Why do I always get out of the way? Ok, I don’t weigh 300 pounds, and that’s a good thing, but does it mean I should step into the gutter just so that a bunch of drunken twittering girls linking arms, oblivious to anyone else, can go past? Or that I should manoeuvre my shopping basket around the idiots that have stopped in the supermarket aisle to have some inane conversation with their pals from the golf course. Yes, I am pretty good at manouvering around people and other obstacles, it comes from living in London. I’d have probably made a great agility dog. But London was always so crowded that it was easy to get revenge if someone pushed you or got in your way. A punch in the back or a kick on the shins is easy on a crowded tube train or when jamming through a group of French exchange students.
That’s not so easy here. Sometimes when I see someone headed towards me that’s making no effort to allow me room to pass, I square up my shoulders and flex my imaginary bicep and it becomes a game of chicken. But I just end up bruised. Whacked in the face by a backpack, or a real bicep. And then I apologise, while mentally pulping their pig-ugly face.
Why aren’t I a bloke? Erik’s gone to see his parents in Maryland for a few days. I think I revert to my natural type when he’s away. I wee with the bathroom door open, I leave dirty dishes and coffee mugs around the place, take the dog out for 2 minute walks, leave my dirty clothes around the bathroom, smoke and act like a slob. I was meaning to make the point that this is more typically blokish behavior but then it struck me that it’s really just a slightly heightened version of what I do when he’s around. I just know that my natural beauty masks my laziness in his eyes.
Why am I 41? I’m at an age where I can’t decide if I want to proclaim this like it’s something to be proud of, the way that old people do: ‘I’m 102 years young you know’. Or if I should just lie like everyone else on Myspace. I don’t look 41 so maybe it’s better to pretend to be 35 or whatever everyone thinks I am. There’s something embarrassing in getting into music that everyone else has been into for years. Lily Allen, yeah she’s great. And the Scissor Sisters, and now I’ve just ordered the Fratellis and Mika. And that’s only because I heard them while listening to the Top 40 on BBC Radio 1 on the web. It’s like your dad toe-tapping along to the Human League when you were a kid. Which my dad never did because he was too into Bert Kaempfert and his album, ‘A Swingin’ Safari’. Not that I know what a Swingin’ Safari is, it’s probably where the elephants, cheetahs and rhinos throw their car keys into a bowl and cop off with each others missus.
Why am I a vegetarian?Ok, I know the answer to this one. I stopped eating meat because I realised what a hypocrite I was being when I ate the barbecued carcass of some poor animal slaughtered in a factory. I go to the PETA site on a regular basis to look at the photo of the cow hanging upside down about to have its throat slit and we have an imaginary chat:
Cow: I don’t want to die
Me: Don’t blame you
Cow: Eat me and I’ll haunt your dreams with my big cow eyes
Me: I promise I won’t
Cow: Thanks. I’ll tell God.
Me: I hope someone dies from eating your lips and tongue
Cow: Me too.
But for the past few days I’ve really been craving meat. It’s not easy living in Texas and being a veggie. And not even a proper veggie – I still eat fish because I figure that they’ve got tiny brains and don’t feel pain. So tonight I went to Whole Foods and bought 2 oz of barbecue beef. I wish I could say it was horrible but it was delicious. The problem with red meat when you haven’t eaten it for 3 years is that it gets into your system and makes you a bit mental. Not British mad cow mental, but tough and angry mental. Having a rant onstage, playing the Undertones at 2am, writing an angry blog and growling at the dog mental.