spasms of identity

We went to London on Saturday night to celebrate a couple of birthdays. People kept asking me how it was going in the new house. 'Fine', I said. They didn't seem convinced. The trouble is, I can't say much because I've given the Sunday Express exclusive rights to the story. Worse than Guantanamo Bay is how I'm pitching it. All the abuse. Made to clean up after a man who never stops eating. Forced to oil his wok. And the emotional torture. On the train back from London, seemingly out of nowhere, Mat drunkenly told me I didn't exist. 'You're an absence, a void', he snarled, as though momentarily possessed by the spirit of some radical French philosopher. I was cut to the core. I don't go out drinking in order to have my identity obliterated. Well OK, I do. But in my own time.

I just now saw one of those 'extreme makeover' programmes. A woman nods and smiles while various experts explain the terrible tortures they're going to put her through in order to make her look presentable. 'Right, first we're going to cut your tits off. Then burn out your corneas.' Nod. Smile. Mat's going to have his brace removed tomorrow, which is going to usher in a whole new world of successful social (ie: sexual) interaction. Not that he's built it up at all, in his mind. He's going to swagger into the Slug and Lettuce tomorrow night with his new improved body and his teeth set free. The girls will be waiting.

Although on one of his darker days this week I heard him reduced to pinning his hopes on 'stop-motion plasticene women'.