by AnonYMous
‘Remember when you fucked ___?’
Mum looked at me, then looked back at her friend.
‘I did not fuck him,’ she said to me.
‘You did, you lying bitch!’ screeched her friend. ‘You said he was inside you on the sofa, here, on the sofa and you fucked him and then you pushed him off you.’
My Mum went for her. I went for my Mum. I’m small, but she is smaller and I pulled her off easily.
They were screaming at each other. I took Mum into the conservatory and asked her again who this fucking woman was.
‘I met her at the pub.’
Great.
There was a sudden bang and we turned around to see Mum’s friend making a quick exit, carrying 3 bottles of dry white and forty Superkings Lights.
‘THAT FUCKING BITCH HAS TAKEN MY WINE AND FAGS!’ Mum screamed, ‘RIGHT, I AM RINGING THE POLICE.’
She rang the police. When they showed up and I answered the door, the man that I had spoken to earlier was back in his car, sitting outside the house. My Mum saw him. She invited him in.
Both her and this man talked to the police about Mum’s Friend. She was an alcoholic. She’d been arrested because she was beating up her husband and threatening him and he didn’t know what to do. My Mum sat there the whole time telling him, ‘I know you didn’t hit her, I know you didn’t.’
I sat there the whole time thinking what a fucking two-faced cunt she was.
The police and man left and I told my Mum that I was sick of this, I was sick of trying to help her. It wasn’t the first time, (and although I didn’t know it at the time, the last) but I told her I’d had enough.
‘Oh, well, aren’t you your Father’s daughter? You ungrateful little bitch. Do you know what your Father did to me?’ She then listed a lot of horrible things, all of which I’d heard before, none of which I believed were true.
I asked her if she wanted to know why, when she left, my brother and I stayed with my Dad. She was silent, looking at me expectantly.
I told her.
She scowled at me.
‘Get the fuck out of my house, get the FUCK OUT.’
And so I went.
So for Mother’s Day I send her a card. It means that I don’t get that phone call telling me what a horrible bitch of a daughter I am, and I guess it probably makes her feel better and forgiven for some of the stuff she has done. My motivation for sending that card is selfishness: I want an easy life.
The Dice Man
The great thing about doing a course at university where you’re supposed to spend a large percentage of your time reading shit to do with assignments, is that you can use basically all of that time doing whatever the fuck you feel like.
I used to use it not to read policy and procedure and journals, but to read stuff that people had given to me, stuff that they had enjoyed themselves and thought that I might like too.
It was one of these days that a friend of mine gave me a copy of The Dice Man. ‘You will like this,’ he said ‘but you will definitely become obsessed with it, because you’re just like that, so don’t read it if you have anything important to do for the next couple of weeks.’
As someone who had recently skipped eight days of lectures to complete Resident Evil 4, I immediately embarked on the story of Luke Rhinehart and The Dice Life.
For those who haven’t read it, The Dice Man is about a psychiatrist who develops a kind of therapy using dice to live life by chance, rather than by what is familiar. I read it, and (I assume) like many others before me decided that The Dice Life was what had been missing in my world.
Rather than doing what came naturally, I began to tentatively use dice to decide what I was going to do. For example, I’d roll the dice in the morning: an odd number meant that I would get up early, have breakfast and go for a long walk; an even number would mean that I’d stay in bed all day masturbating. You get the idea.
At first I only gave myself nice options, but after a couple of days I decided to brave it, and (as happens in the book) put options into the dice that I didn’t much fancy doing. I had one particularly bad day, which pissed me off so much that it ended my life by the dice. Here it is:
I woke up and rolled the dice. Evens: shower and get dressed. Odds: stay in pyjamas.
I rolled odd. Fair enough. I wandered downstairs in my smelly pyjamas and sat with my friend (the one who had recommended The Dice Man).
After a little while I realised I was quite hungry. Out comes the dice. A one or four: eat that steak I bought yesterday; a two or five: eat the pack of mushrooms I’d bought for no reason (I do not like mushrooms); a three or six: Don’t eat. Roll the dice again for food in two hours.
I rolled a six. Fucking dice.
After an hour I was really very hungry. I decided to check with the dice whether it really wanted me to wait another hour before asking again: Yes.
Cunt.
So there I am, sat starving and stinking and the door goes. And of course, because I smell and look like shit it is someone that I quite fancy, bringing round comics for me to read.
‘What are you doing in pyjamas?’ they asked.
Now, when you fancy someone like I did this person it’s probably not a good idea to tell them that you have just read some crazy book and have decided to live your life by chance and that you are starving and you haven’t changed your knickers yet today. But I didn’t know what to say. So I went in to the kitchen and rolled the dice.
‘Someone was sick on me last night,’ I told them. ‘I don’t have any clean clothes.’
‘Riiiight,’ they replied. ‘Bye then.’ And off they went.
I was pretty pissed off by this point. And my friend (who did my fucking head in at the best of times) came in from their day in the library.
‘We’re all going out later, so-and-so’s parents have put money behind the bar for his birthday. Are you coming?’
I very calmly went upstairs and rolled the dice.
I came back downstairs.
‘I can’t,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘I am going to write my essay on Freud and Feminism.’
FUCKING DICE.
The dice didn’t let me eat again when I asked. And all of my friends went out and got very drunk and had probably one of the best nights ever. I sat in writing a fucking essay, like the dice had told me to.
Back in my student days I was a moderate smoker. Halfway through my essay I ran out of cigarettes.
I will buy the most expensive cigarettes I can see.
I will buy the cheapest cigarettes I can see.
I will buy no cigarettes and not smoke for the next two days.
I will buy rolling tobacco and rizla.
I will buy cigar skins and tobacco.
I will buy pipe tobacco and smoke that.
I rolled a three.
‘MOTHERFUCKER!’ I screamed at the dice, throwing it out of the window. But, I had to do what the dice said. And lived out my last couple of days of The Dice more hungry and pissed off than I’ve ever been in my life.
I gave the dice life up after that, and was only reminded of it a few months later when my friends all wanted to play Monopoly one evening, and one friend looking through the box said: ‘Shit, where have the fucking dice gone?’
The Lord of the Rings
I didn’t read The Lord of the Rings until I was well into university. It was when the films started coming out that I thought maybe I should give them a whirl. You know that bit in friends where Joey doesn’t know who Gandalf is and Chandler and Ross are flabbergasted and ask him, ‘Didn’t you read Lord of the Rings in High School?’ to which Joey replies, ‘I had sex in High School.’ I think that’s probably also the reason why it took me so long to get round to The Lord of The Rings.
My brother bought me The Hobbit for my birthday, and then the boxed set of The Lord of the Rings for Christmas. I took my box set back to my student house with me after Christmas and started to read.
My housemate, who has cropped up
a lot throughout these stories, partly because he’s a fucking idiot and partly because I fucking adore him came and sat downstairs one day while I was reading. He used to like being in the room while I read because I would talk to myself while I did. Key phrases included: ‘No FUCKING way!’; ‘God, [insert character’s name here] is such a cunt’; ‘I would ride that wanker into next week’; ‘I HATE PEOPLE THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE, THIS LITERALLY IS ALL ABOUT EVERYONE WHO I HATE’, etc etc.
So there I was, sat on the sofa reading while he sat in an armchair on my right. If I remember correctly at the time he was reading a book called Orcs. (‘It’s about orcs,’ he’d said when I asked.)
I got to the bit where Frodo finds the ring. He puts it on and turns invisible.
‘No FUCKING way!’ I shouted. ‘I want one of these fucking rings! It’s fucking brilliant! Matey’s fucking invisible!’
‘Yeah but you don’t want one really do you?’ My friend replied.
‘Of course I fucking want one, did you not hear me? Invisibility ring. Best thing ever.’
‘Yeah, but it turns you bad in the end, doesn’t it.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, look at Gollum. He’s fucked.’
‘WHAT?’
‘The ring turns you bad. You know this. You’ve seen the films.’
‘I HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILMS YOU FUCKING BELLEND.’
‘… Oh …’
‘How much of this fucking book have you fucking ruined for me?’
‘Basically all of it.’
‘Great. I hate you.’
I threw the book at his head. It hit him in the head. Remarkable, really, because of all the stuff that I’d ever thrown at him over the years that was the only thing that I was on target with.
He screamed out. ‘I’M SORRY! It doesn’t really turn him bad! It’s an awesome ring. Awe. Some.’
I glared at him for a while, then continued reading. After that I never talked aloud while I was reading again, and I recommend that you do that same because the chances are that some fucking dickarse is going to ruin everything for you.
To be honest though, while I read the rest of The Lord of the Rings I didn’t really feel too put out that he’d fucked everything. Lucky he never did it with Harry Potter or I would have stabbed him. He lives to tell the tale.
Trainspotting
A long time ago I met a Scottish boy. As well as having the hottest accent I’ve ever heard, he was also incredibly beautiful.
The first time he stayed at my house overnight we didn’t get out of bed for three days. We didn’t eat or sleep, just lay there talking and fucking. He’d write me letters every day and hide them around the house for me to find. He was romantic and I adored him.
One time he came to stay over, he brought his favourite book with him. Trainspotting. We sat up all night and he read it to me. I had no fucking idea what it was about at the time, I didn’t understand how Scottish he’d suddenly become reading Trainspotting. I just sat and listened.
The next day we got up and went for lunch at a Moroccan café nearby. It was raining so we’d ran there both sharing the same umbrella. We ordered green tea and sat and watched people around us.
When we got back from lunch we sat down on my bed and he told me about the time he tried to kill himself. He tied bits of scrap metal to his legs and jumped in the sea, hoping that the weight of said metal would just gently pull him down to the bottom where he could stay. A man had seen him jump in, and he’d only been in the water a minute or two when he was pulled out and taken to hospital.
To say I was a bit shocked is an understatement. How could he have not told me that? I was confused, but talked to him calmly. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about, I said.
He told me that when I went for a shower in the mornings he cried. He cried because he’d made me so dirty that I needed to get out of bed straight away and wash myself.
Fucking hell.
He went into the bathroom and I sat, waiting for him to come back, thinking about what I could say to make it all better. He was gone a long time.
When he came back he was crying. I waited for him to calm down. That’s when he told me that he was bulimic. He’d been bulimic since he was a teenager. Since his Mum died, and he’d found her dead in her flat when he’d gone round to visit.
The rest of the time we spent together that weekend was a lot of him talking and me listening. And him crying and me comforting. It was fine. I felt awful for him, and I hated anyone that made him sad. I hated his dead Mum and his violent Dad and his friends who didn’t have time to talk to him.
Then he went away, went home. While he was there he phoned me every day and talked and cried, told me how much he hated himself. Then he ran out of money.
He needed to borrow £300. I didn’t have £300. I told him. He went fucking mental. He was too far away for me to go and comfort him in person, so, not seeing anything else I could do, I transferred money from my credit card into my account, and paid the bill that he couldn’t afford to pay.
‘I love you,’ he said.
And then I didn’t hear from him for two weeks.
When I did hear from him, it was a text. He told me he’d gone out for a walk, late one night and that he’d collapsed. He’d been taken to hospital and had just woken up. He missed me.
And then I didn’t hear from him for a month. And when I did hear from him, it was on an old social networking site that we both used to be on, that he used to blog on a bit as a kind of online diary. He had written about a girl that he had shared a lot with. A girl that he loved.
It was me, obviously it was me. Except I kept reading, and it wasn’t me at all. It was his girlfriend.
I emailed him and told him that I needed my fucking money back. He didn’t reply. His girlfriend did, though. She told me that she knew what had happened with me and him, and it was a ‘mistake’ on his part. They were in love and I needed to leave them both alone. He didn’t owe me anything, what a manipulative bitch I was for suggesting that he would ever take money from me.
And that was that.
I heard through a mutual friend that he moved to London a little while ago. I wonder what he’s doing, and if he’s still fucked up, or if he was ever actually fucked up.
I still have his copy of Trainspotting. It reminds me of how sick people can be.
Lolita
If you have ever got a train anywhere in your life you will know how fucking expensive they are these days. It is really quite dreadful recently, with a day return from Manchester to Newcastle costing five pints of your own blood, and an open return from London to Edinburgh costing your first born child, as well as both of your thumbs if you are travelling before 10.30am.
This is why a lot of people starting travelling by the wonder known as the Megabus. The Megabus is like a train in that it travels between major cities, but is not like a train in that it is so cheap that you can buy a ticket to wherever you want to go without having to part with anything other than a small amount of money – in some cases as little as a quid.
I used to live in a pretty big city in the North of England and travel down to London fairly regularly. As I was a student and had almost no money, the Megabus was the sensible option for my travel.
I went to the bus station at stupid o’clock in the morning with my printed-out ticket in hand and boarded the bus. These buses are usually full to bursting, but every so often there are a few spaces. I sat down in a window seat and hoped that no one would sit next to me.
In my bag, as always, I was carrying a book for the journey. Lolita. A wonderful classic and probably one of my favourite books. I was about halfway through. I took it out of my bag, put my bag on the floor and laid Lolita on my lap while I waited for the rest of the passengers to get on and the bus to leave for London.
Two women got on the bus. They were loud and annoying. They were wearing bright, kind-of sporty clothes and were both caked in makeup. One was carrying a baby. The
baby was crying. I knew that the one with the baby was going to sit in the seat next to me.
They were moving towards me, the baby still screaming, the women without the baby now talking about some wanker that she had given a blowjob because she was ‘on the blob’.
‘I’LL SIT HERE AND YOU CAN SIT THERE, YEAH? WHAT WAS YOU TALKING ABOUT BEFORE? OH YEAH, I LIKE THAT KIND OF MOOSIC, I LIKE ANY MOOSIC WIV A GOOD BEAT.’
She got out a phone and played something that sounded like a runaway train crossed with a factory explosion, with some cunt shouting ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ over the top. If I had a knife, I would’ve called my Dad, apologised, and ended it all there.
As I had predicted, the woman with the baby plonked herself down in the seat next to me. The baby stopped crying and started looking at me. I am not a fan of babies, so I ignored it and turned my head to the window. The bus doors closed and we were on our way.
The women were quite loud for another ten minutes. Then they both quieted down – must’ve been the exertion of being a complete pair of cunts that had made them so suddenly tired. I was still staring out of the window, keen not to look either of them in the eye lest I accidentally punched them.
I felt something hitting me in the shoulder. I turned round. The fucking baby was punching me. Its Mum looked at me and gave me an ‘isn’t that adorable’ look. I silently wished them both dead. Then, before I knew it, the fucking child had swept its awful little paw down to my lap and snatched my copy of Lolita. It held it in both its hands, a look of triumph on its face.
I looked to the Mum. She looked at the baby and the book. She took the book off the baby. I waited for her to hand it back to me.
‘Don’t take things off strangers!’ she told it, as if I’d fucking handed it to the little shit. Then, instead of giving it back to me, she turned it over and read the blurb. The look on her face turned to horror. She opened the book and began to read.
I didn’t know what to do, so like an idiot, I sat there with my mouth hanging open watching her reading my book. What kind of dick doesn’t give you your fucking book back? And now she was fucking reading it. What a cunt.