Hmm

I have five days left. And I have written one-hundred-and-ninety-something posts! I can make it two-hundred if I want.

If I want.

Most of this is true

You have ten messages.

Message one. Tuesday nine-fifteen p.m.
“Hey Jonathan it’s mum. Just wondering what time you’d be round on Sunday?”
Message deleted.

Message two. Tuesday ten-twenty-two p.m.
“Hey Chris it’s Martin. I was going to be round in ten but I guess you’re not in. I’ll see you later.”
Message deleted.

Message three. Wednesday twelve-nine p.m.
“Hey boys it’s Dad here-”
Message deleted.

Message four. Wednesday five-fifty-seven p.m.
“-already won. If you would like to claim your weekend for two in Bergen then press one now.”
Message deleted.

Message five. Friday eleven a.m.
“Hi it’s Tommy McClean here. I’m calling about the motorbikes? I haven’t heard back. [pause] Bye.”
Message deleted.

Message six. Sunday ten-twenty a.m.
“Hey guys it’s Dad-”
Message deleted.

Message seven. Sunday one-thirty-nine p.m.
“Jonathan! What’s up? Haven’t talked to you in a while. Gimme a ring back.”
Message saved.

Message eight. Monday two-ten a.m.
“Shit, Jon. It’s just… You know. Shit.”
Message deleted.

Message nine. Monday two-twenty-two a.m.
“Mercer! You have failed me for the last time!”
Message deleted.

Message ten. Monday ten-fifteen a.m.
“Did I call you last night? Where were you? It doesn’t matter. I’ll see you on Thursday right? Bring food.”
Message deleted.

You have no messages.

The life and adventures of Jonathan Mercer, Esq

Lets be frank, for once.

I was in a bad place for a while. Lets not go into much detail in that, but lets say that it was just a low point. The past two months have been shaky to say the least, but they’re over. Now I am here. Hello.

I made a conscious decision on Tuesday. It happened when I woke up at six-thirty instead of eight and I had almost two hours to do nothing. I decided that I don’t really want to be fucked up anymore. It’s a good image I’ll admit; sitting in bars with friends having drink after drink and looking all the more haggered because you did the same the night before. And then the night before. But image isn’t everything. Last weekend I had so little sleep and so much alcohol that most of my memories of it are gone. I can pick bits and pieces, but they’re hazy at best. I felt like I was destroying myself a little bit. Maybe I did, I don’t know, but I decided to stop.

And that’s what Tuesday was about. Tuesday was about setting things right, with everything. And it worked to an extent. Of course not everything was fixed and who knows maybe more problems have arisen, but things felt a hell of a lot better. I think it had something to do with caring. I never used to care about things. I’m failing university at the moment (by the way), and I didn’t care. I didn’t care if my writing was shit or worthless because to me it was brilliance (i still read my own work for entertainment). I didn’t care that I was practically pushing away my best friend and the people close to me. I would just get so angry at all of it. I would be furious at my laziness, enraged at everyone for not appreciating my work and just pissed off at the people around me for not realising what I was going through. And not many people did, but I didn’t tell them. I’m not one to broadcast my emotions really.

So writing this is hard for me. I used to have a group of friends who would compete with each other in their conversations. No one would really listen, we’d just wait until it was our turn to top their story. After a while I began to hate them for that. I hated that when my camera, my car and my girlfriend were stolen from me on – near enough – the same day, no one turned round and asked “How’re you today Jonathan?” No one asked about me or my day, they just launched into a rant. No one knew until about three weeks later, when someone else had heard from a source other than me. So I don’t share my emotions. I feel like it’s making something public that should be private. Anyway, my emotions are my own and you would be bored by them. Maybe like this entry? Maybe like this entry.

Anyway, I thought I’d break with the tradition of my usual veiled entries and just come out and say it; I am alright. I’m not over ecstatic and I’m not down and out. I’m doing fine. This means that you don’t have to leave me alone anymore or shower me with protection, but it doesn’t mean you can abandon me or stifle me with affection. I am OK.

So there we go, lets resume regular programming.

Can this rant sound anymore teenage and cliched?

Sometimes I get so angry with myself. When I sit on couches decimating cigarettes I think of taking a gun to my kneecap. When I watch bad films with soup and wonder what it would taste like with alcohol in it.

(on a side note: three things I hate about the Golden Compass film. 1. How they danced around the idea that religion and the reigning church is evil, 2. They cut the film a good amount short of the book ending, 3. Every single time they referred to the Alethiometer they had to add “the golden compass” because my god aren’t people so retarded that they don’t see that it’s golden and can be perhaps mistaken for a compass? Also, Eva Green was in it. I had a hard time imagining her as a whispy witch when all I can think of is how she looks weird naked)

I just get so damn angry at my inability to do anything. I’d like to blame it on my horrible memory that makes every day looked in retrospect seem like a drunken haze, but I know it can’t take all the credit. I just feel angry that when I’m alone and miserable I actually don’t have a single person to talk to. Everyone that I could possibly call up has this set idea of me, this kind of image plastered onto their minds (which is why they make fun of me to my face, smiles smiling and tongues licking as they know I’m so fucking arrogant and they know that I’m so full of myself that I can take a few fucking finely tuned pieces of humour) which gives them the idea of what they think I am which proves useless when I actually want to rant to someone about things. Because an egotistical bastard doesn’t really have feelings does he? God no. And the few people in my phone book that I actually think know me pretty well I don’t actually trust. They’re either ignoring my existence, working to their own ends, just plain emotionally retarded, or so far up their own asses that they don’t listen to a word that’s being said.

Sometimes I wonder who I really am. I always feel I’m putting on a show for other people. Even today when I was buying some drinks I assumed a role so I could talk to the cashiers. Cashiers. Like they give a fuck about who I am, but I still danced for them. I suppose that the way I can find myself is by being alone for a while. But when I’m alone I drink and I drink enough to hide the bottle when my brother comes in so he doesn’t think I’m drinking. Is tha bad? Maybe that’s bad.

Anyway, in summary: Fuck. This. Shit. And. Fuck. You.

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters

Has anyone ever noticed that I swear a lot on this thing? Really? I hadn’t noticed until I began scrawling through them aimlessly and found more fucks than usually deemed acceptable in modern society. I mean, come on, am I fifteen or something?

I’m reading a book right now called Master and Margarita and it’s so utterly charming, you know? It’s all about the devil and it features a talking cat and it’s a prime example of a novel. It’s like this is how novels are supposed to be written, before people became all crazy and experimental. I always get a heavy feeling whenever I read something, like an awareness that at this moment the author’s furthering the story and at this moment they’re just trying to be pretty. But with this book I don’t get that. It’s telling a story and it’s being pretty. And there’re no gimmicks. Apart from the talking cat. Is that a gimmick?

I’m also reading Transgressions by Chris Jenk or something. It’s basically a lot of case studies about why people push the boundaries of society and break the rules, and so far the only conclusion is that they do it because they are frustrated or they like how it feels which I could’ve told you straight from the beginning. But then no one asks me these things.

You know that feeling you get? You know, that sort of dread that feels like there’s too much warm water in your stomach? I don’t like that feeling. It reminds me that I can still be surprised in the worst way and that oh dear my nightmare is coming true. Did you know that it took me eighteen years to figure out what my greatest fear was? Eighteen years. I used to think it was spiders or snakes or drowning or something like that, but I’ve learned that I can actually handle each of them quite well. Now I know it’s something wholly intangible and only in my mind but by god I’m scared of it nonetheless. I won’t tell you what it is though. You all would probably just do it to annoy me or something. Anyway, the point of that paragraph is to tell you that it’s happening again. Again. For the second time it is happening, and I thought I wanted it to happen but it turns out I don’t and well darn if that doesn’t just suck.

I think it’s time to blow this scene, get everybody and their stuff together. Okay; three, two one, lets jam.

My wonderful day

What a horrible, horrible day.

It started, as days tend to do, at the stroke of midnight. Here we were stumbling out of a bar after I bought THIRTY-GODDAMN-POUNDS worth of alcohol that I didn’t want to buy but people convinced me because it looked tasty and then they didn’t drink it because IT WAS NOT TASTY. Anyway, walked through most of Glasgow to the flat of a friend who was setting me up for the night, and my bag breaks. Whatever, it’s no problem. When we got there, the girl who lives not too far down the road (not too far at all, not really, just another ten minutes, ten small insignificant minutes) demanded that she stay too so of course she got the fold out bed and I got the couch that was four feet long (note: my height is over six feet).

But I’m drunkish. I’ve drank a fair amount of the shit alcohol in order to convince myself it was worth buying and in the process my head is hazy and my speech is slurred but fuck it I’m not drunk I’m drunkish. This makes me sleepy and mildly comfortable with my legs hanging over the armrest, and I’m ready to go to sleep and I say goodnight to the woman taking the luxurious fold out bed and she replies with “can I ask you something?”

Which spurns an hour of useless conversation about nothing I know about and nothing I care about. I eventually drop off at around two-ish.

I have a dream that the walls are crumbling around the couch and everyone’s faces are lit by blue pixels. Children are standing watching me from the hallway in funeral dress, their hands clasped at their fronts. People are behind them dancing and having fun, little blue smiles flying back and forth. I feel like joining them but I’m too tired to stand from the couch.

I wake up too early at eight and wander back across Glasgow with a nice hangover. I head up to uni (yes, I forgot to mention, I’m back at uni) and make my way to my first nine am lecture. I sit outside for ten minutes, wondering why the place is deserted until I see the mother fucking sign that tells me that the fucking class is fucking canceled. Fuck it. An email was sent out last night, but since I didn’t have access to a computer from three pm to that moment I seem to have missed it. Turns out the entire course has been canceled, so now I have Wednesdays free. But! A testament to how rubbish my university is is how I now have to pick another class and the only other class available is on at the exact same goddamn time as a class that’s been moved from a very nice Tuesday and Thursday to Monday and Friday. So now I don’t get Fridays off. Honest to god I’m so fucking sick with how they keep switching round the timetable.

So I head to the only comfy coffee shop in the uni. And it’s closed until further notice. SO. I head up to the completely uncomfy coffee shop and have a fucking horrible coffee. I leave and have a brief run in with Mike which has been the highlight of the day. I go and buy some new clothes which fit me quite nice and look good and would be considered a good thing if it weren’t for the fact that they cost me seventy quid goddamnit. But my new bag’s nice. It’s not broken or anything.

Anyway, I’m feeling depressed and sick and horrible and angry and so fed up that I go to my local bookstore and browse about. They’ve got deals you see, and I end up wandering for half an hour trying to find a third book for the whole buy two and get one free thing. So I pick out three books with the magic sticker (Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov) and Finnegans Wake by James Joyce just for fun. I take it all the way up to the counter and the woman scans them all and gives me this kiddy apple eyed look and says with the sweetest of smiles that sorry these books were labeled wrong and that only one was three for two. But she did happily announce that there was a 20% student discount on and if I had a student card then I’d be able to benefit from this discount, the chirpy bitch. So I showed her my card, bought my books, missed my bus, found another bus and started my way home. It was only then that I checked my receipt. It turns out the chirpy happy smiling cunt of cashier only gave me a discount on one of my books. The cheapest of my books. So instead of the 20% discount of £7 that I should have gotten for spending £35 on books, I get a discount of £1.60.

Ohh I’m so mad I could hit something.

And the day’s not finished. What else can it hold? We can only find out.

Goddamnit.

I just watched TMNT

and I have to tell you that it’s the first film that I’ve ever seen that hasn’t fell below nor surpassed my expectations. It met them entirely, and I am so happy about that.

And drunk, lets not forget them drunk. But peeing becomes a problem when drinking. You drink too much and then you pee too much and problems ensue, like being comfortable on the couch and then needing to stand up to pee goddamnit.

Aww crap

I slept through goddamn House. And still in pain. Hoorah.

My morning.

Three posts in one day! I spoil you all, but this one has a much sadder tale to tell.

After the previous post I retreated to bed where I patiently spent the next five hours trying to get to sleep. Or I tried to be patient for it’s hard to remain wholly and completely patient of the sleep process when you’re MOANING IN AGONY (i capitalise these not for humour, but to emphasise that I am not exaggerating or underplaying the feeling). Stabbing, throbbing, aching pains made their way down my neck, shoulder, arms and spine. I was utterly incapable of sleeping. Every time I turned and settled a sharp numbness seemed to rest before growing and growing into the goddamn pain. After rolling around I discovered that lying flat on my back reduced the pain to a more bearable level, but this bearable level only brought the shadowy sweats of half dreams.

And here’s where the humour comes in! I half-dreamed that, in my sleepy headed pain, I called a taxi and ended up at the local hospital. Then there was no other than Hugh Laurie playing House treating me! Apparently I was a fascinating case and Chase rolled his eyes at me and Cameron looked at me like I was about to die. Foreman was the only helpful one. He came up with the brilliant idea of checking if the neck pain was somehow related to impotence. Freud would probably analyse the shit out of me for that but hey ho. They came up with ideas of clots, trapped nerves, and a bizarre theory of muscle death from an infection started by slicing my jaw when shaving. In the end they couldn’t solve it, and House looked at me in such a way that I felt like I had disappointed him. And Chase rolled his eyes again, the gorgeous cunt.

So my sleeplessness lasted until 8am when I remembered that there’s a supermarket down the road, and this supermarket happens to sell DRUGS. I’m not usually one to take tablets to subside my pain (going for the more manly option of wincing occasionally, looking like crap, feeling like crap and then mumble a feeble but strong “I’m fine” when people ask why I look/feel this way) but this was an exception. So I trundled my way down there with my PJs hidden under my jeans and I laboriously examined each painkiller for the desired effects. I took two boxes of the leading brand and a pack of chewing gum to make my purchase less suspicious (TANGENT why put gum next to painkillers? Surely someone will get confused at some point and swallow gum in the hopes of alleviating pain? Or perhaps chewing ibuprofen? Maybe that’ll give rise to a new form of painkiller…). Since the shop only opened ten minutes previous to my arriving the place was fairly empty, and only on checkout open. So there I went, there I waited, and there I gave the so-overweight-that-she-could-barely-fit-into-her-box cashier a friendly, welcoming, “Morning.”

To this, she responded by giving me a vague smile before looking at the two boxes of painkillers I was trying to purchase, at which her face dropped and she didn’t look at me again. Yes, because that’s how you deal with people possibly wanting to off themselves. You don’t look at them. I said three more sentences. “There you go” when handing over my money and “Cheers” when she handed the money back and her eyes were on the boxes constantly. If I didn’t already have so many then I would’ve bought a pack of razors too, just to see if she did anything other than let her eyes bulge our of their blue shadowed sockets.

And now I am home, squirming as I wait for the painkillers to take effect, and annoyed that all this has happened and it’s barely 9am. House doesn’t start until 12.45!

My adventure

Message sent: 4.00am
Oh fuck. I’m on the wrong side of town at 4am with no ride home and no idea where I am. Time for an adventure!

Message sent: 4.18am
Shit. It’s pitch black and I can’t see a thing. In vicinity of old school. I think I know way back.

Message sent: 4.21am
I’m being drawn to club music. I feel scared but exhilarated.

Message sent: 4.25am
Bonfire party. Club music. Smell of smoke mingling with the music. Yelling. Drugs. God I’m scared.

Message sent: 4.31am
I ran. One of them saw me so I ran. Shit. Now I’m lost. Fuck I’m lost. I’ll keep walking in the same direction, see where that leads me.

Message sent: 4.59am
I found my old school. It’s been knocked down. I know where I am but they knocked my school down. Why did they do that? I had memories there. I had to climb a fence to get out. I didn’t want to go in the dark. All of this is true, and I’m so sorry for waking you. This is an adventure. And it’s not over yet.

Message sent: 5.06am
I’m glad I left my music at home. I can smell the trees and the cars and the morning birth. I’ve had a mother fucking adventure, and I can’t wait to tell you how scared and alive I feel.

Message sent: 5.13am
Home. Bed. Sleep. God.

……

Message received: 11.00am
Oh ok.