Mask Painting

This year I spent my Christmas in London, snug and lazy like a curled bug, barely leaving the flat for about 10 days.

It was great. I’m so sad it’s over now.

The Ex and I were invited to one New Years Eve party with a masquerade theme.

(This is only the 3rd NYE I’ve spent in London. The last party was in a house that was “smoke free”. I’ll say no more.

It really annoys me when people who are smokers (as was the owner of this house who has come to our house and smoked inside), who then throws a party in the middle of winter and insists that everyone goes outside into the snow and rain to smoke. What the fuck? You suck and your party sucks, please never invite me again. So there. Huff!

In any case, I neglected to tell the Ex there was a theme to this years NYE party much to the Ex’s annoyance.

I wasn’t planning to bother getting a mask, being deep in the throes of my sloth, but the ex insisted.

So dragging ourselves up and finally changing out of PJ’s, we tripped off to Cass Art, purchased some cardboard masks, paint (like I really needed any), glitter and some sparkly beads and set to work like little enthu cutlets.

It was nearly a whole day of arts and drafts. The Ex, not usually a fan of either, really went for it. We even bought better elastic and ribbon.

We had a small spat in the art shop because my GENIUS suggestions for the Ex’s mask (Purple glitter paint or white glitter paint and lots of beads + feathers) were rejected and the Ex went to ask one of the shop girls for advice and ended up buying a single tube of silver paint that cost £8.00. 8!!!!!! Tiny tube!

The Ex thinks the higher the price the better the product.

Admittedly the paint was a lovely metallic silver.

But come on.

8 pounds on paint for a one-time-wear mask for a party? Seriously.

So only 6 hours after we decided on our brilliant plan of action for the party did we finally finish our masks.

The Ex grew mildly competitive half way through. (To see who would have the better mask)

It was rather good fun. Here are some crafty photos of the mess.

Mask painting begins

Look at all that mess. Took ages for the glitter to dry

Eventually had to blow dry the paint. That did it.

Mask Finished

My mask (The Queen) & The Ex’s mask (Gay Pope?)

New Years Eve In Goa

Last sunset 2011. How sentimental of me.

That's it. Sun is gone. Thus ends 2011.

Back dated post (Well, clearly.)

The build up for New years Eve is such a killer. All that expectation, all that fear of failure.

The first part of the evening was excruciating.

I mean, I was sober.

With my parents.

We went to a restaurant in Goa called La Plage, which we had already eaten at two evenings out of five – It’s managed by 2 very attractive French women (Older, of indeterminate age. 45+ I should think.) who were very touchy-feely with all their patrons.

They made everyone feel like they were supremely important. Case in point: My PhD bawa neighbor (I’m just going to call him PhD from now on) was convinced one of the ladies was trying to hit on the ex because her hand lingered in what was assumed to be a highly suggestive manner.

The PhD’s and the ex’s thoughts, whatever the context of the situation, jump straight to sex. They both have uniquely one track minds. All I saw was a woman who knew how to do her job beautifully.

Ordinarily La Plage was excellent. Unfortunately they had succumbed to the New Years eve temptation – The greed had gone to their head and were massively over booked. So much so that we didn’t see dinner for 2.5 hours. I was nearly gnawing on the table by then. Starvation rarely adds to the convivial feeling.

Our PhD neighbor’s younger brother and his girlfriend also joined us for dinner, but since they seemed to be either on drugs or coming down off them they were in no position to contribute to any kind of cheer.

Our plan was to eat, watch the fireworks on the beach, then ditch the folks shortly after midnight and find some wild party. Dinner came just before 12. Mine was inedible. Half the patrons left their plates to watch the fireworks. We couldn’t leave the folks until 2 and I was sober until then.

YES! FUCK YES SOBER! STONE FUCKING COLD SOBER! Man I was irate.

Eventually the folks left and the ex managed to strong-arm us into a party, just by looking furious and saying with a thunderous frown

“We were just in here 5 minutes ago! Give us a stamp!”

I saw the man’s face. It’s an expression I’ve had many times on mine. It’s resignation and a desire to avoid a confrontation. He was clearly thinking,

“I know they weren’t here 5 minutes ago but I can’t be dealing with this at 3 in the morning. Just give them a stamp.”

The party was rubbish. I mean, it might have been fun had I been un-sober. But rave music is intolerable even on vast quantities of intoxicants. Sober it was excruciating.

I told PhD and the ex I’d had enough. Screw this night, I was going back to the hut to smoke the measly amount of mal I had managed to scrap, beg, borrow and steal together from kind, charitable souls.

Then just at that moment, coming out of the darkness of the beach, like a saviour, like Jesus, was some Bawa that PhD happened to know. We greeted him so joyously he might as well have been Jesus. (Or Zarathushtra, which would be more fitting, but the name is such a mouthful.)

“Do you guys want to party?”

Yes! by god yes! We do! We really really fucking do!

After that the night picked up.

We found other people we knew at another party with many more intoxicants.

We didn’t really have any other friends in Goa and sort of tagged along with this one group, which I must admit, felt a little uncomfortable. I don’t like satelliting around a group of friends. (But I’m uncomfortable naturally so that doesn’t count for much.)

I think my major tip while tackling the Goa party scene is to carry a roll of toilet paper in your bag. I wish someone had reminded me.

The loo was….*shudder*. I can’t even bear to remember it.

We rolled off back to our huts and I immediately had a shower and stiff scrub.

*shudder*

Sigh. All my stories seem to end in poo.

Social Anxiety & My Mothers 60th Birthday

The bar at the far end, tables on the lawn

My parents are having a big garden party for my mothers 60th birthday.

There are lights hanging on the trees, caterers and waiters and a bar under the chikoo tree.

While I was decorating the table with flowers under my mother’s watchful eye (They have to be arranged like so: one pink and one white, one pink, one white No double whites or…Disaster!) I got the vague feeling that the bartender was trying to flirt with me. In the most cockeyed fashion.

He introduced himself, and asked me,

“What’s your poison?”

“Sorry?”

“What’s your poison? What do you like to drink?”

I said I wasn’t a big drinker. (I also rather dislike being asked what’s my poison. There’s something about that phrase that slightly irritates me. It’s not a line that should ever be used in real life. It ought to be relegated to the bad 1980′s movies that probably spawned it.)

He then came around later to ask me again.

“Shall I make you a Sex on the Beach? A sleazy sex on the beach?”

No. Don’t be creepy. Fool.

“I don’t know. What’s in it?”

He told me.

“Sure. We’ll see”

I really don’t want a ‘Sleazy Sex on the Beach’. That don’t sound good at all.

Then he started telling me how he studied bar-tending abroad, all the while being more far too helpful with my flower arranging. It was hardly a heavy duty job. (But I have no real complaints about that. It was nice. Unnecessary, but still, nice.)

A little while later I was eating lunch he waved and called from the window

“Hope you are enjoying your lunch.”

“Yes”

I opened my book wider and didn’t look up again. I could be wrong about the flirting. Maybe he was just being friendly.

An impromptu conga line down the lawn

My parents have invited about 90 of their friends. I know most of them and they are all lovely people.

That being said, I’m hiding out in my room to escape all the inevitable small talk.

“How are you? What are you doing? Where are you now? Will you come back to Bombay? How long are you here till?”

I understand the necessity of scripted small talk. In fact it’s what I religiously rely on. Sometimes I don’t even wait for responses. I just fire off questions one after another. Sometimes I respond to questions they haven’t yet asked me and before they’ve even had a chance to respond to mine.

“How are you Oh thanks I’m fine.”

I’m just trying to occupy the minutes between breathing in and out.

These social rules are a relief, a gloss over near constant social awkwardness. But it’s exhausting work. I need to take breaks every now and then.

Doing the salsa or something. That’s my mother there, blurry in black.

In a way I actually preferred hosting a party. You’re constantly busy, there’s no time to chat and you have a million things to fiddle with. I need to fiddle. All this socializing with people who are not my friends is giving me some anxiety.

This is my third escape. (I finished a blog post in the second one and published it.)

I can only do this in short bursts or I’ll get caught.

Don’t tell anyone.

I have to go back in now. It’s been too long already.

I have fortified myself with a camera. That should hold me.

The Arsonists Ball – Now Available As Prints & Skins

Arsonists Ball

So this is the prequel for the Turkish Bath drawing.

I’m not sure how I feel about this one if I’m perfectly honest.

Parts of it I really like, but parts of it make me feel slightly claustrophobic.

I guess that was the plan (or part of it) so that’s a good thing.

The children in the corner are pouring petrol down the stairs in a bid to get attention.

The lady in the center, behind the queers toasting and in front of the lady holding the dog collar and leash is the hostess of the party (I think).

I researched all the outfits of the era and drawing the stair-case was a right bitch. The perspective was really hard to get right. Still not sure I got it right either.

Ok so go get a print! 

Put it up somewhere.

Maybe the loo?

You can look at it while you’re on the pot and then you can tell me if it makes you feel claustrophobic or not.

Maybe it’ll just constipate you.

Feel free to tell me that too.

(I’d recommend a slightly larger size than the smallest which is A4 = 8″ x 10″ or letter-paper size. )

Framed

iPhone cases & skins

Laptop skins

 

I threw a New Years Eve BYOB. I know, shocking.

I enjoy organising. That is to say, I enjoy organising things – ordering collections, music, books, folders.

Or organising design folders so anyone can find what they are looking for without directions.

Or organising the fridge so a minimum amount of space can accommodate the maximum amount of food. Although this amazing talent has yet to find me employment, it’s comes in handy when the ex shouts at me for buying too much food, in case it wont fit in the fridge. (It always fits in the fridge.)

Organising people is somewhat harder. People management is a highly valuable and marketable skill. The ex seems to have this. I’ve never met anyone so capable of bossing people around.

Regardless, I have made it my agenda in life to hone, practice and perfect entirely unmarketable skills. Like lining up all my coloured felt pens in specific gradient order. Or organising an iTunes library.

So taking all the above into account, I’m planning a New years eve party in the most disorganized, half-assed way. In fact I think this might be my first official ‘adult’ (snort) party.

I tell my folks a week before I leave London, maybe I’ll have a new years party. I neglect to give them the amount of people or confirm anything. Riddhi is equally vague. Riddhi has all the jings in her pocket. So she’s the one bringing the peoples to the mountain.

I convince my parents, who are a little old school, that we make it a BYOB. I can’t be organising no booze, that’s a stress level too far. So I thought it would be a laid back casual affair, however I had underestimated my mothers party-throwing ability.

I woke up the morning of the 31st to find lights being put up on the trees by a small team of burly men, and small sets of tables, benches and chairs on the lawn. We have garden speakers disguised as giant rocks, which my father and I had already set up.

My mother, who doesn’t do things by halves, insists on flowers and candles.  Flowers must go around all the candles on each table. I throw some outdoor cushions on the chairs.

My mother shrieks,

“No no no no! Not those cushions NO! Just listen to me and put them back!”

“But why?? OK OK! Fine fine”

The ‘party’ cushions are now revealed. Nice and crisp, green and white stripes. So I chuck the party cushions on the chairs. More shrieks. Don’t I know cushions can’t be diagonal?? And this one goes here and this one here! I should know this! I’m an artist.

My father then says in mock horror

“Don’t you know how the cushions go? Shame on you”

She then wants me to insert napkins in-between the paper plates but I have to draw the line. That’s one step too far. I convince her not to create double work and just leave them on the side in their own stacks. People can help themselves. My mother gets very hyper and hysterical before a party. She needs to be reined in.

I scrub the marble side tables. My father complains I haven’t dusted.  I tell him I already dusted. He insists on dusting again.

Then I tell my mother that the mali never even cleaned the tables. She is irate. He is totally useless. This is the last time and he is definitely fired (He’s been fired now 9 times.) Then I told her how he asked me why I didn’t get him chocolates.

My mother is outraged;

“He’s not getting any chocolates! I fired him!”

Eventually we’re good to go.

We worry about the food and mixers and munchies and as usual over-estimate everything. I did very little else aside from sending out a vague Facebook invite and cutting carrot sticks while watching a movie. (Easy A – Teen rom-com, with a cast of over 20′s, about a girl who pretends to lose her virginity. I recommend if that genre appeals to you)

We initially thought maybe it’ll just be 5 or 6 people chilling in my garden. If we were lucky a few more. Eventually 28 or so people turned up and it was great. I shipped my folks off to their oldie party upstairs. My Dad tried to crash our party twice, encouraged by Ratna, but I indelicately made him leave.

Ratna, who like my mother, knows how to host and organise things helped me kick-start the serving of munchies. Her friends brought a whole host of food and extra ice. In fact the guests not only BYOB-ed, they even made food. Riddhi made humus for my painstakingly cut carrot sticks.

J. actually made 2 trays of profiteroles from scratch. From scratch!! They were a massive hit. There were fights over the last profiteroles, a race to the kitchen. Elbows in the face. It got ugly, but they were all gone at last. Someone later coined the term ‘amazing ice-cream burgers’.  We had to tell him it was whipped cream.

I would have liked at least one PhD at my party, unfortunately he went off for some conference slash PTA meeting in Bangalore (seriously). He saw the lights on the trees and asked me why my mothers opted for “these Zionist lights” (they were 6 sided stars).

Party finally ended at 6 am. I wish there was drama and gossip to report, but alas, it was a very relaxed and gossip free party which is perhaps nice for the host.

The only thing I could possibly report is that D. took a 3 hour nap in my brother’s room, in the middle of the party.

and not alone either….

But that’s hardly gossip.

It was only with the 3 cats.

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PhD Party and The Island Queen

PhD PAAAAAARTAAAAY! Take that irate neighbor! Reasonable conversation and civilized behavior! Maybe a lecture.

The fourth A invited me to a party last Friday. I asked the ex to come. The ex said no, I’m going to Milan.

The ex is making maximum use of the no-visa restrictions of a British Passport and is jetting off on weekends, like a diva.

Switzerland this week, Milan the next.

“Why don’t you come?” the ex says.

Completely forgetting the miserable amount of hoops I need to jump through just to get my Indian ass a visa. The ex has mentally wiped out ever being an Indian. The ex is now some Tory type. Tweed jackets with elbow patches. (Although I’ve always been fond of the English country-gentile look. It must be some post-colonial hangover)

A4 claims the ex must be fictional (because they haven’t met yet). Apparently Leo and I seem like a couple, because he is, like, all up in my Facebook. (That sounds dirtier than it is.)

So I asked Leo if he wanted to come.

Leo said he was already invited. (How irritating)

But had another party to go to first. (How doubly irritating)

I was hoping to drag him with me as a buffer for my social ineptness. But that Leo fellow is always bloody double-booking and then he always shows up 2 hours later than he said he would. Like some goddamn social butterfly. He is totally unreliable. Has he no sensitivity to people who are socially stupid?

I arrived at A4′s posh place fashionably late. I decided to buffer myself by going to Astrid’s (photographer/designer/pig butcher) birthday party in a pub down the road called the Island Queen.

I really like the sound of this pub. It conjures up visions of tropical warmth, pirates on a beachy coast, a white cockatoo, and perhaps some elements of camp;  jolly gays, dolled up Trannies.

Unfortunately it’s a pretty standard little pub, albeit with very beautifully painted plants and flowers on the huge mirrors lining the walls. The tropical warmth was provided by a cosy fire-place. Catholic boy was there among other artists. Catholic boy says he needs to go to confession. He’s done a bad thing. He’s sinner. If he dies he might go to purgatory. He’s Irish so I can never tell if he’s joking or not. Deep down I think he means it. He calls me a heathen and asks me how my fire god is doing these days.

I really miss college when I hang out with arty types. I think we (ex-MA’s) should organize a crit in a digital space. At least in a digital space people are more willing to flame. Without a strong tutor , face-to-face crits can descend into namby-pamby back-patting or tip-toeing around a sensitive issue. What use is that? You have to be honest and sometimes that’s means you have to be harsh. I miss the tearing apart of some poor victim in a crit. I’m sorry I just do. Some crits you could just smell the blood in the water.

Then I left to go to the academic party at about 10 pm. I had forgotten how rowdy Camden was, I must be getting old. People falling about all over the place. That’s always been my memory of Camden. People falling about all over the place.

I finally got to A4′s place, to find A4, in a comedy afro, have a full-blown bust-up with an irate neighbor.

A party friend, fortunately not in a comedy wig, was backing A4 up forcefully.

I catch the end of a sentence

“…if you just come in for a moment  you’ll see the music isn’t loud at all…”

irate neighbour was saying quite rudely,

“…well if you can’t abide by the rules of this estate then you should go and live somewhere else!”

(at 10:20pm. Not late and it was not loud, really.)

A4 responds angrily

“well it’s not actually loud and if you come in you can hear it, but we have already said we’ll turn it down…”

A4′s party friend is still forcefully backing her up. Good moral support that guy, because irate neighbor is being an absolute twat.

Irate neighbor isn’t having any of it. He says something rude and despotic again, then rolls his eyes in his fat face, sneers and stalks off.

A4 looks mad as hell, even in a comedy afro, and storms off back into the flat.

I feel very nervous now.

Turns out A4 has the unluckiest flat position in the entire building. In-between the estate manager’s flat and some other building bureaucratic lame-o. They both complain to the landlord. The landlord calls to complain. A4 is very angry. She is abusing sneering irate estate manager left right and center.

The next day A4 finds out walls are paper-thin. Irate estate manager probably heard it all. The landlord calls to fight again.

What a nonsense.

I’ve never been to a more civilized academic gathering in my life. If someone had stood up to give us a lecture on ‘insert long-winded academic subject here that involves reading books in 3 other languages’ I wouldn’t have been surprised.

A4 has a unique introduction strategy.

She pulls someone up and says

“designer – designer. You’re introduced now.”

She grabs someone else

“Jamnabai – Jamnabai”

Introduction over. Like pulling off a band-aid.

This Jamnabai girl says she remembers me (she might have been lying). I have no recollection of her at all. I forget to lie (what’s the point? I’ll just forget about her again). She seems offended. (It’s been over 10 years, I can’t remember people I didn’t even know after 10 years.)

A4 seems to collect PhD people. The room is crammed with doctorates. I chat to an Irishman on the balcony and he speaks fluent Hindi, Sanskrit and perhaps Urdu. He is, of course, a PhD student. Everyone at this party is a PhD student or already has one.

Do you think there’s PhD envy? When I see someone who has made some amazing thing I am filled with bile and envy and rage. Do you think the have-not PhD’s were envious of the haves? It’s a philosophical question. Maybe I should do a PhD on PhD’s to answer it.

There’s also a very tall, attractive PhD Indian on the balcony smoking, with a diamond nose ring and an American accent, studying Urdu short stories. Everyone seems to speak Urdu on this balcony. Even the firangis.

I begin grow a complex. Forget Urdu and Sanskrit. I failed Hindi 4 years in a row. I considered my ICSE passing grade nothing short of a miracle. (My U.P. tutor helped a lot)

This fat, pan-chewing, U.P.-ite (This is a different teacher from my U.P tutor. All hindi teachers are from U.P.) of a Hindi teacher called Shukla once threw me out of class just for speaking badly and stammering. As if throwing me out would improve me.

“You. Stand up.”

I stand up. I’m looking at his red-dyed mouth and yellow teeth. I’m terrified.

“You are house rep?”

“Yes sir”

“Get out of my class”

“Ok sir”

He didn’t approve of a house rep who spoke hindi badly.

Out of A4′s collection of PhD friends Leo and I know one each, to A4′s amazement. How the hell can losers like us know PhDs?

Hah.

Leo and I are academic whores. We totally have our own collection going. Him more than me.

But I have a garden. (PhD’s love a garden. Fact.)

The party ends at about 2, I make a move to kick ourselves out. We are so useless we’re the last to leave. Leo showed up so late the party was pretty much canned. I take a cab home and drop Leo off.

Dan and another academic walk home in the freezing cold. All that studying must have addled their brains. It wasn’t snowing then but it was still absolutely freezing.

I get home, and sit in front of the heater, rolling.

I take it to bed, but fall asleep with it clutched in my hand, unsmoked. At 4 a.m. I finally give it up and just go to sleep.

Socially Inept

A lovely etching by someone called siptakg on Flickr

There’s nothing better than a good house party – you can smoke inside, you control the music, the drinks are cheap and there’s no queue to get in.

But there’s also nothing worse that a bad house party. Difficult pauses. Polite chat. Racking your brain to make conversation.

Shudder.

I have a fear of going to parties where it might be awkward.

I’m fine once I’m there, but I worry in advance about the ‘Polite Conversation’. That’s why a good buffer is handy.

Last last Saturday an M.A. student from by year at St. Martins invited me to their house party, which was down the road from where I live. The only guests I knew who would be there were Catholic boy (he’s a Catholic. The Pope. You know.) and Astrid (amazing photographer/designer/pig butcher. Don’t ask).

As usual Leo had already booked in a bunch of Danes for the evening. I wasn’t sure I could invite them too. So I passed over Leo (similar to the Biblical passing over the Israelites)

First I thought, I’ll go fashionably late. I’ll go an hour after the invite time. That’s fashionable.

You don’t want to arrive too early and be the first. If you arrive when there already are a bunch of people you can always move away if there are pauses in conversation.

Then I think, maybe I’ll eat something before I go.

So I eat.

Then I’m quite full.

Then I think about how many people will have arrived already. I start to think maybe going earlier would have been better because that gives you the upper-hand when others start to arrive, of already being settled in. Walking in a room which is already in mid-swing can also be awkward. People have formed social groups. There’s mingling. And you need to mingle too and it’s all weird.

You see why I have problems?

Maybe I’ll roll one and then go after, I’m fully dressed and ready. Roll one, and watch some junk on the BBC iplayer as I smoke.

So in the end, I was sitting on the leopard print-couch (Bollywood eshstyle) fully dressed, boots and all, even though it was clearly obvious – I wasn’t going anywhere.

I’m totally socially inept.

New Years Eve

Captain H. threw a party for new years at the very last-minute.

I was pleased because if everything else failed I’d have to throw one.

And I hate morning after clean up duty.

The theme originally was “007″ but changed at some point to “Flower Power”. I think this was because 007 was too hard, and no one had any glam outfits or some such lazy excuse. I was happy. I’m not good at fancy dress.

Riddhi, the perpetual 20th century hippie, said in a disappointed tone that it wasn’t even a challenge for her.

Trying to leave the house was highly chaotic. The minute I announce to my folks that I plan on leaving the house they’ll stop me and make me do things. Take a picture, call both sets of your grandparents, do this do that stand here wait one minute let’s take another group picture. Sheesh.

Regular H., and managed to piss the ex off with some inappropriate nonsense sometime when he was a bit drunk.

In case you have forgotten here are the various stages of drunkenness of a H. That’s probably why these two pictures cracked me up when Leo pointed them out.

That’s the ‘Arm of H’.

It’s a classic sign of Stage 2-3 of drunken H.

He’s clearly not very drunk because otherwise he’d be bending a hell of a lot more.

What is an ‘H’?

Hs Celebration of Life. Many Hs! The excitement.

I am slowly recovering, having landed in Hyderabad this morning, from last night’s party above.

Now you might wonder, what is an ‘H’?

And it’s a good question.

A very good question.

A question with many, many answers.

Confusing answers, long and rambling pointless answers

Answering such a question deserves an entire post of its own.

Suffice to say a ‘H.’ consists of many strange things.

There are big Hs, regular Hs and little Hs (Much like Goldilocks’s bears). Then there is alternative H or, as we like to call him, just Captain H.

It is a weird and wonderful thing when you see all the Hs congregating in one single place. There were even the H extensions, the Ns and the Ms.

By midnight 2 out of the 3 more youthful Hs were completely smashed on the bartenders exotic creations, (one of which was a strawberry flavoured, frothy vanilla ice cream margarita. That genius man!)

I almost had an entire proper conversation with regular H. while he was still on his second or third drink but after that it all deteriorated rapidly.

You can immediately tell when an H is high.

Stage 0: Before 2-4 drinks, mostly sober

Stage 1: The arm slips around your shoulder and he suddenly gets very limber

Stage 2: The arm tightens around you, he starts to bends down a little (being a tall guy) and whispers confidentially in your ear.

Stage 3: Lots of bending and hugging, the whispering confidentially in your ear continues but less coherently.

Stage 4: Bending, slurring, incoherence, some obnoxiousness and general idiocy.

Stage 5: Standing and sleeping. Obliviousness to all surroundings.

Stage 6: Sleeping. Anywhere. In any place.

Any kind of sane conversation after Stage 2 and Stage 3 of High H. is impossible. Even little H. gets fiery and crazy after a few drinks.

During Stage 0 (Pre-drunken state) H interrogated me vigorously on that stupid DNA article I wrote (long story) that caused no end of trouble (and is still causing me just a bit of tension).

Instead of actually allowing me to finish my sentences and tell him what happened, the H. told me exactly what he knew happened and vociferously tried to push me into agreeing with his own little version of events.

Somehow during Stage 3-4 of H. drunkenness, little H. picked a massive fight with someone who had picked a fight with alternative H. a year ago.

Later at Stage 3 or 4 (the limber, bending stage) regular H. became unusually odd, at one point putting his arm around me and bending his head down, all the way down to my waist (H is a very tall man, but I was a little puzzled when he did this).

Later he put his arm around me again, tilted his head back and proceeded to slowly show me his tongue.

Sometime during Stage 4 he said

“Don’t hue get all cocky and shhhhhit with me. Hey! Are you like being cocky with me?”

I jusht want to make one shimple requesh ok…just one shimple requesh…listen man…it’s just..a simple..request….listen…I jusht wanna tell you…”

He went on like this for about 5 minutes after which he shoved me quite hard in the ribs. I never found out what that simple request was because by now I was pretty annoyed. I told him not to touch me again and then moved away.

Aside from that it was a great party. The cake was moist, the bartender unusually talented and most of our age group of girls and boys were both well dressed and hot.

Mane dropped me and Riddhi home by about 3 in the morning, after a quickie smoke in his car.

Those delightful red shoes I went on and on about (and here too) finally made it out for their first test drive and they were EXCRUCIATING!!! I have developed beautiful blisters on the back on my ankles now. Dammit all!

But on the positive side, they looked fucking fabulous. (I’m so shallow)

Squat

Last Wednesday I convinced myself I was bored enough of sitting on my sofa to go out to a squat party.

My significant other had decreed by royal mandate, that from now on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday would be spent in our own respective houses.

Of course, I could feel my own doom slowly approaching.

But as I mentioned before, I’ve built up a certain amount of resistance. (It’s about fucking time too).

There was a distinct lull in the air.

Generally, if things are going well for a little while, I know its only a matter of time before I’m bitten in the a**.

This usually involves alcohol. Symptoms include extremes in emotion, followed by erratic behaviour, irritation and mood swings. Which is then closely followed by rage, the sulks, verbal vomit, tears and finally passing out, leaving the shit, as it were, warm in my hands.

The only thing to do really is wait for it. (Avoiding confrontation is in my nature.)

So,

I went to this squat party.

‘Squat’ being an extremely appropriate word in this case. Fernanda, a midget sized Mexican firecracker, who has a bladder the size of a peanut wanted to pee everywhere except in the actual toilet.

(Which, surprisingly enough, had toilet paper and what was even more impressive, though there was a never ending queue of people waiting to be dehydrated, so far no one had pissed on the seat.)

So I’m walking around, on the street, in the middle of the night with Fernanda, desperately trying to convince her of all the wonderful qualities this particular loo possessed while she looks for a suitable car to pee behind. I cringe in horror as she skips off behind one.

30 seconds later, she skips back out. Impressed by her incredible beer-deploying speed, I dared to ask her if she was sure she didn’t own a penis and had just whipped it out.

Later, the cops stopped outside and we were confined in the warehouse, I desperately tried to convince her not the pee in the shower even though the toilet had just been vacated. (and was still reasonably clean with toilet paper to boot, which considering the amount of people that had used it by now was shocking.).

She didn’t listen of course. No one ever listens to me.

She ‘went’ in the shower.

Oh yes, about the party briefly:

I had reduced my expectations appropriately, high hopes would only be dashed.

For the first hour I was arrogantly pleased that the party met expectation.

A handful of scattered vagabond types, skater shoes, weird hair, round flat shoes. Very grunge-trendy. We parked ourselves on some stands with our beers and waited.

It picked up suddenly as the DJ played Russian music and every lethargic drunk danced around like a maniac.

Some guy decided it would be entertaining to take off all his clothes and dance enthusiastically without a stitch on except a T-shirt covering his face.

It only got better from there.

(PS – His penis didn’t seem very large, why would he want to show it off? Maybe it was average. I’m not really sure. What is average anyway? 5 inches? 6? 3-4?)