The Meandering Minds of Zora

The Cold Stories

2011-12-14T17:50:00.002+01:00

Never in my life have I ever felt so deeply and solidly frozen as in the castle where I grew up. I remember walking down the long upstairs landing on winter mornings and pausing to scrape a finger over the thick furry frost that lay in wads upon all the window panes, testing to see if it had formed on the inside or the outside of the glass, discovering that the answer must be "both". Then there was the time my father sauntered into the bathroom one fine morning, in his checked dressing gown and his hard brown leather slippers, and did a backward flip on the black ice that habitually lacquered the bathroom floor in months with an R. He split his head open on the corner of the bathtub and had to get stitches.

The castle was huge, but in the depths of winter, we all used to sleep in one rather poky room at the end of a long landing, which my mother was permitted to attempt to "heat" for half an hour before bedtime with the aid of a small, blisteringly hot electric bar fire. The three vicious-looking orange bars of this remarkably ineffectual device would hum ominously as it singed the 2 feet of air directly in front of it, relieving none of the damp, tomb-like chill from the remainder of the room but somehow creating an illusion of warmth by radiating a strong odour of scorched hair into the atmosphere. One by one, we'd stand and defrost our rigid pyjamas and bed socks in front of the glowing bars. Despite the shivering, the ritual had a cosy, ceremonious feel to it, as if we were gathering around to toast chestnuts. Then we'd shed single articles of daytime clothing and precipitously cram the thus disrobed body parts into our pre-softened garments before the heat could disperse into the air; then it was time to make way for the next family member to repeat the ritual. My parents would take up their nightly quarters in a double bed and my brother and I went top-to-tail in a single one that was positioned crosswise at the foot of theirs.

At night, we all wore more layers of clothing than we did during the day. My own nightwear ensemble comprised a thermal vest, a t-shirt, a pair of fluffy Snoopy pyjamas, a wollen jumper, a dressing gown, two to three pairs of socks and fingerless gloves with mittens over the top. One of the main problems I remember encountering - apart from the impossibility of keeping the tip of one's nose warm while still eliciting a sufficient supply of oxygen - was knowing that once I was ready for bed, I'd be so densely trussed in overlapping layers that if I got an itch, there'd be no chance of scratching myself until morning.

During the daytime, my brother and I used like to snuggle down in the dogs' beanbag beds in front of the Aga. We'd lure them out with enticing toys, rustling bags and playful bouncing. Then, as soon as they were up and looking about themselves expectantly, we'd dive into their pre-warmed imprints and attempt to persuade the still joyfully confused creatures to lie on top of us. Under the dogs was the snuggest place we ever found in the building.

So many of my memories of the castle are associated with the cold, even though there must have been an equal proportion of summer days then as there has ever been. It is as though a whole volume of my reminiscences has been retrospectively frosted.

Here comes another: I remember my father walking into the kitchen and seeing me sitting at the table, doing my middle-school homework in fingerless gloves, a woolly hat and a scarf. He looked at me and said, "Zora, child, what are you wearing all that for? That's ridiculous! It's boiling in here!"

I looked up at him and replied, quite dreamily, "When you talk, I can see steam coming out of your mouth."

And I remember that when he replied, he spoke while breathing in instead of breathing out. He said, "You're exagerating," and left the room on tiptoe, still holding in his breath.

Another occasion I remember clearly was a Sunday in church. My brother and I were in the choir (in fact, it would be more accurate to say that we were the choir, there being no further members). Being the choir, we were required to take communion before the rest of the congregation. On the day in question, the vicar took us aside in the vestry, just after the service, and instructed us to the effect that we should remove our gloves to take communion. To illustrate his point, he said, "You wouldn't eat a meal at home with your gloves on."

I laughed out loud, no doubt quite bitterly for one so young in years, and said, "Oh but I do - and with a hat and a scarf as well!"

He stared aghast, not at our faces, but at our starched white neck ruffles, in a state of dumbstruck disbelief. Then my brother piped up and said, "It's true. I wear mine to eat as well."

The vicar's face remained rigid. He now seemed to be glaring in abstracted reproval at a thread that dangled from a button half-way down my brother's cassock. Feeling unsure of the exact nature and severity of the sin I was rebutting, I tried nonetheless to clarify matters with the emphatic protest, "You have to at our house or the forks would freeze your fingers!"

He continued to glower at the black thread for several mute seconds during which my brother and I shrugged at each other in bemusement, and then, coming to himself with a lurch of concentration, said, rather gruffly, "Yes. Well. All the same... you cannot partake of glory with your gloves on, you know. It just won't do."

Amen to that.

The Creation of Pola-Girl

2011-06-24T13:17:00.016+02:00

Readers, this is all rather confusing. Here is the story so far: yesterday, I stabbed right into my hand with a scapel while trying to open some Polaroids. I had dropped the scalpel and it had fallen sideways onto my legs, and as I reached down for it, it somehow simultaneously flipped up with the blade pointing skywards. It was so sharp that it slid right into the skin of my palm without the least resistance and - at least while it was going in - without the slightest warning twinge of pain. The entire blade was embedded, just below my ring finger. At this point, I said "Ow!" And then I had to grasp the shaft, twist my face into a grimace and yank it out like an arrow-struck 1950s cowboy. The blood spurted everywhere. It was all rather satisfyingly dramatic.

My hand seems to be working fine today, luckily, but now I am having disturbing thoughts about what might be going on underneath the plaster I stuck over my palm - I mean, now that the Polaroid chemicals on the blade have entered my bloodstream. I mean, especially now, when the world is post-Fukushima and the Polaroid in question was probably a little bit radioactive. I mean, we all know what happens when radioactive things bite you.

What I'm wondering is, when I peel off the plaster, will a picture have developed on the skin beneath it? A picture of what? Of an approaching scalpel? How scary is that? And where exactly does it all go from there? Do I end up turning into a freaky (but aesthetically fascinating) superhero with photosensitive skin? Will my skin start developing images of everything that happened in front of it two minutes ago? Will caustic paste ooze from my feet? How do I set my aperture (and do I really want to know the answer to that one?) Also, when I take off my clothes, will my breasts look like a picture of the inside of my bra? And exactly how will this help me catch criminals?

I am more than a little concerned now, Readers, because if I am actually going to transform into Pola-Girl, the only practical crime-fighting use I can come up with for my imminently burgeoning superhuman gifts is the option of using my remarkable photosensitive skin to take evidential pictures of miscreants, viz by tearing off some clothes and flashing them whilst they are in flagrante delicto. This in itself will be somewhat embarrassing - not to mention illegal; and not to mention draughty - but the main problem here is that such heroic deeds will surely ultimately lead to me being subpoenaed and compelled to stand up naked in court as evidence for the prosecution: "Would the jury please be so good as to examine Exhibit Z?" So, as I said above, it is all more than a little confusing.

Quotes

2011-06-20T19:26:00.002+02:00

I'm quite jealous of Oscar Wilde. I'm sure he must have had all manner of hangers-on who scuttled around him constantly, eagerly harvesting all his best quotes for posterity. I wish I had a little man to follow me round with a notebook. Because I can't possibly jot down all my own pithy nuggets for humankind. I'm far too busy. (And generally too drunk to wield a pencil when I say them. And too wieldy to drink a pencil when I don't.)

So would anyone out there like the job? Today, for example, you would have written down the following gems:

"Testicles are like diamonds. You can never have too many of them and when you have lots, it's lovely to plunge your hands into a bucket of them and feel them slipping over your outstretched fingers."

And:

"I would name a girl after the place of conception, in the manner of pop stars' brats. So basically, Fallopia or possibly Endometria, depending on your precise definition of conception.

And:

"It must be before 11, because my hand still smells of cock."

And:

"Chuh! There'll be plenty time for monogamy when we're dead."

And finally:

"Excuse me but your testicles appear to be eating my sandwich."

(It was an exceptionally good day for testicles quotes.)

Blue Suede Nights

2011-06-17T18:55:00.005+02:00

Things happen when you travel alone. Especially at airports. Especially when your travel plans have already gone awry. And most especially of all if you're anything like me and you attract lunatics like moths to a flame.

It's funny to think that if my plane hadn't been delayed and if I hadn't been stranded in Amsterdam overnight, I would never have met Elvis.

Readers. allow me to present Elvis Lovinescu to you. He's a professional Elvis impersonator, originally from Moldova. Most of the year, he works in Las Vegas, where there's regular work to be had marrying couples in the various chapels. (If any of the bridal couples baulks at his most un-Elvis-like Moldovan accent, he says he can generally pacify them with a flip of his quiff and a few of his choicest pelvis moves.)

Elvis was stranded, too. Though we were on different flights, travelling in different directions, we ended up getting free rooms in the same hotel and we ended up propping up the same counter in the same boring hotel bar, and that's how we got talking.

"Elvis" is Elvis Lovinescu's real name - chosen for him by his father, much to the outrage of the baptising minister and the rest of his extended family (who - somewhat confusingly - seem to all be called either "Mihai" or "Mihaiela" with the exception of one solitary auntie called "Dudu".)

Elvis' father was an Elvis impersonator before him. He taught him everything he knows. In fact, Elvis learned how to impersonate Elvis, not from studying The King but from studying his father. According to Elvis, despite not being able to pronounce a single word in the English language with anything approaching linguistic precision, his father was still "more like Elvis than Elvis was".

"So, yeah, you could say that impersonating Elvis is kind of the family trade," he tells me with a smile, "And when I have a son, I just know he'll be born with blue suede shoes on."

Elvis' father died one night in a hotel fire in Odessa thirteen years ago. The only possession that survived the fire was his top set of teeth, which had been miraculously preserved in a glass of water.

As the only surviving relic of his father, the dentures accompany Elvis on all his travels. They're his lucky mascot. He keeps them wrapped in a star-spangled banner. In the evenings, when he goes out, he lovingly lays his daddy's choppers into a glass on the bedside table and fills it up with a generous splash of vodka. (Because daddy still likes a drink.)

"Isn't that a bit macabre?" I ask him as he holds up the glass to show me.

"Not at all," he grins, "Look - Daddy's smiling at you. He'd have liked you a lot, I'm sure."

Despite the dissipations of this night, Elvis kindly agreed to join me in another impromptu shoot in his hotel room, early the next morning before we each checked out and went our separate ways. The series is entitled "Memphis Hotel" and I've just added it to the Polaroid Series section of my website.

The Perpetual Nymph

2011-06-14T17:02:00.018+02:00

My life has been filled with chilling transitions - points of no return that crept up on me unawares. And not just during childhood, either. They can strike at any time. For instance, I remember with a shiver of horror a time when, as if by prior arrangement, all my friends stopped living off Monster Munch and Müller Fruit Corners and started - quite seriously - offering me apples and bananas as if it was a perfectly normal thing for them to do. Then there was the bleak, barren period when all of my contemporaries started drinking responsibly and leaving mid-week parties at sensible times. Then there was the time when suddenly nobody was eating puddings or snogging strangers in discos anymore; not to mention the horrible, ominous night when everyone I knew simultaneously and permanently lost the urge to freak out for hours on end and jump up and down like a dancing fool. Terrible, terrible moments of realisation and disillusionment accompanied all these times, for I always knew that these transformations were irreversible and I could not see that they were changes for the better. I only felt a sense of something bright, buoyant and unthinkingly carefree being lost.

I think the most unnerving aspect about these transitions in life was how most people I knew just swanned through them without a backward glance or a second thought. Afterwards, I would find myself looking around at my friends and seeing that they had all metamorphosed. I would look at myself and see that I had not. But rather than admiring them and wishing to emulate them, I regarded them with a mixture of incredulity and distain - the way a small boy might look at an older brother who has just informed him that "sweet shop owner" is not a viable career choice. I realised that they had lost many of the characteristics I'd loved them for - characteristics and attitudes I'd always thought of as an intrinsic part of their natures. They'd shed their playful, hedonistic old Monster-Munch-gorging selves like husks and fluttered out as altered life forms I had little in common with. Meanwhile, I was left behind, a perpetual nymph, feeling bereft and disconnected, suspecting that I would never follow suit and knowing in my heart that I would never want to, either - but missing them and wishing them back to the way they'd been before.

Looking back as far as I can remember, I can still clearly recall the first such transition I was ever conscious of. And, being the first, it was perhaps the most painful transition of all. It was the day when I realised that none of my friends would ever again want us to play make-believe games. All of a sudden - and much, much too soon - they had turned their backs on childhood and now there was only the option of rough, sporty grappling games with the boys or of lounging and gossiping by walls in locations where the boys could see us and come over to "annoy" us. Overnight, everyone else's interests had become either physical or informational.

I had no option but to outwardly act my part, but as each playtime went by, I would feel as though multiple imaginary universes were bursting all around me like soap bubbles with barely audible "plips". Nobody else seemed to notice or care or even remember that they'd ever existed. And how I missed the way we used to run to those make-believe places and disappear into them at every opportunity. How I missed the unthinking, effortless pleasure of sharing imaginary worlds with my friends. I would sigh in secret. I would even cry a little and hang my head when nobody could see, for the world suddenly felt more oppressive and darker than before and there was noone I could tell this to. Indeed, I think that I have never in my life felt so lonely and so despairing as at that time. I'd probably have topped my wee self there and then if I hadn't already known that there would always, always be books to read; and if I hadn't, even then, felt a glimmer of hope that there might be others of my kind - that maybe, somewhere in the world, I might one day discover other creatures who were just like me.

Swedish Sunday - Epilogue

2011-05-27T19:37:00.009+02:00

"Well helllllooo beautiful!" crooned the husky voice down the line: my ex-lover, and also the only person who could explain to me about that perplexing Swedish situation the other Sunday morning. Just the man I needed to speak to.

"I'm glad you called," I said, "I wanted to ask you something."

"About the Swedes?"

"You guessed it."

"The answer is three hours."

"But I haven't asked the question yet!" I protested.

"No, but the answer is still 'three hours'."

"But that doesn't fit my question."

"It fits mine, though. Maybe you should be trying to find out what that was the answer to."

"I'm not sure I want to know," I said, apprehension dawning.

"But I want to tell you."

"Oh God. Do you have to?"

"Yes, Zora. I think I do."

"OK. Let's get it over with. Hit me with the question."

"The question is:" he began, then he cleared his throat and put on a girly voice, 'How long was I sucking those Swedish dicks for?"

"Three hours!" I exclaimed, "You're exaggerating."

"Actually, I may be underestimating the time. I fell asleep in your office chair after the third hour, as you may remember."

"Gracious. So... erm... weren't you bored?"

"Bored doesn't come into it."

"But why were you there at all, if you don't mind me asking? Why did you come all that way in the middle of the night to find me?"

"I was feeling romantic. (I thought I might try to bang you again, if you must know.)"

"Ohhh. That little project. So: you clearly failed quite spectacularly."

"Well, yeah. It proved a whole lot harder than I'd ever have imagined to find a free orifice."

"Look, you've got to help me reconstruct the evening. I have no idea how we got into the Swedish Sunday situation. When did it start to get kinky? How did it even begin?"

"It was all perfectly normal until shortly after the part where I suggested us going back to your office to listen to my i-pod."

"Hmm. Ok. Still sounds relatively harmless so far. So we all went there to listen to some stuff on your i-pod. And then?"

"I don't know. I left the room for about one point five seconds to get a bottle and some glasses, and when I came back, all three Swedish tourists were stark bollock naked and you were just, like, totally covered in dicks and hands and - this is the really weird part - nobody was showing the least bit of interest in my music. I tried talking to you, but you didn't seem able to answer. You were just too covered in dicks."

"Oh," I said, "Well... that seems a bit... odd, doesn't it? I mean, what a funny way for them to behave."

He sighed. "Not really. I'm getting used to this stuff now. Seems to happen at least half the times I see you."

"Oh, now that's not fair. It's much less than half the time and it's NEVER my fault. And it was definitely your fault the last time. You admitted it yourself. Hmm... still... I wonder what made them do it. Do you think one of us unwittingly used a phrase that's some kind of code in Sweden? You know, like: 'I'd be glad to show you my etchings' or 'Would you like to come up for coffee?' or 'Any chance of a night cap?'"

"So... is this your theory then? You're saying that the phrase 'Why don't we all go back to Zora's office so that I can play you some contemporary jazz fusion I have on my i-pod' is some kind of nationwide Swedish code for 'Why don't we go back to Zora's office so that you can all strip naked at record speed and shove your cocks in her face the second I leave the room, and then keep fuckin'... hypnotising her with them for three solid hours?'"

"Um. Yeah. I mean... It just seems the most likely explanation, doesn't it?"

"Right."

"'Jazz' is a common euphemism. For, you know, 'jizz'."

"Right. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be it."

"And just bearing that particular ambiguity in mind, 'contemporary' (i.e. contemporaneous) 'jazz' (i.e. jizz) 'fusion' does tally quite remarkably with the events which ultimately came to pass..."

"... all over your face."

"Indeed. So I'd say we were all just victims of a cultural misunderstanding."

"Yeah."

"Not my fault at all. Nothing to do with me, in fact."

"No. No. In fact my fault, if anyone's - if I'm following your impeccably twisted logic correctly."

"Well, yes. Now that you mention it, I'm rather afraid it must have been your fault, seeing as you were the one careless enough to utter the key phrase. Lucky for you that I have such a forgiving nature. So no hard feelings, Baby. No need to apologise. I absolve you."

"Zora, Baby, HONEY, Zora, you know I adore you, but somebody has to tell you this: Baby, you're so far gone, you're coming back!"

Awakened by the Wanton Wind

2011-05-24T16:46:00.003+02:00

I suppose you'd call it homesickness, this hesitant clutching sensation, like the searching hand of a timorous child; this feeling that creeps up from behind and tries to slip its tiny fingers round my lower spine as I walk down my city street. It only happens when a certain kind of breeze is on the air - of a certain speed and freshness and with an old familiar wantonness of direction - and only when this breeze combines with a scent, quite faint, perhaps merely imagined, of the warm scuffing of heather on shins, of the succulent hush of bluebell sanctuaries, of long, tough grass trampled under country feet and the ticklish waft from effusive dog tails. Then I feel this timid, hankering clutch and I mourn for my country childhood and the elusive, clever, dreaming girl I once was. And yet... at the same time, I know that I would not choose to go back. Were a magic pathway to spring up at my feet, I feel sure I would not take it. So how can I feel homesick for a place I'd never return to? How can I feel nostalgic for a past I don't want back?

Perhaps these are not really my emotions. Perhaps they belong to the child I once was. If she is not dead, but sleeping somewhere inside me, then perhaps the breeze stirs her from her slumbers and, in those few moments of wakefulness, she wonders and grows forlorn when she sees what lay ahead.

Unmade Memories

2011-05-19T16:56:00.001+02:00

I feel a wish upon my lips that there could have been more kissing. My thighs feel alive with the desire to have been fucked. And it strikes me now that, unlike the mind - whose longing only projects into the present and the future - the body can long retroactively, too; it can yearn for other pasts and altered histories and it can ache terribly for the missed chances and the wasted moments.

Sudden Kitten Death Syndrome

2011-05-17T17:54:00.000+02:00

The worst sign, I always say, is when all your fantasies suddenly become very, very simple - almost innocent - in nature; when the idea of a stolen kiss, a hot hand on a waist or an accidental moment of nudity is enough to fuel whole mad sprees of the kitten-killing sin.

Swedish Sunday

2011-05-13T17:54:00.011+02:00

"The address?" asked the girl one firmly. I didn't respond. I was busy and it didn't occur to me that I was the only one who knew where we were. Then the other two Swedes - the boy ones - joined in.

"Marie's on the phone to a taxi company now, Zora, and we need to know this address."

They spoke kindly, but I couldn't respond. My face was just too full of their filthy falukorvs and I couldn't think in terms of geography - never one of my strongest subjects at the best of times. But I started straining for the answer as I licked, down on my knees before them, moving from cock to cock, trying to make it come to me, trying to reach a point where I could make myself think and speak. It was taking me an eternity - the cocks were just too distracting - and the girl one was getting the tiniest bit edgy now. I vaguely remembered that there had been something about checking out of a hotel. And something about the airport. An imminent flight? She gathered up my hair at the back and used it to pull me gently back and away. (Such nice people, these Swedes, I thought. So imperturbable, so well-mannered. And so endearingly corruptible.)

"It's Sunday morning" I finally said, "Birds... singing. Blackbirds. Like the Beatles song."

"We need to know where we are, not when," said the Sven one with the most exquisite patience. I noticed he was keeping himself fluffed for the moment Marie let go of me. Good lad. They taught them well, up on them thar fjords.

"My office," I finally stuttered, straining towards him now, trying to shake off Marie, "right next to my office chair, on which my ex-lover seems to be sleeping. Ver-ry deeply."

I hoped he was alright. I still had no recollection of why I had come here early on a Sunday morning with three exquisitely polite Swedish tourists and an ex, but I was slowly gaining clarity. Or perhaps it was only cunning: I still didn't know my address but I could suddenly remember the taxi stand that was conveniently located right across the street. I realised that they'd see a whole line of waiting taxis if they just turned their heads away from me and glanced out of the window. And that certainly had to be prevented, at all costs.

"If you two boys both come in my face at once, I think something might jog my memory," I said with a helpful little smile and a shrug.

Sven and Petter smirked at each other. Then Marie sighed and let go of my hair.

The Idea Shop

2011-05-04T16:36:00.007+02:00

"Where do you get your ideas from?": this is a question that pursues me wherever I go. Indeed, I sometimes suspect it even travels ahead and camps on the street, waiting for me to arrive. Having been asked this so many times, you'd think I'd have a really nifty answer by now, but usually I mumble something unhelpful like, "Dunno really. Stuff... pops up." I mean, it's not like there's this marvellous little idea shop down the road that I can recommend or some yoga position I always do while I'm on the loo. I don't cast spells or perform rituals or play poohsticks in the moonlight clad in nothing but luminous green roller skates (although, in the latter case, maybe I should).

Another problem about responding is the fact that I'm not entirely sure how the question is meant. It might not be a real question at all. People may not expect a real answer. For all I know, it might just be a nicer way of saying, "Lorks-a-lordy, woman, you must be some kind of freak, because your stuff is abnormal." On the other hand, it may mean "C'mon, spit out some secret tips. I know there must be a simple trick with a phonebook and a hatpin or something, cause you're not that clever" or "You, my darling, are an enigma, an E N I G M A, and I fear I shall go stark raving bonkers if I cannot delve into your twisted brain this instant and find out how it works." So I never answer properly. I just look harried, mumble my unhelpful stock response and then emit a desperate gargling cry of "Waiter! More wine!" Today, however, I'm in a gregarious and analytical mood. So today I'm going to try and answer the question to my own satisfaction, at least.

My theory is that ideas operate just like dreams in the sense that every single one of us has them, but some of us don't register them - they just don't surface to the conscious mind. A second category of people do register them but don't remember them for long enough to do something about them. They emerge for a few moments but then tumble back into the depths of the mind where they are locked away forever. Then there is a third category of people who register and remember them, but view them with suspicion, thinking them silly or inappropriate or even a bit unnerving. Let's face it, the subconscious can be pretty flaky at times. It can be better to banish the bizarre random visions it occasionally hurls at us - particularly any that feature vampire penguins or motorcycle slutpigs - to shudder, shake one's head, focus firmly on the real world and say "More tea, auntie?" instead.

I reckon that I fit into none of the three categories above, and this is why:
From my early childhood, I have always been known as a terrible daydreamer. I could - and can - quite happily sit in a daydream for hours. I do it by accident and I also do it on purpose. I'm one of life's born mental skivers and I do it as often as I can get away with. Waiting is never boring for me. Nor is silence or solitude. (Perhaps this is a dreadful confession to make, but only other people can bore me - people who insist on discussing intricate humdrum affairs and lengthy expert views without considering that they may be disrupting the very pleasant and absorbing daydream about pirates or pixies - or indeed motorcycle slutpigs - which their unwilling listener would otherwise be enjoying.)

Another significant aspect is that I value my daydream worlds just as highly as the outer world. Daydreams are wonderful. They are free and seem so erractic yet there is also some kind of unfathomable system to them, like ocean currents or weather patterns. They merge into one another. Themes recur, stories meander, circle back to their origins, swerve off in new directions. Time passes differently in daydreams. There's a whole multiverse in there and we can access it at any time. Quite honestly, what the fuck could be more amazing and more irresistibly compelling than that? The latest stock exchange news? Oho. I humbly beg to differ.

Now, it is a confirmed fact that it is very much easier for people to remember things that they are genuinely interested in, and my daydreams interest me very much. (Some would say I was obsessed with them.) And this means that I remember them. And because it is while daydreaming that I get my ideas, I remember a reasonable proportion of my ideas, too.

I get the impression that many people are less concerned with their daydreams and other forms of inner loopiness and more interested in what is know as "life" or "the real world" or "the big picture". This sort of thing is seen - and no doubt very rightly - as the desirable and proper attitude to have. "Not having a life" or "not living in the real world" is seen as a major fault. We are continually encouraged to "keep it real", but rarely to "make it fantastical". All very sound thinking, no doubt, but I'm sure that's why some people don't remember many of their more brilliant creative brainwaves. They are too outwardly focussed and too quick to disown all the oddities that come from within. Now me, I'm not like that. If anything, I'm the other way around. I pounce on my oddities; I exalt and glorify them; it's the real world I'm guilty of pooh-poohing. I can't remember the name of the German foreign minister. The only European government I could comment on with any certainty is the Belgium one (which happens to be non-existent - making it wonderfully easy to remember, and I thoroughly approve of it for this reason). Outwardly, I seem to operate in the real world as well as the next person, but ask me a few simple questions and you'll see that it is but a flimsy facade. And underneath that facade I'm an unashamedly subjective fantasist. I have one eye looking outwards - mainly in order to avoid walking into lampposts or treading in dog poo - and the other looking in.

Now you could say that it was a vain and self-absorbed little world I lived in and that mine was an appallingly selfish and downright reprehensible attitude to nurture, but I'd argue that a) the inner world of a human being can be as expansive, rich and enlightening in its own way as anything you can read about in the newspaper and b) the real world is a vain, self-absorbed sort of a place, too, AND let's not forget that it is the real world which holds such mundane horrors as chirpy telephone salespeople and greengrocers' apostrophes and e-mail wit-forwarding brothers-in-law, workmates who harp on and on about their diets and all those neckless oafs who think it's dead clever to say "cheer up, it might never happen". Bearing all this in mind, I think I can be excused for not wanting to waste my entire life in such a place thank you very much.

Finally, there is one last point that remains: the idea-killer for category three folks - the matter of non-acceptance. Many people remember their ideas but dismiss them, don't think them good enough. All I can say is, whenever I told anyone in advance of an idea I intended to use, they always looked like they secretly thought it was a steaming pile of crap, like it could never work, like I'd clearly lost my touch and my marbles. In other words, every single one of my ideas sounds like total crap at first. The difference is, I just don't believe we should be letting a little thing like conspicuous crapness put us off. After all, let's face it, there aren't all that many instantly brilliant ideas left to be discovered in the world, but there are still loads and loads of slightly iffy ones up for grabs, and if you just make a start on implementing them - because even a dodgy idea is a billion times better than no idea at all - then by the time you've improvised work-arounds for all the daftest, most impractical aspects, changed the original notion beyond recognition, chucked out most of the key elements and ended up somewhere entirely different, you may well be looking at something you find unexpectedly really rather good, actually.

The Spirit of the Night

2010-12-14T10:20:00.002+01:00

(To Chris - A bedtime story for the sleepless.)

It was some kind of very tall, very dense fir tree, but I don't know what species and it stood way down at the bottom end of the lawn, just before the ha-ha. Beyond the ha-ha lay the field known as "The Park" due to its grand history as a hunting ground in the days when the castle was a real castle. But nowadays, The Park was just a sodden field like any other. The first time I saw him standing under the fir tree was in early January. It was a still, frosty night and deep, hard snow was on the ground; the jagged, crystallised kind of snow that has thawed and refrozen and you can walk right over the top of it like Jesus. The sky, by comparison, looked as smooth and as yielding as a deep pool of treacle into which the teaspoon moon had dipped a tiny tip. For the moon was at that controversial stage of near-fullness. It was full enough for someone wishful like me to call it full if I wanted it full; and occasionally I did, but mostly I remember that on such nights, I yearned for it not to be full - not quite full, not quite yet. I feel sure that this must have been just such an occasion.

I was kneeling up on the white wooden window sill in my nightdress and woolly socks, the curtains closed behind me. I was wishing on stars, and that's how I saw him there, that first time. And now I don't remember what I'd been wishing for. One of the usuals, no doubt: that one day, I'd suddenly discover I was beautiful and mysteriously gifted after all, that one day someone dark and deeply exciting would fall in love with me, or that this very night, time would stand still and that all who were asleep when it happened would stay asleep forever, and the world would belong to us: the ghosts, the insomniacs and the stargazers.

I made that last wish so many times. And sometimes, for whole minutes, I used to believe that it might have come true. How would I know, after all, until the morning? I often imagined us - the ones left awake - and how we'd cross great expanses on foot to find one another, meeting on silent hillsides and beneath breezy lamposts; how we'd discuss ways to break the spell, feeling secretly shifty and conspiratorial, each knowing in our hearts that none of us really wanted it to break and that this was why the spell still held strong.

Back then, at just - what, thirteen or fourteen? - I must already have had a sense that I was only capable of loving the world - of worshipping it with my hopelessly pagan soul - when every sensible person had deserted it: in snowstorms, gales, freezing fog and torrential rain, and most especially at night.

Back then, it seems to me that I was never in the moment. It was as if my essence had been split - deliberately and artificially like an atom - and I was perpetually suspended in two places at once: in the outermost reaches of two warring realms: dream and reality, childhood and adulthood, past and future, longing and dread. Never at the centre of anything. Everywhere but here and now. In a state of vibrant paralysis. I was not entirely sure that I wanted to be whole again; to be turned from a restive stargazer into another one of those very capable night-sleepers. No. Not I. When time stopped - if it did - I had every intention being left awake. And that's when I'd be whole. That's when I'd learn to live in the moment.

Back then, I remember there being times when anything seemed possible and even likely, except what was actually happening.

And yet, kneeling up on the window sill of my castle bedroom that frosty night, when I saw the slight winged figure standing beneath the fir tree, my first thought was actually very sensible. I looked at it and I told myself that it must be a shadow of some ordinary object that was creating an optical illusion. I was prone to such temporary delusions, frequently mistaking a dressing gown for a hooded hobgoblin or a drifting sparkle of thistledown for a fairy until I'd reasoned with myself and looked closer. So at first, I peered down at the dark contours, struggling to achieve that mental shift of focus that would ultimately reveal its true nature as a garden hoe or an upturned wheel barrow. But the shift never came, because in a blink of an eye, he was gone. Tender as a snowflake, faithless as starlight. Moth Boy.

When I woke the next morning, I thought of this sighting as a dream. But I remember that as the day drew on, I became increasingly convinced that I had seen something and that I had been awake at the time. I had a full day of lessons ahead of me, and I know I spent them feeling restless and excited, longing impatiently to get back home again so that I could go down to the fir tree and look for footprints in the snow. I formed a very logical theory: that the figure had belonged to a shepherd lad and that the "wings" were simply the outline of something he must have been carrying on his back. But still, despite devoting all my powers of deduction to what I called "The Question of Motive", I could think of no reason why this shepherd lad should have been standing there in the middle of the night, trespassing in our garden, staring up at the house. Unless it was just that the pale, still walls of the castle made a beautiful sight against the treacle softness of the sky. A farm lad with the soul of a poet? I knew my male contemporaries in the village well enough and at times this alternative figure seemed an infinitely more fanciful creation than Moth Boy.

When I returned from school the next afternoon, I was surprised to find myself not investigating the scene of the sighting at all, but delaying the moment instead. I ate my tea quite methodically and calmly, watched two or three television programmes I always watched but never particularly liked, then I settled down at the kitchen table to do my homework as usual, munching on a piece of shortbread, getting up at intervals to pet the dogs. The winter days were short, and darkness would tumble suddenly over the land at around half past four. But for reasons I didn't understand myself, I had decided to let that narrow window of daylight slip by. Perhaps it was because I thought of this boy as a creature of the night. Somehow, it felt like a dishonourable act for me to hunt him down by daylight. If I did that, then perhaps he would know and never show himself to me again. Or perhaps I was reluctant for the mystery to be solved - to find clear prints of size 7 Wellington boots and a discarded sweet wrapper.

At 7.30, I went out into the garden with my torch and a magnifying glass. I stalked around the old fir tree, scrutinising the ground for clues, trying to see how he had come there. Had he walked over The Park and jumped over the ha-ha or had he somehow squeezed through the high wooden fence from the Kanes' grounds? But the snow must have been too hard. Its unbroken surface glittered back, crisp and bejewelled in the mottled beam of torchlight. I could find no trace of him. Either he had flown on moth wings, or he had walked over the surface like Jesus - except perhaps in wellies. (Which Jesus himself certainly would have worn, if he'd been born in the North of England.) Intrigued and far from disappointed, I went back into the house.

From then on, I began to think of him each night before I fell asleep. I'd lie in my bed and imagine him standing there under the fir tree, just as I'd seen him. Visualising him there became a night-time ritual. I would close my eyes and say silent prayers to him, sending him all kinds of crazy telepathic messages and willing him to feel my thoughts and feel our connection. He became the focus for all my restless curiosity and longing, and as the weeks passed, he took on a definite shape. I no longer saw just his outline. In my mind, I saw him fully and clearly, though always - without exception - in darkness. Moth Boy's face was a little sharp and elfin, sometimes mischievous, sometimes deeply melancholic; his brows were dark but his eyes were a curious blue and dusted in shadows in the manner of - say - a guitar player in a New Romantic band. Except that Moth Boy echewed make-up. His eyeshadow was completely natural. His hair was also quite naturally gelled into a tangle with feathers and twigs.

So fixated was I on this figure that often, from the depths of a dream, I would feel as though I could sense him - physically sense him - near by. I would hear a sort of soft electric hum like vibrating wings and my heart would pound. Before even waking, I would have got out of bed, my toes lumpish with sleep, and shuffled my way across the cold bedroom floor to the window. Only when my warm face touched the glass would I truly wake up - to a dark and empty garden. Had he only just left? Flown into the darkness on his powdery wings? Had I dreamt it all? Was I being insane? Or was he out there and watching me secretly from behind a tree?

Before the winter was out, I saw him once again. I wasn't even looking out for him. I was just sitting on my window sill, resting my head against the cool glass. I'd been woken by the mysterious cramps they called "growing pains" and found myself feeling suddenly utterly petrified about all the life that lay ahead of me and all the countless capabilities I was expected to casually develop. I just didn't think I could ever do it. How could I grow up? I didn't have the skills. I didn't have the eagerness to learn them, either, like so many of my peers - drinking snake bites until they puked, learning sex tips from their mum's Jilly Cooper books and sucking on cigarettes. Though I was desperately tired, I'd found myself too oppressed and apprehensive to re-settle my mind in a hollow of drowsiness. So I'd got up and pressed my woebegone face against the dark window pane.

Outside, it was another bright silvery night and down by the fir tree, I now saw a movement. I turned my head sharply and stared out over the lawn. It was...! It was him. Gasping, I knelt up, cupped my hands around my eyes and peered out into the darkness. I could see him. He was standing outlined against the twinkling expanse of The Park. His poor wings looked terribly crumpled (were they really wings?) and he was making a very determined repetitive movement, over and over, in a kind of grim rhythmic stubbornness, like someone trying to force a thing that will not budge. Blood rushed to my ears as my heart raced. Who or what was he, and what was he doing out there? What was he up to? He was clearly very busy with something. He seemed completely absorbed within his movement. I watched. It seemed less stubborn now. More graceful... artistic. Was it a dance? No. A struggle? Was he fighting with something? With what? With invisible forces? Or was he trying to pull a sword from a sheath? I strained my eyes and blinked. Was it part of a magic ritual? If he unsheathed the sword, could he - and would he - then freeze time and give the earth to the stargazers? Was he here to grant all my wishes? Or was he perhaps sewing? Like Peter Pan, trying to reattach his own shadow? Or casting seeds for toadstool rings?

It was strange. It went on for several long minutes and each second my perception of it changed. Sometimes he seemed too otherworldly to be human, but sometimes he seemed too human to be anything else. The longer I looked, the less I could make him out. I tried to understand the movement. Was the main force away from his body and out into the air? Or the other way around? And I? Was I dreaming? I pinched myself, like the heroines in my books. Did that ever work? What if you only dreamed you were pinching yourself? As a test, I tried to speak. In dreams, I knew, speech never comes out the way you intend it.

"I see you, night spirit," I said, "I can see you there. Take me. Stop time and take me with you. I am ready to go."

As I spoke, my breath frosted the glass and I lost sight of him behind the mist. Quickly, scared to break eye contact and lose him again to the night, I wiped the window clear with my hand. As I peered out again, I thought I saw him fall. His legs seemed to buckle beneath him. He stumbled to his knees and his head was first thrown back for several seconds and then bent right forwards as he put out one hand to support himself against the tree. Was he fainting? Or in pain? Should I go to him? I thought of it. Should I? Did I dare? I hovered in indecision. I both longed and feared to go to him; because he might be real and human; because he might be a spirit; because I didn't know what I wanted and I didn't know what to say to boys. Whatever great thing you said, they always acted like they thought you were being uncool and stupid, just because you were a girl. Would Moth Boy be like that? Would I secretly like him anyway?

After that I lost him for a while. His shadow merged with the tree until I thought he must have gone. But I knelt and stared out into the darkness for the longest time, though it was cold and my knees were growing numb. I knew now that I would not have dared to go to him.

Finally, I saw him outlined again. He was either looking back up at the house or out and away over The Park. It was impossible to tell.

All at once, I decided to signal him. Perhaps he would come up to me - fly to my window. Though I knew I was too frightened to go out into the garden and take fate into my own hands, I was - contrarily - still longing for him to come to me and take me with him. I didn't want to make the decision to go. I wanted him to make this choice for me. At this mad moment, I thought perhaps he really could freeze time. Perhaps he would love me and steal me away from the daunting life of daytimes that lay before me - all the frightening exams and career decisions, all the driving lessons and the food shopping, the housework, the parking spaces and the pin numbers. Impulsively, I ran to a drawer to fetch my torch. But I was too slow. When I returned and looked out again, my blind finger grappling for the switch, I saw that he had disappeared.

As it turned out, this was to have been my only chance. Soon after that, there was a bad storm and the big old fir tree was struck by lightening. I still remember the terrible crashing, tearing sound it made when it died and half the trunk fell away from the crown.

Within the week, the old tree was cut down and sawn up into a gigantic heap of firewood that was carried to an outhouse in the castle courtyard. I watched the work from my window and cried. I wanted them to leave the tree - splintered and charred as it was. It was his tree - Moth Boy's. But it was useless telling anyone this. I knew it was insane.

At this time, I suspected that inside, many people were secretly insane, but the only ones they locked up were the ones without the wits to hide it. I intended to hide my own insanity for as long as necessary. But I couldn't stop those tears. My mother thought me ridiculous for crying about a plant. But I think my father was impressed - that I had the sensibility to spill so many tears over some old tree. He found it surprising, but to him it somehow underlined my specialness. Naturally, I didn't tell him I was crying for a mysterious moth-winged spirit who I believed was bound to the tree by some ancient magical force, and who only ever appeared to me. That would have been like underlining my specialness three times in scented purple ink and then launching into a round of chicken impressions. It would have been pushing it.

In the days that followed, as the wood was carried away to the outhouse, my father often hugged me and told me he "understood". He kept saying, "Over two hundred and fifty years. Gone forever. Gone in less than a second." He kept imparting informative nuggets on the last two hundred and fifty years of English history - things like the invention of the spinning jenny - and linking them with the estimated age and height of the dead tree at the time. I nestled into him, feeling irritated yet grateful that the fir tree had at least meant something to somebody else. I was thankful too that my father could always be relied on to completely miss the point.

I never saw Moth Boy after that. I often looked out for him, but he never materialised in a visible physical form again and I never felt the electric hum of his presence in my sleep. I had long relinquished the shepherd boy theory by now and I firmly believed that his spirit had somehow been bound up in that fir tree. I began to think that it must have been so, because why else had he stopped appearing at the exact same time it had been struck dead?

I wondered where he was. Was he still in the tree? In the wood? Did he hover above the woodpile at nights and weep? Poor Moth Boy. If only he'd stopped time before the lightening had struck. And this need never have happened.

In the afternoons, when I got back from school, I began to sneak into the outhouse to visit him. I'd sit down on the pile of logs and chippings and speak to him, the way you would speak to a gravestone or a friend in a coma - just in case he was in there somewhere and just in case he could hear me. Though really, of course, I was doing it more for my own comfort than for him. His appearances had been so unique and so special to me. I just didn't want to let him go. I didn't want to face life without the idea that he was somehow still around and part of it - face a world without the possibility of something as wonderful and enchanting as him; I felt that he was the only living creature who had ever truly understood me - and still liked me. Sitting on the woodpile wasn't as comfortable as watching him out of the window, but romance was never harmed by a little hardship and I bore the change as bravely as I could. There was even a kind of Dickensian charm to the poverty of it all. My mute and needy friend, the woodpile. Oh that it should come to this.

It was over a year before all the firewood was used up. Each time I came in for my chat, I noticed how fast Moth Boy's logs were dwindling. He was losing substance. It was sad. Heartbreaking. Why was he letting this happen?

"Stop time, Moth Boy," I sometimes begged the woodpile, "Do it now, before you're burnt all away to cinders. You can stop this. You CAN."

But he didn't. And a day came when I knew it would be the last time I could visit him like this. I hadn't wanted to believe it would arrive. I had hoped that if it did, then I would somehow miraculously find myself quite ready. But I didn't. I didn't want to let him go. So I stole a single log - the log with the most character in it - and hid it under my bed.

But it was no good. I don't know if you've ever found yourself crouching beneath your bed, trying to converse intelligently with an unresponsive log, but as experiences go, it has to be one of life's most disenchanting ones, and from then on, my relationship with Moth Boy was all downhill. Talking to him felt useless; pathetic. When I looked at the log - so grimy and unshapely and so fusty - it struck me that there really was no romance left in our liaison. And I began to feel disgruntled. He wasn't even making an effort for me. And then I began to wonder: had I ever really seen him clearly? Had I seen him for what he really was? Wasn't it more that I had built up a grand image of him in my own mind and become ludicrously attached to that? Perhaps I had made too much of him, right from the start. Perhaps the exciting winged creature with the gothic eye markings had never existed. Perhaps the boy by the fir tree had never been any more exciting than this mouldy lump of wood and I'd been too blind to notice. Duped by my own wishful thinking.

Eventually, I stuck the log in the back of my wardrobe and tried to forget about Moth Boy. I would have thrown it out, but something in me still clung to that last remnant of him. The log was the only magically-associated relic I'd ever owned. It didn't do anything magical, of course, and seemed most unlikely to ever do so, but some aura of enchantment still seemed to pervade it and it was to that aura that I still held fast. Not so much to Moth Boy as to the possiblity of there having once been a Moth Boy.

It was around this time that we moved house - further up the valley to a cottage in a wild and lonely landscape. Prior to the move, I thought of burying the log at the old spot by the ha-ha. Or of burning it and turning the last remaining earth-bound chunk of Moth Boy into smoke. I had various vague plans for incantations I might chant. I was very sad to leave the castle and a farewell ceremony over Moth Boy's remains would have seemed very fitting. But I was over fifteen now and I had become very lethargic, so in the end, I just placed him on the floor of the boiler room on the last day and left him for the new owner to burn. I felt so weary. After over two years of devotion, it seemed my love had, after all, worn itself out and now it was time to leave.

Later that night, I sat in my new bedroom in the cottage, looking out at the hills and the moon - almost full, at that same controversial stage. It was spring and these were different hills. I had not wanted to come here, but I was forced to admit, they were more rugged and mystic, and much, much more beautiful even than The Park. It felt disloyal, but even now I loved them. I imagined flying into the darkness on two powdery wings of my own. And then I thought, I can do that. Why not? I crept out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs, trying to avoid the squeaky floorboards. Then I slipped through the door, out into the garden and off into the night.

This was the first of many illicit midnight rambles. From then on, when I couldn't sleep, I took to wandering for hours across the hills and fields and through the back gardens of the sleeping cottages I found - dressed only in my nightdress. The ones I called the Night-Sleepers were all safely tucked up in their beds and as the black hill-roving breeze scampered over the treetops and raced around me through grasses and weeds, it seemed to me as though time had stood still for a moment after all and that the wind and I were the only ones left awake. Trespassing. Fervently pagan. Aimless and forgotten. In love with the world as never before.

I wonder now, did any one ever look out of their window and see me, a slight, windswept figure in a long white gown? Perchance a ghost, an insomniac or a stargazer, like me? I cannot tell, for noone ever told me. But while the Night-Sleepers slumbered, I lingered beneath their trees, I stared at their houses and I lay on their lawns. Sometimes I stripped right off and span in circles beneath the stars, did cartwheels, handstands and somersaults in the grass. In these hours, the elements of the atom seemed to rush together. Time had stopped and I was free to do all kinds of things one could ordinarily only do alone and behind locked doors. And I never left a footprint. Tender as a dewdrop, faithless as moonbeams. Moth Girl.

Bad Rainbow

2010-12-07T11:00:00.044+01:00

Black-winged passions are circling like vultures above my whimpering sanity.

Noooo! quails my fearful heart, Noooo, please! Not this again! And not him! Not this man! I DON'T WANT to want him. I wanted all THIS sort of business to END. I wanted to move on, to mend my ways, to learn from past mistakes, to turn over new leaves, dance to new tunes and all that other crap. Oh why did I have to go and talk to him again when I knew I should be keeping my distance? And whatever gave me the ludicrous idea that I would be able to stop myself from flirting with him? Oh why didn't I just do something useful last night instead: whittle spoon rests for OAPs; knit egg cosies for soldiers?

Oh God, fuck the egg cosies: I want him, I want him, I WANT him.

Hm. Ok. Let's just give this a few more days. Let's focus on the fact that it would be very stupid of me to give in to this attraction. Let's focus on what a wholesome, admirable, sensible paragon of a person I had decided to try to pretend to be. Let's focus on the fact that Santa might be watching. Santa would not like me to commit such folly... Hm. Actually... now that I'm having this serious little talk with myself, it suddenly strikes me that it was a little unwise of me to have sent him that e-mail just now. The one that said, "In quandry. Have purchased new socks. Can I get away with horizontal stripes? Please advise."

Hm. And it occurs to me just now... yes, yes, of course - oh God, how blindingly obvious it all becomes... that I really ought to have just described the socks to him. I really ought not to have so thoughtlessly attached this visual aid.

I mean, it's a nice picture of the socks in question, of course, but you can see how it might be misconstrued, though, can't you?

Oh bad, bad, innocent, foolish Zora!

The Thing that Binds Us

2010-12-03T11:56:00.009+01:00

"It's all about loss," she said, "That's the thing we all share. A fear of loss."

"But doesn't everyone fear loss?" I asked.

"I don't think so. Not in the way we do. They aren't continually conscious of it. They don't really think about it unless they have to."

"But maybe that means that they fear it even more than we do," I pondered, "They don't think about it because they can't face it. It would take away all their courage. Meanwhile, we Polaroiders face up to the fact that loss is happening all around us every second of our lives. And we try to do something about it - what little we can do."

"Are we really combatting loss by taking Polaroids?"

"Well," I said, "We capture moments just as they are slipping away from us. We make the ephemeral tangible and durable by creating an image that is also an object - a souvenir of the time and place that is now and here. We go through our lives creating solid physical records of our memories. So yes, I'd say we were combatting loss. Trying to, anyway."

"But Polaroids fade. We're not halting the process of loss - and we know it. We're just slowing it down a bit instead of simply letting it happen and moving on like other people do. That's why I still say that we fear it more than they do."

"OK, but how about this theory: by slowing down the process of loss, we're not trying to escape it, we're actually heightening our awareness of it, enabling ourselves to watch it happening in slow-motion as our pictures fade before our eyes. We're deliberately drawing out the agony so that we can feel it more deeply. We don't want to rip off the elastoplast. We actually prefer the unnecessary agony of coaxing it off gradually. What I'm saying is: we're not afraid of loss, we're in love with it and we want to savour the feeling and make it last for as long as we possibly can!"

"Yes," she said, "But why do we want to make it last? Isn't it because we're so afraid of loss that we even fear losing our sense of loss itself?"

"Ah, well, yeeees," I conceded, "But, then again: Why do we fear losing our sense of loss itself? Surely only because we are in love with it."

We beamed at each other. At last it seemed we were reaching some kind of common ground - two theories that circled each other and gave birth to each other like the chicken and the egg.

"So, let's sum up now," she said, "We're all in love with the thing we fear most - loss? And this is what binds us Polaroiders - this is what we all share."

"I'd agree with that."

"Me too. But then... surely that makes us idiots."

"Mm. I'm afraid that's the other thing we share. We're all total idiots."

Blackmailed

2010-10-19T13:58:00.003+02:00

I opened the envelope hesitantly and drew out the photographs, my heart beating in apprehension. I examined them for a few seconds, one by one.

"Is this it?" I asked, my voice rising in indignation.

"Yes," he said, "I photographed the whole thing. You had no idea I'd tailed you."

"And that's the best you can do...? You seriously expect me to pay you for these?"

He pushed his spectacles further up his nose and leered.

I went on: "Look, I'm sorry, but if you're going to try to blackmail me, I'll expect you to do a lot better that this. I mean, these are RUBBISH. I'm very disappointed. Not only is the framing total crap, but you can't even see anything happening. This could be anything - gnomes dancing round a mushroom - anything."

He blinked, started to laugh knowingly, then stopped abruptly.

"Alright, here's what we'll do," I continued, "Why don't you take this shot here that I took myself from inside the room. If you look closely, you'll notice that it's not only loads more incriminating but much more thoughtfully framed, too. I'll give it to you and then you can write me another menacing letter and let's see if you can blackmail me with this one. OK? Can't say fairer than that."

All that Jizz

2010-09-29T13:54:00.003+02:00

(A conversation with a musician immediately after a jazz concert)

Me: Remember me?

Him: Of course.

Me: Really?

Him: Yeah, you were in that thing (mimes ribbons fluttering gaily from a nipple), with that tiger coat. God, you were really flirting with me. And then, just when I thought I was definitely getting somewhere, you said goodbye and left.

Me: Ah. That wasn't personal. I do that with everyone.

Him: The flirting or the walking out?

Me: Both. I'm a tease. I promise everything and deliver nothing.

Him: Well, I guess I enjoyed it. I certainly didn't forget you. You're intelligent, attractive and obsessed with sex. My favourite combination.

Me (very brightly): Talking of sex, have you ever masturbated into your trombone?

(Long pause)

Me: This seemingly endless pregnant pause means 'yes', doesn't it?

Him: No

Me: You can't fool me.

Him: No, I was just trying to imagine it. I think the end is too wide, and the narrow part is too far into the instrument, and too narrow.

Me: Oh, no, you're thinking of fucking a trombone. I just meant ejaculating into it, or over it. Perhaps as a kind of messy christening ritual.

(Another long pause)

Me: Well?

Him: No. I'm just wondering if that would make it nice and shiny. I might try it.

Me: That can be your homework for next time. But don't blame me if it corrodes the metal, will you? So what's the most unusual object you've ever masturbated onto or into?

Him: I can't think of one.

Me: Shall I tell you what other men have told me? Perhaps something will jog your memory.

Him: Yeah, OK. That might help.

Me: A jar of Brylcreem, a pair of shoes, a watermelon, a sock, a rubber glove, the inner tube of a toilet roll, a flask of warm mince.

Him (pressing fingers to temples in manner of a medium): Oh oh, hold on. I'm getting something. A teatowel.

Me: Your own or someone else's?

Him: My mother's.

Me (clapping my hands in glee and laughing): Ah, excellent! That is most satisfactory. Did you have to wash it secretly?

Him: Yeah, I rubbed it with a wet sponge, then I just hung it back up on the rail again. I've thought of another one. It was the rubber glove that reminded me. But I'm a bit embarrassed to tell you.

Me: Oh, but I like those ones best of all.

Him: You're not going to repeat this to anyone?

Me: I may, but I promise never to reveal you as a source.

Him: OK, well, you know in hotels, there's usually twin beds.

Me: Mmm.

Him: Well, you know there's sometimes a narrow gap between them?

Me: Mmm.

Him: Well, I discovered...

Me: quite by chance...

Him: quite by chance, that if you carefully grease the inside of a small plastic bag with body lotion and insert it into that gap, you can fuck it really, really nicely. That was an amazingly good wank. I only did that once, though, out of desperation.

Me: Was it hard to find the right quantity of body lotion?

Him: Yes. It took me a few goes before I had it just right, because you can't have the bag too slippery, but you don't want too much friction either.

Me: So it wasn't just once, was it? You were lying about that.

Him: Shit. I walked right into that one, didn't I? You're too clever for me. Oh, oh, I've just thought of another one.

Me: I must say, you're quite an impressive specimen. You're about to enter the top three on my list of creative wankers.

Him: Ah, really? That's great! It was the filter of a salt-water jacuzzi in a health spa. I discovered...

Me: quite by chance...

Him: quite by chance, that if I stood just opposite the filter where the water was being extracted, there was a very arousing jet of warm water. I didn't even have to touch myself. I just stood in the jet, getting more and more aroused until I came, and then I watched all the spunk slowly rise and float away towards the filter and disappear.

Me: Didn't you worry that the whole bath was just a warm pool of endlessly recirculating old spunk?

Him: Yeah, later. The next day, I saw this disgusting fat old guy sitting in there. I wanted to have another go, so I was just waiting for him to get out and fuck off, but he was like hogging the place for ages, and then I realised he was at it too. It kind of put me off the idea. You're enjoying this, aren't you? Is this turning you on?

Me: I'm not sure. I seem to spend most of my life feeling turned on, so I can never really trace the feeling back to any specific trigger.

Him: I've never had a conversation like this. I can't imagine this ever happening with anyone else. You're not like anyone I've ever met.

Me: So you're not finding this weird, unnerving or obtrusive in any way?

Him: No, I feel liberated. And it's fun. You've got this look of very earnest journalistic integrity most of the time, but then you suddenly start laughing like some sort of goofy kid. I keep wanting to tell you more, just to see that transformation. Look, don't disappear this time. I'm staying at XXX. Is that in your direction? We could walk there.

Me: I'm here with company tonight. I'm going to do the same thing as last time, I'm afraid.

Him: That's a shame. A walk would have been nice. Romantic.

Me: You're not going to claim that this conversation is making you feel romantic, are you?

Him: Well, yes.

Me: You don't have to pretend, you know. It won't make any difference either way.

Him: I know. But I am coming over all romantic. I've enjoyed this so much and I might never see you again.

Me: Have you got twin beds in your room?

Him: Yes

Me: Have you got a plastic bag?

Him: I think so. I might.

Me: Good. That makes me feel so much better about what I'm about to do.

Him: You're leaving.

Me: I'm leaving.

Him: Oh.

A Story Told in Order of Diminishing Preference

2010-08-13T15:54:00.009+02:00

Hey, Lover-Boy - or rather, the artist formerly known as such. You know I wanted to make a story out of that disasterous night, don't you? A bombastic action-packed tale? Well, I can't. I can't even begin to try chronicling those events in a sensible story-telling fashion. It's just too cringeworthy. So instead, I am going to attempt to write it all down another way - not as a story, but just for the record. And I'm going to do it as a numerical list: I'm going to start with the least unpleasant moments and see if I can work my way up to the more troublesome ones, stage by stage. It won't make sense to anyone but us, but it's the only way I can make myself do this. I have to approach the worst parts stealthily.

Coming up now: the least unpleasant moment. And then, if I can really cope with it, the rest.

1) In the taxi, after our successful bid for escape, I demand a pen and a scrap of paper from the taxi driver and I begin scribbling down a "contract" in my best drunken handwriting: "I, .......... (name), do hereby swear that I will never put you through another night like this one for as long as we both shall live. Signed:............. (signature), this ......day of .......... (month), 20... (year)" I hand it to you to sign. You read it. Then, without a word, you grab the pen off me and sign your name with a scrawled flourish. I tuck the contract into my purse, knowing you'll forget you signed it, already planning to pull it out and astonish you with it, some distant day when the moment calls for it. Then we sit back and look at each other.

"We haven't much time left," I say, "What the hell were we thinking of, actually? How could we waste this whole night doing... that!"

You reach for me and draw me to you. You say, "I'm sorry. I swear, that was the last time. That stuff is over for me now. You're the only woman I ever want to fuck from this day on. I will never, ever want to fuck another. You know I hated her smell the whole time? You're the only one who smells good to me. I just want to have you and be happy. In fact, why didn't we just fuck each other's brains out in my hotel room tonight? That would have been so nice. Don't you think?"

"You're drunk," I say, "We don't fuck anymore, remember? And we never will again."

You sigh and your eyes shift inwardly as if you're trying to focus on me through a jar of vaseline. "Yeah. Course I remember. Why is that, Baby? Can you explain it? All seems so wrong to me."

"Because you were breaking my heart. So I dumped you."

You say, "Jesus," and shake your head. Then you say, "Thanks for being you. Please, forgive me for everything. And please don't ever change."

Then you reach out and pull me closer. Then you kiss me. You just kiss me. Just like that, after nearly two years. Just as if it was your God-given right. I know you won't remember any of this later, so I don't even bother to struggle or protest or push you away. I kiss you back, fiercely, until the taxi stops. Then I get out. When I turn to close the door, you slump back and immediately fall asleep, but the taxi driver says he'll wake you when he thinks he's near your hotel. He drives off in the glistening drizzle with you bobbing drowsily on the back seat. You've only got about 4 hours before you'll have to check out.

2) Two minutes earlier than item 1 above, running headlong down the stairs, trailing scarves and coat sleeves behind us; you somehow hopping your way into one shoe with one hand and zipping up your jeans with the other; me stuffing an armful of underwear - my bra, my knickers, my suspender belt and stockings - into the top of my handbag as I careen after you. When we burst through the downstairs door, I still have one arm trapped inside my top. I stride along the pavement next to you as it burrows blindly upwards in search of a sleeve hole.

We should have been laughing as we came down those stairs. I think perhaps we were; breathily, like rabbits.

3) Still moving backwards through time to a moment very much earlier: at the bar counter, introducing you to that couple as my "ex-lover", seeing you physically cringe at the term and thinking, "Ah, so that still really hurts, does it? That's nice."

4) Switching directions and moving forwards in time now, to right after the bar: me walking along the dark street behind you and the couple, Katy and Walter are their names, and calling, "Look, don't be annoyed, but I'm going to go home. You three go on and have your experience. Have a nice time. I know this isn't going to be my thing, so I'll just head off, OK?"

You walk back to me and try to persuade me. You say, "Hey, I won't go with them if you don't want to come, too."

I say "No, you go on. You always wanted a gang bang. Go have a threesome without me. I don't mind."

You say "But I don't want to be with them if you're not there."

I say "Oh God, I'm just so fed up with having sex with people I don't even like. It feels horrible. I really hate it. I feel like shit the next day. I swore never to do that again. And look at these people: the girl is pretty enough but that old geezer is repulsive. All that nasty grey hair and the smug, greasy way his tie hangs under his shirt collar. I'm sure he's her head of department in some airless, fusty-carpeted, stinking little company. That's the only reason she's having an affair with him. He's sordid. It's distasteful to even think of them together."

You say, "Either we both go back with them or I'm coming with you. I want this experience, but I don't want to be alone with them. I'd rather be with you and miss it than be there without you."

What is this about? Is this meant to be gallant? Romantic? What? You're making me feel like I'm going to be the killjoy who spoiled your adventure if I don't go with you. Then Katy and Walter crowd around me too and say, "Hey, we're cool. You won't have to do anything you don't like. You can just be a voyeur. Come on. It'll be nice."

I give in, but ungraciously, because I'm not very adept at submitting to things I don't like. I announce, "OK, everyone, just to be totally unambiguous: I am not going to have sex with any of you tonight. I'm going along due to group pressure and I'll hang out and drink your wine, but if it occurs to any of you to try to seduce me, I might not be very charming about it. And just to be extra extra clear: it's not because I'm jittery about group sex. It's because I don't feel attracted to any of you."

I'm already being uncharming. I feel it's only right to give them this demonstration of how bolshy I can be. But they smile at me as if they were captivated. Katy says, "No matter what it is you're saying, it always sounds rather sweet."

5) Moving forwards in time again, we are in Katy's flat, in the kitchen. Katy is flirting with you. I see you making your moves on her. Your hands are on her waist; the music is playing from a cheap little stereo with crappy little speakers; you're dancing and drinking with her. You're not looking at me at all, which makes me think you must be feeling especially aware of me. I'm sitting there trying to work out if I'm jealous, but I'm just that little bit too drunk to work out the emotional intricacies of it. I feel quite unconnected. Walter is sitting next to me on a kitchen chair, looking at the two of you, regularly swivelling his head around to see my reactions. I don't return his gaze. What does he think I am - a TV screen? Doesn't he know it's rude to stare at cognisant human beings? I ignore him. And yes, I am especially aware of him. He makes my skin crawl.

"I can't wait to see him fuck the dirty little bitch," he murmurs to me and starts massaging his groin. He reaches over and inserts his sweaty hand, in its limp, rolled up office shirt, between my inner thighs.

"Please, don't attempt to arouse me Walter. Just take your hand away," I say and I splash as much wine into my glass as I can get in there. I'm a little clumsy.

You are taking off Katy's clothes, pulling off her jeans and her top. She's in her underwear now. Her figure is good - the legs slim and lithe, stomach slightly rounded. You're in your shorts and you're looking good too - vital and brown with those muscular arms of yours. I'm watching you touching each other. I don't really like watching it all unfold like this. I want you to move faster and get on with it. I want you to get past this stage because I think that actual sex will be much easier to watch unconnectedly than this slow seduction scene. I think brutal loveless fucking would be very much easier to watch. I'm so terribly impatient for this part to be over, and yet I still keep my eyes on you.

As I watch, I can't help thinking that neither of you is really into the other. It seems to me that she's putting on a show, playing the dirty girl for her dirty old head of department. She's not particularly bothered about you. I can see that. She doesn't know or care who you are, she can't see what it is that makes you special. I almost hate her for that. But then, you aren't turned on by her either. You're trying your best, but I can see that you're not getting the least bit hard. You've realised it yourself and you're trying to direct all the attention in the room onto her, playing for time and hoping you'll get there in the end. You don't really like her, do you? But there's no elegant way out of it now. You have to go through with it, and with an audience, too. It's good that I'm feeling so unconnected, or I would feel uncomfortable for you.

I swig back my wine. I congratulate myself on having had the wisdom to know how to avoid getting into your situation. I knew these people wouldn't be a turn-on. I knew pretending they were would turn into a dreary, endless chore. I'm so glad I'm not in your place.

Katy sits down on a chair and you kneel down between her legs and lick her pussy. She's moaning and writhing but I'm not convinced. Seems patently clear to me that the only person in the kitchen who is genuinely enjoying himself tonight is Walter. Walter now pulls his pants down and flips out his cock. It's almost fully erect. It's also nestling in an unkempt clump of the same slightly flattened, slightly damp-looking grizzled hair that he has on his head. I find myself thinking of his member as a kind of randy old wire-haired dachshund wallowing on an unwashed, hair-encrusted blanket. It even seems to smell like an old stumpy-legged dog, though that could be a hallucination brought on by the association. Nonetheless, the image seems so vivid that I hiccough and retch slightly as a low surge of vomit swells into my gullet. I try not to think about Walter's dachshund cock anymore. I try to think about streams and fresh fields and being home. Meanwhile Walter leans over and starts to mould Katy's small breasts from the back. You're still down between her legs in front of her chair. She is still writhing about rather ostentatiously. Then Walter looks over at me. I am sipping wine expressionlessly at the table beside him.

"You're the one who's turning me on right now, my beautiful" he whispers, "I love the fact that you're hating this in a million different ways."

"I'm quite indifferent about it, to be honest with you, Walter," I say, with a studied air of tedium.

He grins and wanks himself off with his other hand, watching me closely.

"I know your kind," he says in a little while, "I know what's in your mind. I know exactly what little Zora needs."

Then he makes a lunge for me with both hands and starts pulling me towards him and pushing my face down towards the straining dachshund on its horrid hairy blanket.

"You need to be forced, don't you, my pretty? You need a man to be a real man."

He is pushing my face down and down and down and the nearer it comes to his cock, the stronger the fusty animal reek. In a reflex reaction, I straighten my legs so that I'm standing bent over and I kick back the chair, then I reach up and wrench his arms away from my head, fuelled by a surge of defensive viciousness that lends me a surprising strength. I straighten up and then strike him full and hard across the face. He reels.

"Do not presume!" I say, flashing my eyes imperiously at him, "Do NOT presume to know ANYTHING AT ALL about little Zora. You know nothing about me and you never will. Is that clear?"

Raising his arm to shield his face, he nods and mutters, "Christ! Ok, ok, I've got that now."

Then I sit down and start drinking in earnest. I feel a premonition that he is about to grin so I decide not to catch sight of it and turn my back on him - on everyone, in fact. I decide to drink swiftly and dedicatedly until I don't recognise any of you anymore and have no idea where I am. Fuck you all, I think. I hope I puke on something precious.

6) Moving forwards again, I don't know how much later it is, but I'm coming out of some sort of blackout. It could be two minutes later or as much as an hour. I'm in another room, a tiny living-room - drinking straight from the bottle and you're all in the bedroom now. I remember harbouring a feeling of deep scorn for Katy's DVD collection, though I can't remember why. Disney? Billy Crystal? The memory escapes me. I hear Katy calling to me to come in to the bedroom, too.

I stagger in. It's another tiny room and you are all on a mattress on the floor. She is bouncing her face up and down on Walter's fuzzy cock and you are stroking her pussy from the back. You still aren't hard. I think they are both disappointed that you haven't been able to fuck her, and that's why they've called me in. I'm your emergency stand-in. I plonk down on the mattress, feeling disoriented. I laugh and slur the words, "I really don't fancy any of you."

"Not even me?" you say. You look hurt. I try to give you a level look and to fill my eyes with haughty coldness.

"Of everyone in this room, you're the one I'm least likely to have sex with," I announce.

As I say the words I realise how angry and passionate they sounded and hope you're too drunk to be able to notice. You've been drinking more too. Your eyes are drooping. You look crestfallen.

Then Katy reaches over and starts to kiss me with her dachshund-scented mouth. She pulls off my skirt, my top, my underwear and strokes me between my legs. I'm much too drunk to feel anything and much too drunk to sit upright. I lie back. She starts bouncing her face up and down on Walter's cock again beside me while I lie next to them and try to ignore the way the pumping motion of her head seems to jar with the spinning of the ceiling. She has one hand between my thighs and is rubbing away at me. If I was sober enough to feel, I wouldn't like it at all. As things are, it is a just minor irritation. It is keeping me conscious, at least. You are down at the foot of the bed between their tangled legs. I feel Walter's hand reaching over and grabbing one of my nipples and pinching it hard so I slap his hand away as if he was a child interfering with a cake. She takes her hand off me, too.

"Still fighting it, Zora?" he says, "If you knew how much that turns me on!"

"I'm not fighting anything, Walter. It's just that, even this drunk, I still can't bear your touch."

He starts to approach a climax. A swift, sober part of my brain informs me that he enjoyed hearing those words. He thrills to the thought of forcing himself on me, sullying me. Katy starts whimpering, her face burried in grey fur, her mouth full of old dachshund. Another show. I reach over with one arm and pat her on the head and say, "Don't try so hard, dear" before bursting out into silent laughter.

Then I hear a scuffling at the end of the mattress and look down. I see you sweeping up whole armfuls of clothes, a wild, crazy, hunted look in your eye.

"Hey, what are you up to?" I hiss.

"I'm out of here," you say, "I've got to get away from these disgusting people, right now!" You're rummaging around frantically for socks and shoes.

"Stop! Wait! Don't you dare leave me alone with these two jokers!" I cry, leaping up and gathering up handfuls of what I hope is my own clothing. Then, our arms fully laden, hunched over and swaying slightly like two vying sumo wrestlers, we exchange one brief split-second glance across the mattress, above their ostensibly ecstatic bodies. You shrug. I smile at you. You smile, too. I feel... warm, hot, soft. I feel - and it's ludicrously inappropriate of me - I feel love. And then, in exactly the same instant, we dash headlong to the door, naked and with our feet scrabbling everywhere like the skidding paws of puppies. And, yes, we are laughing, quietly and breathily.

Startled, Katy stops bobbing and cranes her head around after us, trying to peer into the dark corridor. Just as she says, "Huh? What are they doing?" and just as I sing out, "Na-na! Told you I wasn't going to fuck you!", Walter ejaculates all over the back of her head and then the flat door slams behind us.

Species

2010-08-10T14:56:00.012+02:00

To the true sensualist, beauty and physical perfection are neither here nor there. The gorgeous wrappings on a parcel may excite the imagination of some, but unless one is happy to remain in the realm of promise and fantasy interminably (and the true sensualist will always yearn for the heat of a real touch) then those metaphorical wrappings must be shed at some point. And this why the gift itself - the sexual essense within - is the only quality that the sensualist prizes.

Luckily, when it comes to appraising parcels, the sensualist has a sexual sixth sense - a special sort of x-ray vision that looks right through the wrapping and reveals whether the gift is likely to please; yet (most intruigingly) without ever revealing what its precise nature or appeal will be. Call it a kind of instinct. Call it a kind of torment.

Also, much like two dogs or cats in a room full of bipeds, when two sensualists find themselves located in one room, it takes a fraction of a second for them to notice the other's presence, no matter how large or how full that room may be. Because two lone animals of the same species will always instantly sense one another in a crowd, even though they may each be labouring under the charming delusion that they are human beings just like everyone else. Indeed, I believe that they may be drawn to one other without initially knowing why.

So what is it that entices the sensualist? What lures such a beast to one's side? And when you find one in hot pursuit, how do you know if he or she desires you as a mate of their own species or merely wishes to gorge themselves on yet another tasty human prey?

Good questions. I'm very glad you asked me. And I do want to answer. I want to bring these thoughts to a conclusion for you, but each time I try, I lose myself in longing and feel too flustered to think. But I will try now nonetheless. I think the answer to the last question could possibly be something like this: if you find that you really couldn't give a flying fuck whether you're prey or not - if you just don't want or need to know because your urge to succumb so vastly overpowers your urge for caution - then the chances are that you have nothing to fear; you're most probably of the same breed yourself and sensualists don't usually kill their own (though not, I might add, for want of trying).

Can you trust me on this?

Lord, no - I shouldn't have thought so. Now would you please shut up and fuck me?

Google Baiting

2010-07-28T13:24:00.004+02:00

Dear Unsuspecting First-Time Visitor,

If you have just reached this post via a search engine, then please be so good as to leave a comment, enlightening my readers about which bits of the gobbledygook below you were googling. Because we're all a bit bored today and, apart from anything else, we'd just really love to know more about you, so DO tell us, oh DO.

oddsbodkin forced to suck
amputee nurse gherkin-lover
on a four-piece suite
with rampant pony
squelching parsely sauce
all over her
blue tit
nesting box
rumpy-pumpy moustache
wank nodule
wedged between monster breast pods
with naughty wardrobe
puppy licking
pussy litter
in a boy scout uniform
dripping red-hot pea juice
all over his erect sapphire-breasted hummingbird
eating a wet witwanton widgeon
drenched in Dalai Lama
poo poo poo and more poo
cum bum wee-wee
oozing over frilly bonnets

Oh, and Visitor, just one last thing: you are sick - you hear me? Sick. Seek help. Now.

(Haaaaaaaaaaa! God, that was childish. Sorry. Forgive me for wasting your valuable time. It's been a dull morning. Please feel free to go back about your business now. There is nothing of any interest for you here and I'm sure you all have important jobs to be getting along with.)

The Lovers' Medium

2010-07-20T13:25:00.015+02:00

I know for a fact that my eyes cannot be focussed in the throes of passion. In a state of rising arousal, I would find it increasingly difficult to, say, read the time off a clock. By the time the first touch meets my skin, I'd have difficulty even locating the clock itself from which I was to read it; and on the pre-climatic plateau, I daresay most of the larger appointments and furnishings in the immediate locale - be it wardrobes, rows of filing cabinets or a flock of curious sheep - would likewise have all but vanished from my view (though this is, naturally, not something I can ever recall attempting to verify).

And yet, paradoxically, I also know for a fact that, in the throes of passion, my eyes focus on my lover with ease. I can locate his pupils in an instant and gaze deep into his eyes, I can see and marvel at all the small and fascinating features of his face and his body. How can this be so?

Another thing that strikes me is how different a lover looks to me once my desire has been enflamed. I don't mean to say that he doesn't look like himself. If the Honey Monster were to press himself against me and capture a nipple between his fat, fluffy fingers, I would not look up to discover myself gazing upon the head and torso of, say, a wiry Tony Tiger or a rugged "Brains" the Weetabix. But what would happen is that I would look up and see an impossibly golden, celestially sumptuous and altogether captivating version of the dangly-armed, cereal-fixated fluff ball - bathed, as it were, in the softening glow of my heated gaze. This has often made me wonder about the nature of arousal and how it influences - indeed hoodwinks - our senses.

I have a theory. I believe that when we look at the face and body of a lover through a state of arousal, we are not actually seeing them with our eyes but with our minds. What we see is not exactly, or not quite, that which is before us. It is a beguilingly realistic illusion dredged up from subconscious memories, closely based on what we already know our lover looks like, yet smoothed and subtly transformed to pander to our erotic wishes.

When people ask what the great connection is between Polaroids and eroticism, we all have a plethora of points to make: the privacy of home-development; the playful spontaneity of the act of capture; the sensuousness of two people holding the fresh image in their hands, their bodies close, their fingers brushing; the physicality of the Polaroid experience; the way that the anticipation of watching the development mimics foreplay; the subsequent function of the Polaroid as a kind of keepsake - a physically tangible witness to and relic of treasured moments from the past. It is true that all these characteristics make Polaroid the perfect medium for intimate photography. But I feel that there is another important connection here - one that is not quite so often made. It is this: we all look a little different on Polaroid - exactly like ourselves, and yet somehow softened, somehow luminous, somehow subtly transformed. You may say that this is a physical impossibility, but I believe that when you take a Polaroid of your lover, you do not make a physically accurate, visual record of the person before you. I believe that the lens actually works back-to-front, and that what you get is the image your mind is creating of that person as you look at them through eyes that are filled with passion. Polaroid and only Polaroid can do this.

Pity for the Partridge, Sorrow for the Sparrow

2010-04-14T13:21:00.010+02:00

Birds can fly; we cannot. And long, long has man looked to the birds and coveted their power to soar above the world, to sail upon the gladsome breeze, ride tattered clouds and do poos on people's heads from really high up. But please, before going berserk with envy and frustration, dear Readers, I would ask you to spare a little thought for one very grave misfortune endured by our feathered friends. Please - before you go out torching nests and toppling birdbaths - calm yourselves, and ponder this: with pretty wings instead of hands and brains the size of lentils, our friends the birds may fly about to their tiny wee hearts' content, but they are quite unable to wank.

Yes... Just think about that.

The Wanking Receptacles List

2010-03-10T17:34:00.008+01:00

A great day has arrived in your lives, Readers, a great day. For today is the day that I have decided to publish some of my painstaking research into the subject of wanking receptacles. It's taken me five years to gather these findings, so I do hope you will find them informative.

Here it comes: the full list so far:

A (worn) sock (bachelor's No. 1 choice)

A (worn) sock called Pamela (slightly less common)

A freshly laundered sock (trick entry - I made that one up)

A tub of vaseline (subsequently disposed of)

A tin of Brylcream (subsequently disposed of)

A cut-off Head and Shoulders bottle with some nice slippery blue shampoo still lining the inside

A friend's trainers (subsequently hurriedly dried with friend's sister's hairdryer)

A watermelon

A washbag (after being rapidly emptied onto floor with the other hand)

A trombone

A mug (used)

A pillow

A new guitar (sperm-based bonding ritual)

The hole in a toilet roll (not recommended - it "didn't really work")

The fingers of mummy's rubber gloves

A frying pan (clean - at least, beforehand, that is)

A stranger's towel, discovered in a sauna at an opportune moment

A vacuum cleaner bag (presumably empty, but unfortunately I forgot to check)

A cuddly toy (with customised perforation)

A polythene bag pre-greased with body lotion and wedged into the narrow space between two single beds in a hotel room

Mother's teatowel (wiped with damp sponge and replaced on rail)

The exhaust of a Golf GTi (I don't believe this one)

A tree (frosty, in wintry field)

A jaccuzzi in a spa (no hands)

Each new vehicle purchased, in course of entire life (christening ceremony generally performed in a lay-by, the most recent vehicle being a Range Rover)

A dinner plate (after eating favourite dish off it and prior to taking a photograph of it - so I certainly believe this one)

Any gentlemen who think they may have an object to add to the above list are requested to please come forward. Identities will, of course, be treated with the utmost confidence.

Slugs and Snails

2010-02-26T14:55:00.014+01:00

Well, Readers, today we can all breathe a little sigh of relief around here, I think.

"What does she mean?" I hear you cry.

And I riposte, quick as a flash: what?! Didn't you notice that at least half the posts had been hidden? What do you do in here? Just look at the tit pictures? Is that it? Shame upon you! And there was I thinking you came in to ponder my art and to marvel at my wit and intelligence... (HEY! Stop scrolling down. There is no nudity in this post. NONE whatsoever, so you may as well stay up here.)

Enough of that. Let's just backtrack to the subject of the hidden posts for the time being. You remember the art competition thing I entered a few weeks ago in the hope that Steve Buscemi would give me a flat in New York? Well, I got into the finals, and that was great news, of course, but then I had a massive paranoia attack about what would happen when the judges clicked on the link from my competition profile to this blog, expecting to see deep and moving art works, and the first thing they clapped eyes on was "Be my ass-fuck Valentine". So I went through the whole blog one night carefully weeding out all the stuff about ass-fucking and snails pooing out of their ears and so on. When I'd finished, there didn't seem to be much left over, so I had to go back through the whole thing again and put a few back up. Anyway, luckily the judging is over and Steve Buscemi and his art-world chums have now presumably all gone home for tea. They didn't give me the flat in the end, but I did get an "honorable mention" which is worth much MUCH more, I think. (Shut up! It is!)

Actually, you're right. It isn't. But that is neither here nor there. The only reason I am writing this post is to announce to you that I have just spent a pleasantly frivolous early-afternoon putting all the embarrassing, rude and puerile back-posts which I had made private last week back up again. This blog has thus been lovingly restored to it's pre-Buscemi levels of filthiness. And now please allow me to set the tone back to its accumstomed level so that we can all relax again:

Snails poo and breathe out of little arseholes on one side of their heads. I have seen and heard them doing it.

Thank you. You may now resume your ordinary activities.

(See? Told you there wouldn't be nudity. Now go back up to the top and read this properly, you scallywag.)

Dear Valentine

2010-02-09T13:44:00.019+01:00

So, is everyone hard at work bracing themselves against the inundation in feel-bad mulch which characterises the run-up to Valentine's Day? Yes? Are you all busily culvitating the right mood - the right mood being one of darkly peevish indifference or its alternative: embittered distain? I am a great believer in traditions - especially meaningless invented ones - so I do hope so.

I was just preparing for V-Day myself when I disovered the tips I will be copying in below. I have decided to follow the author's advice to "think outside the box" to the letter this year and see where it leads me. Here goes:

"Instead of sending out the same generic Valentines as everyone else, why not add your own personal touch this year with personalized greeting cards?"

By golly, yes. What could be more romantic and appropriate? I think I shall do just that!

"Here are three ways to inject a little personality into your custom Valentine's greeting cards this year:

1. Choose a thoughtful theme for the card. Typical store-bought Valentine's Day cards feature hearts, flowers and happy couples, but when you're designing your own cards, you can think outside of the box. Try choosing something that will be especially poignant for the recipient. Choose something that matches his or her interests; for example, an animal lover might respond to a picture of a beloved pet, while a sports fan will respond to an homage to their favorite team."

OK: something poignant to the recipient; something that matches his interests. Hm... what are his interests actually? Let me just think... Uh-huh.... uh-huh. Yup. OK. Got it. And this is definitely going to be "outside the box". Next tip, please:

"2. Next, decide on a special message for the card. Instead of a simple "Happy Valentine's Day," you can let your imagination run wild. Keep in mind that this message will help set the tone of the card, so consider your audience and choose your words accordingly. Pick a phrase that will communicate the depth of your love."

Ah, good point. Let me just consider my audience for a few moments as I choose my words... Hm, how best to communicate the depth of .... OK, got it. Phew, this is going to be so romantic. And yet so thoughtful and sincere, too. (These really are excellent tips.)

"3. Remember, when you're designing greeting cards for loved ones, it's hard to go wrong. Just let your love be your guide, and you're sure to create something that conveys your feelings far more accurately than anything you could buy in a store."

Well that's good to know, isn't it? Can't go wrong. Gosh, Readers, I'm so happy, knowing that by following these simple tips, I can now go and create a card that will truly warm the cockles of my Valentine's heart.

And here is the result:

(For those of you who don't speak German and wish to understand the inscription on the gingerbread heart, "Schneckerl" means "small snail". The word to which it is hyphenated is, I assume, fairly self-explanatory. Now I did intend to explain a lot more about the linguistic intricacies of the phrase "Anal-Schneckerl" at this point, but you know what? Having just translated it literally into English in my head and imagined the resultant puzzlement, I've just realised how much more fun it is if I just let this incomplete annotation stand.)

Room 35

2010-02-04T14:30:00.009+01:00

"Do you want to spend the night?" he asked, his head propped up on his hand as he lay on his side, the sweat still glistening on his body, "You can if you like, you know. Or will he ask too many questions?"

He tapped some ash from his cigarette into the ashtray that was lying on the cream-coloured covers.

"Exactly," she said, "I have to go. It's 4 in the morning. Again!"

"Yeah, we really should get started on this stuff sooner next time."

"It wouldn't work," she said, "We'd just go on for longer."

She got the feeling it would always be 4 in the morning; that moment when he stood up, ran his hand through his hair and flicked the curtains open, then lay back down to smoke. The sky outside would always have that dirty oatmeal colour, like a widower's fridge. You have now left the Dream Zone. Welcome to Reality. Please get off on the left-hand side. Should you discover any unattended luggage on the platform, please take it with you. It's yours.

"It feels a bit like coming out of the cinema after a matinée," he said, "It has no business being this light. It's just wrong! You sure you don't want to stay over? I don't mind..."

He began to hum and sing along to a Brazilian song that was coming from the laptop on the desk. She was sitting up in bed next to him, the covers pulled up to her waist, sipping on one of the glasses of wine they'd stolen from the cocktail bar when they'd made that rather urgent departure.

"No, I look like shit in the mornings. You don't need to see that."

He laughed, casting an admiring glance over her face and body,

"Now that's something I really can't imagine!"

She gave him one of those complicated smiles that adults like to bestow on euphoric children; the kind that signifies "I adore your innocence though it wounds me so".

"And I'd like you to hang onto that little illusion. But I don't have to go just yet. I want to listen to you singing some more. You know, you're a pretty crap singer for a musician. I think I like that... and I like you."

He lay back down on the bed again, stretched out on his back and then closed his eyes and groaned.

"What?" she asked.

"Aaaah, that was just so... fantastic! Fucking amazing. I still can't believe it."

He cracked his eyes open a little and turned towards her. "We didn't do such a lot of... penetration as the first time, did we? Was that alright for you?"

"Oh yes, I just love all the other stuff."

"Mmm, I could tell."

He looked down at the bed covers and shook his head almost shyly as he murmured,"Nobody has ever done some of those things to me before."

She studied his face for a couple of seconds in silence. Then he took a cheeky sidelong peek at her and laughed.

"Hey, only joking!"

She slapped him playfully.

"Oh you!"

But she was racking her brains, going through all the things she'd done for him. There had definitely been a very strong reaction to something, but what? She tried to match it with the right moment. She thought she had it. Yeah, he'd liked that. That had surprised him, driven him crazy. She couldn't help feeling secretly proud.

Downstairs, a few minutes later, the lobby was deserted. He rang on the bell a couple of times, but nobody came. The door to the hotel bar was still open and a dim light was on somewhere, so he walked in calling, "Hullo? Hullo? Anyone there? We need to order a taxi." The light he had seen was coming from the kitchen over on the other side of the bar. She watched from the doorway as he went through, still calling. A few seconds later he reappeared, his flipflops softly scuffing on the floor as he padded back, grinning naughtily and victoriously holding up two chocolate croissants.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"I'm fucking starving!" she said, grabbing one.

They stood at the hotel doorstep looking out into the deserted street, munching happily. Then he turned to her, looking rather sensible and serious with the chocolate from a stolen croissant smeared all over his face.

"How are we going to find you a taxi?" he asked. But she was laughing now. It was so endearing. She fought the urge to rub her face in his hair and say something incredibly stupid. Instead she just laughed tenderly and said,"You're completely covered in chocolate!"

"Oh, am I?"

As he wiped it off, she said, "I think I can walk home from here. I'm fairly sure I know where I am."

He walked with her to the end of the street then they stopped on the corner and kissed. He was gazing happily at her and she knew she probably looked just as dazed as he did.

"Thank you, Miss Carlisle, for another truly wonderful night," he said.

"It was a pleasure, Mr Ramazvazkrzschdurian," she solemnly replied and walked away down the dim street.

"Amazing," he called after her, "How that just rolls off your tongue!"

"It's one of the most agile parts of my body," she replied, walking backwards and waving.

As she made her way home, the birds were singing and the sky was blenching sluggishly into wakefulness. A road sweeper van was parked up ahead, its headlamps winking at the conniving morning light. Three road sweepers in fluorescent orange uniforms were brushing the pavement. As she strolled up to them, her handbag slung over her shoulder, she was suddenly aware of her glowing face and ruffled hair, her lack of underwear and the discomfitingly jaunty sound of her blushing peep-toe sandals as she walked. The road sweepers must have heard her coming because when she looked up they had all stopped sweeping and were standing to one side of the pavement, leaning on their brushes. They were standing very still in a line and, as she approached and walked by, they each looked deep into her eyes and smiled. Feeling self-consciously regal, she returned their smiles and put an extra little leisurely swing into her hips. How contented they looked, and how peaceful. It was as if they had just achieved something they were proud of and wanted to stand back for a moment and bask in the glory in it. She wondered if this was the greatest job satisfaction they got; catching sight of a happy girl or boy strolling home in the early hours, bathed in the afterglow of a wonderful fuck. They must live for those private glimpses in the night. That was how it felt to her at this moment, at least.

If this was a musical, she mused, we would all be breaking out into some kind of song and dance routine right now. She was tempted to fling her arms out and spring up into the air just to see if they joined in, kicking up their heels and pretending to woo their brushes as the sun came up. The idea was so compelling that she even did a couple of high kicks, twirls and sweeping arm flourishes when she reached the bottom of her street. There was noone about to see, and besides, who gave a shit anyway? She was happy, she was alive and it seemed she was a fantastic fuck!

Pitiful Cry for Help

2010-01-20T11:23:00.005+01:00

Stop me looking unpopular when Steve Buscemi views my Polaroids in a couple of days by voting here: http://artistswanted.org/Strangefields

And look: here is your bribe.

This magnificent toaster.

To the Escape Pod!

2010-01-15T11:46:00.020+01:00

What is it about outmoded futurism that fascinates me? Wherein lies its peculiar bitter-sweet charm?

Sixty years ago, people visualised such a bright, funky, golden future: a future in which the human race had advanced and ennobled itself; a future in which we were the good guys: stylish heros with hearts and voluptuous catsuits of purest gold. Yes, our world was to be fraught with perils and problems, yes, there were to be mavericks and villains in our own ranks, too; but we were always to emerge from every struggle with our cheer and our togetherness undiminished and a heart-warming sheen about our elaborate towering hairdos.

Today, when all self-respecting futuristic visions are dark and post-apocalyptic, science-fiction from the '50s looks hilarious. And also touching - impossibly innocent and somehow very, very sad.

Where did all our shiny hopeful futures go? Are they lost to us now forever, or can we still win them back? How could we substitute them for collective backslides into primitivism, for rotting, skyless concrete-and-steel cityscapes, barbarous games, robot tyranny and grim dog-eat-dog cynicism? When did we lose the ability to imagine ourselves as the good guys? When did we stop holding out for the flying cars and the orgasmatrons?

Little Princess Angelpig

2010-01-11T11:13:00.006+01:00

Now if you'd asked me early last year whether I'd ever had sex in the most expensive hotel in town whilst bound from head to foot in pink wool, wearing angel's wings, a princess tiara and a pig's snout, I'd have probably said something like, "Why certainly not, you beastly and fascinatingly surreal pervert. Where ever do you get such notions from?"

Which is a totally different response to the one I would give you if you asked me the very same question today.

Not that you would, of course...

... but what a fun fact to start the year with.

Natural Considerations

2009-12-11T14:38:00.011+01:00

Do snails ever get itchy? Has anyone ever seen a snail trying to scratch itself? If it needed to, could it? Do snails sneeze? Why do they sometimes (but only sometimes) shit out of one ear? Why is there no research into this? There must be a logical reason why their poo comes out of one of their ears.

Do hens ever fall over? I grew up in the country, and I can't remember a hen ever falling over. They've only got two legs. How come they never seem to trip or stumble?

Do lady dolphins ever give gentleman dolphins "blowhole sex"? They are supposed to be such intelligent beings, but have they ever explored this creatively kinky option? If they're so bloody brainy, why don't they?

Hm. I don't even want to go into the subject of toilet paper usage within the animal kingdom.

But I will.

Does anyone else find it unpleasant that animals never use toilet paper? Imagine if we all went around like that! And another thing: whatever happened to those strange crumbly white dog poos you used to get? In the 80s, they seemed to be everywhere. Where did it all go? Why has it disappeared? What does its demise portend?

And why don't dogs ever give themselves oral sex? What exactly is stopping them? Where's the difficulty? They can reach it with ease. I mean, if you were a dog, wouldn't you be at it constantly? Surely it would be more effective than clamping yourself to a pensioner's ankle and jiggling till his socks come down.

And finally: why do butterflies insist on landing on top of poos? Has anyone else ever noticed this happening? All that flitting about from flower to flower - is it just a pose so that we don't realise what they're really up to? What is that all about? Again, why is no research available here?

There are a lot of things in the natural world that puzzle me. All things considered, I'm glad I'm a human. We have the best food and the best toilets by far. Our bodies are perfectly designed for masturbatory purposes, and we're clever enough to realise it. Seen in this light, life ain't so bad.

Self-Portrait as a Work of Art

2009-12-02T17:37:00.005+01:00

It's a peculiarly schizophrenic experience, being your own model, playing two totally different roles at once and switching back and forth between them in rapid succession. You play around with framing and focus, lights and exposures. Then you set off the self-timer, run into the picture and jump straight into your model role. You hold very, very still, like a statue, trying to picture how it will all look through the lens you can no longer see through, blindly trying to envision your pose and expression, trying not to sneeze or fall over or suddenly change your mind about where your knees and elbows should be.

This was an attempt to capture the feeling I have about it. It was probably the most uncomfortable shoot I have ever put myself through - including the one where I tied myself up in pink wool and hopped to the camera and back. And in the end, ironically, I didn't manage to pull it off with the self-timer (everything is so difficult with your arms snapped off). I had to engage the services of a tripod monkey.

Hard Times

2009-11-26T17:35:00.003+01:00

I've worked and worked and worked all year, but I haven't been able to take even a penny as salary for eight months so far - and counting. All I can do as the months go by is try to keep my head above water and cover my fixed costs. My savings are all used up. Almost exclusively on food. I have nothing left to show for all my years of hard work.

The lovingly kitschified Polaroid below is dedicated to the German tax authorites, who - just as I was beginning to find hope - presented me with a bill that came straight from the land of gnomes and goblins. In lieu of the payment I cannot possibly make, I shall be skipping over to their offices with this Polaroid and slipping it into their letterbox.

Now come and get me, you fucking munchkins.

Lateral Displacement Complex

2009-10-22T16:01:00.007+02:00

I fear I am displaced. Laterally.

I feel that I'm in the right time - I feel very strongly that I do belong to the present - only not to this particular present.

I believe that I belong to a different version of the present: one that can only be reached if you travel there directly from a certain time on a certain day in 1976.

I wonder: has there ever been a way to get back home?

Diary of a Lady Pornographer - Porn Holiday

2009-10-06T15:51:00.007+02:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again, a pornographer's work is never done. Honestly, keeping you folks' peckers up is a more relentless task than stoking a steam engine. You get one pile of wankfuel shovelled into the furnace and just as you've wiped the lipgloss from your nipples and wrapped yourself in a kimono, down goes the blaze and you have to start all over again. Chuh. What a life.

I spent last weekend taking Polaroids of myself in front of the Kremlin, dressed as a topless news correspondent ('80s-style - hence the aforementioned lipgloss). It was a demanding shoot, as you would imagine, so I was really looking forward to taking a well-earned break in Amsterdam this weekend. All week, I kept imagining myself packing my case, casually catching sight of my nipple gloss and just tossing it over my shoulder with a musical peal of laughter, knowing I wouldn't be needing it. I also pictured myself skipping through the red light district dressed in some sort of voluminous jumper and maybe even trainers. I wanted to revel in the luxury of letting the other girls do all the gruelling panting and cavorting for a change. Holiday! A real proper holiday from all that pesky porn-making.

But I hadn't reckoned on Um Chief, the Lady Carmen. Hardly had the flights been booked than her little list plopped into my mailbox. "When we're in Amsterdam, Mischief darling, there are a few little appointments we need to squeeze in."

Picture my dismay, Readers. Instead having a fantastic time not brushing my hair until I look like a manner of vagrant muppet squirrel, it looks like muggins here will have to spend a whole day writhing in front of a camera crew, watching young men masturbating and licking other ladies' nipples. Damn, damn, damn and blast it! Don't you just hate it when these things happen? Take a tip from me, Readers: never go on holiday with a collegue - especially not another lady pornographer.

Of Rabbit Holes and Giant Shoes

2009-10-02T16:51:00.034+02:00

You could say that this is my special place now: inside a Pola frame.

I've had many hideouts over the years - real physical places. Forest clearings and remote valleys, hen coops, tree tops, overgrown gardens, deserted houses and broken-down cars. There were places I had to crawl into through brambles and nettles, places I had to climb up to or break into when noone was looking. And I was forever hollowing out bunkers in the middle of haystacks; even now, that sweet dusty summer scent still sends an instant bolt of joy to my heart. I've just always loved hiding places. That feeling of being untraceable and unreachable, always having a secret rabbit hole to tumble into, always having the power to slip beyond the clutches of the everyday world.

But it seems as though there are no such places left for me to run to now - not in the physical world, anyway. And I think it all has something to do with growing up. I mean, I dread to think how a farmer would react today if he found me - a fully-grown lady - bunkered in his haystack. After a certain age, you can't just wander off and hide from life. It's not the done thing.

When you're a kid, you think people won't be able to lord it over you when you get older. You think you'll finally have all the freedoms you yearn for. You'll eat ice-cream for breakfast and live in a giant shoe with a robot and a baby giraffe. But when you grow up, you discover that the reverse is the case. You find out that there's actually even more stuff you're not supposed to do - and now you're not even supposed to feel like doing it anymore.

Grown-ups are so devious. They turn you into one of them and then they die.

But anyway, just because I'm one of them now, it doesn't follow that I no longer want or need my hideouts. In fact, I can think of a multitude of things I don't ever intend to grow out of. I want the best of both worlds. I want the car keys and the credit cards as well as the giant shoe, the robot and the baby giraffe. I don't actually care if that's odd.

And that's why I keep running into this little white square. It's my kingdom, my secret garden, my fortress against the world. It's the only place I have left to run to. And in my Polaroid Wonderland, even though I've grown tall enough to reach the key, I'm somehow still small enough to fit through the door; only I can get in; they can't get me, you can't get me, and the person I was meant to turn into can't ever get me there.

Apology to Mötley Crüe

2009-09-26T12:36:00.007+02:00

Dear Mötley Crüe,

I'd just like to apologise to you for that last post. It was childish and inappropriate and I promise not to do it ever again for ever and ever and ever amen. I am sorry, Mötley Crüe. It wasn't nice and it may have hurt your feelings. Sorry, Mötley Crüe.

Sorry again,
Zora

Arte Tracks

2009-09-26T12:11:00.010+02:00

Haaaaa ha ha ha. Pfff hch hchchchhhh. I've been sniggering gleefully all morning. I bet Mötley Crüe thought THEY were going to win the "Stupidest Hair and Outfit" award on last night's TV programme (http://www.arte.tv/de/suche/2860748.html and http://www.arte.tv/de/content/tv/02__Universes/U2__Echapp_C3_A9es__culturelles/02-Magazines/12_20Tracks/01__Edition_20Cette_20Semaine/edition-2009.09.23/05__polaroid/2861296.html). Not to mention the prestigious "Surrounded by the Scantiliest-Clad and Most Shamelessly Cavorting People" prize. I bet they're really cross with me today. Haaaa ha ha ha. My spoon-wielding kung-fu nudists knocked the spandex socks off their groupies. I can barely drink my coffee, I'm laughing so much.

Goldilocks and the Three Nudists
Dedicated to Mötley Crüe

The Making of Muschi Guerillas

2009-09-25T20:34:00.001+02:00

Here's a short Super8 film documenting the making of the cover for TicKL #3 on the streets of Vienna. (Cover shot taken by my lecherous Belgian collegue Carmendevos.)

My First Fantasy

2009-09-24T14:21:00.008+02:00

I didn't fully make the connection between masturbation and sex until I was about 15. By about 13 or 14, I began to have my suspicions about it, but I wasn't completely sure until I was 15 and decided to try thinking about boys while I was masturbating to see if it worked - and of course there was no turning back after that. The fact is, my masturbating didn't have a lot to do with explicitly sexual images until then. I had to consciously make them sexual - and at first, this felt like taking an indirect detour. Before I deliberately wrought this change in my fantasies, sex wasn't the point. People weren't the point. Touch wasn't the point and nor was love, attraction or any other form of interpersonal emotion. It was about me and the world, about life and death, the supremacy of pleasure over all those considerations, and about letting go.

I wish I could remember my first time, but it's just too far back. It began before my first memories. I remember always needing to do it when my mum had dressed me in certain clothes. Dresses and pyjamas were ok, but any skirt with a firm, tight waistband or trousers that encased my little thighs would give me the same feeling I now associate with wearing tight jeans - arousal. When it happened, I would go off and press myself against one of my favourite articles of furniture. Yes reader, yes. My first major sexual relationships were with furniture. For instance, if the coast was clear, I'd sometimes crawl under the dining room table and wrap myself around one of the legs and hump it. In my bedroom, I remember forming a very strong and lasting attachment to a corner of a white chest of drawers with a big picture of Pluto on the side. But I think it was the Fourth Banister From The Left on the landing that was probably my all-time favourite household fuckbuddy. It was made of wood, coated in glossy white paint that soon became warm to the touch, and it was square in shape. By God, yes. Very, very square. I know, I know, it sounds devastatingly sexy. And indeed, it was a very sultry object to me and I was often powerless to resist its glorious white, painty, woody allures. I remember that I used to stick my legs around the slender and seductive shaft of the Fourth Banister From The Left and cross them so that they were dangling down into the abyss. I never remember getting caught. I remember always knowing it had to be secret. I wonder about that sometimes. I think perhaps I may even have done it in my pram, before I can remember anything, and my mother might have stopped me and scolded me. Because how else would I have known - at the age of 4 - that I had to hide it? But this is just speculation.

Something I do remember for sure is that I tried to show my little brother how to do it - I would have been about 6 or 7 at the time and he about 2 or 3. I invited him to try the enticing charms of the Eighth Banister From The Left - an attractive banister which ought to have set his pulse racing with excitement. I showed him how to make sweet love to the Eighth Banister From the Left and promised him a big surprise at the end of it. He sat there for a little while, his podgy little legs swinging loosely up and down as he waited for his surprise; and then he just seemed to lose interest. I was highly affronted, as I recall. I felt as though I had just offered to share the most monumental of all life's secrets with him, and he just crawled off in the middle of it in order to satisfy a more pressing urge to drag his Fisherprice tractor backwards and forwards over the carpet. I was deeply disappointed in him. I don't think I managed to forgive him for many years.

I still remember some of my fantasies from this time. Pretty much all of them involved either falling or getting stuck in a tight place. About a year ago, I decided to try out one of my toddler fantasies to see if it still worked and was amazed to find that it did. A classical one had me dangling off the side of a cliff, clinging on for my life. A faceless individual would come by and reach down to help me. To be rescued, I would have to grab their arm so they could pull me up. But then the tingling feeling would begin - it would be something between fear, a delicious, stomach-churning giddiness, a hot sizzling vibration and deep, unfathomable excitement. It was very like the feeling I got when I was high up on a swing and I looked down between my legs just as the ground was rushing up towards me. In the fantasy, this feeling would be so incredibly wonderful that I would stop caring about whether I fell down the cliff, because I wanted it to go on and on. So I'd hesitate, still clinging tightly to my rocky ledge. I'd dangle there in a dilemma, trying to force myself to relinquish the sensation of pleasure in order to grab my rescuer's hand and save my own life. I'd reason with myself. I'd try to convince myself how much I wanted to live, thinking of all the people I'd miss and who would miss me if I died, and I would know that, viewing the situation sensibly, I HAD to grab that hand. The person above me might then say "Take my hand - quick". At this point, I would have to make my final choice between being rescued - surviving, but losing that wonderful feeling - or risking falling down the cliff because I just couldn't resist it; because it was just too tempting and for that all-important split-second, an intense but fleeting pleasure seemed more important to me than my life and everyone and everything in it. The orgasm came at the exact moment when I was making the decision and thinking something along the lines of, "Yes, it's madness, but what do I care?", and as I was climaxing, I would unbend my imaginary fingers and let go of the side of the cliff and plummet down through the air as my astonished and disbelieving would-be rescuer stooped over the edge watching me recede, my clothes flapping around me and my hair swirling around my face. I was always very peaceful and happy at this moment, knowing that nobody alive would ever understand my decision, that I would never see anyone I knew ever again, but that I had made the right choice - the only possible choice.

As a very small child, I don't think my fantasy can have been quite so complex as this. What I have just described was probably the more sophisticated version that slowly developed from some simpler original fantasy while I was growing up. Even today, I find the image a startlingly apt description of the state of mind I - and perhaps all women - have to reach in order to orgasm. Just to be quite clear here: you have to reach this place first, and then you can climax. It's never the other way around: that climaxing induces this state of mind. Not for me, anyway. I'm sure this is why so many women have problems reaching orgams. Men can orgasm by mistake. They have to concentrate on not coming too soon. Women have to concentrate every fibre of their mind and body in order to get there at all. You have to be able focus on the supremacy of your pleasure over all other things and at the same time, to be able let go of yourself so completely that for a few seconds, you couldn't care if you lived or died; and you have to time and control those two complex states of mind and bring them into a perfect alignment.

The Great Knicker Crisis of Nineteen-Ninety-Something

2009-09-08T19:00:00.010+02:00

Hard to believe, I know, but I wasn't always this glamorous. I wasn't born with a golden bra on my tits - or indeed with such pretty toilet ducks on my head. And sometimes - just to stop myself from getting too hoity-toity - I like to think back to the days before I started taking all those rude Polaroids of myself and proclaiming myself an idol - days when bra straps were indelibly tinged with jus-de-denim and knicker gussets were rather dramatically moonscaped.

For example, I vividly remember a time when I returned to university after the hols - yes, yes, this is years ago now - and fell straight back into my usual knicker crisis. After working my way through my normal knickers, my shabbier older pairs, my bikini bottoms, my old school PE kit, my swimsuit and some ancient garments resembling a collection of loosely hanging colourless shreds, I found myself staring into an empty drawer with just 5 minutes to go before the bus left. What to do, what to do... ? Go commando, steal some from a flatmate, buy new ones (no chance on my budget)...? Whatever should I do?

It was then that I remembered the pack of cheap frilly knickers my gran had given me for Christmas. There were three pairs in the pack - one white, one pink, one pale blue - and they looked like she'd picked them up at the market for about 50p. The sides were fairly chunky and made from a kind of tacky looking lacey fabric. The middle section looked sort of perforated, as if the designers had intended to make an ironic fashion reference to teabags ("You only get an "Oo" with Typhoo" or possibly "It's the special Tetley perforations that let the flavour flood out"). They were hideous, there was no doubt about it, but they were knickers and they were clean. I ripped open the packet and put on the pink pair. So far so good. And off I went to the campus.

Later I paid a visit to the loo. As I pulled my knickers down, the "lace" spontaneously disintegrated along one side. The side seam just fell apart as if it had never been sewn together at all; as if they'd just glued it together with a bit of flour and spit. Never mind, I thought, it was nearly time to go home, where I could slip into a nightdress and pretend the knicker crisis wasn't really happening. I pulled up my jeans and, walking very carefully, made my way to my last lecture.

When it was over, I walked down to the busstop. As I walked, I began to notice a bulge in my trouser leg. Unfortunately, I didn't quite register what it was. I just thought, "Golly, how mysterious, a wandering bulge," and carried on walking. Then the bulge suddenly shifted and when I looked down I noticed a pink frilly object working its way out of the bottom of my jeans. The situation now became clear: my knickers had fallen down and were currently hanging around my foot, flapping as I walked.

I was surrounded by other students, including Lindsay - the leggy disco babe from my course - and her American friend. Thinking quickly, I stepped onto the fabric with my other foot and, without changing my pace, I deftly pulled my shoe out through the knicker hole in a movement so smooth as to surely be indiscernible to the people around me. Or so I thought. I carried on walking, leaving my knickers lying on the ground behind me. I recall smiling and tripping lightly down the pavement, tossing my hair like a girl in a shampoo advert. I thought I'd got away with it and I was feeling pretty smug. But just as I got into the bus and was preparing to buy my ticket, a guy came running up to me. He tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. He was panting.

"Sorry," he said, "You dropped your handkerchief. Here."

He opened his outstretched hand to reveal a semi-disintegrated pair of tacky frilly pink knickers. The whole bus was staring as I mumbled my thanks and reached out to take them. As I did so, a sudden flicker of sheer horror passed over his face as he realised what exactly the slightly moist item was that he was now holding out in his hand in full view of a bus packed with other students. Our eyes met and we both blushed a deep, painful, scorching red from the tips of our toes to the roots of our hair. I could hear Lindsay tittering in the back seat.

Both the guy and I spent the rest of our time at university studiously ignoring each other. Sometimes I would catch sight of him slipping out of view behind a friend, his face burning like a red hot poker.

Ah, fun times.

Course nothing as embarrassing as that could ever happen to me nowadays. Because when I run out of knickers nowadays, I have other, more sophisticated and foolproof solutions at my disposal. Such as the scheme I invented only this morning. (Amazing really, how few people seem to have realised that a pair of attractive and fully functional makeshift knickers can be knocked up astoundingly easily by taping a fresh sanitary towel to one's body with a selection of elastoplasts.)

Temptation

2009-07-26T12:00:00.004+02:00

I came up with the best solution to the problem of temptation some years ago. Rather than waste any more energy resisting it while attempting to enjoy the dreary ersatz-satisfaction of having proved the strength of my willpower, I decided to simply announce to all potential witnesses and affected parties my express intention of indulging myself in whatever form of debauchery took my fancy. And then, of course, I consistently followed through on those promises, frequently even exceeding myself.

Not only is this solution ingenious in its simplicity, it has also produced an unforeseen side-effect: I am now renowned for my enviable willpower.

When the Cuckoo Clock Strikes Two

2009-07-09T09:47:00.005+02:00

A shudder ran through me as I read the message. I sat in my office yesterday afternoon at 4.43 pm, shaking. My phone still rested in my half-open hand but I had temporarily lost the power to focus on it. I had lost the power to do anything other than sit there and will myself to exhibit what I hoped was an adequate semblance of mild interest in the words I had just read - for my colleague had chosen that precise moment to step through the door. I forced myself to remain motionless and expressionless, but I felt as though a handful of goosepimple seeds had been cast over my flesh and instantaneously begun to germinate there. My body was tingling.

"My cock is hot and aching to pierce you. I need to feel your perfect breasts in my mouth again. I'm burning for you. Where are you? I need to fuck you over and over, now and all afternoon."

It was from my Uncle Jeffrey.

Now before you all immediately start compiling an image of some jovial, chuckling character with a moustache like Freud's pan scrubber and a hand puppet that can conjure coins from your ear, let me at least put you right...

Uncle Jeffrey doesn't have a moustache.

Yes, yes, ok, so there is still that astounding thing he can do with the hand puppet and the coins. But let us disregard that minor detail. Let us focus instead on the momentous fact that he has no moustache - and no inclination to grow one at any time in the foreseeable future, either. I think that's an important point - a very salient consideration - when judging the merits of an uncle/niece hanky-panky situation.

Another point I would kindly ask you to bear in mind is the fact that I am not some pigtailed virgin in white anklesocks, but a fully developed woman of some experience. Yes, I wear pigtails sometimes, yes. But I was not wearing any on the particular Sunday I am about to tell you about, and I do not possess such things as anklesocks. Or indeed hymens.

So you see, dear Reader, it is not all quite as dreadful as it may have sounded at first.

Oh dear. I'll begin again. This is a hard one to write. I am in danger of losing myself in self-justifications. But let us be practical now. Let me give you some background: I met my Uncle Jeffrey for the first time in my life last weekend. I'd never set eyes on him - nor had any sort of direct contact with him - before then, because he grew up in New Zealand and because my mother's large and sprawling family are an amiable but distant lot who only ever clap eyes on each other at funerals - if at all. Indeed, funerals in my mother's family tend to be quite sociable affairs, at which very close blood relatives are first informed of each other's existence. (What? My father had a sister? I have an Aunt Binkie? And two extra grandparents and a cousin called Dwane? Good heavens, how do you do!) So Uncle Jeffrey was a stranger to me. I knew of him by name only. Then there is the fact that he's four years younger than I am. This makes it impossible to take his avuncularity the least bit seriously. He feels more like a brother. Oh dear, that's not good either, is it? Let me change that: he feels more like... a cousin. Yes. That's it exactly: he feels like the nearest possible blood relative the police will let you fuck.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. I fucked Uncle Jeffrey. I had sex with a man who emerged from the same womb as my own mother. If we had a child, it would be its father's great niece or nephew and its mother's cousin and have clusters of extra eyeballs up its armpits; hair would grow in the wrong direction along its fingers and it would have toenails on the roof of its mouth; it would intermittently bark and shout the word "nifkins" and two perpetual rivulets of snot would join in a y-shape beneath its chin. Oh bad Zora. Bad, bad Zora. Where is my rolled-up newspaper? It is time for me to beat myself about the nose and use that horrid growly voice.

And it all started so innocently, too. He is travelling around the world and he happened to be passing through my city, so he got hold of my e-mail address and suggested that we both went off on a picnic, which he would provide. It sounded delightful. I even baked a special cake to take along as pudding the day before - as a good niece might well do for a long-lost uncle on a Saturday afternoon. And I planned a route for us to take - into Austria and up into the Alps. But on the Sunday, it rained and rained; we were driving around in my Mini for miles, peering through the little round portholes we had wiped in the steamy windows, listening to the disasterous-caravan-holiday sound of the rain pattering against my softtop, watching my flimsy windscreen wipers going slapity-slap like some silly clockwork device - making no impact whatsoever on the torrents of water that were streaming down the glass.

So Uncle Jeffrey very sensibly suggested that we got ourselves some strange old-fashioned Austrian hotel room and ate our picnic in there. Some place we could feel dry in; some place that looked exactly like the inside of a cuckoo clock, he said. Well, you all know about my hotel room fetish. Not to mention my cuckoo clock fetish. And what with my rampant sex fetish, too, the events that ultimately ensued are hardly surprising.

It was just that we were getting along so well. I felt a deep affinity towards him right from the start. It felt like meeting my male counterpart - or discovering an element of myself that had been separated from me at birth and I had been missing all my life without realising it. I was astounded that such an incredible person existed in the world and that nobody had ever told me about it. He even looked a bit like me. The family resemblance was striking: fair-skinned, compact, wiry and attractively proportioned, a warm, copper glow upon his thick and unruly crop of wavy shoulder-length hair, fine features, blue eyes that seemed to hold intriguing never-ending layers of innocence upon shrewdness upon innocence; layers that tunnelled like a self-reflecting mirror, far beyond his physical outline, reaching all the way back to infinity; eyes that somehow seemed shaped into the lines of a question that had never been asked. And though looking at him felt like gazing at myself in a self-reflecting mirror, at the same time, I was finding him inexhaustibly surprising. Our sense of the ridiculous seemed to perfectly overlap. As we talked, things kept falling into place. We had to keep bursting out laughing and clapping our hands together as one or other of us suddenly came out with something we whole-heartedly agreed with but had never put in quite that way before. I was captivated. My gaze was continually widening in awe and amusement at his delightfully warped astuteness. I watched his face while he spoke, and I thought that his eyes looked like two almond-shaped moons hidden behind storm clouds, and then I saw him looking very intently at me, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and fascination, and I wondered if he was thinking the same about me.

Before long, our gestures were ending in hot, tingling touches. And meanwhile our picnic lay forgotten at the other end of the wooden bed. We had become far too excited to eat and we wanted this exhilaration to go on and on. We wanted to leap off a precipice and plummet into it, tumbling further and further down until we lost ourselves entirely in this topsy-turvy cuckoo clock world. And I suppose that's exactly what we did.

There, in a tiny panelled room that could easily have housed Hansel and Gretel, words stopped abruptly when he slid over to me and pressed his thigh against mine. Sitting next to him on that quaint, hand-painted bed, listening to the unrelenting electric fizzle of rain against the window, I became aware of the throb and the incredible heat of him. Hot waves of energy seemed to be radiating towards me through his trousers. I tried to pick up my sentence and carry on talking but I was feeling suddenly hot and very flustered and the glowing breadcrumb trail of words I had been following began to dim and peter out. His hand shifted the hem of my dress and stole stealthily up my bare leg. As the last bright crumb of meaning waned into everlasting obscurity, he tore down the shoulder of my little dress and bent over to lick one of my nipples.

"Shit! You're my uncle!" I said with a gasp.

"Shut up," he said, "I'm your uncle and I command you to shut up."

"Don't you dare cheek your elders and betters!" I said, "I'm the eldest. I have the authority here."

He stood up before me and opened his trousers to show me how big he was. He was hard, fully erect and straining. He was hard for me - hard just from sitting beside me and watching me move and hearing me speak. Perfectly silhouetted against a twee wardrobe, he held his cock in his hand and tossed it lightly up and down in a confident gesture of understated power, as if he was secretly showing me a loaded pistol. Then he said, "Nobody must know. What happens inside the cuckoo clock must stay our secret. Do you promise to keep it a secret? Do you promise never to tell mummy and daddy, little Zora?"

I stared at the throbbing cock that was slanting towards me across his palm. I wanted to fall to my knees and take it in my mouth. I was yearning to suck it - to show him what else his little niece could do. I wanted to make the little birdie come out. So I slid off the bed and kneeled in front of him, resting my hands against his thighs, but he grasped my head and held me away at arm's length.

"Do you promise Uncle Jeffrey?" he asked.

"Certainly not," I replied, with a pert smile, "Let me suck your cock this instant, young fellow-me-lad, or I shan't let you have any pudding."

Two seconds later, as my eager mouth enclosed him, I heard him say, "Of course, a blowjob isn't really incestuous, is it?"

"It's no worse than drinking your parent's bath water," I reassured him, corroborating my statement with a voracious, flat-tongued lick. He looked down at me and shuddered.

An hour or so later, as I was straddling him and bouncing up and down on his ecstatic body, he reached up for my breasts and pulled them to his face, saying, "Of course, it's not really incest unless you don't use a condom, is it?"

"That's quite correct Uncle Jeffrey," I panted, circling my hips and grinding him as his hot mouth closed around its captive target, "Strictly speaking, for this to be incest, the skin of your cock would have to physically touch the inside walls of my pussy as I slide up and down on it. As it is, this thing we're doing here falls into the same category as, say, wanking into one of your mother's rubber gloves."

"While it's up her fanny."

"Well, obviously - if we're going to be pendantic about it - then yes, ideally, the hypothetical glove should be up one's mother's fanny at the time."

Reader, my phone just rang again. Just now as I was writing that. It must have been telepathy.

"The thought of my naked heat deep inside you, condomless, shatters my remaining sanity."

Has quite a literary streak, does Uncle J - wouldn't you say? I wonder if he writes.

(Guard! Guard! Take this phone away now! Bring me my rolled-up newspaper, quick! Guard...! Please... Guard... Oh bugger.)

From the Ashes

2009-03-07T11:41:00.004+01:00

The look did it all. Did it in less than half a second. He was there. I had him caught like a squirming fly in my sticky little eye. As I held his gaze, it was as if an unseen hand was reaching over to steal from his body a single glowing spark. Damn. He was beautiful. Damn. He liked me too. Damn, I was free. I had made my decision. I had done it. I was out.

I didn't even know this man. I knew he was incredibly talented, I knew his music moved and fascinated me, but I didn't know what he was like. But I picked him. Or rather, something inside me picked him and I endorsed its decision, knowing I had no political power to question it anyway.

I had a feeling. I was bored with losing people; bored with the relentless drabness of my mourning garb; bored with peering disconsolately into the oblong pit. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All the romance had been drained from the feeling now. There was no more lashing hillside rain in my heart. No more trampled roses or thunder clouds. No more burnt-down candles, dying forests or cold breakfast plates; no more songs heard behind black glass on long winding night roads. All that was left was the silence of concrete and the paralysing iron-clad chill of a lesson being learned. I felt that I was encased within a thin metal eggshell; brittle, inflexible, perfectly formed and somehow protective.

"Stay in here," said a voice, "Learn your lesson," it promised, "And you can find peace. You will never feel that pain again."

"Move now" said another, "And you can break free. You can escape. You can live. You can taste those pleasures all over again."

There was only one answer. I had to get out. And the thing that would entice me out must be the thing that had put me there in the first place. And the thing that had put me there in the first place was reckless stupidity. Or passion, as I liked to call it. And so I picked him. A new lover. Let's see if I can get him, I thought. And I felt a stir in the molten heat at my core. I felt the iron around me beginning, not to crack, but to soften.

The man I chose was another musician. I'd only ever seen him on stage. I would go to his gig and he would see me and be stunned by my fascinations. I would get him.

I don't normally go for good looks and the musician was not pretty in that sense. His head was clean-shaven and he looked like a devil; stood like a Frenchman - that strangely exaggerated posture that makes them look like circus acts; like men in white tights, balancing on a running elephant, getting ready to grab a trapeeze; not quite masculine yet very far from feminine and at moments teetering on the brink of an exotic repulsiveness, like the scented, offal-like albino slither of a lychee in your mouth when you were already feeling sick. And yet, inexplicably, still devastating. How can I explain my response to him? I liked him in the same slightly hair-raising, slightly distasteful, slightly shameful way that I liked licking batteries or copper coins. I liked him in a stupid way; a don't-do-that-or-you'll-be-sick way. He was the perfect enticement from my iron egg. I would kindle a fire in him and throw myself onto it and I would rise from the ashes in miraculous innocence and hope; ready to start a new life and to wilfully waste it making the same mistakes.

The moment of the kindling went like this: he had to walk right past my seat to get to the dressing room. I was sitting at my table and at the precise moment when I thought he would be likely to catch sight of an eye movement of mine out of the corner of his own eye, I shifted my gaze up to his face and gave him a bold, challenging look. It worked. My timing was perfect. One minute he was trotting off the stage and walking through a faceless mass, just enjoying his applause and minding his own business, the next minute he was suddenly brought up short and looking back at me, full of that alertness that comes with a sudden blaze of mutual attraction. Meanwhile, his feet kept on moving him forwards and all at once, he was gone with the momentarily alarmed, flickering back-glance of a passenger spying you from another train.

I knew then that he would be back. And surprisingly, it almost didn't matter now, because the small spark I stole while his devil's eyes were floundering in mine had done it all.

The Inexcusables

2009-02-12T11:43:00.003+01:00

Does anyone else have an "Inexcusables List"? This is mine:

- Dipping mum's toothbrush in the toilet (revenge for severe beating with tennis racket).

- Gleefully depositing incredible monster bogie in Joey's Aunt Cecilia's cut glass vase (revenge for trivial offence).

- Spitting into chalice at holy communion (pact with Satan).

- Feeding former boss a) various kinds of rotting food b) carefully prepared slices of cake with very long hairs wrapped around them c) coke spiked with entire pack of Sweetex d) items discovered on kitchen floor (unorthodox but highly successful technique for restoration of sanity).

- Cheerfully making date with man in park, who said he wanted to cook a three-course meal for me at his flat, writing down address, listening attentively to directions to flat, waving goodbye and calling "See you later" while fully aware that I was never going to turn up (weariness).

- Telling all of Jan's friends that Jan's sweet but tame girlfriend had only moved from Hungary to Sweden because "Hungary wasn't pervy enough for her" thereby creating interminable running joke that was eventually publicly related to Jan and his girlfriend in my presence at a party attended by his friends, parents and potential customers (flippancy).

- On being visited by ex-boyfriend with drippy new girlfriend in tow, secretly retrieving cat's fork from open tin of cat food in fridge, giving it cursory rinse under cold tap, presenting it to her as an ordinary piece of cutlery and then gleefully watching her eat with it and attempting to disguise continual fits of uncontrollable giggling as a naturally bubbly and friendly nature (punishment for always leaving a pointless token leftover amount on every plate, no matter how measly you make her portions).

My First Embarrassing Orgasm

2009-01-21T11:48:00.002+01:00

As a girl, it's exceedingly difficult to have an embarrassing orgasm - and heaven knows I've tried. Now obviously, I've frequently found myself throbbing at my desk at the precise moment that a customer calls; or when performing a "Jedi wank" on a plane, I have found myself falling into a euphoric swoon, just as the stewardess is attempting to ascertain whether I want Worchestershire Sauce in that. But somehow, that never feels inappropriate enough to count. In many ways, I merely feel immensely proud of my ability to maintain such an impeccable professional front. (Although, in moments of self-doubt, it sometimes crosses my mind that I could be quite mistaken about this. Perhaps it is flagrantly obvious that I am mid-climax. I mean, just say that someone did notice - what exactly could they possibly say? "Excuse me - sorry for asking this - but did you just orgasm at the precise moment I said "Worchestershire Sauce?")

But let us put such thoughts aside and move on to my happy news. Readers, it gives me great pleasure to announce that yesterday afternoon, I finally made my first serious foray into the world of cringeworthy orgasms. At last I know what it is to plunge from ecstasy to a clammy feeling of sheepishness. Hurrah!

And so, here it is for your delight: Zora's First Embarrasing Orgasm. I was lying on the sofa under a blanket. A video was on. I realised that I needed sexual relief - and fast. Four or five minutes later, I was pulsating inside. As the convulsions commenced, my eye focussed on the screen before me and, to my misfortune, I registered what it was that I was looking at. It was Petunia Clarke. She was standing next to an upright piano. Her hand was outstretched and between her thumb and forefinger dangled a small silver fish. To my chagrin, my orgasm ignored all these warning signs and continued to hurtle me upwards and onwards towards the giddiest heights of bliss. As my pleasure peaked, so too did the cringe factor, for it was just then that I heard Petunia say, "Rolf! What's this fish doing in your piano?" And then, moments later, as my body was shuddering and the delicious twitches were slowly starting to subside, Rolf the Dog said, "Oh, that's the piano tuna", clapped his mouth wide open and swung his head around to the audience for a long "Aaaaaaaah-aaaaaaah" Muppet laugh.

I wonder, can any of my readers beat that?

Close Your Eyes...

2008-12-18T11:49:00.006+01:00

Santa is cümming.

(I have just deleted a whole series of revoltingly lewd double entendres at this point, you'll be pleased to know. I feel rather proud of myself.)

Here's wishing you all a creamy white Christmas. (Yes, I left that one in. Believe me, it was the most innocuous. Anyway, this beard is a little more slimming than the other one, don't you think?)

Ahem. I digress. I shall be away on Christmas travels until next year and will not be blogging again until January. So have a lovely time. And remember: be good, or be bad and write about it.

Zanta Claus, Terror of the Skies

To John Thomas From Lady Jane

2008-12-01T11:56:00.004+01:00

You may think it a joke but it's true: my first love, John, was a ditch digger. That was his job. He lived on a farm outside the hamlet where I grew up. The day he asked me out at the village show, he was an exotically grown-up 21 and I had just turned a demure 17. I say demure, but if truth be told, I was only outwardly so, and if you'd ever seen the glint in my eye, you'd have known that for all my coyness, underneath I was as rampant a vixen as ever ruined a country lad. At my school, I was the only 'A' level student from “up the valley” and I still remember the shrieks and giggles of outrage when I announced the liaison to my fellow sixth-formers in town. To them, he was "a simple country lad" and hence an object of titillated amusement. He could hardly read or write, he signed his name in block capitals and dirt was ingrained in his hands like the markings on the skin of a panther. Inevitably, the entire school proceeded to rechristen me "Lady Chatterley" and as I walked through the gates each morning, I would be hailed with cries of "Thou looks right rosy this mornin'! Appen Milady paid a visit to John Thomas last night?" As I made my way to lessons, I was often greeted by rounds of inexpertly choreographed groin thrusting accompanied by an intermittent touching of forelocks and the odd obsequious bow.

"Have you even read the book?" I would demand, "Or did you just jizz off to your dad's porn version?"

"Aye Milady."

I, for my part, quickly shrugged off my demure image, instead adopting the charming custom of cursing my fellow students as "a bunch of childish fuckers" and sticking my fingers up at them in a manner that owed precious little to my well-bred literary namesake. In the canteen, one girl made it a popular tradition to relate fantastically lyrical tales of Milady’s imagined adventures in a breathless, throaty voice, lingering on the rough feel of those filthy workman's hands upon her soft, quivering ladyflesh and unfolding tales of passionate romps in cowsheds, hencoops, silage pits and other such deeply romantic settings. But I didn't really mind the teasing; the truth was, I took a secret pleasure in it. The eroticised deference my presence now commanded was far from unpleasant and the sight of fine young men spontaneously thrusting, caressing their groins and genuflecting as I passed through the corridors was not without its appeal. And, apart from anything else, I was amused; they were so very close to the truth.

Sometimes, after a night out, John and I would take a detour over the fields in his old Land Rover. He used to let me drive, although I was nowhere near getting a licence. I remember there was a collection of tweedy caps in the back, and I used to like putting one on and imitating a selection of toothless old codgers from our village as I drove along. I loved the almost helpless way he laughed and I think he loved the playful way I provoked him. Then we'd find a dark, deserted spot next to a dry stone wall or a little wood, spread out a blanket and fuck with the wordless concentration of wild animals. It was always damp and freezing cold at nights and the air was swarming with bloodthirsty insects, so we never fully undressed. Our eager hands would rove over the goose-pimpled landscapes of our bodies, searching out secret folds of flesh beneath each other's clothes, panting and fondling, teasing and grasping in the throbbing blackness of the chill, grass-scented night.

Unfortunately, there was one major drawback to our night-time al fresco trysts. It was the sheep – those ubiquitous, dumb observers of our outdoor lives. So lumbering and stupid by day, they seemed to take on a new, surprisingly unsettling guise by night. There we would be, quite happily rolling about in a state of frothing carnal ecstasy on an old green blanket in the dark, contracting a perplexing profusion of cuts, bruises and severe grass burns in the process, when one of us would look up and discover, quite by chance, that at some unspecified point we had become enclosed within a tight ring of luminous greenish eyeballs, all gazing blankly down at us like pairs of weirdly floating peeled eggs that had - for reasons yet to be explained - been vigorously boiled in phosphor and then festooned about us in the manner of fairylights. Straining to focus in the blackness, we would eventually realise that motionless sheep must have somehow materialised noiselessly around us from every corner of the field with the precise objective of staring impassively at our writhing entwined figures. This was slightly off-putting, to say the least. The suspicion flitted through my mind that they could well be in the employ of my father; woolly white chastity guardians – his own personal army of sheepbots. I wouldn’t put it past him, even now.

The first time it happened, I believe I may have emitted the very, very briefest imaginable of bloodcurdling screams; not that I’m generally the screaming type, but when an erect male is present, one so often finds oneself obeying the traditional niceties of courtship. And yet, I cannot stress how deeply scary the phenomenon was, the first time it occurred. It was all just a teensy bit too reminiscent of a scene from a zombie film – but with sheep. The strange thing was, as we soon discovered, if you made the tiniest movement by day the sheep would bolt away bleating, but at night nothing we did seemed to faze them. We could clap, flap our arms around, run at them shouting "Shoo!" and "Mint sauce!" and "Oh God, just fuck off, you fluffy perverts!", fling hand grenades, turn fire hoses on them, pump lead into them with machine guns whilst cackling like maniacs and screaming “Die, die, you woolly bastards, die!”; never once did I see one of those buggers flinch. They just stood there obdurately, like stiff palace guards, frozen into position while tourists waft leaflets and burgers and Union Jacks in their faces.

But youthful ardour must needs prevail and, in the end, we learned to ignore the soundless apparition of their bulky forms and the horrible unblinking eyes that hovered in the air around us. Yet, try as I might, I could never rid myself of the continual sense that they were watching and waiting. As soon as our backs were turned, I feared they might leap on us from behind, wrestle us to the ground and suck out our soft, liquefied brains. It must be said, much as I adored country life, teenage sex could be a rather grisly business.

Daytime al fresco couplings didn't present the same disadvantages. The sheep remained picturesque, docile and were mostly quite well-behaved. We would seek out a wild, beautiful spot right up the valley, next to a tiny bubbling stream, with the hills rising up around us and buzzards whirling in the sky above. The only hitch with these rendezvous was that I always had to take the dogs with me as an alibi for my father, who seemed to be labouring under a totally unfounded impression that I was incapable of performing lewd acts in front of animals. Regrettably, though, despite my carefully laid plans, the dogs proved more troublesome in their way than the sheep. They used to go splashing around in the stream as we were getting down to the business of hyperventilating and roughly tearing each other's clothes off. But just as things were getting interesting, they'd come bounding back up to us and one would start shaking itself, showering our naked bodies in icy, dog-flavoured stream water, meanwhile the other would absolutely insist on joyously ramming a cold wet nose up the most conveniently located unprotected arsehole with the unerring accuracy of a guided missile.

More often than not, we'd be hurtling towards a glorious crescendo when both dogs would come scampering up and collapse onto us, pressing their clammy, stinking fur onto our exposed skin and bestowing a well-intentioned but toe-curling lick on the nearest crevice. Many was the time I'd be lying on my back, tentatively approaching what promised to be an exquisite climax and the happy muzzle of one of the dogs would loom into view as it playfully attempted to drop a truncated sheep's head or a decomposing squirrel onto my face. If I ever tried to push them off, they'd look so sad and hurt that my annoyance would melt into guilt and pity. All in all, I probably used to have more laughing fits about the dogs than orgasms. But we still loved it. It was an intoxicating feeling, fornicating completely naked in broad daylight, totally exposed within the vast expanse of a breathtaking landscape, with nothing – no walls, ceilings or barriers of any kind – to hem you in or protect you. Only sky and land. And rotting sheep cadavers. And dead squirrels – let’s not forget them.

But in spite of the danger of putrefying animal remains descending onto my face, the sensation felt primal and somehow timeless, and I remember that it made me feel very small and vulnerable, too. Sometimes I lost all sense of orientation. Like when you stand on your head for too long and you begin to feel as if you might drop off the floor and plummet towards the ceiling at any moment; I would feel as if I was clinging to some remote, topsy-turvy tangent of the planet, and I could see nothing at all that was preventing me from falling off the side and spiralling away into space.

I left John when I left the village to go to university. It was a terrible wrench for us both and he did all he could to persuade me to stay: he tried to give me the little Austin Morris he'd been restoring ever since I knew him; he proposed marriage; he offered me a life in the prettiest little cottage on his farm. But I had to go. He had to stay. I had paused for one summer on the brink of adulthood, but now the time of parting had arrived. Like a hothouse flower and a bramble, we could not have shared the same soil for long.

John stayed single for what seemed like years and years and then eventually married my childhood foe, Michelle – one of the most evil freckle-faced bitches who ever commandeered a public toilet, but that’s just my opinion. All I know is, she never let him have any fun and she wouldn't let him speak to me anymore. But if ever he was out on his own and he saw me, back on a visit, we'd sneak away to the village pub, get wrecked together, talk nonsense and fall off our stools laughing, as if no time had passed at all. Sometimes it took all my willpower not to reach out and hug him, but I knew that I couldn't, because I was the one who broke his heart and it was wrong to think I could mend it with a hug.

I last saw him two years ago, just before my parents moved away. It was to be my last night in the village, and, feeling lost and fiercely fragile, I made my way to the pub. I needed to feel that sense of belonging one final time, before I could say goodbye. He arrived, as if by arrangement, and I took the chance to steal another evening from his life. When the pub closed, we staggered out, arm-in-arm, crooning some ancient jukebox melody, pretending to be drunker than we were. Then we stood for a moment on the dirt track that led through the village, joining it, to the right with distant civilised worlds, to the left with the wind-lashed hills of our home. As our merriment died, the air seemed to resonate with the memory of our voices, like the vibrant hush that follows the lullaby. I could hear the trees and the bats chirping. The air was damp with drizzle and wild winds whipped my hair so that I could hardly see him in the darkness. He turned to me, pushed me gently back onto the gritty wet sandstone of the wall and, pulling the dripping hair from my face, he pressed himself against me and gave me a sad, slow kiss. It had been so long. I'd forgotten how soft his lips were and the clean smell of dirt and tractor oil. But now I can remember it. Then he took one road and I the other. I have never seen him since.

A Trip to the Vagina Doctor

2008-11-14T12:03:00.004+01:00

I finally had the guts to go to the gynaecologist's yesterday. The whole scenario just reminded me of why I don't enjoy going there in the first place. I mean, they don't exactly go out of their way to make it a special experience, do they? First she inserted a clearly over-lubricated ultrasonic dildo into me without ANY foreplay WHATSOEVER. Then she proceeded to shift it around inside me as if it was some manner of playstation joystick. No rhythm to speak of. I tried my best to concentrate, as one does, but it was no use. It was going nowhere.

'Well,' I finally spluttered, 'that's hardly going to bring me to orgasm now, is it?'

At this, she gave me a deeply forbidding look.

'Ah now that's a bit more like it!' I said encouragingly.

Then, a little later on, the woman began to manipulate my breasts. Completely ineptly, I might add, but I suppose she was doing her best.

'If I may make a tiny suggestion,' I began, 'it would be a lot more pleasant if you did this kind of thing BEFORE inserting the dildo. Just a hint... you might like to think about it.'

(Chuh! Sometimes I wonder what exactly they teach these people in medical school.)

The Diary of a Lady Pornographer

2008-11-04T12:05:00.004+01:00

True extracts from my diary during the production of TicKL #2

Day 5

Well, dear Diary, the life of a lady pornographer is a curious one indeed! I had no idea there would be so many emergencies to deal with. It's all rather urgent and exciting. Last-minute nude photo shoots must be squeezed in between loading the dishwasher and brushing one's teeth. I feel as though I am turning into a manner of super-heroine. By day, mild-mannered Ms S leads a quiet and unassuming life. By night, she is Girl Grumble and flits about saving the sinful and allaying porn emergencies. She doesn't need a costume.

'Help! Quick! I need pictures of an orgy – TOMORROW!' says Editor-in-Chief at 8 pm, 'Help, help, help! They are all letting me down.'

'Okie-doke,' says I, 'Give me one hour.'

Girl Grumble to the rescue!

I transform myself into my alter ego by striping off every scrap of clothing except my high heels – at lightning speed. I zoom into the living room, faster than the human eye – vroooom – my trusty porn camera galloping along behind me on its trusty tripod legs. 'Joey! Porn emergency! Not a moment to lose!'

'I'm a bit tired,' he protests.

I wrench the guitar off him, drag him into the bedroom and exploit his body for filthy purposes – at lightening speed. While I'm at it, I also take some pictures for that accursed art pamphlet. Wham! Zok! Kapow! I also freeze frame myself mid thrust and imagine a lot of nonsense words appearing in zig-zag borders around me. Nfrup! Xnoing! Fshrump!

Day 6

Yesterday's orgy disaster having been successfully averted, Mme Chief calls me up on The Red Phone, catching me at work in the middle of a full office. I am surrounded by people who know nothing of my other identity. She gabbles urgently – almost tearfully. It seems that unless I can use my super-powers to conjure a filthy story about a picnic within the week, she will be forced to coat her naked body in cheese and photograph herself in it. I am aghast! I must save her from this gruesome fate. Let me explain: it appears that the music-and-sex text originally planned has fallen through and all she can find to replace it is something written by a 'famous' Belgian woman about cheese-and-sex (yes, Diary, you heard me – cheese! Belgians. Low, filthy creatures. Need I say more?). But she has no visuals to go with it. I can't talk openly. Speaking in an ingenious code, indecipherable to my colleagues, I say, 'I shall arrange a PICNIC. There is NO NEED for you to buy CHEESE. Do you read me Pink Falcon – over?' Then off I go, pretending to be translating an accounting handbook, but in reality I am rattling out some naughty fantasy about people being rude with each other in a field.

Day 7

I am sent visual material. Someone commissioned to take pictures (another evil Belgian) has sent in shots of himself weeing into what appears to be a muffin tray. All horribly sordid and dribbly and the bollocks look podgy and disgracefully unkempt. I choke on my coffee.

'Do you think this is too edgy for the main section?' asks Um Chief.

'No,' I type, still choking 'I do not think it is too edgy for the main section at all. I think it is TOO VILE AND REPELLANT FOR WORDS!'

Diary, even the muffin tray is nasty. He has clearly taken an old crusty one from the back of his gran's cupboard. And I bet his gran still uses it, too. I bet he just swishes it under the tap when he's finished and shoves it right back in. I am disgusted.

Day 8

Great news, great news! I have been awarded the title 'Editor-in-Mischief' for outstanding services to scud!

Oh, oh, oh, I am so happy! I am living my ideal life!

More Girl Talk

2008-10-25T12:01:00.003+02:00

Lisa: Phwoar, I fancy him

Zora: Ah, it's hopeless though.

Lisa: Too good-looking?

Zora: No, I mean just look what he's shoving into his face. He'll be crap in bed.

Lisa: Oh! Do I sense a theory coming on? Will it make me feel better about the fact that I can't have him?

Zora: Definitely.

Lisa: Come on then. Out with it.

Zora: You remember the theory about dancing and sexual prowess?

Lisa: How people dance is how they are in bed?

Zora: Yes. I've revised that. Particularly in view of the fact that we are both really crap dancers. And I think you'll agree that we can't possibly be crap in bed.

Lisa: Right. We're both complete bombshells, naturally.

Zora: Naturally. So I have now formed the theory that how people dance is how they want you to THINK they are in bed. It's all just show though. You must never let them fool you. Observing people's eating habits will tell you everything you need to know about their sexual habits.

Lisa: I like this one! Let's analyse somebody and see if it works. What's Charlotte like in bed?

Zora: Let's see. Charlotte eats a lot of oven chips and ready-made quiches when she's on her own. As soon as there's a man on the scene, she suddenly starts babbling on about how much she loves all those traditional "meat 'n' two veg" type meals. She doesn't seem to actually produce many of them though.

Lisa: So... she's basically not really all that into sex. She just pretends to be when men are around because she wants all the attention.

Zora: Fits, doesn't it? She pretends to be into sex in order to get the thing she's really addicted to: attention and adulation. Also, the meat 'n' two veg thing suggests a firm rejection of all the more "exotic" practices.

Lisa: Missionary position and a lacey pair of Marks & Spencer's knickers in some kind of floral design. I like it! Let's do me!

Zora: Are you sure?

Lisa: You've already done me secretly anyway, so I may as well hear it.

Zora: True. OK. You are one of the few people I know who never shops for food. Your cupboards are completely empty. You never plan a meal, buy ingredients and then cook. You go through life like a kind of foraging animal. You live off the chocolate croissants and bits of baguette and cheese that fall across your path as you make your way across your territory.

Lisa: Oh God! And I was so impressed with the effort I make when you're here! I really thought you hadn't noticed how hopeless I am with food. This is going to be damning isn't it?

Zora: Not at all. Your attitude to sex is the same. It never crosses your mind to keep a supply of sex - in the form of a steady boyfriend - in stock. You don't want to spend hours planning everything around the act itself. No peeling vegetables for you. You forage around through your territory waiting for a stray man to take your fancy. He doesn't have to be 'good for you', he just has to satisfy any spontaneous urges you may be experiencing.

Lisa: That's so true, it's almost uncanny! Shall we do you?

Zora: Oh, I'm not sure it really works all that well on me.

Lisa: But... oh... ah! Aaaaah! Aaaah! Now I understaaaand! Now I seeee what this is all about! Why, yoooou sneaky cunning underhanded little...

Zora (innocently): What? What have I said?

Lisa: God, you almost had me with that one! I can't believe the effrontery of it!

Zora: What? What one?

Lisa (through gritted teeth): Rrrrrr! You and your kinky kitchen appliances and your shelves full of recipe books and that gigantic cupboard full of exotic spices, and all those nifty little dishes you whip up. Come on admit it, bitch: you engineered this whole conversation just so that you'd end up being the one who's completely ace between the sheets while I'm just some pathetic drifting croissant-forager!

Zora (examining her nails absently): Mm, I suppose I am a bit of a whiz in the kitchen.

Lisa: Aaaaarrrrrgh! I hate you!

Zora (now laughing openly): The beauty of it is, you believe it now, too, don't you? The food and sex theory? You've caught me out, but it's too late. You're already completely convinced!

Lisa: Hey, actually, do you fancy a shag?

Zora: I am a Michelin-starred chef, I'll have you know! Don't you DARE try to forage me!

Thought of the Day

2008-10-13T12:08:00.003+02:00

It's a strange thing and, as far as I can see, it has nothing to do with size, beauty, perfection or performance; nor even with the length or frequency of contact or temporal distance: some cocks linger vividly in the mind for the rest of your life, while others seem to morph into a generic sausage almost as soon as they put their pants back on.

The Inner Monkey

2008-09-15T12:09:00.003+02:00

Dear Blog, dear dear lovely Blog,

Can you tell by the tone of my voice that I have something terrible to confess? You're right. I have. I have been a bad girl again. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. I have sat here all morning whacking myself on the nose with the rolled-up newspaper I keep for such occasions, saying, 'Baaaaad Zora, baaaaad Zora. No!' in a deep growly voice. I feel awful.

I don't know what it is, but sometimes I feel like a kind of combination of a ringleader and a performing circus animal. Ringleader Mme Zora has high hopes of Zou-Zou the Tightrope-Walking Monkey. She makes such efforts to guide her, train her and keep her in check. Zou-Zou is a dear little thing. So promising and eager to learn. She absorbs so much and listens so attentively. She rides her unicycle up and down the tightrope in her little pink tutu, twirling her frilly sunshade. A perfect angel. And so clever, how she keeps her balance and makes it look quite easy. But sometimes Mme Zora drops off to sleep in her leather armchair and her whip drops from her hand and clatters to the floor. And that is when the monkey leaps up in a flash and rampages through the circus grounds. She throws her pretty sunshade into a puddle and ransacks the place, throwing bucketloads of confetti over the tigers in their cages, writing rude messages in lipstick on all the mirrors, filling the sword-swallower's trousers with green jelly and catapulting cream cakes at the passers-by from a big shiny spoon. Oh she's a terror.

As soon as she has done it, she begins to feel ashamed. She knows Mme Zora will be disappointed in her. But at the same time, even through her shame, the feels the impish urge to roll on her back and laugh triumphantly.

I am a BAD PERSON. Not actually evil, or unfeeling or truly vicious, but uncontrollably subversive. It requires an immense continual effort for me to function within the bounds of acceptable behaviour. I can feel myself consciously exerting my willpower over myself pretty much every hour of the day. I only say about one hundredth of the bad things I think of saying. I only do about one thousandth of the bad things I think of doing. I think I do a good job of keeping my nose reasonably clean, all things considered. But there will always be brief lapses in concentration. Nobody can watch a mischievous monkey 24 hours a day every day of their lives. Not one like this, anyway. Because my inner monkey never sleeps. It is always there, always on the watch, waiting for the tiniest momentary lapse in security to wreak its chaos. That's all it needs.

Anyway, this is what the monkey did yesterday. It wrote an e-mail to a man I had sworn – for many very excellent and important reasons – not to lead into temptation and the e-mail read as follows:

'I'm just about to leave the house, only I'm having this huge dilemma about my outfit. Could you please, please, just take a quick look at this picture, X, and tell me the truth because I don't know who else to ask: do you think this beard makes me look fat?'

And then that naughty, naughty, horrid little beast attached the following picture: