Bad tranny

[A short true story.  Photos are available if I get more than 15 comments]

It’s 1am - and I’m walking along a main road dressed as Little Red Riding Hood.  A long red wig hides my short hair; over the knee stockings my hairy legs.  I purposely didn’t shave for the last ten days; so tonight; before I left home: I did, giving myself a 70s style moustache.  There’s no getting away from it – I look like a really good bad transvestite.

     I originally wanted to go to tonight’s fancy dress party as a zombie – a nazi zombie - to be precise, but my best mate had already bought a brilliant werewolf outfit and someone needed to be LRRH – so here I am.  It’s been a great night.  Everyone of the forty people dressed up - except for one person.  Good company and music; just enough alcohol to get us merry.

     A car slows down as it passes on the other side of the road, heading the opposite way to me.  I don’t look towards it, I just keep walking.  At no stage did I ever think I might be in danger, being dressed up like this, but my internal alarm bells are ringing.  A klaxon goes off in my head: some people won’t think this is a joke.

     ‘You f**king gay c**t,’ screams a voice from the car.

      I keep walking, but wonder how this might turn out.  Should I run, or maybe face up to them?  Should I stop and cheekily ask: ‘Are you talking to moi?’ 

     ‘Oi you f**king queer ba****d.’  I want to point out that even though I’m dressed as a woman – it doesn’t actually mean I’m ‘f***ing gay’, but I decide its best if I say nothing; unsure of whether this is the greatest moment to educate an inbred on the details of sexual orientation.  To be honest, I feel a mixture of fear and exhilaration.

     Somewhere inside, I want some dirty little chav to get out of the car and start on me.  I want the chance to surprise him with my fists and boots, so that he thinks twice about ever picking on someone again. ‘You dirty f***ing gay,’ screams the voice again as the car wheel spins up the road.  For the first time I look over my shoulder; checking that they have gone, and I’m relieved to see the red tail lights disappear into the distance. 

    

     That could have turned out so differently.  For instance: It would have been funny if they had tooted their car horn and then shouted ‘Whoa-hey’ out of the window on their way past.  I would have laughed at that.  Or I suppose the other alternative would have seen me lying in a pool of blood; having had the s**t kicked out of me.

    It’s odd that a grown man dressed as Little Red Ridding Hood with a 70s porn moustache, should find ‘them’ weird, but maybe its ‘them’ that are uncomfortable with their sexuality?            

       

100 Words: Scooby Doo

Room 2041.  Another day; another spook, another crappy hotel. 

A stranger looks back at Scooby Doo, from the mirror across the bedroom.  He doesn’t see the face of a hero anymore; just a washed out has-been. 

‘It’s gonna be the caretaker’ he whispers to himself. 

He pulls the plunger up on the hypo and watches the blood mix with the heroin, before pushing the colour of a beautiful sunset into his arm.  The empty syringe falls to the carpet as he feels the rush – the only rush left in a life of haunted houses, snack food and forbidden sex. 

100 Words: Born before god

McCann struggles to breathe inside the canvas shelter; dug into the desert sand - not because of the stifling heat - but because the small boy is hovering a few feet from the floor.  Cross legged and alone; he appears to be meditating.  Removing his fedora and both guns, McCann approaches the child with caution.  Sensing him, the boy’s eyes open, and he speaks:

     ‘I was born before god.  First I was born; then god was born, then Jesus was born.’       

    

     Falling to his knees, McCann knows that the search is over.  He has found humanities saviour, or end.

Noises of the night

My neighbour’s front door grates and pushes over the swollen wooden frame, before she finally shuts it with a click. The sound of the door closing didn’t wake me though, because although it’s nearly 4am, I still haven’t fallen asleep yet.

     Insomnia.

     I've come to recognise all the noises of the night, from the slow ticking of the hot water tank as it cools down, to the creaking of the staircase as the house shifts and settles; breathing a sigh of relief as it relaxes for the night. From the slightly open bedroom window, comes the sound of the fox that hunts along the grass verge outside, snuffling about in the dry fallen leaves of last summer, looking for worms and mice. Some night he will call with a horrible barking like a lost soul in the darkness, calling out for help. Floating through the cool air comes the beautiful, but mournful song of our resident robin, who can be heard most nights of the year; especially in winter time, reminding us that spring is not far away, and for a while last summer, there was the ghostly 'twit twoo' of a pair tawny owls that took up residence in the woods across the green. Sometimes at the weekend - mostly on hot summer nights – I recognise the sound of late night revellers, as they make their way home from the local town. Money spent: no cash for a taxi; drunken bravado, voices, and mumbled conversation about their evening, drifts along on the night air. All these sounds of the night come and go depending on what time of year it is, except for one. We live just a short distance from a busy motorway and even in the middle of the night the comforting whoosh of cars and lorries as they travel to who knows where, can always be heard.

     But then I hear something alien. A rumbling sound not far away, and loud. So loud that I get out of bed to peek out of the window. I wipe a little hole in the cool condensation on the glass, which feels cold on my fingertips, and peer outside. A figure – a woman I think – is walking along the road pulling a suitcase on wheels behind her. I watch her for a moment, before she disappears from view, and then feeling cold, I climb back into bed under the warm duvet.

     The mystery woman plays on my mind. Its 4:10am, and -2° outside: where could she be going?

     Is she running away, or running to someone; is it the end of a relationship for her, or the start of something new?

     But as I consider where she might be going, and imagine all sorts of fictional reasons for her being out in the cold, and dark, I have finally found an antidote for tonight’s insomnia...

Patterns

Closing my eyes, I face into the sun to feel its warmth for the first time in— how long?  But there’s still a cool wind, blowing across the car-park towards me from god knows where.  It kisses me gently on the cheeks like an ice queen reaching out to me from Norway, Russia or even Iceland.  I wrap my big grey woolen winter coat tightly around my body and flip up the collar.  My look this morning is one of a lone Russian border guard, standing in the icy wastes of Siberia rather than a bored office worker standing in a car-park in Hampshire.  Only the other week I put this coat away, deep into the wardrobe, and pulled out something lighter.  But I was way too hasty because here it is on my back again.

     I hunker down into the depths of the coat, hiding from winter’s last breath; my now cold cup of tea clutched tightly against my chest.  Walking slowly round the car-park in ever bigger circles I become conscious for the first time of a pattern.  Herringbone.  I’ve never noticed it before, which is unusual because I always see patterns in things.  I love the patterns in the weather, especially the sky.  Cirrocumulus and cirrus clouds stretching as far as the eye can see, like ripples along the edge of some gigantic beach.  And I see patterns in nature too.  The spider webs that line the gorse bushes next to the river as I walk to work.  Bathed in early morning dew and frost they are all equally spaced apart as though some spider planning office has measured each one out to a perfect distance from it neighbour.  But my favourite patterns are in architecture.  In the buildings that we live and work in, in brick, steel and glass.

     Walking around in an ever increasing circle I eventually stop at the edge of the curb-stone.  There, along the edge of the curb stones, runs a thick two inch line of green moss.  The rich Sphagnum has no place here in the industrial setting, but it has scratched out a life regardless.  I stand staring for a while, concentrating.  Somewhere deep in my memory I remember sitting on a cold concrete pavement.

     I hold a stick in my hand as I scratch out the moss from the cracks in the pavement outside a council maisonette in London.  A  lifetime ago.  But as in most things there are patterns in our lives too, and for a moment the little boy is my grandson, K.  He is sitting, digging out the moss from the cracks in the pavement, on a council estate today.

     There are patterns everywhere. 

     All around us.  

     In our pasts, and our futures.  

100 Words: Daphne Blake

Daphne slips quietly from the bed, and pulls on the purple dress that he virtually ripped off her body last night.  God his sexual appetite is something else.  He may come across as a lazy slob who’s obsessed with snacking, but he’s an athlete in the sack and hung like a donkey.    She looks in the mirror, tiding her hair when she sees that he has given her a love bite on her neck.  “Mother f**ker,” she mutters under her breath as she ties a green scarf round her throat, to hide the evidence of her affair with Shaggy.  

Write away your worries

[Forgive me for reposting this short piece, but I think some of my newer visitors may be interested in its content, which focuses on the excellent reasons to be a blogger even if it means you never win a Booker Prize.  It also fits in with my idea of “Blogging it out!”]

While I was flicking through a magazine yesterday [May 2010] I found this article on “writing away your worries.”  I wouldn’t normally use someone else’s work in my blog, but the article seemed not only relevant to me, but also to lots of the favourite blogs that I read.

“There is no doubt about it,” wrote Anne Frank in 1942, “that paper is patient.”  It is also entirely without judgement chronicling all manner of previously taboo issues (miscarriage, infidelity, abortion, prostitution...): to write is to confess, to purge, to exhibit, to seek absolution, support or solace.

“The very purpose of writing can be beneficial since we are giving ourselves permission to externalise something we have been carrying around in our heads,” explains psychotherapist Graham Thomas, who offers online counselling via the written word.  “It’s like setting a thought free: once it’s on the page – or screen – we can read it, delete it or reflect upon it.  Writing allows us to tap into the logical and creative parts of the brain as we weave meaning together.” 

Try it: take one of your conversations or confrontation which has troubled you – and write what you wish you’d said or the words of compassion you wish you’d been offered.  Writing a blog may have superseded diaries, but they are both a means of marshalling your thoughts.  But adds Thomas, this kind of writing is more about expression than grammar.

“It doesn’t have to be of a Booker Prize standard to have value; quite the opposite: this is about writing as a personal journey towards understanding.” 

Words reach out to us. 

In sharing words, we learn what matters to us. 

[In the course of reading through other people’s blogs I realise that lots of us may already be doing exactly what this article suggests.  I think I am.]

Mission statement: Why?

Recently I’ve been receiving texts from my daughter asking me random questions like: “What is my [her] mission statement?” and “What are my [her] career high lights?”  I have to confess that even at my age, I’m not really able to respond to either of these questions for myself, let alone answer them for a teenage girl who is desperate for employment in this shite economy.  

     Now I know we’re in a never ending recession, but surely unskilled jobs need not be so bloody complicated to apply for? 

     Who; I would love to know, is the twerp who coined the phrase “mission statement” in relation to a job?  Seriously!  Why would an unskilled worker need to go into that sort of detail to empty bins or clean toilets?  For that matter why would anyone have a mission statement?  It’s one of those phrases that only ever get mentioned on CVs, and is a complete load of b***ocks.        

     When I first left school, back in the mid 80s (not many jobs about then either), the best way to get an unskilled job was to just go into your local workplaces, factories and shops; asking the question: “Do you have any vacancies?” There was no need to register your details with an employment agency, or online with some sort of directory that forever emails you spammy job vacancies that aren’t even related to the work you are looking for.  All you had to do was ask the receptionist or floor manager if they currently had any vacancies; and if they did: Shock Horror; they might even give you an interview on the spot, or maybe later in the day!  Yes that’s right.  If you suited the role, they might actually let you start your new job without the need for vetting by an employment agency, thus saving themselves hundreds, or even thousands of pounds a year.    

     There was no need to interview 742 applicants for a £7 an hour job serving burgers or pushing a broom round a warehouse (as there isn’t a need to today), because if you fitted the bill, you got the job – very simple really.      

100 Words: 2am - January One

I weave through the familiar back streets with ease; not missing a turn, despite the alcohol that’s roaring round my blood stream.    An old acquaintance stops me to say “Happy New Year Dicky,” and I shake his hand, returning his good wishes whilst trying to move on.  Emerging from an alleyway at the cross roads I finally see her standing outside the shop, in a world of neon yellow, waiting for me.  I want every year to start with her, every day, and every moment.  We meet in the middle of the road and kiss:  2am - January One.