#200

I totally had a crush on #191’s then-girlfriend. I mean, I probably still do, as well, only I haven’t seen her for ages. Anyway, they were non-monogamous, so that side of things was arguably okay, but there was no way in hell I was going to make a move, because I was just sort of in awe of her and couldn’t begin to imagine doing anything about it. So, as per usual, alcohol eventually stepped in and attempted to sort things out.

I’d gone round to her place and #191 gave us both haircuts. I drank a metric fuckton of red wine and the three of us headed to a vegan sushi dinner party. Most of the other guests seemed to be straight scientists and I attempted conversation with a couple of them but it just wasn’t working out, so I contented myself with doing suave things like trying to pour myself more wine with the lid still on the bottle.

After that, well, we pretty much have to rely on #191’s account. Apparently, I’d kept burbling at her BLAH BLAH BLAH I HAVE SUCH A CRUSH ON #200 IS THAT OKAY and she was all, predictably, GOD! YES! JUST MAKE OUT WITH HER ALREADY! The three of us eventually decided to leave, and in the stairwell #191 realised she had forgotten her scarf so she returned to the party, where she pushed #201 (do you see where this is going?) against the wall and made out with her. Meanwhile I got to make out with #200, except I don’t remember any of it, which is disappointing. And apparently I asked her to come home with me, which she declined. #191 returned and suddenly I was all I’M GOING TO STAY HERE AFTER ALL SEEYA and vanished back into the flat. Like I say, fucking suave.

#199

I don’t know if Polish Majorca parties are a regular theme or just something that #184’s friends were into at the time, but I’ve never been to any non-Polish Majorca parties. Anyway, my second Polish Majorca party involved some low-level foreshadowing (“I am not going to get off with anyone here. Oh wait, I just did”). I showed up with a couple of couchsurfers, and we sat in the corner amongst lots of balloons. About six people in a row made weak jokes about my name and I focused on drinking cheap wine.

Two points about people making weak jokes about my name: 1) This happens all the time; 2) everybody always seems to think they’re the first to comment on it. It’s amazing. The worst, though, is when I am in the process of shaking hands with someone and he starts asking me all about it and I just want my goddamn hand back.

So eventually this boy came and talked to me about the year he lived in Belfast and how it was kind of weird, and then he kissed me but he was trying to be discreet because of, I don’t know, an ex-girlfriend at the party or something like that, so we left the flat and went upstairs and got off in the reasonably filthy stairwell and it was kind of hot.

I don’t remember too many details about him, but then I guess we didn’t spend that much time on conversation. Occasionally he’d say “Belfast girl” and I don’t know whether he just liked the ring of it or if he’d forgotten my name already. He wanted my number and all, but he was like “I’m leaving the country in six days to travel for two months so we have to see each other before then” and I thought, but do we? And we didn’t.

But he kissed me a couple more times, later that year – once at Balkanarama, only #184 was sitting with us and complained loudly until he stopped, thereby killing any prospects of further action for me that night. Thanks, #184! And once at my birthday party, at which #199 was in his customary mode of “I can’t kiss you because someone awkward is around” and then did it anyway.

There was one other time, though, when a bunch of us were at a bar and #199 seemed to be with a girlfriend or similar, and she left early, and I avoided the potential for anything to happen between us because it was like I’d suddenly found myself some moral standards. I guess we all have phases we go through.

#198

I think if #198 and I lived in the same place she would be my partner in crime. She makes music and she writes and she gets off with people a lot: I think I could work with this.

But the first time I got off with her I was kind of useless. It was two nights after #150’s flying visit to London and on top of that I was still dealing with the general whirlwind euphoria of my weekend at Transfabulous. Also I hadn’t slept properly for several nights and I’d been drinking too much. So my mind and body were both kind of wrecked.

I was crashing at #198’s place and the thing was that we were clearly destined to get off together. I don’t know, it’s like I have no trouble walking up to someone and going “Hey, wanna make out?”, which may or may not yield positive results, but when I’m faced with a foregone conclusion I suddenly become utterly inept. We were in bed and #198 was dropping hints and I was failing to respond and finally she gave up and wrestled me. This is a thing she does. She always loses at wrestling but the point is that then people get off with her. So that was what happened.

The next time I saw #198 I fared somewhat better. It was more than a year later, and I had just gotten back together with #116 (which, incidentally, happened subsequent to writing the blog post about her. So there is more story that I haven’t told). I was kind of exhilarated about that but I was not the dazed wretch I’d been on my previous trip to London. This time there was no wrestling; #198 asked if she should kiss me and I agreed that she probably should. “Have you ever made out with anyone with better breasts than your own?” I asked. “Because I would be amazed.” Listen to me. I am the goddamn anti-suave. #198 considered this for a few moments and then admitted that she hadn’t.

#197

I was at Transfabulous, waiting for #150 to show up and drinking to pass the time/calm my nerves. I was in kind of a whirl of socialising. A friend of mine introduced me to this girl who I’d seen at Klub Fukk the night before when I’d been wandering around feeling awkward and she’d been on her own and I’d failed to talk to her. “I wanted to say hello to you too!” she said. “But I didn’t know what was proper etiquette, whether it would look like I wanted to shag you. Which I do, but still …” This was good news indeed, and yet somehow I was like “#150 is going to get here any minute and I am way too distracted so let’s just hang out”. I hoped that I’d be able to get off with the Klub Fukk girl the following night when I could focus better, but sadly it was not to be. Still, it’s not like I wasn’t goddamn busy enough that weekend.

Plus I wasn’t even consistent with my ‘too distracted to get off with anyone else’ strategy. I recognised #197 from the radical drag workshop that afternoon, at which I’d managed to do little more than stand around awkwardly (apparently this is a theme), and we talked for a while, all about genderqueer stuff and radical politics and Mattilda, and then #197 gave me their e-mail address and we made out. I guess this continued to happen intermittently even after #150 showed up, I mean she was occupied with someone else some of the time as well.

The following evening I was hungover, dazed, and had just managed to experience my first panic attack in years, which I was less than thrilled about. #150 had spent the night with me and then flown back to Rome and I didn’t know what to do with the contents of my head. Transfabulous was winding up with a cabaret. I talked to #197 in the interval, they said “You have to keep in touch, because you are AWESOME!” And I was happy about the enthusiasm because I couldn’t remember stuff too well, on account of being drunk. And they said, “I really enjoyed kissing you … I’m not sure if I want to kiss you again, I think it would be better if we were platonic” and I thought: hey, great articulation of boundaries! That worked for me too. That was something I figured I should bookmark for future reference.

#196

While I was still in the middle of my unhelpful crush on #193, #196 was enduring an unhelpful crush of her own. We took to updating one another with our woes and small triumphs. We opened up to each other and admitted just how batshit crazy, twelve, or otherwise stupid we were feeling about each respective car crash. “Has he e-mailed you back yet?” she’d ask, and I’d feel validated that someone else actually cared, given that the whole saga was starting to bore even me.

On a Saturday night, I organised dinner at a restaurant to say goodbye to a colleague who was leaving. The restaurant was conveniently near my own flat, and the pub we subsequently retired to was conveniently even closer. #196 had no affiliation to my work, but we’d been texting that evening and I invited her to join us at the pub. Despite the recent surge in crush-related communications, we’d only met in person a couple of times, and she warned me that she was already tipsy and liable to be lecherous. We were talking about writing, and crushes and relationships and sex. I said, do you want to know a secret, the last time I was in here I made out with #191, and #196 high-fived me. And then, when everyone else had disappeared outside for a smoke, she said I just want to kiss you right now. So we did.

Did you know that pulling someone in front of all your colleagues doesn’t necessarily qualify as suave?

Closing time and those of us remaining headed to my flat, where I dug out my leftover birthday champagne and #196 drunkenly mauled me and then there was a mass exodus due to a collective feeling that she and I maybe needed some space to ourselves.

In the heat of the moment, she blurted out the L-word, just like #194 who’d freaked me out the previous week, but #196 had already told me that she says stupid things like that when she’s drunk, so I let it go. And in the morning we lay there at great length, talking, it was good. She wasn’t a drunken mess any more and she was entertaining and cool. A song by #193 had been playing in my head and I had been worrying that I was thinking about him too much, and then eventually the song got more distant and I thought no, it’s cool being here.

#195

I had just met #195 for the first time that night. I’d found him in the bar after the Eurovision and I recognised him from a café I’d been at earlier in the day, and #184 knew him a bit. Plus he was clearly not insane like #194, which was a blessed relief. I don’t really remember how come we wound up kissing, but okay. He left the party a couple minutes before me, and I found him along the street. It was a long walk home and we paused frequently to get off and he said presumably filthy things in Polish. I wound up with hickeys, again – seriously, does anybody else over the age of fifteen get them, or is it just me? The sky was getting light and the birds were singing and my couchsurfers had been safely tucked up in bed for hours when I tiptoed into my flat.

#194

The saga with #193 was still underway come Eurovision time. Which is when I should have twigged that we were going nowhere, because he was adamant that it was the worst thing in the world ever, and refused to watch so much as a three-minute performance on YouTube. Clearly I could never have a meaningful relationship with someone who was so misled: I realise this now.

His aversion meant that he missed out on the joy that is Laka. Who, incidentally, is welcome to make a guest appearance in my blog, if anyone can sort me out with an introduction. Thanks.

Anyway, #193 was out of town that weekend, and after subjecting my bemused non-European couchsurfers to the spectacle, I got drunk in a bar on Leith Walk, then wound up at a party in Morningside. The party turned out to be weird. It was in an impressive poncey sort of new-build house and there were all ages there. It wasn’t a studenty/twentysomething party, the sort that I usually went to – it was clearly someone’s family do, with retired people, and twelve-year-olds playing the drums, and middle-aged couples with charming laughs. Alice and #184 took one look and headed straight back to Leith. I found myself some wine, a woman told me I had just insulted the host, I found the host and apologised and she didn’t know what I was talking about, everything was fine. I met a boy who was related to whoever was holding the party. He was cute and he demonstrated an interest in me from the moment we met, but that got weird. WEIRD. He was telling me I was cool, but I wasn’t sure why he thought so, because we didn’t find out all that much about each other. Eventually I kissed him because I am suggestible and opportunistic; by this point, I had the sense that his aunts and uncles were delighted to see we’d hit it off. And then he wanted me to spend the night with him: no sex, he said, he just wanted to be with me. I started to say no, to make polite excuses. Why? he asked. But I love you! he exclaimed. I AM SERIOUS HE FUCKING SAID THAT. Alarm bells started to deafen me and I excused myself, told him sorry but he was being too full-on, found the acquaintance who’d brought me to the party and held a quick conference in Spanish. Someone poured me some more wine, weird wine. My acquaintance and I found ourselves doing a performance of 500 Miles, me singing the same verse over and over again because I’d forgotten the rest of it, and then I wandered into the living-room, nobody else there, karaoke all set up with Alice Cooper’s Poison all ready to go, so I performed it with possibly no witnesses. #195 was leaving. I think I kissed him and I think #194 came over and got territorial and I said, actually you know what, I’m going to go home. The next week I thought I saw him in the centre of town and I avoided like hell.

#193

I met #193 when his band was supporting #207’s. #184 and I liked them a lot, so we spoke to him afterwards. He gave me a free CD and we had a couple of drinks. I got the impression that he was maybe Interested, but maybe I read it wrong. And me, I thought he was cool but if there was a crush I didn’t reciprocate it.

We swapped some e-mails after that and wound up drinking together on the night of the IDAHO gig. A friend of #185 and #192 got increasingly drunk and kept telling me that #193 was hot and that I should get off with him, and he and I both did our best to pretend this conversation wasn’t happening. After #192 made out with me, #193 and I said goodbye to the rest of them and I walked him over to his bike. I hadn’t talked to him enough all night. I said what happens now and he said I have no idea. Then I kissed him. Then I walked home alone.

I did a total bit flip on this one. It seemed to be a new kind of foreshadowing: one in which I didn’t even know my own mind. The following day, I sent him a disclaimer about how even the vaguest idea of dating is akin to getting married on my fear of commitment scale. Nevertheless, I secretly found myself thinking back to that night rather fondly. #193 responded that everything was fine and to chill out, leaving me feeling suitably anti-suave.

#192

I’d been to the IDAHO gig and then wound up drinking in Whistle Binkie’s till closing time with a few folks, including #185 and her girlfriend, #192. I tried to shock them.

“I have a job,” I said.

“That’s okay, you have a really worthy job.”

“Fine. I work with the police sometimes.”

“Well, we can see how you’d have to.”

“Okay … I have a mortgage.”

Gasps of horror. I sat back with my pint, satisfied.

After the pub shut, the others rummaged through bags left outside a charity shop while #192 pushed me against the wall and made out with me. I was a bit startled.

Then one night last year I went to QueerMutiny with #196 and got drunk, as is my wont. I mingled, danced with people, ate a cupcake somebody had found in a skip, and at the end of the night I offered to help clear up, but I was too hammered so my contribution basically consisted of holding something for a minute. I made out with #192, I guess, and took her home to crash at my place, on account of her living in a tree. We got off but it’s blurry, and she was pretty rough, and, okay, usually if it’s rough then I’m the one who’s making it so. I’m okay with switching sometimes, but this was kind of too rough. Ow.

I lost my earring in the process, and the next day Alice greeted me with “OMG, what happened to your neck?” Although you’d think she would know by now.

#191

#191 came round for dinner. I made sweetcorn cakes with grilled tomato and salad. It was ambitious and impressive. #191 rolled a joint, accidentally dropped it in her glass of water, warmed it over the cooker, dropped it in her glass of water again, started over. It was the last of her hash. We stood out on the balcony and watched the rain as she smoked and tried to take a close-up photograph of a spider. We went through two bottles of wine. She’d never heard of the Eurovision and I showed her various highlights on YouTube. I explained the art of foreshadowing. We talked about queer stuff, gender stuff, writing, people, and it felt good to get to know somebody I clicked with so well. Which is to say, I click with lots of people but I loved how her take on things was similar to mine, how she got some things in a way that maybe some other friends might not. We went to a nearby pub for more wine and the bartender mistook my ten pound note for a twenty and gave me change accordingly and I decided not to mention it to him. We talked about sex, made out across the table and then again in the street. A straight couple were walking past, we weren’t even making out at the time, and the man said “Wait a minute, here are two lovers,” something like that, wanted to shake our hands. I’m never impressed by that kind of thing but I take my lead from whoever I’m with and the women I’m kissing are always friendlier than me: #191 humoured him. They went away, we made out some more, kissed goodbye. It was the only night we kissed. “Go easy on me,” she said later when I’d started my blog project, but I don’t even have to try given that she’s so consistently super.