errour asked: 21, 31, 33!

21: Talk about a time you had to turn someone down.

Oh, god. That would have to be the time I got with a girl on Friday, cheerfully agreed to have a drink with her for the next Friday in response to her ‘I had fun last night! Would you like to have a drink sometime?’ (Why do people - including me - always use ‘fun’ as a euphemism for sex? It is fun, but) text, went on a date on Tuesday night with a boy whom I proceeded to fall in love with & get my heart eviscerated by when he turned me down, again via text, decided I really wanted to go to a special college dinner commemorating Burns Night, asked her if she’d be willing to go along to that, and ended up being on a date, at Burns Night dinner, with her… and two of my best college friends, because I wanted to go to Burns with them. (“Can you two just pretend you’re dating?!” I demanded somewhat desperately.) Anyway, it was a fairly good dinner, except for the bit where she was ~shocked and appalled~ that one of my friends doesn’t drink, which was ugh. We went to the common room after that for a private dance party with her flatmate, who is also a pretty good friend of mine, and when we were sitting side by side on the sofa I said, “I don’t think I can date you,” and explained about how I was still hung up on the other guy. “I don’t think I want to date you either,” she said, “That would be awfully fast.” It was both embarrassing & a relief. Then she told me that she was hung up on her best friend, and she said, “Can we just make out still though?”

I said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” and so we didn’t. She was very nice about it, which I am not grateful for, per se, but it made me think that she was cool and that I would quite like to be friends. But we never made it to friends. There are probably some things you can’t really get to once you’ve turned someone down. 

31: Talk about what you think death is like.

Ah, so, I’ve just been reading Gabriel’s Gift by Hanif Kureshi, and this comes pretty close: 

‘Will Archie come back?’ he liked to ask Mum, from the age of six. They had gone to visit his grave, as they always did on the anniversary of his death. Gabriel’s birthday - their birthday - was always sad, too.

‘No,’ she would say sharply. ‘Never, never.’

‘Does he hear us talking about him?’

‘No.’ 

‘Does he think?’

‘No.’

‘Does he see?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Not even black?’

‘No. He sees nothing. Nothing for ever.’

‘Is he in heaven as well as under the ground?’

‘He could be. Gabriel -‘

‘With his friends?’

‘Gabriel, we carry him with us, wherever we go, in our minds but he will be dead for ever and ever and ever.’

She would say no more and would clench and unclench her fists as if trying to retain water in the palm of her hand. 

33: Talk about what you do when you are sad.

It depends on what kind of sad, probably - if I have a legitimate reason to be sad, I like to talk about it with sympathetic people and drink tea and eat good food and do no work and feel devastatingly sorry for myself in a self-indulgent kind of way. Music is probably involved too? If there is no reason, and the sadness is that blank awful kind of emptiness that fills you up and pushes everything else away, I basically do all the same things except talk with people about it, because there is nothing to be done & nothing to talk about, and it feels like I do nothing all day long. /o\

Anonymous asked: 5, 13, 16!

5 - Talk about the best birthday you’ve had.

Probably my 18th - sure, I had two exams that day, but those actually went well, and then I came home and we went out to dinner at this Korean restaurant I will never stop mourning the closing down of, and we had, amongst other things, fried oysters & cinnamon tea & Korean coffee, and this gorgeous strawberry and whipped cream cake that looked like a cloud, and it was all super low-key and great. Then I came home and the Internet had sent me several birthday greetings, which for a lonely teenager meant a lot at the time. So. It was a good day! I felt incredibly optimistic about the rest of my life!

13 - Talk about the first time you had sex.

There are probably two stories in here, both of which I think of as my losing-my-virginity stories equally: the first time was with some guy I’d been obsessed with for a very long time, and then we made out on the way home from a party and it was all very sweet and everything I wanted for the longest time, etc. We were in my room - he said “hi”, and took my hands in his, and we kissed, and have I mentioned how fucking sweet and romantic it was, even in retrospect (given how shittily everything turned out, and given the amount of experience I’ve had since)?! Anyway, eventually we got to the naked stage, and he went down on me, which was odd, because I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d thought I would, and also he used his teeth. Eventually I got kind of bored, so I was like, “Um, I think I came,” (I know) (kids - lying about orgasms: bad!) but he obviously wasn’t fooled. As he left he said, “The next time I’m going to make you come.” It sounded like a declaration of love at the time. There never was a next time.

The next time, though, I mean, the next story: I was nineteen, he was twenty-eight. He had this habit of self-aggrandisement that I fancied I could see all the way through, wasn’t any smarter than me (and I was a dumb nineteen year old) and all round made me feel disdainful as hell. He came to my room in the middle of the day (at the time I was in a room that opened onto the street outside. Him: “Can you hear everyone passing by outside?” Me: “Yes, it’s a real bother.” Him: “But I think -” significant pause, meaningful middle-distance gaze “that there’s something nice about it, all these people living life.” Me: “Uh, sure.”) Penetrative intercourse happened, and it hurt. Afterwards - I am not sure about this, but that’s how I remember it - I said, “You have to go now,” and he did. I put on my clothes again and emailed Helen, then I felt like I had to do something to mark this special occasion, so I left my room and shouted up to a friend’s window, asking if she wanted to get some ice-cream. I didn’t tell her what had happened, but I do remember this: the ice-cream was fucking ace. We were strolling up Cornmarket in the sunshine, and my legs felt unsteady still, and I bought Kate Bush’s new album. 

16 - Talk about the best party you’ve ever been to.

Probably the one where I first got with the guy from my first story in 13, to be honest. I was someone’s (and this person is on Tumblr) plus one to a birthday party, and halfway through said party, because I’d been going on and on and on about him, this someone said, “You have to text him. Text him and ask him to come here,” and I said, “I can’t! I’m not even a proper guest!” 

Anyway, eventually I texted him, and he came. We talked for about an hour, and the someone I alluded to got to meet him, which pleased me, because at the time I was desperate for an outsider’s opinion. At some point he said, “In about twenty minutes we’re going to start making out,” which in retrospect wasn’t a hint, but because I am very very contrary it made me determined to hold off rather than start. Eventually he said, “I’m leaving now,” and someone said, “SHE’LL WALK YOU HOME,” and so I did. I complained about my hands being cold, and he interlaced his fingers with mine. When he had to turn right to walk down he stopped, and said goodnight, and kissed me. There were several long kisses, we were standing under a lamppost, people passed by and shouted, “Get a room!” and it was all very cliched & perfect. Eventually we parted (he had to be at a place at 10 the next morning) and I walked home and called someone and said, “This is all your fault,” several times, and basically shrieked myself to sleep with glee. 

Besides that, though, it was a good party. There was homemade Jaffa cake. I also promised to proofread some guy’s novel, which I then proceeded to forget about for a whole year until I actually did read it, and it was pretty good.

Anonymous asked: 27

[your favourite part of someone else’s body]

um can we say HANDS AND MORE SPECIFICALLY FINGERS??????!

Anonymous asked: 2, 24, 28!

2 - Talk about your first kiss

Oh man. This is a really good first kiss story! A friend was staying over and my parents brought us out to dinner, there was wine because it was the year after I’d left high school and she was a bit older and I got sneakily drunk. I’ve always been - still am - a massive lightweight. Anyway, after we went home, we decided we wanted MORE wine and snuck a half-full bottle out of the fridge and drank that and… started kissing, aha. I don’t actually remember what led up to it, except that it was tipsy and giggly and ridiculous? We were such babies. At some point, she said, “Are you giving my fingers a blowjob?” (I was.) The next day we met for ramen, and wouldn’t stop laughing at each other. Then the day after she was round, and my sister and her boyfriend made pasta, and my mum said, “I know what we’ll do - we’ll finish that wine!” It was really hard to maintain a look of polite puzzlement instead of cracking up as my parents got progressively more astonished over the missing bottle.

24 - Talk about something someone told you that meant a lot

Argh, this is probably not in the top 3, but it’s all I can remember at the moment: this one time last year when I was talking on at great length about how I thought being in one’s 20s was going to suck because of its essential insecurity (re money, career, relationships, general life narrative, etc), while everyone around me politely disagreed / rolled their eyes. We were having lunch in hall, and afterwards I dragged myself back to the library to do yet more reading. Someone who’d been sitting next to me stopped by my spot and said, “As you know what you want and work hard for it I don’t think you’ll face any difficulties,” which was a lovely and reassuring thing to say and very good to hear.

28 - Answered above!