Take That, Chick-lit Bitches!
Choice extracts from the Diary of Felicity Arnold
Saturday, 21/04/07
Smoked my last ciggie. I'm in fathoms-deep shit. Can't work because my mind is crawling with feelings for the one guy who is utterly wrong for me. He is fat, obnoxious, married and catholic, and morally, on the other side of the realm from me. When we hug, his belly comes between the top half of my body and him. Now I'm so emotionally entangled. The thing began as pity for poor bloke obsessed with me. Investigating the pity, I found it was partly amusement, sadistic amusement in watching him wriggle, and partly self-congratulatory, sychopant-seeking revelry in hearing him pour out his adoration for me. Now he's eaten part of my brain and left a gaping need it seems only he can fill. I spent an entire day moping in pyjamas, hurrying in the bathroom lest I miss his call. He's been calling everyday lately. But of course, he didn't call today. Had tons to do which I didn't. Worse, he's having a baby anytime now. The wife's probably in labour as I speak. God I miss the bastard.
(a little later)
Still no phonecall. Need to get out of this. I'm still pretty sure all he wants is to fuck me; that's how it started. He yearns to bone anything remotely resembling a pussy on legs, as a rule. Why would it be different now? Sharing a few jokes is tops but when it comes to brass tacks, all he wants is a rough and tumble in the sack. Grabs me to cop a feel everytime I'm too near him, and I'm the type to let him; now it's affected my brain. And EVEN if he does harbour real feelings for me, which, he says he does, but I'm doubtful of, there's no way he's gonna shake up his comfy home atmosphere, with all his moneyed crazy as coots cath. circle of friends who are crawling with kids and his utterly complacent wife who thinks (I know, I know, a bit judgemental of me) a husband is a necessary tool to help one produce chidren (the lord's little blessings), and sex is a bitter grease to necessitate the process. Aw... why wouldn't he call?
Friday, 27/04/07
That was last saturday.
Monday - I sat on his lap in 'our' cafe and confessed I'd missed him over the weekend. Let him drag me to my place and curled up in bed with his erection nestling against me and his love words in my ears.
Tuesday - Dropped keys down to him early morn, kissed him, rolled on top of him and said, let's have sex and get this whole nonsense out of the way. He refused to fuck; said 'I've waited one and a half years not for a quick fuck. I want the whole deal. Mistress. Proper. Stayed in bed four hours. Chatted online while attempting to do office hours, went to his office around 5.30, almost fucked standing up (bled a little), stayed till 9.30.
Thursday - Four hours in bed again. Then online chat. Then he came for a quick cuddle before he left home to wife, gave me four-five lovely old books he'd bought at this book stall on ----. Too short a while. I sent 'xx' as a text. then I texted 'It's been three hours since you left, and I'm still wet. x.' The wife read it. He told her (I'm listed as Dave) 'I had a water fight with this guy called Dave, and he's a bit gay is why the x.' I also left teeth marks on his shoulder - very distinct. He stopped at his garage before entering house and hit himself with a spanner type thing and made it into a big industrial type injury to cover the teeth marks. Said to me, 'Actually gpt sympathy from the wife. Tee hee.'
Friday - Today. Went to meet P--- for goodbye drinks, as she's leaving to Australia. He came in, and I had to pretend he was the same and I was the same and nothing has changed between us before everyone. I felt sick. He slipped out when I was saying goodbye to her and told me to come up to his office for a hug, but his colleague was standing at the entrance and I was feeling funny already so I said I had to go and left.
Feel sick.
He called and I told him and he said, Can I see you monday and I said I don't know and he said I won't give you a choice, I'll just tell you I'll see you monday. Then I texted 'You left the untreated corn saplings in proof 4 acetate instead of 3. Call me if you want it switched.'
Friday, August 15, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
08/08/08 8 months 4 days
What do I lose if I lose him?
I'd lose everything and nothing. Because he is everything, but so am I.
ps- Need to talk less and kiss more.
I'd lose everything and nothing. Because he is everything, but so am I.
ps- Need to talk less and kiss more.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Real Indian Writing?
A House For Mr Biswas
By V.S. Naipaul
I’ve always been uncomfortable with most of ‘Indian English’ fiction that stagger the shelves. Even if one or two of the writers actually live in India, and have not been living in England or the US since their Oxbridge-Harvard days, they are from the upper echelons of Indian society, the super-sophisticated, westernised, English-speaking cream, and their fiction is everything they are. http://www.pugmarks.com/week/writers.htm Half of them went to St Stephens (the Indian Eton) and on to oxbridge.
I did not imagine that Naipaul, of all people, Trinidadian, only Indian twice removed, would portray a world and people I know intimately. The vast Indian middle class, people with their eyes to the west but feet firmly entangled in a history and culture which they view with myopic eyes, and with little understanding. The people in Naipaul’s early novels (of the mid twentieth century) are the family I’ve grown up with.
Mid to upper caste, not necessarily Brahmin, lower-middle class to middle class people, who slave themselves to educate their sons. Tellingly characterised, is their pride in being old-fashioned juxtaposed with their pride in their children holding new-fangled views. Says Mrs Tulsi in pg 211 about her son disagreeing with her views: ‘…Owad is going to college, reading and learning all the time. And I am very old-fashioned.’ She spoke with pride in Owad and pride in her old-fasionedness.’
Shama, Mr B’s wife, holds her ‘bureau’ close to her heart, a piece of steel furniture with a secret locker that I’m intimately acquainted with, as it travelled many one bedroom tenements with my parents and me. The one steel bureau (Godrej most preferred) that comes with the dowry and lasts an entire lifetime, how did it survive the boat to Africa and then all the way to Trinidad?
The sullenness that characterises familial relationships, boy am I familiar with that. I come from a people that only smile at strangers, because they feel warm and friendly only with strangers, for whom they throw open their doors and hearts. With family, one is usually sullen. Like Mr B’s sister Dehuti, whose sullenness holds no meaning, and is an attitude fixed by habit, simplifying relationships (pg 326)
School. I remember how strange and exciting my English lessons used to be, how exotic the idea of playing pranks and sharing picnics. In our school, there simply was no time for play. Bullies did not exist because of the limited time we spent in the play fields unsupervised. I suffered school just like Mr B’s son Anand, who realises that ‘Pranks’ were only permitted in English Composition. (pg 403). Like Anand, we had to endure ritual before every exam (He was given many blotters, many pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler and two erasers, one for pencil, one for ink. Shama, braving his anger, sprinkled his shirt with lavender water when he wasn’t looking. She put a dry lime in his pocket to cut bad luck) pg 496.
While by no means can I call Naipaul's writing, Real Indian Writing, as, of course, India is one country characterised by its resistance to be characterised, whose identity is its many identities, whose voice is its plurality. Naipaul's diasporic Indians are the most real for me; these are the people, the masses, that masala-movies were originally made for; these are the conservative, ever-suspicious, comical Indians with hearty sullenness, who indulge in everyday melodrama to survive the hammering mundanity of their ration-shop-lives.
I belong now to a new caste (separate from the society from which it has been released, pg 604), created by the very education for which my parents have slaved, like Naipaul’s parents slaved. I can see why Naipaul has been consistently famous for being bitter and twisted, and terrible at relationships. Patrick French’s excellent biography attempts to throw light on him, and as French says, how hard and how terrible it must be for Naipaul to have struggled desperately to move from the margin to the centre, and I imagine, how excruciating to find himself viewing the oppressed, his own people, through the eyes of the oppressor, to whose side he’s crossed? (Emanuel Litvinoff)
By V.S. Naipaul
I’ve always been uncomfortable with most of ‘Indian English’ fiction that stagger the shelves. Even if one or two of the writers actually live in India, and have not been living in England or the US since their Oxbridge-Harvard days, they are from the upper echelons of Indian society, the super-sophisticated, westernised, English-speaking cream, and their fiction is everything they are. http://www.pugmarks.com/week/writers.htm Half of them went to St Stephens (the Indian Eton) and on to oxbridge.
I did not imagine that Naipaul, of all people, Trinidadian, only Indian twice removed, would portray a world and people I know intimately. The vast Indian middle class, people with their eyes to the west but feet firmly entangled in a history and culture which they view with myopic eyes, and with little understanding. The people in Naipaul’s early novels (of the mid twentieth century) are the family I’ve grown up with.
Mid to upper caste, not necessarily Brahmin, lower-middle class to middle class people, who slave themselves to educate their sons. Tellingly characterised, is their pride in being old-fashioned juxtaposed with their pride in their children holding new-fangled views. Says Mrs Tulsi in pg 211 about her son disagreeing with her views: ‘…Owad is going to college, reading and learning all the time. And I am very old-fashioned.’ She spoke with pride in Owad and pride in her old-fasionedness.’
Shama, Mr B’s wife, holds her ‘bureau’ close to her heart, a piece of steel furniture with a secret locker that I’m intimately acquainted with, as it travelled many one bedroom tenements with my parents and me. The one steel bureau (Godrej most preferred) that comes with the dowry and lasts an entire lifetime, how did it survive the boat to Africa and then all the way to Trinidad?
The sullenness that characterises familial relationships, boy am I familiar with that. I come from a people that only smile at strangers, because they feel warm and friendly only with strangers, for whom they throw open their doors and hearts. With family, one is usually sullen. Like Mr B’s sister Dehuti, whose sullenness holds no meaning, and is an attitude fixed by habit, simplifying relationships (pg 326)
School. I remember how strange and exciting my English lessons used to be, how exotic the idea of playing pranks and sharing picnics. In our school, there simply was no time for play. Bullies did not exist because of the limited time we spent in the play fields unsupervised. I suffered school just like Mr B’s son Anand, who realises that ‘Pranks’ were only permitted in English Composition. (pg 403). Like Anand, we had to endure ritual before every exam (He was given many blotters, many pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler and two erasers, one for pencil, one for ink. Shama, braving his anger, sprinkled his shirt with lavender water when he wasn’t looking. She put a dry lime in his pocket to cut bad luck) pg 496.
While by no means can I call Naipaul's writing, Real Indian Writing, as, of course, India is one country characterised by its resistance to be characterised, whose identity is its many identities, whose voice is its plurality. Naipaul's diasporic Indians are the most real for me; these are the people, the masses, that masala-movies were originally made for; these are the conservative, ever-suspicious, comical Indians with hearty sullenness, who indulge in everyday melodrama to survive the hammering mundanity of their ration-shop-lives.
I belong now to a new caste (separate from the society from which it has been released, pg 604), created by the very education for which my parents have slaved, like Naipaul’s parents slaved. I can see why Naipaul has been consistently famous for being bitter and twisted, and terrible at relationships. Patrick French’s excellent biography attempts to throw light on him, and as French says, how hard and how terrible it must be for Naipaul to have struggled desperately to move from the margin to the centre, and I imagine, how excruciating to find himself viewing the oppressed, his own people, through the eyes of the oppressor, to whose side he’s crossed? (Emanuel Litvinoff)
Friday, May 30, 2008
Jazz Black
On me your voice unfolds
Like they say love should
-anon
Jazz black
A Thunderstorm in eyebrows
held tender as at twilight the weeping skies
The jangle and ka-boom of a canon stride
The hunger in your face
As you stare at me
As you stare at yourself
The mountain god made you
With a wisp of a shadow
Mixed with rain drenched earth
The soul of a kite
And shoulders of a pragmatist
Music in your veins
That pulse through to your heart
As this songbird
Perches on you
Shimmering wings that flew
For several summers
South into your arms
Like they say love should
-anon
Jazz black
A Thunderstorm in eyebrows
held tender as at twilight the weeping skies
The jangle and ka-boom of a canon stride
The hunger in your face
As you stare at me
As you stare at yourself
The mountain god made you
With a wisp of a shadow
Mixed with rain drenched earth
The soul of a kite
And shoulders of a pragmatist
Music in your veins
That pulse through to your heart
As this songbird
Perches on you
Shimmering wings that flew
For several summers
South into your arms
Afternoon After
A still grey afternoon of sombre truck
Desiccates the spirit within
That gossamer thing
Suppressed under layers of heaviness
Of successive siestas
Through yawns emptying delight
Freshness of the morning
Given way to optimism
Of clear eyes unclouded by dreams
Of long nights on itchy mattresses
By the side of moist warm bodies
Of stale lovers
Who in evening glow shimmered
Whose bodies undressed glowed velvet
So removed from the late night’s chancing
When to a whirling moth they seemed
Pretty butterflies to drunken eyes
In the dry drunk desperation
Of late early party mornings
When anything would have done
Had done them, being done for
Again and yet again
Desiccates the spirit within
That gossamer thing
Suppressed under layers of heaviness
Of successive siestas
Through yawns emptying delight
Freshness of the morning
Given way to optimism
Of clear eyes unclouded by dreams
Of long nights on itchy mattresses
By the side of moist warm bodies
Of stale lovers
Who in evening glow shimmered
Whose bodies undressed glowed velvet
So removed from the late night’s chancing
When to a whirling moth they seemed
Pretty butterflies to drunken eyes
In the dry drunk desperation
Of late early party mornings
When anything would have done
Had done them, being done for
Again and yet again
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