I'M BACK! 08/08/08

Hi readers everywhere!

Thanks for being patient with me while I toiled away on the cliff face of literature (a lovely terrace in Andalusia...) working on my novel Blood on the Sand.

I'll keep you posted as to how that's going but for now on with The Daily Male:

Friday. I set off for a couple of days away with an old friend to his country cottage in Devon. PT and I have known each other for many years. When we first met, he made a bit of a play for me, but I wasn’t attracted to him in that way and he seems to have accepted it. He does still try it on occasionally but I slap him down affectionately and he takes it in good part. I think...

As we are closeted in his car for the long drive West, I tell him all about CC. He listens attentively but doesn’t express much, except to say: ‘He sounds like trouble’.

The weekend is pleasant enough. It’s always good to get out of town as long as you know you’re coming back.

On the Sunday afternoon, I return to London by train as PT is staying on. I’ve got the steak date with Eurotrash to look forward to but as the train is chugging through Berkshire, the trashy bastard texts to tell me he’s ‘not feeling very well’, having had ‘a large one’ the night before.

How fucking dare you! I think to myself. You knew you had to be on top form for Sunday night! I could have stayed on in the country and now I've got nothing to do when I get home. I consider hurling myself into the path of an oncoming express, but Mr. Branson realises this sort of thing might happen (he obviously knows men like Eurotrash personally) so he's sealed up all the windows.

My disgruntledness of the bloody awfulness of Sundays in general, and cancelled dates on Sunday nights in particular, reaches an all time high. I console myself with a cosy, little homily: Life sucks and then you die.

I draft some texts to CC to pass the time on the rest of journey. Writing to him is like talking to him…

My darling, I haven’t slept for nights. (not strictly true). I do not wish to harass you emotionally (strictly true) but is there any way we could stay in touch that you would be comfortable with? I can’t bear the thought of losing you forever… I miss you every day...(totally true).

I save these in my drafts folder.

Wednesday. Unable to keep my counsel any longer, I send CC the favourite from among my drafted texts:

I’ve waited with the noose around my neck for you to kick the chair away. Please either do that or come and lift me down.

After several hours, I receive the much-dreaded reply:

I’m really sorry lovely Wendy but I have read your memoir and I know that this perhaps overly private and sensitive man cannot do this. I wish I could but I can’t. Sorry sorry sorry. Your adventure is bold, courageous and I respect what you are doing xxx

I only wrote The Toyboy Diaries to inspire other women that all things are possible no matter your age. I never expected it to come back and bite me on the bum.

Through a mist of tears, I text back:

Sweetheart, I am devastated... please don't judge me by the contents of a book. I am worth more than that... And I am.

I get no answer.

The massacre of my last vestige of hope leaves me lost without a cause. I feel like a rat swimming against the tide in a maelstrom of muck of my own making. Now what? Now what? I feel like my life has turned sepia. Where did all the colour go?

Another week begins and unable one night when I am home alone, I decide I have to phone him. I psych up myself for at least an hour, composing disjointed sentences the words of which shatter into a crazy alphabet which swims around in my head.

Finally, hardly making any sense, I dial his number. It rings a few times and goes to voice mail.

‘H-hallo?’ I stutter. ‘It’s…er… Wendy?…er…I’m…er… not sure if I’m allowed to do this?…Am I still a…er…friend or an ex-friend…? (nervous laugh) I just wanted to say… I think about you often and I’d really like to know how you are? You see… I…er…I really miss you? …and I care about you?…and er…it would be nice to hear from you?… to know you’re OK…?

I have no idea why I’m talking Australian? but I know I sound vulnerable and insecure, and this is not an act. What I’ve created by making the call is renewed hope…the hope that he will call me back.

Had there been a brick wall within bashing distance, I may just as well have impacted my weary head against it but within a few minutes, my mobile rings and it’s him!

APOLOGIES FOR THE INTERRUPTION!!

Dearest Readers,

I hope you will forgive me this hiccup in the continuing saga of "The Daily Male".

I have taken some time out to work on a novel, an idea I´ve had for some time which simply had to be released. I´ve hidden myself away in Southern Europe but I shall return to the story in a couple of weeks, I promise.

Thanks for your comments and your patience - I love knowing you are out there even if we´ve never met...

Have great summers, everyone, and I´ll be back soon.

Very best wishes and thanks for reading.

Wendy x

THE DAILY MALE - continues...03/07/08

Sunday. I’m worried that I might be turning into a shark. The urge to keep moving lest I die is bordering on manic. Not content with having had 'knowledge' of four different men in the past two weeks (perhaps in Essex that’s the national chaverage) I’ve been lured out by a fifth this afternoon who’s contacted me on a dating website.

He’s a character actor, been in The Bill (hasn’t everyone?) and sounds like a bit of a geezer. I’m meeting him in Regent’s Park at 4.30 p.m. for tea. Before that I’m meeting a girlfriend for a walk and after that I’m going to the cinema with a male mate.

Now there’s no problem with this per se, but shouldn’t one be staying home occasionally and sorting out one’s knicker drawer? Or learning how to use the new DVD – G-d forbid one should ever want to be in of an evening watching one?

I think about CC, cast in the role of Hanging Judge, deciding my fate as he reads the fruits of my nefarious labours. He probably hasn’t got beyond the first chapter – or even the back cover. He'd have thrown it straight onto the fire dressed in an exorcist’s robes to expunge the corruption contained therein.

The date with Rough Stuff gets cancelled at the last minute and I am somewhat relieved, though this leaves my brain excess time to bubble away like a witch’s cauldron, to which I keep adding extra frogs, newts, toads and bats.

Tuesday. Something in my genetic make-up, or maybe my upbringing, will not allow me to accept defeat. A long line of oppressed ancestors battled their way out of Russia, Poland and Lithuania and dispersed to the four corners of the globe where they not only survived, but made a go of it. I was conditioned from an early age to strive for success and this ethos has dogged yet encouraged me through all of life’s situations.

Although I walked out of two marriages because there were insurmountable problems, I gave them both my best shot and for this reason, I am still determined to fight for CC.

I cannot understand if someone has a chance for love that they wouldn’t embrace it with open arms? I mean… you’re a long time dead… especially if he genuinely thinks he’s only got a few years left...you’d have thought he’d want to fill those years with all the unbridled joy that’s on offer.

Or maybe he doesn’t see me as ‘unbridled joy’…maybe he just sees me as ‘major aggravation’.

Unfortunately, deep in my soul, I know where he’s coming from. His fear of rejection, fear of getting hurt, fear of my infidelity, fear of having his heart ripped out and thrown to the wolves, are all very valid terrors. And I’m getting far too carried away with this less than ‘magnificent’ obsession.

Maybe I need to take a step back and write myself a reality cheque.

Wednesday. Eurotrash texts me and we make a date for the steak fest for Sunday night. Him being a bit Transylvanian ‘n all, I hope he means steak and not stake.

THE DAILY MALE - continues...20/06/08

Before I know it, I’m running a bubble bath, lighting candles, opening a bottle of Cava (I'm not wasting Champagne on him!) and selecting the appropriate music.

Drunk and disorderly, we both get naked and slide into the warm womb of water where we slither all over each other like a merman and his maid.

Despite his shortish stature - no more than 5’9” - Eurotrash is sporting an impressive organ which pokes up out of the water like a 'peniscope'. The invitation is irresistible and I lower my head and sink my mouth around it. He groans appreciatively and massages my feet.

We soap each other's bodies and talk and laugh and it feels like someone has changed my batteries. Normal service has been resumed.

We get out of the bath and step naked onto my little balcony. The night is mild and heady and he wraps his arms around me and pulls me back against him, attempting to enter me from behind.

I’m not that drunk and there’s no way we’re having full penetrative unsafe sex. I don’t trust him. I also have no idea where he’s been and, more to the point, I remind myself that I am trying to stay faithful. To what, or more precisely, to whom, is debatable.

Eurotrash doesn’t insist, so we lie down on the bed and just fool around. When he leaves, we’re still laughing. No mental anguish is involved, no demands, no commitment. We arrange for him to come over again some time and he promises to cook me a 'fat, juicy steak'. I am disproportionately excited about this.

Friday. Despite the brilliant fun I had last night which certainly helped to blow the cobwebs away, I still haven’t heard a dickie bird from You Know Who. Brad Pity ups the ante by bringing our date forward to tonight. I weaken to the point of horizontal by inviting him to come straight over without bothering with the ‘drink at the Elgin’ first. Well we have met and I know what I'm dealing with.

My attempt to have a zipless fuck fails. Guilt and remorse and nostalgia make uncomfortable bedfellows. CC said he couldn’t have sex without love and although I can and often do, it happens that I rather wouldn’t.

THE DAILY MALE - continues...13/06/08

Thursday. He texts to thank me for the meal.

‘It was very kind of you. I’ll read the book and see how I feel’ and then I have an epiphany!

HANG ON A MINUTE, I think to myself. You’ll see how you feel?? Who the hell do you think you are - The Lord High Executioner? I have to wait and worry all weekend while you see how reading my story makes you feel?

At least I never tried to dupe anyone, pretending to be someone I'm not, making them fall for me then telling them I can’t cope with it.What sort of a man is that? So afraid of dying he’s forgotten how to live? Worried about falling in love in case the excitement proves too much? Hiding away like a hermit in case, God forbid, I might enjoy myself? And who is he to judge me anyway?

This mental outburst helps me to put things into perspective. Of course I still care about him and would love to try to make it work between us, but if he’s always going to doubt me and never going to trust me, it has no chance of even getting off the starting block.

I spend the weekend on a self-inflicted death row, the condemned woman who awaits the decision of the hanging judge. Right now, the jury’s out and the defendant awaits an almost certain Guilty verdict.

Tuesday. I still haven’t heard from him. I compose but do not send a variety of texts ranging from furious to flippant to frustrated. This helps on a scale of zero to not at all.

Thursday. I am looking after my little granddaughters which is like trying to tame a pair of electric eels, and although it’s a great distraction, I still manage to fret about CC the entire time. Once I’ve bathed them, fed them, read to them and put them to bed, I doodle out a few texts which includes making a further date with Brad Pity. After the rejection by CC, I need to re-affirm my desirability.

Friday. Having decided to give Eurotrash a further run for his money, I visit him at the gallery. The minute I walk in he’s all over me like a second skin. He has a delivery to make near my home so we decide to go for a drink, which turns into a second and then a third by which time we’re hungry and need to eat.

It’s a beautiful evening and we're sitting outside in the patio garden of Le Cochonnet. I feel relaxed and liberated which makes a pleasant change. Eurotrash is entertaining company. He makes me giggle and although I know he’s a wrong ‘un, somehow, we fit.

We discuss a Shakespeare play he's seen recently of which he could not follow the plot. I remember a book I have called Shakespeare for Idiots or something and offer to lend it to him. This book is on my shelf at home which happens to be… just around the corner. He says:

"Veel get it now, shall ve?" and I say: "OK".

I know exactly where this invitation is going, and as you might expect, Shakespeare is forgotten the minute we walk in my door.

THE DAILY MALE - continues...08/06/08

To lighten the mood and erase the conversation that has just taken place, I tell him I have theatre tickets for next week and I ask if would he like to come with me. I am resolutely convinced of my power to re-invent us as a fully functioning couple.

With scant interest, he asks what play it is, and I tell him it’s an Indian version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. He pulls a face like I’ve just poured a very hot curry down his trousers, and says his attention span is rather limited and the Bard, therefore, is not someone he can sit through.

While still desperate to repair the situation, I am becoming mildly exasperated. Surely it would be easier to just give up? I question my motives. Maybe it’s the challenge that drives me on. I’ve had men not wanting me before, but for some reason, I want this one more than I ever wanted any of them. And I do want to help him; I doubt he’s ever had someone who really cares about him like I do.

We continue our disjointed dialogue which winds blindly through a complex maze of dark passages and alleyways until it comes to a grinding halt somewhere north of nowhere. It’s like I’m talking Icelandic and he’s answering in Cantonese.

Reverting to my default setting of Jewish mother, I suggest we have something to eat. He admits to being hungry and seems surprised and grateful that I should offer to cook for him, like no-one’s ever done this before.

I try to get him to help me in the kitchen to create some sort of positive dynamic between us, but he doesn’t even know how to slice a mushroom, so I end up doing it all myself.

I rustle up a smoked salmon and avocado starter and make a risotto which he appears to enjoy. At least something has pleased him about tonight. The hostess, sadly… pas beaucoup…

Over dinner, he perks up a bit and talks about his teenage years and how he used to play in a band, but not once during the evening is there any of the lightness of spirit or humorous piquancy of the holiday passing between us.

And then it’s 10.30 p.m. and he says he has to go. He needs his sleep so he asks me to call him a taxi and the minute it arrives, he leaves.

I get a half-hearted hug at the door, do the washing-up and go to bed feeling melancholy and hopeless. The whole emotional investment of the past two weeks seems to be producing no return.

The Pet Shop Boys sing me sleep, their lyrics strangely appropriate to my darkening mood:

When I look back upon my life,
It’s always with a sense of shame
I’ve always been the one to blame…

THE DAILY MALE - continues...02/06/08

‘I cannot allow myself to fall in love with you. I will get terribly hurt. And…’ he drops his voice so I can hardly hear him, ‘I cannot have sex without love…’

I take onboard what he’s saying, resenting the fact that it was fine for him to have ‘sex without love’ just a few days ago.

I suddenly decide to give him a proof copy of The Toyboy Diaries. Maybe it would work like homeopathy – treat the sickness with the sickness. I take one off the shelf and drop it into his lap.

‘Instead of imagining the worst, why don’t you read it?’ I suggest. ‘It’s nowhere near as bad as you may think, especially since most of it is made up!’

My nose grows by at least an inch and my tone is possibly half an octave harsher than usual. I’m still smarting from the No Sex Please – We’re Skittish comment. He recoils as he lifts the book gingerly off his lap and holds it at arm’s length as if it’s a ticking time bomb.

‘Please don’t throw things at me,’ he bleats ‘and don’t shout…’

I apologize, and consider that, should we ever by any remote chance get it together, I might have to temper everything I do around him: my voice, my mood, my personality, my behaviour. Christ! Do I really want to live like that?

He turns the book over frowning deeply as he reads the back cover. I stand there chewing my thumb, like a schoolgirl whose father is reading a letter from the Headmaster informing him that she’s been caught in the toilets giving the gym teacher a blow-job.

‘How can it possibly work out between you and me?’ he asks despairingly having scanned the best of the worst of my story. ‘You’ll always be looking over my shoulder for the next 19-year old!’

‘I will not!’ I cry defensively. ‘That affair happened twenty years ago and I’m so over all that now…’

How far can you bend the truth before it snaps?