The Fight Chronicles

Recently, I was having quiet drinks with friends when after a little while, two girls came and asked if they could sit at our table. Looks wise, on a scale of 1 to 10, one of them was about a 6. I’d had a few beers which bumped her number up a little so of course, I let them take the seat. Her mate was about a 0/1. She looked vaguely like this... 

A huge amount of alcohol was needed to help her looks.

So of course I cracked on to the more attractive one of the two. Running my game for a little while as the drinks flowed. At one point the more attractive one gets up to use the washroom. She had to walk around to my side of the table to get there. She took the opportunity to whisper in my ear “I like you. I think we should be friends on facebook” That was a weird thing to say, I thought, as she slipped me her business card. She continued “...and by the way, my friend thinks your cute” Suddenly fear shot through my body. This was not what I was expecting, nor what I had planned.

My attitude had completely changed by the time the girl had got back from the washroom. I showed disinterest to them both and started acting slightly anti-social. Panic started to kick in when the more attractive girl left the bar in a taxi, leaving her ugly mate with me and my friends. Oh no, what had I got myself into now?

Embarrassingly she started to act flirty toward me in front of my friends. A particular low point for me was when my friends tried distracting her. Whilst she pretended to listen to them talk she rubbed her foot up and down my leg until finally finding my crotch. I felt a tingle, well, more of a shiver down my spine. I had to stop this.

Eventually my friends gave up trying to distract her and we went back into our own conversation. She asked me a simple question ‘So what’s your perfect girl?’ I suddenly saw an opportunity to end this nonsense so I had to pick my words carefully. With a straight face and totally deadpan I answer “One that can take a punch”

Now,

I can’t tell you whether it was the Jaeger bombs she kept buying me or my endless quest for self amusement that made me say this. What I can tell you is I don’t really believe in hitting girls and that’s what this ridiculously long introduction has been leading up to.

I’ve not been in many fights in my life. The ones I have been in also barely count as fights.  My first was when I was eleven. I watched my friend get beaten up in a park by a kid called James, who used to practice judo. I watched my friend get knocked over and punched time and time again until I couldn’t watch anymore. I stepped in to help him out only to get taken to the ground myself. I distinctly remember watching my friend running into the distance crying as James sat on my head.

My next fight, aged thirteen, a friend and I were play wrestling on his front lawn. A kid that used to bully me at school was walking past, came over and joined in. Of course, he started to get rough and it soon ended up in a real fight. I was all over him, despite his friend shooting at me with a potato gun.

Another time I had got into a little argument with some lippy kid called Billy. He was always starting fights with people as his brother was supposed to be one of the toughest in my school. We tussled on the pavement not really hurting each other until I ended it by hitting his head against the curb. He ran off crying but soon found me later that day with a huge group of his mates. I was climbing a tree with my friends when they all showed up. Of course my friends got out of the tree and walked away leaving me to fend for myself.  (There seems to be a theme here?) Billy and all his mates waited for me at the bottom of the tree until his tougher, older brother turned up. Billy explained the story to his brother, I was convinced I was going to get my head kicked in. That was until the brother told Billy “Good, you’re a little prick and you deserve it”

The last fight I ever had was my most humiliating. When I was fifteen I took up boxing.  I loved it and took to it like a duck to water. After a few weeks of training they started to let me spar. I loved that too. The majority of other kids they put me up against I dominated. This is until they put me up against a girl that had been training at the gym for years. Despite my little joke about hitting women, I really do hate it and was quick to protest against it to my trainer. He didn’t want to hear it and talked me into getting into the ring with her. The sparring match started and we both put our guards up. She edged toward me, I stood rooted to the spot. I really didn’t feel comfortable hitting her so I did the next best thing and just tried to dodge every punch she threw. Not an easy thing to do when you’re not so agile and you’re a rookie fighting somebody so experienced.

After a few minutes of this girl raining punches on me the trainer stopped the sparring match out of pity.  I was quick to leave the ring, I just wanted to bury my head in the sand. She was quite humble about it, I was  surprised. That is until the next day, when I discovered she had told her mates and word had spread around the whole school. You can imagine the abuse I got for that.

 It took a long time to live that one down.

Cock Blocking Cross Dressers

When I first moved to Vancouver, I didn’t really know anybody. In the first few months of living there, I had a great way of meeting people and trying to get lucky. I used to go down to a hostel that was a short walk from my apartment. I’d go there early and alone and sit at the bar. As I’d drink, various different people would come and go until eventually a lonely attractive girl would sit next to me. I’d strike up a conversation with something smooth like “so what’s going on with your face then?” you know, something James Bond would say and we’d get lost in conversation for hours. Eventually, when I felt we knew each other well enough I’d suggest we try a different bar which the girl would always agree to. From here I’d take the girl to a bar that was (conveniently) close to my apartment. The special thing about this place was that it is a gay bar, this would lead to the girls telling me how impressed they were that I’m so comfortable around gay guys. Most importantly, there wouldn’t be anybody hitting on her. Here we’d get into a deeper, more personal conversation until I’d decide to either take them to a gay club, the beach or, if I played my cards right, to my apartment. On one particular occasion, this is how I met a girl that, in this story I’ll call TheScandinavian.

Now the night I met TheScandinavian I didn’t take her to a club, beach or my apartment. I met her fresh off her 12+ hour flight and she was extremely jet lagged and tired so she went back to the hostel where she was staying for the week, but not before we exchanged numbers. A couple of nights later whilst I’m out with friends she sends me a text asking if I wanted to meet up. I wasn’t overly attracted to her aesthetically but she had a great, fun personality.

Also I’m male, I have a penis and I wanted to use it.

 So I told her to come out and meet us. She meets my friends who all fall in love with her personality just like I did a few nights before and after many, many drinks, my friends all filter off until it’s me, TheScandinavian and my other female friend, let’s call her Tartan. I pick up where I left off the other night and suggest we hit the gay club. They both agree.

We hit the gay club, we drink, we laugh and then we start playing pool. I’m terrible at pool, but I’m beating the girls until a lesbian comes over and Challenges me. TheScandinavian and Tartan sit down to chat with each other. I start playing and beating the lesbian at pool. That is until one point where I bend over to take a shot and I get a massive slap on the arse.

I ignore it. I’m in a gay club. I don’t want to encourage this behaviour. I go for another shot and get my arse slapped again. I still don’t react. The third time I can’t help but look round. Only to find myself met with a big, black, drag queen wearing a short, strappy, hot pink dress. “You’re playing me next big boy” He/she says, in a way so stereotypical that it makes me wish I was exaggerating.

I pass the offer down but he/she’s persistent. I start getting encouraged by the lesbian and the gay guys orbiting around the drag queen. I have no choice. It’d be more uncomfortable if I walked away. I guess I have to play her/him now, at least one game. As I rack up I look over at my friends. In my absence, they’re getting hit on by two lads. No problem, I think, I’ll get this game of pool over and done with and then continue my pursuit of getting my fingers stinky with TheScandinavian.

 I start to play pool. I want to get it over and done with quick. But as I said, I’m terrible at pool. I’m not potting anything. I look over at the girls again. They’re leaving for the outside area of the club with the lads to smoke. FUCK!

Embarrassingly I start to get owned by the drag queen. To add to that embarrassment, the pool game starts to become a spectacle as a huge crowd of gay guys form throughout the match to watch and cheer on the drag queen. She’s/he’s potting everything and absolutely destroying me. He/she toys with me. I’m clearly uncomfortable and the drag queen adds to it by taking his/her time with the black ball. She/he must have known I wanted to get out of there.

She/he finally potted the black ball and this suddenly left me in an awkward position. I’ve got to be polite, that’s my nature. Do we shake hands? Or do I hug him/her? Through quick thinking I decide, I’m in a gay club, a big crowd has formed,  I don’t want to offend anybody, I want to be polite, I’ll go for the hug.

I’ve made better decisions in my time.

We embrace. My hands find his/her back. Remember, this is a big, black, drag queen wearing a short, strappy, hot pink dress. I can feel all the hairs as my fingers run through them. They curl around my fingertips as I pick up the sweat from his/her back with my palms.

Tasty.

I finally leave the pool table, red in the face and go to find the girls. But it’s too late. They’re deep in conversation with the lads in the smoking area. TheScandinavian has seemed to have lost interest and is now focusing all her attention on one of the lads. I blew it. I admit defeat and go home. Trying to figure out the moment I went wrong.

A couple of days later I meet up with TheScandinavian for some drinks for her last night in her trip to Vancouver. I want to end this story without going into too much detail, but I need to conclude it somehow. So with a cheeky play on words...

In more ways than one, there was a happy ending.

Inception and the Horse Tranquilizers

I thought I’d kick off the blog with a fairly tame story. I’m not sure what you readers are willing to take so I’m going to ease you in to the good stuff slowly and gently. Think of it as the textual equivalent of anal sex.

If you know anything about me, you’ll know I’m a bit of a closet film geek. I love them. I can sit and watch them until my face turns blue. If I’m not watching them, I’m reading about them, making them or writing them. I’m not fond of talking about them because I believe people shouldn’t be defined by just one thing, hence why I’m calling myself a closet film geek.

It’s rare these days that I get ridiculously excited for the release of a new film. So when the release of Christopher Nolan’s Inception was coming up it was extra special. I was practically creaming my pants. I couldn’t contain myself. Christopher Nolan to me is like a god. Any video, article, trailer or rumour about his new film Inception would get me giddy with excitement to the point where I was climbing the walls of my bedroom. The release date, 16^th July, couldn’t come quick enough.

I had it all planned out. I was working graveyard shift at a supermarket at the time. I’d finish at 8am Friday morning, drive to Bristol from my hometown in Swindon and catch the very first showing. Why Bristol I hear you ask? They have this cinema with huge, stupidly comfortable, luxury leather seats that you could sink into. This was going to be perfect.

So the 16^th of July came. I was excited, but I had the distraction of an extremely painful tooth ache. It was excruciating. I was trying to work but couldn’t concentrate, the pain was too intense. I was popping painkillers like they were candy. But it wasn’t working; the pain was just getting worse. Everybody who came near me that night would get an earful of complaining. A colleague got so sick of my moaning that she offered me her prescription painkillers. She told me they were really powerful, take two; it will sort the pain right out. What could go wrong?

Mistake.

I took the painkillers and went back to work. On the positive side, the pain was fading fast. But my god, I was starting to feel very light headed and dizzy. It was a very weird feeling of drunkenness. It started to worry my manager when he came round the corner to find me giggling at some ham. I was out of my mind. My legs were wobbly, I was feeling drunk and groggy, I was wobbling around everywhere and I couldn’t stop chuckling to myself. It’s a surprise I was never sent home.

Finally it got to 8am. I went home to change.  The painkillers were still in full affect. I was so groggy and tired that it felt like my face was melting but my will was strong.  I was going to catch the first showing of Inception no matter what.

So I made the trip to Bristol. Parked up the car, got my ticket, wandered around Cabot Circus for a bit then hit the cinema to finally catch the movie that felt like such a long time to get released. I sat down in one of the huge, stupidly comfortable, luxury leather seats that you could sink into and looked around. It was just me and an older gentleman a few rows in front of me. I look at my watch. Only 10 minutes to go.

I then wake up to an explosion.  I watch on the screen as Leonardo Di Caprio shoots people in some sort of snowy environment. I think to myself, this can’t be the first scene can it? I wake up again to the end credits. I sit there watching the names roll up the screen. I’m trying to battle staying awake whilst also trying to process the fact that I had just slept through the entire film I waited so long to see. I couldn’t believe it. I groggily walked back to my car; even walking I could barely keep my eyes open. I was still stumbling all over the place. What was in those pills?

The drive home was a mission. It was so hard keeping my eyes open that they were reduced to a squint. I blitzed along the motorway. I needed to get home as soon as possible before I fell asleep. I had the window open, blasting my face with air. I had the radio loud and I was singing along to it, doing a weird sitting down dance thing all the way home. God knows what the other drivers were thinking after seeing that. I could feel myself dropping off to sleep, I just had to battle it the whole drive home.

I made it home in record time; it felt like a long drive though. I went straight to bed. Apart from getting up a couple of times for the toilet, I slept right through to my next shift on the Monday night. I lost a whole weekend. Three days of a marathon sleep which is kind of scary now that I think about it. I went to work feeling fresh apart from my legs feeling a little wobbly. I told everybody at work about the little escapade and had one response that will always stick with me “I’m not surprised! Those painkillers are fucking horse tranquilizers!” It was three weeks before I got another chance to see Inception too.

To be fair though, my tooth didn’t hurt anymore.

PS. Did I actually compare my blog to anal sex?

Overcoming Resistance

So I’ve been thinking about starting up a blog for a while. Through a mixture of indecisiveness, over-thinking and just plain laziness I haven’t started writing until now.

My main obstacle was thinking about what to write about. At first I thought I could write a blog about moving to Vancouver and all my adventures here. But I couldn’t help telling myself....who cares about that? I’m sure that’d be a fairly boring read. Also, as I write I’ve been here 6 months already. It’s slightly late for a travel blog surely?

I then thought I’d write a blog where I’d drop knowledge and blow your minds. But who am I kidding? I’m incredibly simple, that blog would be very short lived.

I then played with the idea of writing anecdotes of the many stupid and embarrassing things I’ve got up to over the years. But would I want my life out there for everybody to see like that? Plus I’m just an average guy. It seems pretty egotistical and indulgent to write out what would practically be a biography.

So I’ve been letting these ideas swim around in my head for a few months now, debating in my mind whether a blog is a good idea or not and just like a lot of my other ideas, it doesn’t come to fruition. But I recently read a book called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It talks about the creative mind, writers block, resistance and how you can overcome that.

It also talks about the muse and how we’re all connected to this one consciousness and we’re actually just physical beings that translate all that creative energy into the world. But that’s just silly. It distracts from what is otherwise an intelligent and insightful read that I’d recommend to anybody.

I digress.

The thing about resistance, it stops you from achieving your goals. It gets to you through self doubt, fear, rationalization, fear of success or in my case, ego. After all, the whole reason I’ve been debating back and forth about whether a blog is a good idea or not is because I’m ultimately thinking, what would the reader think of this?

So this is me taking in the advice of The War of Art. This is me overcoming resistance. Forgetting ego. Just getting on my arse and just writing. Typing on my keyboard just to get into the motion of typing and getting my mind working. Even if it is the ramblings of a mad man.

I don’t know if the blog will be any good. I don’t know if it would even last that long. But it’ll be nice to share something with all you people of blogville. It’ll be cool to watch this thing evolve and maybe turn from brainfarts into something that might actually be entertaining or interesting and actually worth reading. It’d also be fun to see what sort of shit comes out of my head in the future.

...and anyway....I am egotistical and indulgent....so there!