Time Killing Kid

So, to cut a potentially long(ish) story short, I asked her out for the drink, and she said yes.

Thanks to all the words of advice, encouragement and piss taking since my last post. I would like to make it clear to y’all that I do have some previous experience in this area, and have been asking women out for drinks since I was at least 31.

Yesterday was my seventh consecutive day in work (hooray for shift work!), and one I took rather leisurely (a rare luxury in an understaffed psychiatric project).

I pretty much spent the last hour of my shift playing pool with JC and, admittedly, was not trying particularly hard to win. When someone you’re carrying a torch for beams that much every time they pot a ball, you find yourself deliberately missing a few shots and even losing the odd game.

My blissful hour was only interrupted once by a hilarious intervention from SGH, who walked into the room, saw us playing and said:

“Alright TKK. Alright sweetheart. [to JC] I’m only calling you sweetheart because I can’t remember your name. I’m not bent. I’m not gay. I can remember men’s names, just not women’s. They’ve always been jealous of me, ever since I was a young woman...”

Eventually, I ran out the winner in our games, and being a gentleman I shook her hand. However, when I attempted to release her hand, she held mine tighter, and so I held onto hers, resulting in us holding hands for an inordinately long time. I don’t know whether it qualified as a ‘moment’, but it certainly felt that what started as a handshake finished as something else. She then decided she wanted another game, although we only got halfway through as one of my key clients needed something from JC and my shift had now finished.

Our rota for July is due out next week. *crosses fingers*

Punctuality is not my forte.

I was a pretty punctual person until my early 20s, although by that point, after living in London for a few years, I decided to wave the white flag and join the fashionably late brigade. Anyone who's ever stepped into the London Underground Bermuda Triangle and been reported missing by the friends will know the frustration at seeing your life ebb away while stuck in a stranger's armpit on a Central Line carriage.

However, today I knew I had to be on time, as this was going to the first of only two opportunities I had this month to catch the Jewish Cleopatra.

Or so I thought.

So I pack my overnight bag (I'm doing a sleep-in shift at work tonight - joy!) early. I got in the shower, early. I shave early, etc. Basically, I was Mr Early today.

I left my flat (early). Stepping out onto the street from TK Towers a No.29 bus passed me.

It was too early.

Despite being too cool to run for buses, I managed to make the bus as the driver decided to nip into a shop to get a drink.

So I arrive at work.

Early.

I drop my bag upstairs, stroll down to the staff office and walk in through the door.

Early.

Five minutes early. Result! Not too suspicious...

Except...

She's not there.

I feign innocence and ask the other staff in the office who else did the sleep in shift, knowing full well I'd pined at the rota for many an afternoon since the new shifts were announced, and how few she'd been given. Thankfully, she hadn't gone (early), so I go upstairs to unpack some of my stuff.

And then she walks into the upstairs office, looking like Horses-era Patti Smith mixed with Cleopatra.

Be still my beating heart.

I knew it was going to be a brief chat, as when you finish a sleep-in shift you really want to leave the place sharpish, but I also knew I really wanted to ask her for a drink and I only had two chances to do that this month.

But... it just really wasn't the time. As much as I want to ask her out, I want it to look vaguely natural when I do get round to it. So I let it go and said at the end of our chat: "see you soon. Whenever that's going to be".

She replied: "I'm sure it won't be that long, TK".

I checked the rota downstairs when I got in, expecting the July rotas to be out today, as promised, which of course meant they were delayed until next week. While I sort of expected that, I didn't expect the extra bank shift booked in towards the end of the week, overlapping rather nicely with one of mine.

Which just happened to be filled by the person I broke the tardy habits of a lifetime for today.

It seems my lobbying at the team meeting on Tuesday had had an immediate impact.

The rest of the day went by in something of a haze. Having to work a nine-hour shift with a co-worker you really don't get on with is pretty tough, especially when you've seen someone you swoon over leave the building.

Later in the evening as I played pool with one of the residents, True by Spandau Ballet came on the radio. For the next three and a half minutes I was in another world, dreaming of thrills in my head and pills on my tongue, forever being punctual and True!

This finding deeper meaning in classic 80s pop songs can only mean one thing...

She's going to politely turn down my offer of a drink (whenever I get round to making it).

Almost three years ago I uploaded a post about fancying cartoon characters, namely Jane Lane from Daria:

As I put it, back in the day:

Now I hadn't watched any Daria episodes for some time, but it suddenly dawned on me that someone I had pulled and been quite smitten with a couple of years ago was Jane in all but the hair (don't think outside of a cartoon you could quite pull that hairstyle off).

I have now met someone who does uncannily resemble Jane, right down to pulling off a similar type of hairstyle (kind of like a Jewish Cleopatra). What’s even more uncanny is that, just like Jane, she happens to spend most of her spare time painting.

I’m finding working with someone I’m deeply smitten with hard to get my head around. Considering I spent far too many 9-5s sitting next to the farmer’s wife lookalike, someone who looked like they’d received an arse transplant from a cow, it’s no surprise that the semi-regular company of someone nubile and artistic has gotten me all in a tither.

Our employer has a pretty intolerant policy on staff relationships, to the point where there’s an apocryphal story that goes around the office about “friendship coffees” having to be declared after they’ve taken place.

Unfortunately for me, the Jane Lane lookalike only works part-time due to her other job in a gallery. Therefore my efforts to reach the friendship coffee stage are at the mercy of our shift patterns.

Personally, I think my manager has cottoned on to my tither and for the rest of June has rota’d myself and the Jewish Cleopatra apart, to the point where if one of us is starting a shift the other is finishing it, and vice versa.

The only chance I have of seeing her for the next few weeks is by either being on time or, shock horror, early for work. And as anyone who’s spent 60 minutes in Covent Garden choking on incense fumes while waiting for me to stroll over knows too well, punctuality is not my strong point.

At our team meeting today I will be raising the issue of staff shortages and insisting, nay demanding, that we increase the amount of shifts on offer to our bank (in-house temp) workers over the summer.

A hidden agenda, you say? How rude!

I just had to.

Had to.

I emailed Mr Smith for his sex references.

And he got back to me pretty, pretty quickly:

Anna,

Thank you for considering my application, please find my references enclosed as requested.

Reference 1:

"When I met Bill, he was 16 years old and had never had a girlfriend before. I introduced him to the pleasures of mutual masturbation, although we never had penetrative sex. After a shaky start, Bill soon became very adept at bringing me to orgasm and we spent many fun-filled hours pleasuring each other in my room.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Bill for as a fuck buddy, friend with benefits or even one night stand."

Marion Murphy

Reference 2:

"When I met Bill, he was very adept at massage and bringing to orgasm through clitoris manipulation with his fingers. However, he had never had oral or penetrative sex, and I had to introduce him to the pleasures of both. A quick and eager learner, he soon discovered what I did (and more importantly didn't) enjoy and always took great time and effort to ensure a mutually pleasureable experience when having sex."

Jospehine Smith

I trust this is satisfactory and look forward to your response.

Bill

If anyone can think of any questions I can ask him for his interview, do let me know...

A colleague in work recently discussed with me her experiences of internet dating. Like most people I’ve discussed internet dating with they’ve (a) not found true love and (b) have had negative experiences.

By the truckload.

Despite this, internet dating is widespread, and in terms of popularity (and success rate) it’s probably up there with, say, dieting.

Realising potential blog fodder, I decided to get in on the act.

But with a slight twist.

Rather than taking a hammer to my own self-esteem, I uploaded a fake female profile to a dating site, reasoning that there’s only so much fun I want to have at my own expense; and I really needed to guarantee some material for the planned post.

But where to upload the profile?

There could only be one place.

www.adultfriendfinder.com, as recommended by BCUK’s own resident lover of the fairer sex, Safriz.

Sex contact sites purport to offer a world of instant shags, all available within a few clicks of a mouse button. But the truth is far from that.

The ratio of heterosexual men to women on sex contacts sites is estimated at more than ten fellas to every chick. So whereas men go on contact sites in the expectation of finding a population of gagging for it gals, the reality is that women can afford to be even more selective and picky than they might be in real life.

And boy do they need to be.

To guarantee an abundant response I made clear I was (a) just out of a relationship and ready to let my hair down and (b) was up for anything.

Plus I had my super sexy profile pic.

But before ‘my’ sexy snap was approved by the site administrators, my inbox heaved like ’my’ corseted bosom.

While I was prepared for cock shots and the like (even though these and phone numbers are supposed to be initially screened on AFF), I was quite taken aback by the messages that came my way (pun intended).

Letting down the narf Lahhden massive big time was Soppy4u5:

hi ladies am jason in north london looking for sexy nostrings fun come over and lets meet i love to have fun in the outdoors on the bus train park bench as people are about or maybe we meet at the bar we betend we dont know each other we might even end up in the pub toilets

Jason clearly has a different idea of enjoying the great ourdoors than most.

Or maybe you ladeez would prefer a south Londoner, like SElondonse10:

Sexy photo i would love to have fun with you, do you like a big dick x

Perhaps something more exotic might be your thing. All the ladeez know the French are so romantic, like Bigfrenchcock3:

Fancy a taste of France

By that I don’t think he had a baguette in mind. Or maybe he did...

After a few days of scanning the messages in my inbox, I was exhausted. While it’s nice to feel popular, it started to feel somewhat overwhelming. Some messages would be short and to the / their point, whereas others would be thesis length or demanding why I hadn’t replied, like John’s message below:

Hello again Anna,

Do hope this message finds you keeping well

I must admit that I am truly most disappointed you have sadly decided not to respond to the lovely messages I sent you and especially to the long one I sent you yesterday, not quite sure why though, as I feel that at the very least, it deserved a nice thanks-but-no-thanks such a real shame indeed

I was actually truly hopeful about you/us if I'm honest, as for some odd reason, had a really strong warm feeling about you since coming across your profile. Guess I may have been wrong about this one after all... oh well, c'est la vie I guess

Anyway, I nevertheless wish you all the very best and hope you find whatever it is you are searching for.

If you regret not getting back to me, then you know how to reach me.

Needless to say that if I have got the wrong end of the stick (which if course may well be the case) then I am truly sorry and would really love to still hear back from you

Love,

John xxxx

I was tempted to send a Dear John letter of my own, stating I had about 300 messages in my inbox, so no offence if I might have overlooked his first message and not replied. The other notable thing about John’s rather submissive message after checking his initial emails was that he had written in the hope of being my dom!

One other repeated theme throughout the messages was men stating how much they loved to give oral, often within the first, second and third line (assuming there was actually a line beyond the first and the cock shot). We may well be in a recession, but I don’t recall cunnilingus being rationed. Maybe Nuts and Zoo have provided a ‘How to bag a bird’ booklet in a recent issue, and have put “say you love to go down on ‘em” at the top, but a large amount of the messages I received seemed to be under the impression they were offering date dynamite simply by saying this.

Of all the messages I received, one stood out by a long way, although receiving a sex CV does mean you stand out amongst the cock shots. I’d like to think it was meant to be tongue in cheek, but Bill Smith’s profile picture made me think otherwise:

SEXUAL EDUCATION

1979–1985 Masturbation – virtually constantly – passed with honours.

EXPERIENCE
1985–1992 Mutual Masturbation with various partners – Improved over time.
1992–2007 Mutual Masturbation, Oral and One-on-One sex with Woman who became my wife.
2007-Present Sexually Inactive.
2009 Signed up to Passion.com in order to alleviate the above.

INTERESTS
I love to lick and suck a clitoris to point of orgasm. I am a complete gentleman and have never, apart from a few mishaps early in my career, had an orgasm before my partner.
I am both attentive to a woman’s needs and very demanding of my own. My ultimate ambition is to complete a “grand slam” (oral, pearl necklace, “doggie” and anal) in one night with one person. Please note, my cock never goes anywhere my tongue hasn't been first. I would, obviously, ensure that person had more orgasms than me; I am very proficient with battery operated toys.

Ah, yes. Us guys all have those ‘mishaps’ early in our 'careers...'

Bill even put references down, one of whom was his wife. As this was the wife who has stopped having intercourse with him, it might be worth obtaining if you’re thinking of offering him the job.

Due to the volume of responses I refrained from getting into a dialogue with anyone, although on one occasion I couldn’t resist, after Niceguyforu10 told me:

you need a good sapnking x

To which I replied:

You need a good spellchecker.

After a week or so I’d had around 3000 page views and hundreds of messages. I hadn’t even gone on a date, let alone got laid, and I was fucked. Despite getting a good insight into the shag psyche of my own sex I hadn’t been too appalled, until I received a message from the appropriately named Darkthoughts 32.

Mr Darkthoughts decided to send me some erotica, as writing pornographic material was a hobby of his. I wasn’t quite prepared for the 2500 word gangbanger tale he sent me, which, ahem, climaxed with the following paragraph:

You are handcuffed back to the headboard and your legs held apart by tying your ankles to a rope running under the bed. Over the next few hours we all use you as our toy. You are fucked endless times, your swollen minge dripping all over the bed. You are covered in spunk, over your face, tits and hair. The final act if for you to receive two cocks being forced into your pussy simultaneously whilst you suck on the 11 incher.

This was the first message I received from him. I did check my profile again in case I'd inadvertently typed "love being gangbanged" instead of "GSOH!!!", but hadn't in fact made this rookie error.

Now, guys, imagine going up to a woman in a bar and launching into the above spiel within the first minute. Since when did managing a sex life online mean that it’s ok to skip the subtleness and gentlemanly conduct?

After wading through messages like the above for a few more days I began carving notches into my misanthropic bedpost. It was like being made to watch Ron Jeremy’s entire filmography and having to see every single one of his cumfaces in slowmotion, with a director’s commentary.

Still, I wasn’t the only one finding the virtual world of sex contacts hard to deal with. One guy messaged me to complaint that:

So i recently joined having heard good things about this site, only to discover it is full of crack heads and wierdo's.

One message finally tipped me over the edge and broke my no rude messages vow. I think there’s only so many photos of smug balding thirtysomething men and their cockshots you can look at before going all Andrea Dworkin.

Being sent a gloating 'let’s fuck in a hotel while my wife thinks I’m at a conference' fantasy convinced me I should retaliate with one of my own:

Dear fitman4u12

Glad to hear you have an active imagination! I thought I’d send you a fantasy of my own...

You arrive home, somewhat disheartened, after being stood up by your potential NSA extramarital affair fuck buddy. As you walk in through the door you can hear laughter and deep moans coming from the bedroom. You race up the stairs, into the marital boudoir, and find Russell Brand fucking your wife up the ass. Jonathan Ross is taking pictures, and sweating... although manages to get a great shot of your crestfallen face for his private collection as you enter the room.

Now, how was that for you?

Since I’ve been working with the mentalists, I often get people asking me what it’s like at the project, probably having some image in their head of a third sector Bedlam, with residents foaming at the mouth, drugged-up, shackled-up and hallucinating purple dragons and daemons.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Overall, it’s been pretty settled since I’ve been there (eight months and counting), although my definition of ‘settled behaviour’ may now be slightly more flexible than the average person’s.

But for a long time I’ve held the view that we’re probably one resident / staff member away from chaos, so delicate is the psychological ecostructure at the project.

Last week SGH made her return after more than eight months on an acute inpatient ward, probably only slightly less manic than when she went in. She was admitted after an incident involving a taxi, where she may well have grabbed the wheel, and her intention may well have been to crash it, and there may well have been a member of staff in the back seat (as part of SGH’s updated risk management plan, members of staff no longer ride in taxis with her).

SGH received a diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder around thirty years ago, and since that time has probably spent half of her life on inpatient wards. She rapidly cycles between periods of mania and depression, even while on high doses of medication.

The majority of the residents at the project have received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and tend to lack energy and motivation (part of the ‘negative’ symptomatology of schizophrenia), but this is not something SGH could be accused of.

A conversation with her (and I use the word ‘conversation’ quite loosely here) is like
getting a one-woman rendition of the Eastenders omnibus inside five minutes.

Her conversations don’t go off in tangents, they jack-knife. Her internal editor has left his post and allowed the copy boys to go all purple prose with her stream of consciousness.

As I’m new to SGH, I’m a novelty, and she’s still trying to measure me up. She approached me towards the end of quite a fraught shift last week and asked me how I got the job. After politely listening to my response for ten seconds, apropos of nothing, she hurtled into the following tale:

“I was fifteen, no, sixteen, working in the factory at the time, really pretty n’ everything, and this electrician came up to me and asked me for a drink, wasn’t into any of that, was only sixteen, no, fifteen, but he asks me for a drink and I think ‘ooh, maybe, maybe’, but I was only sixteen, no, fifteen, at the time, prettiest girl in the factory, and this electrician asked me to come out for a drink, and I was only fifteen, no sixteen, at the time, and I didn’t do anything of that, but he asked me out to go to for a drink, and all the other girls in the factory were jealous of me, really jealous, cos’ I was so pretty, prettiest girl of all the factory, and he’d gone and asked me out, and they were so jealous, and they wanted to get a knife and SLIT MY GUTS OUT!”.

And to think I used to spend my working day sitting next to somebody who would say nothing all day (apart from the occasional report of eating a crab paste sandwich the previous evening).

It’s now been a month since I moved into TKK Towers, and it’s (almost) summertime and the livin’ is easy.

Occasionally, I do have to pinch myself that, yes, it’s 10.30pm and the people in the neighbouring flats are either asleep or quietly going about their business. This is in contrast to my last place when people would start arriving at 10.30pm to get the business of the day / evening going.

The biggest problem I’ve had to deal with so far was a ladybird nest in the window frame, but a few well aimed swats with a newspaper put paid to those squatters.

But it’s been so quiet on my floor since I moved in that I began to suspect that something was not quite right, and my suspicions were soon confirmed.

It turned out that part of the reason for the deathly quiet was death itself, as someone in the flat two flats down had dozed off into the big sleep. But compared to life with the Fat Fucks, I would have preferred a decomposing neighbour to them.

This got me thinking as to the ideal neighbour I could have in the block.

While there might be some cachet about having someone fashionable or famous living next to you, the chances are they’d have people over quite frequently, have parties and make a fair amount of noise, and might even have sex occasionally. This is no good to me when I’m at a stage in my life where I want to have the bare minimum of noise disturbance from neighbours, but can’t afford a detached house.

What I’m looking for is someone out of step with the times, has no sex life, a greatly reduced social circle, dislikes the TV and likes reading. That way, I could take a nap at any time of the day (without earplugs) and not have to listen to Eastenders reverberating through the wall, or shagging.

This sounded perfect, until I realised that under those criteria this man could qualify as my new neighbour:

Hmm. Anyone know how to raise the dead?

Ok, maybe not as ‘yoof’ as having a DJ saving my life, but without the wonders of a selfless sack barrow I’d be walking as bow-legged as Mjohnson is this morning with his “sporting arse injury”. Behold!

Only the timely intervention of a kindly neighbour saved the aforementioned Mjohnson (cheers, blood!) and I from attempting to shift a 65kg digital piano on an office chair I’m currently selling on eBay. I forgot my neighbour’s name (which is fortunately on the door to his flat) almost as quickly as it took me to write the thank you note (and explanation for why he won’t be seeing his barrow for another 24 hours) I put through his letter box, but I’ll know what a sack barrow is for the rest of my life.

I have now moved all the cumbersome stuff to my new crib and am up early waiting for the new bed to be delivered. I kissed the Fat Fucks goodbye (not literally, as being prostitutes they’d probably bill me for that) last night, and at 11pm yesterday the only sounds heard in my flat were the echoes of me dropping heavy objects on the wooden floor.

I have a glorious vista of Finsbury Park from my new window, if I don’t spoil the view and look down to the petrol station forecourt beneath me. It means on a glorious summer’s day I’ll be able to see flowers, smell cut grass and children skipping together in the park. A cynic might say that I’ll also be able to inhale petrol fumes, watch dogs crapping and drunks fighting during daylight hours, but that would still be preferable to having the Fat Fucks as my neighbours.

Moving, unless you’re a snail, can be something of an inconvenience.

I’ve moved twice in the last eleven years (and one of those moves was to another flat in the same building), and as much as I lurrve north London, other factors have been behind my ongoing residency in London postcodes beginning with the letter n.

Now, it’s not as if those ten years have been marked with harmonious relationships with my fellow man.

The French, the Spanish, the Italians, the Boers, the Congolese: I’ve fought ‘em all.

Yet I thought I’d managed to build up a certain degree of tolerance / apathy to the activities of my various neighbours, or simply that my hearing had degraded over the years, until a pair of residents I christened the “Fat Fucks” moved in.

Worst neighbours ever.

The first weekend they moved in they were up until 2-3am playing what sounded like Zanu PF propaganda tapes at full blast.

Then the parties started (as did my calls to the Hackney noise pollution team).

Then I noticed cigarettes being extinguished.

On the banisters.

I left an ashtray out over one of the patches of ash, hoping this would alleviate the situation, but the next morning I found the ashtray gone.

And another cigarette butt in its place.

Through the looking glass we were, people.

It was impossible to get a break as the Fat Fucks rarely ventured out, and why should they considering that half the world kept trooping in to see them (generally at the more antisocial hours of the day).

The guy in the flat beneath me (and adjacent to them) was having the same problems I was with them, and we bonded over this.

He was convinced they were prostitutes, but I had to disagree with him on this point.

I was of the opinion they were crackhead prostitutes.

The letting agency proved to be of no use, constantly telling me how hard it was to evict tenants (which goes some way to making the case for screening the buggers effectively before you move them in).

About three weeks ago I had to call the police again, but this time it was for another resident.

And on Valentine’s Day, of all days.

And this incident led to me reconsidering my reluctance to find new digs.

When you've got the numbers of the local police station and the noise pollution team on your speed dial, it really is time to move on.

And although my flat may have been shit hot for throwing snowballs at unsuspecting pedestrians, seeing as the next heavy snowfall in London is probably going to be January 2018 then it was time to move on.

There is the small matter of having to move a piano to my new flat, but that may be part of the reason I’m only moving two minutes up the road (and to a building with a lift in it).

I've had the damndest manflu for the past 48 hours, which no amount of pharmaceutical remedies has provided some relief from. Yet, the sight of snow today, and a morning spent throwing snowballs from my third floor window at unsuspecting passers-by has cleared my head like nothing else.

Take that, bitch!