2002-09-09 - 2:34 p.m.

"Thank you. How you doing folks? Me too. You gotta bear with me, I'm very tired, very tired of travelling, and very tired of doing comedy, and very tired of staring out at your vacant faces looking back at me, wanting me to fill your empty lives with humour you couldn't possibly think of yourselves. Good evening." (Bill Hicks).

Finally it�s raining after another weekend of fairly unfulfilling excess, countless gin and tonics in a private members� bar proving the only way to get through the minor-celebrity fest without feeling too grubby and then a house party with karaoke, which is becoming a disturbingly frequent addition to the night�s entertainment. I don�t agree with much that professional ex-junky Irvine Welsh says, but his theory on karaoke � that at first, no-one wants to do it but then suddenly you�re fighting over the mic � is spot on. (Kara-oke is Japanese, of course, and comes from two words meaning �empty� and �your head of any thoughts of retaining even a smidgeon of dignity�). But it seems like as good a time as any for taking stock, it being a toxic Monday morning, but not in a good way. (Sometimes I think my whole life should be suffixed with the phrase �but not in a good way�).

So then I got to thinking�just how does Carrie Sadbore get away with apparently being lucratively employed to write a column about sex WITHOUT EVER ONCE WRITING ABOUT SEX? Can everything be reduced to vaguely smug metaphor or�should she be stripped of her job faster than you can say �flagrant disregard for the trades descriptions act�?

Now, it�s not that I�ve ever really been too much of a conniving, lying bounder about things, but I�ve recently been trying to inject a little more, if you will, honesty jam into the donut of my life. There are certain aspects of my existence that I don�t go around shouting about in a publicly intrusive fashion, and if pushed on the subject, I�d usually shrink back like a startled tortoise. Well, I�ve recently been passively open about these things � for example, my journal, and who I�d theoretically consider as potential sexual partners. It hasn�t so much caused that many problems, but it has highlighted the fact that people REALLY don�t like it if you refuse to nail your proverbial loyalties to any of the sexuality (insert object that proverbial loyalties are proverbially nailed to�I�m thinking �masts�, or the more Lutheran �church doors�?).

I can�t imagine that my sexual preferences are anything but a matter of supreme indifference to everyone except the people unfortunate enough to have seen the underside of my duvet, and even they probably see it as not much more than a minor annoyance. General discussions with friends have seemingly gone quite well up to a certain point, but then comes a question along the lines of��Ah! But what are you REALLY?� And this is symptomatic of one of the major faults of the human race. We could fly, but we�re so hidebound by the truth.

Anyway.

An unfortunate side-effect of that whole emptiness-garnering, soul-crushing, conversations with your goldfish-inducing loneliness that you get at three in the morning, is becoming increasingly socially withdrawn. Groups of strangers can suddenly seem like a pant-fillingly vertiginous ice-strewn mountainside, with your base camp still being clumsily erected in the grassy foothills, and you don�t have a map, and all the Sherpas have arsed off to help people with a more realistic chance of getting up there alive, or at least with a better line in smalltalk and who don�t spill their canap�s as much. Single people have often thoughtfully been invited along, but you warily hang back, and they�re quickly snapped up by whichever perma-rutting Alpha Male happens to be passing, them with their �enviable social skills� and �healthy emotional makeup� and whatnot. Overrated fuckers.

This doesn�t really bother me, even on days like today, but what�s been really frosting my buns for some time is this: the fact that, for the first time in around seven years but on two occasions in the last, say, nine months, I�ve been close to falling in love so hard that it feels like you�ve been drop-kicked in the solar plexus, but thanks to things that fall into what can collectively be referred to as �a situation�, I haven�t. I mean, I haven�t on purpose. Which, apparently like taking care of Mr and Mrs Jonathan Hart, ain�t easy. And it would be easy to think about these things too much, and you know deep down you�re just lucky to have met these people at all, let alone still have them in your life, and nothing good could possibly come of feeling any other way than you do now, so fuck that noise, right?

I know I haven�t really been very funny for a few months. It�s just sometimes�this is why.

Fuck, this has been incoherent.