» Crappy relationships

My made up relationship story is true
On my first night at university I got drinking with a group of lads and, as 18 year old boys do, we all started boasting about sex. I had no sex boasts, having had no sex, but I still joined in. “yeah, well once I was shagging my girlfriend in her mums bed, and we were really banging it, and her mum walked in, and as she walked out she defiantly gave me a wink” I lied.

Why this imaginary mother would wink at a short spotty chubbster mounting her daughter, rather than vomiting in disappointment, was not questioned. I now realise that was only because all the stories told that night were lies,to call one would have collapsed the whole pack.

Once I’d settled into a social group my ghostly girlfriend followed me. She now had a name (Lucy) a vocation (studying medicine in Bristol, year above us) and an appearance (megafit). All this within a week, my most successful relationship ever!

After a month of audacious charlatanism I met a girl who I liked, and who I thought might like me. She wasn’t megafit like Lucy, but she was real. I realised I had to break it off with the nonexistent Bristolian.

But how to do it without looking a knob. I had boasted to everyone who would listen about how into each other Lucy and I were. If I just said “oh yeah, it’s over” they would assume I had been dumped, no doubt for being shit in bed. If I announced out of the blue I had dumped her then everone would think I was a bastard (yes I was self obsessed).

So I faked the collapse of the relationship over several months. Lucy’s behaviour became more and more unstable, the relationship more and more crappy, she would phone me in the middle of the night demanding I went to Bristol (/to my parents house). She would arrange to visit me in London and pull out at the last minute. I made sure all my friends knew that I had the feeling we were drifting apart.

After a about 9 weeks of this I faked a day long mega sulk, sighing loudly and doing a strange stare into the middle distance that I thought effectively communicated emotional turmoil. Eventually someone asked me what was wrong and I confessed “Yeah me and Lucy broke up last night”.

Hooray! I was free. I did date the real girl for a short while, but she dumpted me for being a twat. Various other relationships have come and gone, all of them real and most of them hard work. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed with Lucy, she would be an imaginary doctor by now, we could be looking for an imaginary house, maybe planning an imaginary baby. Life would easy.

And yes it turns out everyone knew she was made up all along.
(Wed 27th Oct 2010, 11:44, More)

» Things we do to fit in

I chose not to choose life. I chose something else.
My school seems to have lacked the hierarchical structure a lot of people are describing. I can’t remember one group shouldering the frigid cross of coolness (unless, could this mean, the cool kid was... me?)

No any sociologist studying T.P.S circa ‘95 would instead have seen a hideously mutating mélange of groups, squads, possies, gangs, mobs, friendly societies, cults and covens, all squabbling over the right to not go home in tears because someone had pushed you in a puddle and thrown your pencil case on the roof.

If you weren’t part of a clique you were a target, it was mob rule, rabid dogs have more compassion than children on a forty minute lunch break. In my second week I knew only one thing, I knew my retainer wasn’t getting thrown in the big green bins again; I had to find some friends.

My horribly rash decision one lunch time lead to me falling in with the wrong, crowd squandering my teenage years, and eventually left me alone and freezing at the side of a dirty brown lake. I was constantly feeling tench, I was on tenderhooks and wondering whether I should pike it all in.

Thats right, I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. I chose fishing. Fucking Fishing!! I spent the years between twelve and eighteen fishing!! I want that time back, I want house parties and teenage sex, I want being tricked into smoking spiffs made of lawn, I want to be able to say that I dabbled, dabbled in anything! I want a collection of pogs, I want to know the dance to the Macarena, I just want to say I’ve lived!

I haven’t picked up a rod in nearly 8 years now, but there’s still not a day goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve lost and how easy it would be to fall back into the comforting old ways.

My name's Asser and I’m a Fisherman.
(Wed 21st Jan 2009, 12:31, More)

» Devastating Put-Downs

In a Pub
I was sharing a long pew with two young lads. One was teasing the other in a way that only the underage can, "you’re such a light weight! Bet you’ve never even been to a pub before!" "ha you’ve only had three pints and you’re pissed, I can drink eight" that sort of thing.

For about five minutes the teasee said nothing. Then he slowly put his pint down, looked his mate in the eye, looked back down, and vomited over them both.

I very nearly died.
(Tue 29th Nov 2011, 21:17, More)

» My sex misconceptions

mmm trampy
When I was around 7 or 8 I was walking through town with my mother and we stopped to hear a busker play.

Now this was quite an occurrence for me as I lived in a small rural town and we never had this sort of entertainment. Looking back he was obviously a travelling itinerant; semi vagrant with weird long hair, a beard and strange clothes. But he was strumming away and singing so I was happy.

On our way home laden down with groceries and a copy of The Beano we saw him again. This time he was hunched over in a doorway and was jerking about with a strange look on his face. To my innocent mind it looked like he was in pain so I said to my mother ‘mummy what’s wrong with that man?’

She looked at me fondly, patted my head and said:

‘don’t worry dear it’s just minstrel cramps’
(Tue 30th Sep 2008, 16:49, More)

» First rude thing I ever saw

Fluid Mechanics
As an alumnus of the early 90s Key Stage 2 program, my sexual education began aged 10 with a cartoon about genitalia.

By my 11th birthday I knew far more about female anatomy and the act of reproduction than I’ll ever know again. I knew about fallopian tubes, I knew about wombs, I knew about ovaries, uteruses and the cervix. I knew that the male genes were carried by sperm. that sperm was mixed with seminal fluid and that both were called ejaculate.

So when my parents forgot to take their VHS of Trainspotting back to blockbuster I recognised the scene where a naked Kelly Macdonald rides Renton as ‘Sex’. Turns out knew bugger all about sex. Why were they so sweaty? Why did they need to pump up and down? Why were they saying things like ‘Uh nearly’ and making it look such bloody hard work? I had assumed the man would insert his penis, deposit the next generation and remove his penis; like a machine filling a donut.

I came to the conclusion that the mechanism of sex was more complicated. The man obviously inserted his penis, began to ejaculate and then had to carry on forcing out sperm until the woman was filled to the top of her fallopian tubes and the ovum had been reached. The passage of the fluid and eventual impregnation would be aided by vigorous pumping, like when I filled my bike tires, hence the sweating, the bouncing and the grunting.

I don’t know when I was disabused of this early belief, maybe when I began to ejaculate myself and realised I would never saturate a whole womb, but it was certainly a big part of my childhood sexuality. Even today if I’m watching porn and the woman shouts something like ‘yeah! fill me!!’ I can’t help but wonder how full she already is; past the cervix? Somewhere near the fundus?
(Tue 16th Aug 2011, 21:52, More)