Days - 14 Days
Hours - 336 Hours
Minutes - 20,160 Minutes
Seconds - 1,209,600 Seconds
Hours - 336 Hours
Minutes - 20,160 Minutes
Seconds - 1,209,600 Seconds
It's a lifetime, unless you're sunning yourself on a golden stretch of loose glass grain, cheap booze and ciggies in hand, loose women in bikinis wiggling about past you, flashing you fuck-me-eyes.
Good times to be had, no doubt.
Sample some local culture, be fascinated by the customs and attitudes. You call your parents and tell them that you are well, the food is great (even though it's purely full English breakfast that you've been living on), and that yes, you are being careful, sex-wise.
You feel like a different person - am I right?
We are all just whores on holiday, playful carefree nymphs cavorting in Caesar's palace.
No comebacks, no fall-out. Just hedonism.
Beautiful simplicity, really. No morals, nobody to answer to, no conscience. Just like ancient Rome.
But when it came to 2 weeks in the Cubes, 14 days was like a life sentence.
It was an unforgiving and merciless place to live when you felt down and out. No sympathy oozed from it's damp, diseased walls. Only an unyielding and relentless blank reflection of your own pain and depression.
The routine of work, sleep, calling round to your mum's on a Sunday to show her you were in one piece, watching shit TV, reading the same passage from the same well-worn book, listening to the same music which sounded stale, even though you loved it initially - was getting very
....Old.
However hard I tried, nothing could distract me from Linda's knock-back.
Or her continued silence.
I was angry at the world, pissed off, on edge.
I hated myself for my own stupidity and gullibility, cursing my vulnerabilities and my naively open, honest attitude. Too often I'd been manipulated and played with like a beat-up Rubik's cube, led on, sent up.
I'd been too blind until it was too late.
No longer, I resolved bitterly as I sat in my living room, my face furrowed and lined with rage and pain.
I tried to analyse what was wrong with me, why she had treated me so. What drove me to madness was that I couldn't identify exactly what I had done to make her stab me through my fucking heart.
I never beat her, spat at her, stole from her, called her names. I never disrespected her or her family or friends. There wasn't a moment when I didn't worship her and think the best for - and of - her. I just wanted to make her happy. It beggared my self-belief that she would ever want to lose someone who cared about her so, by callously and contemptuously throwing me away like so much human garbage.
I would have died of personal shame to do that to someone with such flippant arrogance and ignorance. It was beyond my way of thinking, my upbringing, my soul. It was the reptilian, predatory nature of her behaviour that truly chilled - or was it boiled? - my blood.
Here was a female...someone who could bear children and nurture them, look after them.
The progenitor of man.
The Eve to my Adam.
And she was that shallow and cold....that's what really sickened me.
During that time, I would roll about in my bed, agonising night after night after night after night after night.
Having a keen mind can be such a burden.
I fantasised every one of those 14 lost nights about how, whilst I lost sleep and sanity, she would be in all likelihood, laughing herself to sleep with a twisted sense of smug self-satisfaction.
I would convince myself that her game plan all along had been to soften me up for the kill, make me lower my guard before she knifed me.
My moment of introspection was broken suddenly by the creaking of my door, which I had forgotten to lock.
Dean's annoyingly good-looking head was wedged between the door and it's frame, timidly peering in with his Superman-blue eyes.
"Yer alright lad?..Ain't seen yer forra while......Not up to anything are yer? Ain't disturbin' yer am I, lad...?"
I shook my head and exhaled loudly. I had to stop thinking to myself so much, I reasoned as I woke up. It would be the death of me.
"Nah...not at all, Deano...Please, come in and sit down, have a can..."
I waved him inside, pointing to an empty armchair.
"A bit of company would be....great..." I mumbled, sipping on my cold cup of tea.
"So...What yer been up to, Frederico lad? Any news?" Dean chirped with his affable, harsh-yet-familiarly warm Norris Green accent.
I needed to share my problems with someone.
Dean was always with different birds, and never seemed to get stressed about them. I knew he wasn't a close mate at that time...but given my emotional state and the gravity of the situation, maybe he could be of help....
"Dean.......you ever been messed up over a girl? I mean, really had your head done in by one?"
He leaned forwards to me, perched on the end of his seat, his eyes widening in that freakish way, expanding to saucers.
"Shuuuruup lad....All the time lad...had murder, PURE murder with some of 'em.....why, what's wrong?
"Let me explain.....Stick with me, it's gonna take a while" I said, not only drawing breath but dipping into the most twisted memories I had locked in my skull......
Posts
