(Women’s knickers were a terrible disappointment to me when I embarked on my co-habiting career. I never really recovered from the shock of discovering that women do what we do: they save their best pairs for the nights when they know they are going to sleep with somebody. When you live with a woman, these faded, shrunken tatty M&S scraps suddenly appear on radiators all over the house; your lascivious schoolboy dreams of adulthood as a time when you are surrounded by exotic lingerie for ever and ever amen… those dreams crumble to dust.)
- Two
I know I’m being stupid, but I don’t want her coming to my shop. If she came into my shop, I might really get to like her, and then I’d be waiting for her to come in all the time, and then when she did come in I’d be nervous and stupid, and probably end up asking her out for a drink in some cack-handed roundabout way, and either she wouldn’t catch my drift, and I’d feel an idiot, or she’d turn me down flat, and I’d feel and idiot. And on the way home after the gig, I’m already wondering whether she’ll come tomorrow, and whether it will mean anything if she does, and if it does mean something, then which one of us it will something to, although Barry is probably a non-starter.
Fuck. I hate all this stuff. How old do you have to get before it stops?
- Four
I don’t really know why it matters so much. Ian could be better at talking than me, or cooking, or working, or house-work, or saving money, or earning money, or spending money, or understanding books or films; he could be nicer than me, better-looking, more intelligent, cleaner, more generous-spirited, more helpful, a better human being in any way you care to mention… and I wouldn’t mind. Really. I accept and understand that you can’t be good at everything, and I am tragically unskilled in some very important areas. But sex is different; knowing that a successor is better in bed is impossible to take, and I don’t know why.
- Five
It’s harder that I thought, though. London, eh? You might as well ask people if they’d like to take a year off and travel around the world with you as ask them if they’d like to nip out for a quick drink later on: later on means later on in the month, or the year, or the nineties, but never later on the same day. ‘Tonight?’ they all go, …
- Twenty-four
I can’t speak to Laura because she lives with somebody else and she calls from phone boxes and she pretends she doesn’t, and I can’t speak to Liz because she knows about the money and the abortion and me seeing someone else, and I can’t speak to Barry and Dick because they’re Barry and Dick, and I can’t speak to my friends because I don’t speak to my friends, and I can’t speak now because Laura’s father has died, and I just have to take it because otherwise I’m a bad guy, with the emphasis on guy, self-centred, blind and stupid. Well, I’m fucking not, not all the time, anyway, and I know this isn’t the right place to say so - I’m not that daft - but when am I allowed to?
- Twenty-six
‘Do you know that expression, “Time on his hand and himself on his mind”? That’s you.’
‘So what should I be doing?’
‘I don’t know. Something. Working. Seeing people. Running a scout troop, or running a club even. Something more than waiting for life to change and keeping your options open. You’d keep your options open for the rest of your life, if you could. You’ll be lying on your deathbed, dying of some smoking-related disease, and you’ll be thinking, well, at least I’ve kept my options open. At least I never ended up doing something I couldn’t back out of. And all the time you’re keeping your options open, you’re closing them off.
- Twenty-seven