#187

When I first met #187 I guess I essentially thought: girlfriend material. Which is saying a lot given how I am generally scared of commitment and everyone I’ve ever gotten into a relationship with feels like an exception to the rule. But the thing about #187 was that, not only was she of course hot, she was also smart and cool and we had a bunch in common and I was like: how come this person has been living in Edinburgh and I didn’t get to hear about it before now?

I was adjusting to being single again. Having made out with #184, #185 and #186 in quick succession, I figured I was up for more of this sort of thing, but I decided I really wasn’t ready to have sex with anyone again yet. Nope. Definitely too early to even think about that. Definitely needed time. I was absolutely convinced of this, and when I’m that convinced of something it can only ever be viewed as foreshadowing. Within a week, I was having blurry but nonetheless hot lesbionic sex with #187.

I mean, for the longest time I didn’t know how it had happened. We’d gone out for dinner with Alice and Eithne, and then drinks, and then I had gone back to #187’s place by myself to, you know, drink tea or whatever, and then … yeah. I couldn’t for the life of me remember who had made the first move, which felt like crucial information to have given that I actually had an ongoing crush on her. I woke up in her bed the next morning, and I remember we drank lemon, ginger & mango tea, and we lay there talking and I peeked out the window and saw snow swirling around like crazy, and it was kind of beautiful.

#186

There was some sort of confusing interlude after QueerMutiny ended that night and #186 and I had a brief discussion about where to find an after-party. I’d seen him at ACE before but we’d never really been introduced and I had thought of him as a bit standoffish and unfriendly, not that I had a whole lot of information to go on. I liked that he was wearing a skirt, though, and I guess he just got too close to me, which is dangerous when I am that drunk. I don’t know if he had been aiming to kiss me or not but that’s what wound up happening. And then I went off with my friends and we found ourselves at an awful party with the wrong kind of people and everybody was unfriendly except for one woman who I thought was insane and then we found a different party and then eventually Alice fainted. Oh and I never saw #186 again.

#185

I was standing drunkenly by the dancefloor, watching people dancing or maybe watching a band, I don’t know. #185 was standing next to me, maybe we talked for a while, and then all of a sudden she was making out with me. I was a little startled. It was the same night that #184 kissed me for the first time and it wasn’t like the whole of Edinburgh had received a memo about my newly single status, but somehow that night progressed much like the olden days without any attempts on my part to make anything happen.

After a while I stumbled outside feeling sick and threw up in a bus shelter, the bus shelter outside the Forest that probably sees a whole lot of vomit on a regular basis (“if there’s not someone playing a bongo drum in it,” says my friend Gregor). #120’s ex-flatmate turned up, I hadn’t seen him in ages, and he had a conversation with me for a while before he realised he was standing in my sick. Later, back inside, #185 returned to make out with me some more and I warned her I might taste of sick, but she didn’t seem to mind. We are classy people.

The next weekend I ran into her at a magazine launch in Glasgow. We talked for a while and I was relieved to hear she had done a brief stint in prison because that meant she was likely to be over eighteen. She had in fact just turned twenty. She was ten years younger than me and she was complaining about how she was so old now. She lived in a tree on a protest site. She showed me how she was scamming Megabus and travelling for free, and I was glad that she knew about Brian Souter and Section 28, but it was kind of a headfuck to think that back when I was sitting in pubs with my friends using up all the free postcards so we could overload his freepost address, #185 was busy being twelve. Anyway, I found myself making out with her again.

This has since happened a couple more times, usually at QueerMutiny when I’ve been ludicrously drunk, so it’s kind of blurry.

#184

“Nine, are you a good kisser?”

It was about a month since I’d split up with #182. #184 and I were at QueerMutiny, drinking at a table near the dancefloor.

“I don’t know. I mean, people have said so before, but I’ve just been kissing the same person for two years, so I don’t know if that’s affected my technique.” #184 lunged forward and kissed me before I knew what was happening.

“You’re all right,” he concluded.

#184 was my partner in crime. He volunteered at my workplace and we wound up hanging out all the time. We got drunk together a lot and he’d make pronouncements about how we had THIS CONNECTION and we REALLY UNDERSTOOD EACH OTHER. After that night, he’d lunge at me and make out with me on numerous occasions. Our song was Pass This On by The Knife. We’d get drunk and dance to it and he’d inevitably pause and demand, “Nine, who is leading?” I guess it was me.

It is good to cultivate friendships with people who are bigger train wrecks than you are. You can then trick everybody into believing that you are the responsible one.

#184 helped me with my Polish; he gave me a list of useful phrases.

On(a) jest gorący/gorąca
He/she is hot

Zpałam z nim/nią
I slept with him/her

Nie mów o tym teraz
Don’t talk about this right now

His stories went like this: “And then: blackout. And then: it was 6am and I was in a youth hostel. I don’t know how I got there.” The pair of us regularly navigated our way through Edinburgh in a drunken haze, making friends with everybody, forgetting what happened two minutes ago, and seeking people to get off with. The difference between us was that I had some kind of homing mechanism whereby I always seemed to make it back to my flat unscathed, even if I didn’t know how (one time, he apparently put me in a rickshaw). #184, on the other hand, would suddenly find himself stumbling around a housing estate far from the city centre, 2pm, still drunk, and without his jacket or wallet. Every time we went out somewhere, one of us would text the other the following day: “What happened?” Together, we were an advertisement for the perils of alcohol. “I’ve got almost everything,” he crowed one morning after, as if this was an achievement, “except my bandana and my hat.” If I expressed an inclination to go home before the very end of the party, he’d look at me like I’d just shot his dog.

Here’s another thing about #184: his attention span.

- Nine, how are you?
- I’m ill.
- What are you doing tonight?
- I’m staying in because I’m ill.
- Oh, well there is a party on Niddrie Street, do you want to come?
- Thanks, but no. I’m ill.
- Oh, you’re ILL?!

After all the late nights and lunacy, something happened. #184 fell in love. He moved down to England in July to live with his boyfriend.

This is the problem with Edinburgh: people come and go. I get used to it.

Still, they’re not a million miles away. They’ve welcomed me into their home. If even one of us could get a proper income, we’d see more of each other. I don’t think our chapter’s closed, it’s just on hold for the time being.

#183

Why have I taken so goddamn long to update this? Well, I’ve been busy. This includes being busy kissing someone a lot, which I guess we might talk about in due course. We’ll see.

Anyway, back to chronology: it was May 2006 and I spent eight days in Helsinki and Copenhagen. My friend Will had advised me that I was all burned out and needed a holiday, minimum two weeks, but instead I opted for the high-speed version. I hung out with #183 my last night in Copenhagen. I had thought he wasn’t even interested in meeting up with me when I was in town, but it turned out my e-mail had gone straight to his spam folder, meaning I hadn’t needed to have a mini-drama about him no longer wanting to be my friend. (This modern age is rife with new ways for us to feel bad about ourselves.) We met up along with #130, who was hosting me, and a couple other friends, and went to the Ghost Mice gig at Ungdomshuset. #183, being rather a snappy dresser with a taste for the finer things in life, looked the most out of place; I had my usual ‘15-year-old boy joins the Black Bloc’ fashion aesthetic going on so for once I felt like I kind of maybe fitted in. Ghost Mice were endearing and super and I was delighted that one of my trips had coincided with a gig by a band I was really into.

Afterwards, we went back to #130’s place to drink. #183 kissed me because he’d already kissed #128 and #141 in Berlin and it was only logical to complete the circle. He attempted to dip me like we were in a classic film or something, and I fell on the floor.

Other than a brief liaison with #128 a couple of months previously, when she was passing through Edinburgh, this was the only time I kissed anyone else during my two-year relationship with #182. Here’s the cool thing: for a change, it wasn’t hard to stick to monogamy. The difference was that this time, monogamy was a conscious choice rather than a default setting, and I informed him of my choice when I got back from Copenhagen. I’d been thinking of him a lot while I was away, and I realised that I just wasn’t interested in anyone else. And that actually felt healthy rather than needy – I’d experienced a co-dependent relationship before and I was damned if that was going to happen again. This time, I was in a relationship that was not only a success in general, but I wasn’t wading into monogamy half-heartedly. My friend Lucy subsequently commented that she saw us as practising what she termed ‘radical monogamy’. And I guess it was, in that it felt like a new perspective; instead of going along with someone else’s script, we considered our relationship in terms of what worked best for each of us. I guess maybe it was kind of a eureka moment to realise that I hadn’t paid so much attention to that in my previous relationships.

#182

Leonard left the UK for good a few days into 2006. I went to his leaving do, got surprisingly drunk on not a whole lot of wine, cried, and got hauled back to #110’s place where I slept in my clothes. In the morning I walked into town with unbrushed hair to meet Leonard for a last brunch at the Blue Moon. Then I helped him load his luggage onto the train, gave him an excessive number of awkward hugs, and walked away crying.

I cried all fucking day. I could not believe I was capable of so much crying. I had never experienced anything like it. Maybe it was a bereavement thing, maybe that meant I felt different types of loss more profoundly now, I mean it hadn’t been that long since I’d lost my mum, seven months, and anyway nobody gets to say how long it takes before you feel normal again. Leonard had been my partner in crime for the past year, and he’d been understanding when I felt sad and he’d provided marvellous distractions and adventures as well as some stability while my mum’s health deteriorated. I remembered feeling unsure, back when we first started hanging out, whether he’d really want to see me three days in a row; I didn’t want it to feel like overkill. But we hadn’t run out of things to say to each other, we were always comfortable in one another’s company, and now I was afraid I wouldn’t experience that with someone again. Maybe I would just shut myself in my flat and mope my way through the January blues alone. Fuck.

I couldn’t shut myself in for long, though. The very next day, I stomped off to my first editors’ meeting as #177’s replacement. I did not want to go. They were going to be a bunch of pretentious hipsters, I was sure, and I didn’t want to be a fucking editor anyway. I was going to find someone to take over from me as soon as I possibly could. I didn’t want any goddamn responsibility, and anyway I figured I was just too fucked up right now to do this sort of thing.

Of course, it didn’t turn out that way. Everyone was really nice and friendly. I started to feel like this was maybe something I was interested in doing. I made plans to review films and music, as well as work on my own section. And plus that was the day I met #182.

#181

It’s dumb, but it’s no dumber than many of my preceding encounters: I kissed #181 just because it was New Year and I was damned if I was going to attend a New Year party without kissing someone.

Even so, I was already well-versed in the anti-climactic nature of New Year. I was at #166’s party and I guess I wasn’t really in the mood, and I wound up drinking gin with orange juice. Nobody wanted to make out, which was fine because I wasn’t really interested in anybody, but I was still being kind of predatory anyway, trying to ingratiate myself to a really drunk girl who wasn’t my type in real life. Not cool. But I did bond with some folks and then when I was going home I drank whisky with some strangers on the street.

I had an acquaintance back then who said how you spent New Year was basically a trailer for how your year would go, so I got halfway superstitious about that and I was like: goddamn I need some action. I didn’t want another curse of January.

#181 was a boy from the Internet who’d come down from the highlands to have sex with Leonard. That’s all. I kissed him when we were saying goodbye. Beyond that my main recollection is when he asked what Leonard’s deepest fear was, and Leonard paused and reached deep into his soul and confessed, “Being alone, I guess,” and #181 said, “Huh,” and explained that his was being crushed by a fold-out bed.

#180

I felt weird in the days leading up to my twenty-eighth birthday. Kind of disconnected. Kind of like I was waiting for something. Leonard was going to leave the country in less than a month and I wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

It was my first birthday since losing my mum. I hadn’t called my dad in about two weeks. I didn’t know what to say to him: “well, I’m fine, I’ve been getting drunk and doing stupid things.” I resolved to make lists of things that were safe to report to him. But when I called him, it would remind me that my mum wasn’t there any more, and then I’d feel sad to think about him all alone, and then I’d make it worse by avoiding calling him.

I got a new tattoo for her. I had minor surgery. I had a dream about #129 contacting me and being all friendly like nothing ever happened. I had a crush on someone which swiftly came to feel utterly pointless. Frequently, I got waves of wanting to cry. It was cold and dark most of the time. I went to meetings at work and there was this woman whose voice drove me crazy and I spent a lot of time thinking about how it sounded like cold soup being slowly poured down a drain.

On my birthday I went out for dinner with Leonard and #110, and then we went to Planet Out and finally wound up in CC’s because we’d had copious amounts of alcohol and no longer knew any better. I ran into #180, who I’d met a few nights previously at a party at #108’s place. We bonded a lot, and he stuck around all night so I figured my company must’ve been okay. I was all excited because I reckoned he was going to be my new friend. Then I made out with him when I was leaving, and couldn’t remember afterwards whether it was hot or just dutiful, I mean dutiful on his part, I mean because I was basically like “Let’s make out!”, and that was dumb. I think he’s actively avoided me ever since, so I guess that says it all. I really was behaving like the anti-suave lately, I noted, though I couldn’t remember enough to discern whether I’d been really obnoxious or whether I was just suffering the hangover of the soul.

#179

My chronology is out of whack again, because #179 actually happened before #177 and #178, but I didn’t find out about him till later. This is because I barely have any recollection at all of the CAFDAB boys’ party. I knew I’d brought #28 along to it after he cooked dinner, and I remembered something about teasing some 20-year-old boy for knowing everything. That was about it. It had been a cold night and I didn’t remember anything about walking home singing, so I figured I’d eventually been shovelled into a taxi, which turned out to be right. When I woke up on the futon in my living-room – I’d moved into it for the winter because the bedroom was so goddamn cold – the light was still on and so was the halogen heater. That was about all I knew about my movements.

The CAFDAB boys told me a few weeks later that I’d actually wound up making out with the 20-year-old boy, but decided not to take him home with me because that would be weird. This was surprisingly smart of me! Especially given the subsequent interlude with #178.

I didn’t know anything else about #179 except that he had a cool name. I thought I remembered that he was quite likeable, and I had a sense that making out with him had been hot, but it wasn’t like I had any proper memories to go on. I never heard his name again, so I don’t know what became of him.

#178

I woke up with a hangover and slowly cast my mind back to the previous night. What had I done? Oh, I’d gone out for dinner with #110, and then we’d had a few drinks at Planet Out. What had I done after that? Presumably I’d just gone home. A nice simple night, I figured.

Actually, when we parted ways, #110 settled down to sleep in the doorway of a pet shop while I jumped in a taxi to go to an art student party that #166 was at. It was starting to come back to me now that I’d switched on my phone and found the text #166 had sent once I was already en route: “Full of wankers. Avoid!” Too late.

Head thumping, I struggled to piece together the rest of the night chronologically. Making a failed pass at #166; making out with #177. Okay, fine. Oh, yeah, and then there was this other boy I made out with too. Huh. Well, y’know, these things happen. I gradually remembered that the party was an eighties party and the boy was wearing a tracksuit and a sweatband and I’d said “Mark Knopfler!” and he’d had no idea what I was talking about because he was TOO YOUNG.

I’d left the party with Leonard, hadn’t I, so presumably going home had been quite straightforward, right? Except – my hazy recollection triumphantly delivered another flash – we’d somehow encountered that same boy wandering lost around Marchmont, so we’d taken him back to mine. Leonard had wanted to get off with him too, but me and the boy swiftly got busy again, so Leonard did the sensible thing and left us to it.