Thursday, June 02, 2005

Cheap Shots, Expensive Drinks, and the Girl in the Leather Trousers

It's been a good number of years since The Best Rock Band in the World (TM) identified that from time to time everybody hurts, and that when faced with these instances its best to seek some solace in those closest to you: your friends. Now, whilst I feel that this has become something of a cliche over time, I'm happy to report that there is still some form of truth in the statement. You see, over the past few weeks I hadnt been feeling especially great or clever. I hadn't been sleeping, or eating, much. I'd been working a lot. I'd been feeling a lot more discouraged and lonely than I usually do. I was having some pretty severe dizzy spells as well. In fact, there were a couple of instances when I thought I was beginning to look a little like a cross between Tom Baker and the singer from My Chemical Romance. Couple that with the creeping paranoia that something wasn't quite right in the world, and its no surprise I was experiencing some form of dementia (if that's the operative word).

However, there's nothing like a reunion with your closest, and most endearing, friends to make you feel a hell of a lot more positive: you realise that the same jokes that were funny, possibly up to three years ago, still have some form of resonance, you realise that you can turn up and do or say whatever you feel and it won't be judged, you know that everyone is growing in to that which they always threatened to become, whether that be flash-boy Surrey type or, in my instance, a slightly off-beat writer type. Whilst I'd have like to have thought the insult 'And your Mum' might have been relegated to the playground of comebacks in favour of something better, I suppose there will always be some things that your stuck with.

Its also nice to see that with age, you're moving into the better drinking establishments. Granted, there are still some dingy holes, and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible to Metros, that you'll frequent for a good few years, but its also nice to see people willing to step into the air-conditioned, faux-utopias of alcohol us journalists seem to like to frequent. All that and they've got a videoscreen of a fire playing as well. Is that cool, or is that just me? However, its also good to know that you can return to the watering hole you called 'Home' for the best part of two years and pretend you never really left or grew more cynical, showing off the same impressions of celebrities that don't age in the same way as the wine you're drinking.

Finally, it's good to know that additions can be made, and openly welcomed, into the old dynamic. Additions that are easy and pleasent to talk to, laugh at the stories dredged up from the past and seem genuinly interested in what you've got to say, giving you hope that one day you might meet someone cast from a similar mould. Moreover, its comforting to know that you can go out, desensitise some of your inhibitions and see girls like the ones that appear in your head: like something out of a strange Goth Rock Opera, all leather trousers, heavy eyeliner and can't-be-fucked graces that hides an Amy Lee-style vulnerability beneath the surface. Or that's what you'd like to think about them in your head.

At the end of the day, it's jsut nice to feel like you belong once more. Even if it is just for 48 hours...

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