+++

The man stood with his back to me is still talking at great lengths and I feel sick. So I take a deep breath but it somehow manages to make me feel worse and heightens my need to sit down so I hold my breath instead. And while I’m stood there not breathing the man with his back to me goes on and on saying something to the forlorn looking man at the ticket kiosk, but the odd sensation not dissimilar to being underwater is preventing me from hearing his words. His grey overcoat is just a blur now since my eyes are focusing and un-focusing. And I don’t understand.

The man in the grey overcoat moves away, I step forward, resist the urge to sit down on the floor, place both hands on the ledge of the desk and murmur something indistinct to the haze of colour materialising into the sad figure and fading away in front of me. Miraculously he understands, snatching the note from my clammy hand. I take the thin strips of card marking an undisclosed destination and sit down on a nearby bench. And I still don’t understand.

I’m breathing heavily by now, trying to regain some kind of composure because my brow is sweating and I’ve never felt so out of sorts so suddenly before and it's worrying me slightly. The oddest thing. Minutes pass. Two or ten, I don’t count. Then it’s all over.

I wipe the sweat from my forehead and fix my disheveled state in the poor reflection of the train window. Pretending nothing happened I’m smiling when I meet RG for lunch.

+++

At whatever hour of darkness this is my only half-awake consideration is the dishevelled reflection in the window. Tall, unshaven, thin in his white cotton tee and loose fitted grey pyjama pants, an impassive expression across his face. I study him for a second, making half-willed gestures to flatten the hair jutting in a peacock fashion at the back of my head while they ooh and they aah passing around presents they'll appreciate and presents they'll feign appreciation of behind me.

I plaster my merry maker face on, but it’s more transparent than usual, smile widely, and for just a little while pretend my enjoyment of Christmas didn’t kill itself ten years ago.

+++

I’m clutching a bottle of white wine (cheap, closest to hand when I bought it) standing in the middle of a kitchen trying to figure out where the glasses are hiding. And after five full minutes of getting in the way of all the bodies trying to cook in this tiny space I give up and go hunt down our host, a guy I’ve known since the days we used to laugh and ride our shiny new bikes down steep hills back when all that mattered in the world was how well you could do a wheelie and what Pokemon cards you had. And it turns out that there are no wine glasses in this student house so I shake my head in disbelief, pour half the bottle into a sizable tumbler and take a gulp. Sweet, refreshing with a nice kick.

So I stand in the doorway between the living room and kitchen and survey with mild amusement contemplating how, judging on the dishes being prepared, the “Christmas Dinner” part of “Gathering up the old faces for Christmas Dinner and drinks” can be justified. But I give up and just laugh as plates of pizza and nachos are carried through.

--

“It’s a question of natural birth rights though surely?” someone is saying while I shake the last drops of the bottle in to my glass and turn back to the chicken I’m destroying because I detest pizza, and am wondering how the conversation has steered to surrogacy and abortion.

“You can’t dismiss how a woman feels when she has a baby, it’s a connection” someone else adds.

“What I find amazing is how a woman can go for an abortion without saying anything to the father. But if she wants to keep it and he doesn’t he has no rights whatsoever. It’s half his after all!”

“It’s her body!” shouts N.

“So?It’s half his baby”

“You’re a man you would say that!”

I laugh. “We’re very profound tonight. My wines all gone.”

--

So I’m sat there nursing the glass, recently refilled by our host with a second bottle, in my hands while Elena Paparizou sings in Greek about fireworks and signals in a clear night sky, completely detached from the conversations buzzing around me.

Πυροτεχνήματα, γράφουν συνθήματα σ’ έναν καθαρό ουρανό.

A voice cuts through my reverie and a girl I’ve never seen before in my life is stood there smiling down at me and politely asking whose iPod is playing this song. So I tell her it’s mine and, half expecting her to demand we turn it over, explain that I was the only bright spark in the room to bring one along. She beams while I look confused at her enthusiasm, since the concept of enjoying music in a foreign language is lost on most people I know, and explains that she’s the host’s housemate and just so happens to be Greek. We talk music for fifteen minutes before she wanders off. We don’t exchange names. I never see her again.

--

Sat on the coffee table I find myself clutching a small tube of yellow icing half gesturing at someone, who I’m informing I only get drunk quickly like this because I’m so lovely and thin, half decorating a gingerbread man.

--

The bottles are empty. The gingerbread devoured. Negotiating the frozen streets is a nightmare. Surprisingly I don’t fall once.

+ + +

M r . M o d e s t y . S t e p s . O u t

The elusive Mr Modesty, whose recent customary disappearance from the internet-sphere evoked [little] a stir, was spied lurking last evening. ‘The callous brute is back,’ shrieked Miss Cetera Etcetera, ‘one lives in hope he’ll succumb to the workload’. Apologetic, with pledges of a swift return to normality, the haggard Mr Modesty remained reluctant to pass comment on his latest vanishing act.

+++

I've done this before, I know I have, but lets pretend last time never happened shall we?

I'm distrusting the little device that points out whose stumbled across this babble. So be a dear and in the comments....yep just down there...leave me one to tell me where abouts on the globe you're reading from.

It'll take half a second and if you don't have an account can be done anonymously. So please.

Thanks in advance.

+++

Surrounded by familiar and not so familiar faces I’m sat fork in hand stabbing distractedly at some sort of marinated chicken dish, ordered through sheer laziness and reluctance to even bother looking at the rest of the menu, half listening to the ongoing conversation about diets or Koi carp or Madonna or something equally unimportant which I’ll never remember.

And I’ve given up on the idea of actually eating the dish I’ve systematically destroyed in front of me when an unfamiliar face, a boyfriend or something of someone, asks what everyone is actually studying at University, so I murmur ‘History’ and wonder what his name is. I still don’t know. He pauses for a second nodding in an irritating over exaggerated pondering motion, I resist the urge to roll my eyes or stab him with my fork, and he asks what I want to do with my life. I tell him I’m an aspiring male escort slash GoGo dancer.

One reduced fashion journalism spiel later I pause for the inevitable questions as to why I didn’t do a degree in journalism. One reduced I-like-history-and-would-get -bored-and-not-choose-to-do-it-if-I-studied-journalism later he nods, clearly missing the point, but his long deliberating pauses are becoming tedious and I need another glass of wine so I don’t push it any further.

So it’s while I’m looking around for a waiter, all of whom seem to be constantly there when I don’t need anything and hiding when I do, that JJ who is saying something to Mr Deliberator points out that there are a fair few options really with a degree in History. To which I reply that I suppose should some terrible accident destroy my GoGo dancing career and the long line of punters diminish I could teach or something.

JJ: Exactly, got to have a plan B for when you’re riddled with diseases.

Mr Deliberator: Is it a hard subject to study?

Me: Not particularly. The sheer excess of the reading is tough but I enjoy it.

Mr D: But if you’re planning on a career writing why didn’t you do a degree in it?

JJ: Please, don’t get him started.

Me: Because it’d be a complete waste of life. I’m with the idea that you’re a writer or you’re not, I don’t think it can be taught. It shouldn’t be! I’m sorry but it’s absolute bollocks. People should explore their style and ability by reading and experimenting and so on, not being told and led. Do you see what I mean?

JJ (To Mr D): Aaaaanyway...you never said, what are you studying?

Mr D: Err...English with err...Creative Writing.

Everyone laughs. Mr D’s girlfriend shoots me an annoyed look then averts her eyes, clearly stifling a laugh. JJ roars. I extract my foot from my mouth and laugh long and hard for awhile.

He's good enough to take it on the chin.

+++

22: 32

Clutching a bottle of Vodka in my left hand I’m glancing not-so-nonchalantly in to a hallway mirror and making a useless attempt at fixing my hair. Unsatisfied I move past the masses of people I don’t know and don’t much want to know who mingle about with drinks in their hand, laughing and swaying to the music blaring from somewhere, sidestep a really ugly and badly dressed couple kissing by the stairs and find the host.

And I don’t really know this guy particularly well aside from that he’s a Londoner and the son of a friend of Muv and Farves. We’ve met a handful of times, he seems to think my name is Liam, but I don’t let that bother me because a fair few people in my family seem to think that too, and we’ve one or two friends in common. So I find him in the kitchen quite clearly half cut, handover my offering and murmur something about a Happy Birthday. He introduces me to an overenthusiastic looking girl (“Thish is Liam mate”) and wanders away.

23 : 16

I’m slugging back my fifth or eighth Vodka in the corner of a kitchen talking to a girl I happen to know because she lives two doors down from me and goes to the same University. The Pigeon Detectives sing This is an Emergency from an iPod somewhere and she’s looking at me shaking her head asking somewhat disgusted how can I stomach straight vodka, I have no answer and merely shrug.

Her boyfriend turns up with a can of beer in one hand and a glass of red in the other as she’s putting her number in my phone. He looks at me briefly as though he’d like to put my head through the window until she explains who I am. He shakes my hand; we talk about the pointlessness of University and the subject of journalism for ten minutes while she stands looks vacant.

00:44

My brain tells me it’s time to text people, so I do. Including:

‘Pisedfed u fity xxx’

‘______ yoourt A CUNNNNNNNNNNNNNT”

‘THISD IS SPOARTA!!!!!’

I still don’t know why.

01 : 02

Some dismal noise with very few lyrics and a consistent beat is thudding and I’m vaguely aware that I’m dancing to it. Over the heads of the people dancing through the open door I see the unconscious birthday boy being carried upstairs.

01 : 46

The boyfriend of the sister of the guy whose party it is attempts conversation but I can’t understand a word he says in his thick Cockney accent. Nodding and shouting yes at intervals gets me through.

02: 16

A man I recognise as a friend of Farves puts a bottle of whiskey in my hand and orders that I’m not allowed to go home until I’ve emptied the bottle, no excuses.

I tell him I don’t like Whiskey and reach for a glass.

02 : 45

The Whiskey Nazi asks three times why I’ve not finished the bottle yet. I hide the half full bottle behind a plant and stand half listening while he tells me how proud Muv and Farve are of me.

03 : 13

I utter to a strange girl I happen to be dancing with that I’m ‘fucked’, before I lose any last glimmerings of self-control and the world fades.

11 : 00

A pair of grey skinnies, the knees stained, lie tossed on the hard wood floor, a fitted black polo tee stinking of booze and smoke haphazardly thrown onto the desk, a shoe rests uselessly on the windowsill next to half a bottle of wine.

An eye opens. My body regains its feeling. The screaming begins.

+++

The message I open on the cold and miserable late afternoon contains an invitation to respond with how I am and the following picture:

So I sit and I laugh, because the idea of my face on the cover of a magazine is quite funny when you consider it, and hit back a reply thanking the sender, telling them I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown and asking what possessed them to waste valuable seconds making it.

And three and a half minutes later they reply to tell me that they saw it and, having paused for the briefest of moments, thought only of me who'd actually appreciate it. So I sit and I stare at the picture for a good five minutes, analysing, ripping myself apart a little, as I frequently do when presented with a photo of myself i've never seen before, and fail to conclude why i'd never deluded myself by making something like it myself.

+++

I’m sat staring at myself with a disguised look of confusion beneath the impassiveness because the me I am staring at is not me at all.

The alter-Lee is standing there, just a few feet away, looking directly ahead over the dark skyline and scattering of lights in the distance beyond the platform. The same dark skinny jeans, bottoms tucked in the same brogue detail military boots, that same faded blue and white checked shirt collar peeks tellingly from beneath the same fitted bomber jacket. The same black leather bag is dropped at his feet.

And all reasoning, logic and concept of probability escape me while I watch this clone tapping his booted foot along to the music still looking out in to the dark. So very similar, yet dissimilar. To cling to my sense of uniqueness I list our differences. His height stands out as an obvious starting point. Even with the distinct heel I doubt he is the six foot one (or perhaps two, everyone keeps saying taller lately) that I am. His face, though with elements of my own, is fuller. His jaw less defined, lips less prominent, his nose more enviably straight than my own, he is slighter, shoulders less broad.

So I wish desperately that someone else could be here with me to confirm that I’m not mad and ponder why interesting things only ever seem to occur when I’m alone. So I take out my phone and while I punch out a text he answers his similar model in grey in a voice higher and entirely different to my own.

Text: Me – Her

There’s a guy stood at St dressed and looks like me. Scarily similar.

Text Her – Me

That’ll be your reflection love. Another you? Scary. I won’t sleep tonight. x

And a train going to another part of town pulls out of the darkness and in to the station. And swinging his bag over his shoulder the alter-Lee steps into the overcrowded carriage, settling himself near the doors. My brown eyes meet his same green eyes, he half smirks as the train pulls away.