be with him at all.

But that too feels like being dumped. She seems compeletely oblivious to how I might be feeling in all of this. In the past I have half-jokingly referred to him as my replacement, and that's what it feels like. However many times we may sleep together, or just share a bed, or drink too much and make out it's not me any more, it's him. We've been here before, she and I, and it's obviously a character flaw in me that we keep ending up back here. The whole thing with the over-enthusiastic bunny boiler girl just made me miss San, and want her back, and make me want to tell her I loved her. But you can't go back. Even if she felt the same way, even if I asked her to take me back, I know now she wouldn't. It was a bit like with Fi, I felt like with each successive boyfriend of hers since me I was getting one step further from ever being able to have her back. Perhaps it's good that Fi and I only see each other once every few years. Incidentally, she wants to meet soon -- asked me again today when we could go for a drink. And I still fantasise about winning her back.

It's absurd. Last weekend I was taking an Italian girl to a snowboard show and taking her picture on my phone, thinking how beautiful she looked in the picture. Even now, she's going back for a couple of weeks and I tell her I want to see her and I want a postcard from Italy. But I don't know if I really like her, if I just want to like her, if I just want to be with someone. Part of me says it would be unfair on her to do anything, if I'm still moping after a girl who dumped me two years ago, and part of me says it would be an excellent way to move on.

Thursday night was a haloween party at work. It was messy. Anything that involves a "vodka luge" -- a kind of ice-scuplture ski run they poured vodka down to your waiting mouth at the bottom -- was never going to promote responsible drinking. Most of the night seems hazy to me now -- flashes of memories, here and there. Talking to a woman from a neighbouring design agency, telling her I wasn't a frustrated novelist and her trying to convince me to take part in NaNoWriMo. Or a half-remembered flash of hugging the cute redheaded girl -- how small her waist felt, as I hugged her. She was drunker than I was, hugged me and told me she was so sorry I was leaving.
"I didn't think you knew who I was", I told her. Trying to be cynical, probably just slurring my words.
"Of course I know who you are!" She insisted, "You're Jay [or insert real name here]! Everyone knows you!"

I don't remember much else. There was certainly nothing inappropriate. I remember very vaguely the train home, hiccuping. I remember throwing up on the walk home in someone's bushes. I have a very vague memory of buying Burger King before catching my train, which probably explains why I threw up in a bush.

The next day I can't find my Oyster card -- and I only just put a tenner on the damn thing -- or the photo portion of my travelcard. Mysteriously the ticket portion was in my coat pocket -- I mus have taken it out of the travelcard wallet to get through the barrier. That's a small mercy.

Last week, before I even heard about not getting the job, I cut myself. For months I have mentioned here feeling confronted by sharp objects. Feeling uncomfortable around a stray craft knife left on my desk. I can't be trusted with sharp objects. And eventually it became a self fulfilling prophecy, a scalpel used for cutting pages from magazines eventually was put to good use -- cutting short, sharp lines into my forearm. More of a scratch than anything else, wary of not drawing undue attention to myself -- but all the same I'd look down later to see small trails of blood. Small enough you could wash them off, or keep washing them off until they clotted, and the cuts small enough to hide.

These are the things I self censor.

Pointless

I'm beginning to wonder what the point in keeping this blog is if I don't feel I can write honestly in it. Its role has always meant to be partly as therapist, but when it comes down to it now I keep silent, and keep things inside, rather than writing about them as I want to do. And I don't know what this means I should do.

Misplaced, my faith in the dark side was.

Yesterday I was sat at my desk, working like any other day -- perhaps not quite like any other day as we have a big event coming up on Monday and Tuesday so have a lot of work to do. But I was minding my own business, when I got an email from the associate account director with the subject "Your Interview". It read:

"Thank you for your interview yesterday.

As discussed we need to feed back on that interview. I am out of the office until later this afternoon yet back at around 5 if that suits you to sit down and allow us to feedback.

I will call you when I am back in the office later.

Thanks"

I did not like the sound of it. I was forwarding it to colleagues expressing my concern, and it seems now like they were conspicuously non-committal. San told me not to worry, and that it could be good news. It didn't sound like good news.

The afternoon rolled around, I got a phone call inviting me upstairs to a meeting room and off I went, especting the worst. We chatted a little about all the stuff we had going on, and then it started. She began telling me how much they liked me and that I had interviewed well and what a great job everyone thinks I do. But you know that none of that stuff ever precedes good news.

And so it goes. They decided not to offer me the position of account assistant. I don't know if I mentioned it here, but I had a nagging feeling after the first interview that maybe I know had too much experience -- especially since they said I would be in this position for as long as 18 months without promotion. I insisted then it didn't worry me. But apparently it was an issue for them. They wanted someone "fresh out of university" without any experience, someone who would be happy to do the job for 18 months -- and that I was too good for that job, and should be aiming more for an Account Exec position.

I think what it came down to is that they thought I'd be frustrated and dissatisfied in the job after about six months -- and is I'd thought myself, I could always leave at that point. They don't want to have to hire someone else in six months for this position.

But what it means for me is that not only do I not get the job, but I can't continue to work there. I now have no job to go to at all. I have emailed my loathsome recruitment consultants this morning, telling them this and to step up the pace in finding me a job. I have some friends taking my CV and tentatively asking contacts of theirs. I have also emailed a couple of style magazines my CV in the hope they might be able to make some use of me.

We walked out of the meeting and on the side of a nearby desk was a selection of soft drinks and a couple of beers. I'd originally declined a drink before the meeting, but thought now I could really use a beer and picked one up. I went back to my desk long enough only to open the bottle, avoiding eye contact with anyone, and went to sit on the fire escape outside. I saw on the fire escape -- just far enough down that anyone looking out of the window wouldn't see me. And I cried. It sounds stupid, to be so upset over a job, but I insist it wasn't just that. It was frustration and disappointment and the fact that my parents want to move house so I need a job and a place of my own quickly if I don't want to go with them. It was a hundred things. I've no idea what my colleagues thought of me, when I went back to my desk with bloodshot eyes and constantly blowing my nose.

Now it looks like I get to look forward to the wide-world of office temping.

At least she's not a lawyer

Back in the day of the Derby poetry circuit, I wrote a poem about being in love with a serial killer. Along with a (true) poem about my girlfriend who could see the future, I also wrote poems about Blockbuster video and Mystic Meg. The trouble was partly I started to get a reputation for being a bit of a "character", someone you'd think "oh good, who comes the shy kid who writes funny poems" but I also wrote poems with anger and pain and hurt. And I don't think people knew how to balance that. I remember when I announced I was going to read a poem called "It's my couch, my couch, don't they understand" and maybe I imagine it now, but I think people visibly relaxed and leaned back in the chairs for something quirky and funny.

Instead what they got was a poem I had no title for, about a girlfriend's rape and ending with the words "although it's not possible for you to feel the pain you caused, I'm going to try".

I read only that one poem that night, then walked back to my table in the dark to sit alone and drink.

Anyway, the point of this little story was meant to be about how I once wrote a poem about a serial killer -- which ended "at least she's not a lawyer". I remember when I first read it, someone suggested to me that I change the ending each time to a different job. I never did, but now I think if I ever 'do' live poetry again, I might be tempted to change it to "recruitment consultant".

It's a bit rich of me, really. All these people are doing is trying get me a job -- which is to do their job, and trying to market what they have to sell -- people. And like most marketing this involves bending the truth a little here or there, and I'm sure they get paid handsomely for it.

I just have an increasing dislike for them. They call me up, out of the blue, talking of jobs and wanting to send me along for them and how the employer is really interested. They tell me "just be yourself" along with "be really bubbly" and I think to myself that if I actually had a job I could afford the drugs to make me this person they want me to appear as. But it's not that part -- it's afterwards, when you don't get the job.

It's the struggling to get the consultant to return your phone calls, and when they do you can hear from their tone of voice what their news is. They always start with "they really liked you, but", a bit like when someone starts a sentence "I'm not racist, but..." and you know what you're about to hear would make Oswald Mosley blush.

What I resent is that the recruitment consultant always sounds pissed off at me -- presumably for losing them the however-many thousands in fees. They know with my experience and my passions, I should be perfect for the brand, so why the hell didn't I get it. "They said you seemed nervous" they tell me, almost accuse me, "Were you?"
Well, yeah. I wanted the job. I haven't worked in six months or more, it's getting increasingly desperate. I liked the company, liked the brands, wanted the job. Who the hell wouldn't be nervous?
They also said my examples of my leadership style were mostly taken from my previous job, rather than from my PR experience. I have been an intern for six months, what do I know about leading anyone in PR? What I was talking about were transferable skills, taking my skills and experiences in previous roles and applying them.

Just the same, I won't be getting a second interview and I guess my recruitment consultant will have to wait a bit long for that designer Burberry handbag. I'm told they would welcome me to reapply in 6 to 8 months, and who knows -- maybe I will. But it will be off my own back, and not through some consultant they have to pay. I'm tempted to even contact the company myself and tell them one interview shows nothing, let's skip the consultant and have another go.

Short of that, I had my second interview with my company today (third interview if you count the one I had about 4 months ago for a different position). Unfortunately, the advice given by my recruitment consultant came several hours too late for this -- but maybe I got this one.

We did talk about a shared passion for 'The Great Gatsby', but in hindsight maybe I shouldn't have told them "What's the point in living if you can't feel alive?"

Space monkey mafia

Everyone's comments on the whole situation with Kat -- she's probably going to be cropping up more, so I figure she deserves a name -- were very enlightening, you seem equally divided between saying "run for your life" and suggesting maybe she does deserve a chance.

As last week progressed Kat actually got on my nerves more than freaked me out -- although with credit to her, she does seem to back off when I tell her to. I think she might be socially inept rather than actively psycho, but just the same I didn't really want her to give mapquest driving directions to her house and when she said she wanted to go for a picnic in the park, I think I decided she wouldn't be seeing me.

This was driven home in no time when I got what I felt was an unprovoked but pissy email from her, asking if I really scared off that easily or if I couldn't handle her liberal, open mind. Everyone knows I'm very closed minded and conservative, obviously. I'd had a couple of drinks that night and a shit week, so I figured I had little to lose from expressing myself. I wasn't unkind, but I told her I was uncomfortable with being told "I just...care about you" and to take responsibility for her own feelings. I know it's easy to say "you make me happy" or angry, or sad, or whatever but I told her I didn't make her happy -- she did, and she could choose how to react if I am cranky or stressed or whatever. I also told her I wouldn't be seeing her on Sunday.

I'd more or less forgotten about the email until the next day in a text message she asked me if we were still on. She seemed annoyed or sad in her very brief few words of a response to the email, and I thought if I left it there I could quiet slip off her radar. Especially when I found a second personal ad she'd posted online and was amazed at what a freak she sounded. And no, I don't sound like a freak in mine, thankyouverymuch. I thought I wouldn't be hearing from her again, but I got an email today wanting to know how Friday night was, because she hadn't an update. I didn't know I was expected to write one. I replied a few hours later with some sparse details, polite but not over-friendly. I guess she's a nice enough person still, I have just lost all interest in her.

I am again increasingly of the opinion that this is the worst possible way I could try to meet someone -- but without a steady wage it's one of the few options I currently have. Today I got an email responding to an ad I posted, but not actually responding to the content but instead asking -- for some study they are doing -- if I'd had any success.

The weekend itself was largely uneventful but not bad -- Friday night I went straight out with San to a comedy club, and it unwound me suitably from a shit week and a stressful day. Saturday was going to be a trip to Tate Modern, but we couldn't be arsed in the end and I didn't get out of bed even until the afternoon. Saturday night -- in a dramatic break with tradition -- my friends actually did come round instead of going to the pub.

So, of course this leaves Sunday for hangovers, leftover Chinese takeaway for breakfast, and barely getting off the computer all day.

Now it's Monday again. I have started a beta blog for ranting -- or just writing generally -- about work. I'd like to think it will become one of those widely-read and highly amusing industry insider blogs, but I think it's doomed to a life of obscurity. That said, I like what I have with you, my hardcore group of readers and lurkers here -- and it's a lot more popularity than I have in the real world.

Be careful what you wish for

#I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them, but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?
I wish, I wish -- I wish you'd care# -- "A New England", by Billy Bragg

Last week I was bummed out because "Star Girl" -- whatever her name really was -- seemingly lost interest in me. It seemed familiar, either I wasn't good-looking enough or interesting enough or something but clearly, I felt, I was at fault. Sometimes when I think back over my past relationships, however happy I was with San when things were good I've often thought I'd like to meet a girl a bit more like Fi. Not in terms of looks, or personality as such -- but Fiona was a lot more expressive. She was crazy about me, in her own mixed-up little way. You can't compare one person to another, but sometimes I miss being complimented or hearing someone say "I love you".

It was late on Saturday night, I think, when I was checking for emails from Star Girl and not finding anything I saw there was an email in my junk mail folder. I always check my junk mail, in case something legitimate slips through the net -- even if it's usually offers of prescription drugs. And never good drugs, I don't want viagra, I want ritalin, dammit. But yes, it was a legitimate email after all -- another reply to my ad.

This time the respondent seemed to be taking it seriously -- she wished me luck in my search for the blonde 20 year old double-jointed super model, who owns her own brewery, and an open-minded twin sister. And that was all. I replied, explained it was a joke that nobody had seemed to get, and we struck up a conversation. This was Saturday.

Today is Tuesday and she uses phrases like "I enjoy you", "You make me happy" and "I just...care about you". She is also vocally impatient that we can't meet before this weekend. I have no problem with meeting, I didn't place the ad to email someone I'd never meet, and sooner is often better than later. But something doesn't sit right with me.

I like her and all. She has all the good, healthy things you would want from a person -- a sense of humour, intelligence, interesting, yadda yadda. It's just a little hard to know what to make of it all. She asked me what I would write in a 'real' ad, and I paraphrased my profile currently showing all this week on Match.com -- which is being met with resounding silence. She said something like "Oh my, can I keep you?". The pictures didn't put her off, either.

I am making a concerted effort to be honest with her -- last night she asked if I would call her to say goodnight. I told her no. I got a random text asking me to tell her "something dirty", I refused -- told her there was a time, and a place, and that kind of thing just makes things confusing. And if on meeting her I have no desire for anything more than friendship with her, I will tell her that, too.

She has made it clear what she wants -- she likes me already, wants to meet up as soon as, and then if that goes well to "be with" me. She apologised in case she was scaring me, but I don't scare easily. Just the same, she's a bit too fucking eager.

Maybe I am just putting obstacles in the way. I complain when nobody likes me, then when a sweet, affectionate girl comes along who makes no secret of liking me I complain that she's too eager.

Or maybe I really should just be a bit more careful with what I wish for.

Optimist

"Optimistic man, 25, seeks a blonde 20 year old double-jointed super model, who owns her own brewery, and has an open-minded twin sister."

It seemed like it would be a good way to start a personals ad. I'd read it in some forwarded joke about supposedly "true" small ads published in an Irish newspaper, and it amused me. I thought it would be an almost ironic take on the other personal ads on the site, and would attract attention. Maybe even arouse curiosity.

I was surprised when in less than a day I already had a response:

Possibly the funniest ad i've ever read! I'm from East London too - am blonde but other then that i am not double jointed, don't have a twin, etc.
You got a pic?

So far, off to a good start. Rather than striving for that elusive balance between upbeat and confident, yet down to earth and normal I'd sneak around the side with humour. I responded naturally enough, telling her how I enjoyed music, comedy, candelit dinners, long romantic walks on the beach and that I had no idea what to write in these situations. Again, she liked the humour. We shared a passion for music, and she mentioned having been snowboarding in Banff -- but wasn't much good.

It all sounded good. I sent her pictures, and she commented she would reciprocate later. I thought it a little odd that she was mentioning sending pictures before she had divulged her name, but no matter.

A few days on, it's all gone silent and now it seems it may be significant that she didn't comment on the pictures I sent her. Like maybe she replied before she looked at them. It's easy to read too much into it, like I always do -- maybe I wasn't interesting enough, maybe I talked too much, maybe being "funny" is one thing but when you see the pictures you realise why I am trying to meet people online?

Or it could mean nothing. It could be just that I am trying to meet or form some kind of halfway meaningful relationship with someone I know nothing about and who replies to personal ads she sees on the internet.

But some feedback here, maybe, and honestly -- what is it that really matters?

Musical Monday (#9)

There's little point in trying to justify it -- we all have something in our music collections. Some of us more than others -- and sometimes it's right to be ashamed. But anyway, enough about the embarrassing songs on Mez's iPod.

I first came across this song when I had to review it for the university paper. I'd been a slightly-ashamed fan of her early work, in a way not dissimilar to my liking for Britney Spears: I thought she was hot, and then liking the music sort of went from there. I even once tried to get an interview with her, back when I first heard of her, but that that was long before I knew the right way to go about it.

At first I just dismissed this song. More of the same, nothing new, nothing to see here, hated it. But sometimes the more you play something, the more it grows on you -- and I'm glad this did.

I will stand up and say it out loud, I'm not ashamed: my name's Jay, and I'm a fan of Avril Lavigne's music.

Don't get me wrong, her first album had some pretty bad songs on it -- Sk8r Boi is almost unforgivable, it has a stupid "txt spk" title, some terrible songwriting ("He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?") and I personally think that the song "Things I'll Never Say" borrowed from Poe's "Angry Johnny" if only because of the suggestive use of the phrase "I want to blow you.....away". But I forgive Avril for it all, because I don't think she actually wrote any of the songs herself.

I liked her whole "Skater Girl" look. Much more than I like her more recent bleached-blonde-Mrs-Deryck-Whibley look. I never really cared if she was really 'punk' -- as far as I know, she never claimed to be a "real punk" anyway, although I did used to fantasise about forcing her to listen to the Sex Pistols and the Stooges. Among other things.

But this song is completely different. "Don't Tell Me" feels a lot more real, a lot more raw -- a song about someone who you thought cared about you trying to take advantage. I don't much care about what the "yoof" of today get up to -- god knows I wasn't particularly well behaved, myself -- but in the song she isn't making decisions for anyone else, she isn't making value judgements. I just liked that she was a girl, standing up for herself, and saying no.

And I don't think it should negate any of that if I think she looks hot, too...