Bibliogenesis....maybe!

Or another false dawn, more likely. I had a very vivid dream in the early hours of this morning, involving me and two people I know, but who, to the best of my knowledge, have never met each other. I woke at around 2:00, in the midst of the dream, fell asleep again, and found it continuing. Even the first time I woke, a story was brewing in my head, and when my alarm ended the dream definitively, it almost began writing itself. What has happened during the day, though, is that I've decided that it may be conducive to an unusual structure, which is what I'm going to try. I've written a chapter and a bit so far, and it seems to be flowing. Can I get it out of my imagination and into the world? On recent evidence, it's doubtful, but you never know!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

One of those days, one of those weeks

Today hasn't been all that wonderful - up at 'stupid o'clock', tramping through the rain to the bus stop (although, at least, it hasn't snowed here, unlike many other places in the UK in recent days), work was 'meh' at best, the journey home traffic-ridden and frustrating, and, to cap it all, I nearly had a row with K (mainly my fault) when I got in. We kissed and made up, though, so at least that part of the day ended well.
But then, the week as a whole hasn't exactly been overflowing with fun and frolics - I had a very down day on Wednesday, the darkness inside threatening to drag me into its quagmire, which I was going to blog about, until I realised it was all stuff I've blogged about ad nauseum in the past, and stuff, moreover, that I've said I wouldn't keep harping on about, even though I can't seem to help myself sometimes. Oh well, only six more early starts to go, after which I get two (count them, two!) days off before launching into eight straight night shifts. Are we having fun yet?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Et in Arcadia ego

On the way out of 'worktown', on a particular bus route I used to use quite often, but don't so much since I moved to the flat, is a road with some very posh houses. I'd seen, as I came and went, a new house being built, and it was obvious it was going to fit in with, if not eclipse, its neighbours - it really is a very smart place. I was aware it had been finished and occupied some time ago, but what I hadn't noticed until today was what the house had been called. Arcadia. Immediately, I thought of the phrase in the title of the post, which I'd first come across in a documentary years ago, and which is usually translated as 'even in Arcadia, I am there', where 'Arcadia' represents some utopian society, and 'I' is taken to be death. A memento mori, in other words. A reminder that no matter how well-off, how privileged you are, you'll end up like the rest of us. Dead, gone, and, in short order, almost certainly forgotten. Even if you own a house like Arcadia.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The morning after

I got ridiculously drunk last night, or rather the early hours of this morning, the worst I've been for quite a while. It wasn't in any kind of reaction to yesterday afternoon, though, it was simply an accident. I called in at my local for an hour or so on my way home from work, but it was when I got indoors that the damage was done. K and I ended up in the kitchen of the flat, having one of our 'anything and everything' kind of conversations, and there was a bottle of wine in the fridge. There isn't now! K was far more sensible, she just drank two mugs of tea. The worst part about it is that I've ended up wasting a good part of my day off today - I didn't wake up until almost 10:30, and I'm still drinking my breakfast (brunch?!) coffee as I'm writing this. I don't get that many days off, so to spend one of them in an alcoholic coma, and its aftermath, is pretty stupid, in all honesty. Never again - until the next time!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Unfair

OK, I'll admit that I sometimes go out and about specifically to look for eye candy, not, certainly of late, with any great degree of success most of the time. When I go to work on a Saturday afternoon, already one of my least favourite shifts, though, what I don't expect is for the eye candy to come to me, in a manner of speaking. Wrong again. One of my colleagues brought his son in with him, and I spent all afternoon, breaks apart, no more than a few feet away from the boy, given that his father was working the position next to mine. First impressions were that he was around 11, because he was a compact little guy, but as soon as I heard him speak, I revised my guess upwards - his voice was decidedly not 'little boyish' - and found out a little later that he's nearly 13, when I got the chance to talk to him for a couple of minutes. All in all, though, and although he was by no means 'drop dead gorgeous', it was still bloody torture having him so close for such a long time, trying to look without being obvious, but at the same time not wanting to look, or interact with him, in case I 'outed' myself. As always, all I can say is that anyone who thinks this is a 'choice' on my part simply doesn't understand, or, more likely, want to understand. It's a nightmare, but one where you never wake up.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nephelokokkygia's Greatest Hits

I've never pushed my other blog, Nephelokokkygia, preferring to allow readers to find and explore it of their own volition. It has been going almost as long as this main blog, though, and even those who have been kind enough to take a look might not have gone back to its earlier stages, so, at the risk of seeming self-congratulatory, I'd like to point people in the direction of what I consider to be the better work I've managed to come up with. The stories I'm going to list are in reverse chronological order - and there is a good reason for this, or so I think, anyway!

Beached - my most autobiographical story, based on my relationship with R, the first boy I ever fell in love with, when I was 17 and still at school. It is fictionalised, but there's quite a lot of my real life here.

Revenant - my favourite very short story. Inspired by someone who has been mentioned myriad times in this blog, but based on a dream rather than anything that happened in reality.

Fiction - written in one sitting on a Sunday afternoon/evening, in reaction to an event that had huge repercussions for a little corner of the internet which had, up to that point, seemed to be happy and friendly, but which was never the same again afterwards.

Hallowed - another story produced in one take, after a good few months when I'd written almost nothing. I didn't think that much of it at the time, but I've grown fonder of it since.

Jamie - inspired by a chance encounter with a boy who very much reminded me of another boy.

Lucid/Lucent - actually my first two stories of any substance, but republished in a more user-friendly format six months or so later. Lucent, in particular, is close to being, in my opinion, the best thing I've ever written. That is just my opinion, though!

Quaesitum - something a bit different, a story that started as nothing more than a title, a word I found on a website dedicated to unusual words.

Bridges - a story of redemption, maybe.

Discrimination - a little counterfactual, tongue-in-cheek thing, but one which, I hope (at the risk of sounding pretentious), might make one or two people pause and examine their attitude to others.

Confluence - not autobiographical in any way in terms of actions, but there's really quite a lot of me in the protagonist, certainly in terms of attitude towards the objects of my attractions. Approach with caution, please, if you're offended by intergenerational relationships.

Perihelion - in the top three, in my assessment, of all the things I've written. A lot of emotion went into this, and it was pretty much all-consuming in the weeks I was writing it.

Londoner - something almost completely different from anything else I've produced, a sort of sci-fi thing.

Optimal & Diary - another pair of stories not for the easily offended. Optimal was so called for a reason, which will probably be evident to anyone who's read any amount of this blog.

Alexandrine - and last, but certainly not least, my magnum opus, to date, anyway (and hence the order I've presented these links). A love story, nothing more or less. And, without apology, I adore it, and its title character, however masturbatory that might seem.

There are a number of other stories I could have mentioned, but most of them are more erotic in nature, and undoubtedly not to everyone's taste, as well as a lot of thoroughly substandard poetry, and even one visual art piece (Assemblage). Nearly five years worth of what might loosely be described as 'creativity'. Very loosely.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The big lie

If I hadn't been lied to by my former manager on the concourse of Plymouth station six years or so ago, told that there was a possibility of a job near home when that possibility never existed, I could've moved to a better paid job much earlier than I did, maybe soon enough to have rescued our finances, the finances which, ultimately, were the catalyst for the 29/2/12 phone call that destroyed everything. Yes, the secret, the 'real me', would still have been there, still an accident waiting to happen, but I could still have been married, still living in a quiet cul-de-sac in Cornwall, even the poor bloody cat might still have been alive. Why, for fuck's sake, couldn't he have told me the truth? I feel like going and finding him, and beating his head against a wall. Not that it would solve anything, except to get the screaming frustration out of my system. How fragile it all was, how easily it all crumbled to dust. All gone. Forever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Oh, capricious muse, where are you?

When I got in last night, K was showing me the A-Level Photography work she'd been doing over the weekend (and very good it is, too), telling me how she'd suddenly gripped by extra enthusiasm for the project, to the extent that she's had to rein herself in and not do too much, given that she's got other subjects to consider as well. It took me back to almost two years ago, when my life was taken over by a similar, all-consuming passion for a particular endeavour, namely the writing of Alexandrine. It also made me realise that I've written almost nothing of consequence since - there have been a few false starts, but I simply haven't been able to follow on and finish anything, despite the fact that some of the draft stories have complete plots in my head, and just need a few words to hang onto the superstructure, as it were. I'd really like to get back into writing substantively, because it's something I enjoy doing, and perhaps have at least a small amount of ability in, it's just a case of finding the spark that will engender the '99% perspiration' needed to get the ideas out of my head and onto the computer screen.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Coincidence and crying

Well, I did read that chapter of that story, and it left me in bits, as it always does, crying my eyes out. And, almost unbelievably, the track that was playing on Planet Rock while I was reading it was Fallen Angel by King Crimson. There's no way of explaining how much of a coincidence that was, unless you've read the story, in which case you wouldn't need the explanation. So I guess I should add a link, in case anyone is interested. And while you're there, read the rest of the story. It's stunning.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ever more repressive

I know I said I wasn't going to write about this stuff anymore, but a couple of random things that happened last night that linked together all too well began these musings, to the point I've decided to break my resolution.
When I got on my train home at 'worktown' last night, it proved to be a 'tale of two cuties'. The first, already on the train when I boarded, was obviously too young - 10 or 11 - but he reminded me more than a little of R, the first boy I ever fell in love with when I was still at school, His hair in particular, in terms of both colour and style, was almost identical, and there were facial similarities, too. If the youngster was strictly 'eye candy only', someone who got on the train just before it left was, at least theoretically, rather different. He was undoubtedly of legal age, maybe 18 or 19, and he was very cute. Not that I expected for a moment that he would've been interested in me, even if he was gay, but he certainly caught my eye. Both of them got off the train within three stops, and that would've been that, except for something I read online when I got back to the flat. I must have been at a particularly loose end, because I found myself reading a couple of threads at the forum attached to a story site I visit occasionally. I can only remember having looked at the forum once before, and that was probably four or five years ago, so for me to be there at all was very much out of the ordinary, but the particular thread that I read a good deal of tied in with the story I wrote about in my last post, and with my thoughts about the young man on the train. The site 'owner' had initiated a discussion about what constitutes 'abuse', particularly in connection with 'intergenerational' relationships. He posted a list of rhetorical questions, and it was the very first of them that was particularly apposite - it contained the phrase '...child (however that is defined)'. The replies, for the most part, were predicable enough, yes, it's always wrong, always abuse, but some of the suggestions as to what constituted 'wrong' really brought home just how repressive 'society' is becoming in this subject area. Relationships where both parties are of legal age, but there was more than a five year age difference (more than 2/3 years in one comment) when the younger is 'barely legal' were deemed unacceptable (hence the link with the young man on the train), and one commenter even suggested a relationship between a 15 and a 13 year old would be wrong. And this was on what is basically a 'gay' site, not some tabloid fuelled 'hang the paedos' place. It brought yet another Nineteen Eighty-four quote to mind - 'the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism'. It probably should've been predictable, but it was depressing, nonetheless.

Love & best wishes
Sammy B

Humpty Dumpty would be proud

 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean'. So said Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass. There seems to have been a frustratingly large amount of what might loosely be called 'journalism' along those lines in the past 24 hours, particularly around the definition of the words 'child' and 'victim'. Even the age of consent appears not to mean what one might have believed. But then, as a member of the most despised underclass, my opinion is automatically worthless, of course.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The perils of rereading

I'm a great rereader, finding stories I like, and revisiting them time and again. But it isn't always an easy option. I've just read a couple of chapters of a totally wonderful online story I know very well, but there's a difficult, so difficult, chapter coming very soon, if I continue. A chapter that even the foreknowledge of has reduced me to tears. I've written about it before, maybe some long-suffering souls who've been here for a while will remember. Reduced to mush by the fictional fate of a fictional character. Again. Most people who know me think I'm a thoroughly cold fish. But that's just a mask, a coping mechanism. A way of dealing with the fact that, in reality, I'm an emotional animal. Far too emotional, in all honesty. But I can't let it show. That would be giving too much away, make me more vulnerable to ridicule than I already am. Boys don't cry, after all. Except when they do.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Signed and sealed

The deed is done, I've signed up to an eighteen month extension to the tenancy agreement on the flat, which takes us beyond the end of K's time at her school. That done, and given the twin disincentives to meandering of a bus strike (although 'our' bus, the one that stops outside the flat, is running normally) and some pretty unpleasant weather, I've decamped to my local, which will, of course, now retain that status until the end of summer 2016, at least. They'll probably be sick of the sight of me by then!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Schizoid day

Maybe it's something to do with the fact that I've been exhausted all day, having finally got through my week of nights,  but my mood has been swinging rather more than usual today. I stupidly went looking for 'the boy on the bus', didn't find him, needless to say, and promptly got very down - but only for a matter of minutes, after it struck me that I didn't expect to see him, hadn't done, so why the melodrama? There were a few more swings of the pendulum, but not to any huge extremes, and I've ended up in a reasonable state of equilibrium, helped by the fact that K and her mother do seem to have come to an understanding about the funeral on Thursday - my girl putting in an appearance at the wake for a couple of hours before heading home appears to have been deemed acceptable. I might even be able to chill out on my day off tomorrow - stranger things have happened!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The enemy within

Not an Orwell quotation, for once, but one from Nabokov, specifically from Ada, my all-time favourite book - 'the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented'. I woke from a dream an hour and a half or so ago which left the 'dream me' lying on the floor in a foetal position, crying uncontrollably. A dream in which it seemed that my subconscious had drawn together pretty much all of the elements of my emotional life that, if repeated in 'real life' (not that such a permutation could ever have happened, because of different timelines) would cause me the most distress. In a nutshell, it involved DBJ, as the 14 year old he was when I last saw him, in bed with the young woman, as she was when I last saw her, who, if marriage was ever a viable option for me, should probably have been my wife, while my actual ex appeared as a shrewish harridan and K as a 6/7 year old dreadful, uncontrollable spoilt brat (which neither of them ever were, I hasten to add). No wonder the virtual me was reduced to incoherent tears.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Unconscionable

I had what amounted to a row with my ex when she rang me while I was on the train to work this evening. Her dad's funeral has been arranged for next Thursday, as she told K, and K had passed on to me a couple of days ago. What K didn't say, though, was that her mother was unhappy about K not wanting to stay for the 'do' afterwards, my ex openly saying to me this evening that if K wasn't prepared to do 'the whole thing' she didn't want her there at all - basically, do it my way, or stay away. Even the knowledge of my ex's fragility, on this occasion, didn't prevent me from saying exactly what I thought, namely that to tell your own daughter she can't go to her grandfather's funeral unless she jumps through the right hoops is completely unconscionable. I can't remember being more annoyed with my ex, possibly ever, certainly not since the marriage imploded, and I said so. I spoke to K immediately afterwards, and suggested a possible compromise, but I'm going to leave the 'to go, or not to go' decision up to the girl herself. I'm still seething, though, even four hours after the call.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

'I'd never judge....'

There seemed to have been a break from it for a while - maybe people were preoccupied by the festive season, or something - but last night at work, it was back to 'normal', with a couple of gratuitous outbreaks of 'gay baiting'. The target on this occasion was one of our more recent 'recruits', and one of the younger guys in the place, whose training has now almost finished - he wasn't there, of course, in the nature of this stuff, it almost always happens behind people's backs - who seems to have been targeted because of the way he dresses, and the fact that he's flat sharing with a couple of young women, who 'obviously' wouldn't feel 'safe' if he was a 'red-blooded male'. At one point in the conversation, one of my colleagues, with obvious (and almost certainly deliberate) irony said 'I'd never judge anyone by their orientation', and it was all I could do to avoid calling him a liar to his face. Because I know, from things he's said numerous times before, that he would, without a shadow of a doubt, judge me for my sexuality, as would virtually everyone else who works in the building. Judge me simply because of the existence of my attractions, rather than any consideration of how those attractions are expressed - which is, of course, not at all in any practical sense. It's not just the prejudice that irritates me, it's the hypocrisy, too.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Not moving

I've just fielded an e-mail from the estate agents saying that the landlord has agreed to extend our tenancy on the flat by at least another year, and isn't proposing a rent increase, either, so it looks like K and I will be staying put for the time being. It means, of course, another year or more of time-consuming commuting for me, but I'm used enough to that now, and given that it facilitates K being where she wants to be educationally, it's a price I'm willing to pay. I would've moved, had the landlord either not wanted to renew, or had put the rent up substantially, but it wasn't high on my 'wish list' for the early weeks of the New Year. One less thing to worry about, at least once the paperwork is signed and sealed, which will, all being well, happen at the beginning of next week.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Waste

Specifically, the waste of 23 minutes of my life last night, watching the video of the 2013 'Leavers' Prom' of a certain Cornish school. Looking for a beautiful boy. Who, of course, was conspicuous by his absence - he was either extremely camera-shy, or, much more likely, not there at all, which could, of course, have been for any number of reasons. I know it's all pointless, harking back to someone who was never a part of my life in any direct sense, much as he (inadvertantly) changed almost everything, but I can't help it. As I've said in various dedications to fictional stuff in my other blog, 'for DBJ, with love, always'.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

In and out

K still seems to be bearing up well after the bad news on Thursday - she's gone out today, to meet up with the friend she went to America with last summer, who's in London, en route from home back to uni after the festive break, I suspect. I, on the other hand, have been sequestered indoors all day, because I've come down with yet another chest cold, and the weather here has been anything but conducive to going out in such a state of health - it's been wet and miserable, albeit not too cold, all day. I'll have to drag myself out in the morning, because I'm working, but I certainly can't say I'm looking forward to the prospect. And then I start nights again on Monday. I've got a feeling I'll be running on empty in pretty short order.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The New Year is difficult already

I guess there could have been more sombre news to start 2015, but the phone call I received at 10:30 is certainly enough to be going on with - my ex's dad, and, obviously, K's grandad, died this morning. It wasn't exactly a shock - he was 82, and he'd been in poor health for several years - but my ex, of course, was very upset. K was a bit more sanguine - as she said herself, she never really knew him that well, given that she grew up, for the most part, in Cornwall, the best part of 300 miles from my ex's home town, as opposed to her cousins, who all live within 30 minutes drive. K is going to go to the funeral, although when that will be is still to be arranged, but she seems determined to carry on with life as normal in the interim. I will, of course, be around for her if things catch up with her later, but she seems to be coping at the moment. I just hope that this isn't going to set the tone for this very new New Year.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B