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Monday 4th February 2008: Just a quick visit, I’m not much in the mood for sharing my thoughts and extracts of life with a blank screen. I’m right off life at the moment, though not suicidal I hasten to add, the Samaritans are not on standby ready to take my call. Besides, Dick and Shane would kill me if I committed suicide, especially if I hadn’t made their dinner and made sure the laundry was up to date before leaping off the doorstep of life into the great unknown. I’m just a bit down, a case of the mundane Monday blues. I just popped in to post another part of my autobiography concerning my Achilles heel, it’s turning out to be almost as long as a Greek epic, I bet Homer penned the Iliad in less time than its taken me to write up this chapter. Click here for part three of Achilles. Tuesday 5th February 2008: It being Shrove Tuesday today I came over all traditional and decided to impress the bf’s by whipping up a batch of pancake batter for breakfast this morning. They’d appreciate it I thought, it would be a nice change and a fitting start to the beginning of Lent and our forty days of arduous fasting (yeah, and if you believe that you’ll believe anything, fasting in this house comprises of saying no to third helpings at dinner) I improvised on the traditional recipe adding cinnamon to the batter mix to spice it up, I’m really into cinnamon at the moment, it’s my spice flavour of the month. I read on the net that it has all kinds of health benefits, helping regulate blood sugar and thyroid function, that kind of thing. I worry about my two, I mean they’re not getting any younger and I want to keep them as fit as possible for as long as possible. Shane wasn’t keen on the cinnamon idea, too sweet he said and really he wasn’t that fussed on pancakes anyway, not for breakfast, he’d prefer scrambled eggs and bacon please, which sounded like a request but was in fact an order. I made a shirty comment about casting pearl before swine, which Shane countered with a comment about casting his hand over my backside if I didn’t watch my lip. Dick, I was sure, would be more appreciative of my shriving attempt. He was, he thought it was a lovely idea, he was all for keeping old traditions alive and well. However, he said he hoped I wasn’t too offended but could he pass on the pancakes and have a nice bowl of bran flakes instead? I was offended, I’d gone to loads of trouble, and no he bloody couldn’t pass on the pancakes, I’d made them and he could eat them either that or I’d give up sex for Lent, all orifices would be closed to incoming and the trousers pup would be kennelled and unavailable for petting purposes by anyone but me. That worried him. He said I was a blackmailing little bastard, but he ate pancakes. I voiced an intention to toss in the kitchen, which made Dick’s face light up; alas he was set for disappointment when the only thing that shot into the air was a pancake. Pancake tossing is easy, a doddle in fact, until you get fancy and over confident and try to pitch the pan from one hand to the other before catching the pancake on its downward descent. I dropped the frying pan when my fingers touched the hot metal part of the handle instead of the heatproof part and my tossed pancake landed on the lit gas ring and was immediately consumed by flames. It made a hell of a mess and set the smoke alarm off. I had to open the back door to let the fumes out. Fortunately Shane had set off to work by then and missed the pancake conflagration. Dick thought it was hysterical and said it served me right for being a cocky littler tosser, he was still grinning when he headed off to work leaving me to clean up the kitchen. If Shane thinks he’s escaped my pancakes completely this year he can think again. I’m serving them for dessert after dinner this evening, only well tarted up in fancy French costume as crêpes Suzette served with Grand Marnier and cream, and I can’t wait to see Dick’s face when I serve him with a bowl of bran flakes instead. Wednesday 6th February 2008: In the spirit of organisation and file management I’ve been tidily arranging my diary pages and autobiog chapters into different folders, they’re so much easier to dust that way. However, I fucked up yesterday and made some pages vanish, the files concerned while snuggled safe in their folders were not on view. Yahoo for once is innocent; it’s a plain case of houseboy error. There’s a vacancy for a file manager, applicants need to be smart, conscientious, computer savvy and willing to work for absolutely bugger all by way of remuneration. If you’re reading this then obviously I’ve fixed February, but other stuff will have to wait until I get back from the dentist later on. Friday 8th February 2008: My dental appointment to have my pheasant damaged filling replaced was changed from Wednesday morning to Thursday on account of the fact that half the practice staff including my usual dentist, he of the humongous hands and habit of engaging in conversation requiring response once he’d crammed them into my gob, had called in sick and there was no one available to cover until the next day. I felt fortune was smiling on me when I turned up for my appointment to discover that his stand in was a lovely oriental lady with blessedly tiny hands and a propensity for complaining to the attendant dental nurse about her husband as she worked, thus leaving me free to recline on the chair without worrying about imparting speech around a gag of chunky latex covered digits. The dentist gave me an injection of Novocain, or whatever they use, and while waiting for my mouth to numb up she poked around with her little tool, picking out bits of the breakfast I fondly thought I’d brushed away prior to setting off, while wheeling out a list of her spouse’s shortcomings. Then it happened, I got the aura. I felt the viscous feel of invisible spider thread brush my face and a foul taste invaded my mouth that had nothing to do with the injection I’d just had. The episode was fairly mild in itself and its trigger was the dental lamp positioned above my head. It was slightly misaligned so that the light irritated my eyes. I’m very light sensitive and really I should have said something to the dentist and got her to adjust it, but I didn’t like to break the intense flow of the conversation she was engaged in. She was obviously royally pissed off with hubby and needed to offload to her colleague as an antidote to either filing for divorce or resorting to violent homicide, so I just closed my eyes against the light’s glare, which I think made it worse as I could see the blood shining red in my eyelids. Anyway, as I said, the episode was relatively mild, but it left me with the usual irrational unfocused fear coupled with tremors as my muscles went into spasm. The dentist suddenly stopped talking as she realised that her patient had stiffened and started to tremble and after looking at my face leapt to the assumption that I was frightened, and indeed I was, though not of the dental procedure. What followed was deeply embarrassing. The dentist began apologising profusely for not realising I was nervous and made an all out effort to reassure Mr Brown that there was nothing to be nervous about. She held my hand and while gently patting it explained in terms tailored to suit the intellectual capabilities of a three year old what she was going to do, showing me various tools and telling me it wouldn’t hurt and would soon be over. She talked me through every stage, ‘I’m just going to drill out the old filling Mr Brown, it won’t hurt, but there’ll be a big noise, it’s coming now, relax,’ at which point the dental nurse maternally gripped my hand. I was mortified and halfway between wanting to cry; heightened emotion is an aspect of my episodes and wanting to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of the situation. They meant well and I assumed that they dealt with scared kids more than with scared adults and therefore their handling strategy was more geared to the former. My humiliation was complete when at the end of it the dental nurse, tongue in cheek, offered me a choice of sticker for being a brave boy. I took it in good part and chose one of Spongebob and his mate the starfish, sticking it on my t-shirt to show off to the bf’s. I suppose I could have explained that I wasn’t afraid of dentistry as such and that my trembling fear stemmed from rogue neurones shooting misinformation around my cranium, but to be honest, embarrassing though it was I preferred them to think I had a dental phobia than explain I suffered from epilepsy. There is still a stigma attached to being an epileptic, it’s still something that’s not fully understood, not even by the experts who research and treat it, and it still has this bad biblical connotation attached to it, you become a thing, something labelled and classified, as opposed to a person, you are an epileptic, prone to strange actions beyond your control, and that scares people. Hell, it scares me. I felt a bit down afterwards and drained of energy so I got a taxi home. The house rule for the houseboy is that any episode, however mild, gets reported ASAP to the appropriate authorities i.e. Shane and Dick, in that order. At first I resented the rule because it was a reminder of something I was still in denial over, namely that the epilepsy had taken a turn for the worse. I felt impotent on several levels (but not the lower level, everything works just fine down there thank you very much, there’s nowt wrong with my flag pole.) The epilepsy robbed me of one kind of control over my own being and then Shane and Dick took away my right to pretend that nothing was wrong by making me confront the fact that I have a medical condition that requires awareness and management. I still struggle with it sometimes. Once home I called Shane and thankfully got him on his mobile without having to go through Attila the secretary. He told me to record details of the episode in my medical diary, and properly or he’d skin my arse (he doesn’t tolerate entries such as: my spas brain popped a fucking fuse today, must have been the five lines of coke I snorted) what happens then is that I trot off to bed because I’m usually knackered after an episode no matter how mild it is and they then take turns in calling me until one of them can arrange to come home. It’s nice actually, a safety net, reassuring for them as well as me. I can often be very selfish about the effects that my condition has on them, tending to think that its just all about me and my frustrations and fears. Anyway, Shane’s schedule was more malleable than Dick’s on Thursday and it was he who came home to keep me company. After reading my medical diary (it’s always the first thing he does under such circumstances) he took me tenderly in his arms and gave me a right bollocking for not asking the dentist to reposition the lamp. For a minute I thought he was going to divest me of my Spongebob sticker. Then he lay down with me and I cuddled up to his solid warmth, drooling on his shirt because my mouth was still a bit numb from the dentist, and allowed myself to sleep safe in the knowledge that Daddy was watching over me. Dick stayed home today even though I said I was fine apart from a slight headache. He drove me over to see my mother and came in with me and had a good old chunter with her, he can make himself at home anywhere can Dick and he’s a right gossip queen when he gets going. I think my mum has a crush on him, she thinks he’s got a lovely voice, so refined like something out of Brideshead Revisited and she goes kind of starry eyed when she looks at him, and who can blame her, he’s gorgeous. I’m not making dinner tonight, we’re having a take away, Indian, which should be here very soon I hope, as long as the delivery man doesn't get lost again. I’m starving. Sunday 10th February 2008: It’s been a nice weekend on the whole, just the three of us, no visitors, no going out, no pressures. I’m just popping in briefly to post something I didn’t have chance to post yesterday and then I’m off to make a start on cooking a very late Sunday lunch. Click here for Jottings. Saturday 16th February 2008: Okay, batten down the hatches; I feel a long entry coming up, as the bishop said to the rent boy. The week just past was a kind of busy and bitty one. Yahoo once again triumphed in its quest to aggravate its customers, or at least this customer. For some mysterious reason every apostrophe and speech mark on my diary and autobiography pages were changed for a question mark, it looked a real mess, you might have noticed this perhaps and thought, ah, the houseboy has been fiddling again, but it was not so, I was innocent of fiddling in this case. I wrote to Yahoo and politely expressed my annoyance and mystery as to why this had happened. They politely replied and promised to look into it and it seems to have been rectified, but I’m no closer to knowing why or how it happened. I think I might be grandiose or paranoid or something, but I have this picture in mind of bored Yahoo employees looking for ways of entertaining themselves and saying, ‘I know, let’s piss about with someone’s site, someone non commercial so they don’t threaten to withdraw revenue and sue us for loss of business, Gillibran Brown, he’ll do.’ (If anyone from Yahoo is reading this then I’m just kidding) We had an unexpected guest staying with us last Monday night, a friend of Shane’s from way back who was up this way for a family funeral, not a close relative, but one that required the respect of acknowledgment at passing. He called Shane and said he’d be in the area and he’d like to meet up before returning home to Aberdeen. Shane invited him to stay over with us rather than put up in a hotel. I liked him. He was a good bit older than Shane, maybe in his late fifties. He was a very quiet man, not shy in any way, just quiet. Usually quiet people make me nervous, I always feel the reason they’re quiet is because I’ve done something to upset them or they don’t like me for some reason. Ray came across as just one of those people who didn’t really do small talk. If he felt a pressing need to add to the conversation he did so with easy confidence. He didn’t seem at all uncomfortable or fazed by our domestic set-up and I must admit my jaw dropped slightly when Shane told me that Ray lived in happy harmony with his wife and their jointly owned live in male slave of thirteen years or more so an arrangement like ours was hardly going to shock or confuse him. There’s nowt as queer as folk as the saying goes. Shane and Dick do the Master/slave role thing when they’re playing, it’s something that really turns Dick on, but it must be a very, very different dynamic to a 24/7 real life Master/slave relationship. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to give up all aspects of freedom even down to the ownership and use of your body. While Dick and I are subject to Shane’s authority at all times, we still retain a good deal of personal autonomy. I think the M/s relationship when undertaken as a real life model probably becomes something resembling a religion with a very complex emotional and psychological interplay. When you think about it most religions are M/s in structure, the followers being the willing and devoted servants of a Master to whom they give their all and whose tenets might not always be that comfortable or easy to adhere to. Wednesday wasn’t such a good day. I woke up with what’s known where I come from as a right cob on, and no, that isn’t a euphemism for a hard on, it’s a euphemism for a shitty mood. From the moment I opened my eyes nothing felt right and nothing pleased. I hadn’t slept well, so that was perhaps part of the trouble. I woke up at about half past two and just couldn’t get back off. There’s nothing more annoying than being wide-awake in the early hours when your bed partners are soundly sleeping. It feels like a conspiracy. I finally dropped off again at about five only to be rudely awoken by the alarm going off at six. I lurched out of bed fully aware that I was in the ugly grip of what Dick and Shane term as one of my ‘nagging wife’ moods. My mouth became a repository of acidic complaints that it felt obliged to spit out. It complained about the mess left in the bathroom: the hairs everywhere, head hair, pubic hair, armpit hair, leg hair and body hair, what did they do after a shower for fuck’s sake, shake themselves like moulting dogs? It moaned about caps being left off shampoo bottles and toothpaste tubes. It ranted about toothpaste spitting, was it too much to ask that they SPAT their toothpaste in the general vicinity of the plughole and rinsed it away properly instead of leaving unsightly white rivulets down the side of the sink that had to be scraped off, yes SCRAPED, it was disgusting. It carped about the way they peed, the toilet bowl was big enough for God’s sake, so how come they managed to splash urine all round the rim, it wasn’t as if they had cocks the size of fire hoses, they shouldn’t be that difficult to control. I didn’t splash around the rim when I peed. Spit and piss, that’s all I did, mop up spit and piss, I might as well call myself spitpiss boy, skidmark spitpiss boy and offer myself to a convention of gay skinheads for sexually motivated abuse! It also whinged about the damp towels left on the floor and then there was the mess in the bedroom, on the landing, in the kitchen: whine, moan, no appreciation of my work, grouse, grumble, taken for granted. The worst thing is that when I’m in that kind of mood it’s like part of me is viewing from a distance and I can hear myself going on and on and I’m thinking, ‘for fuck’s sake man, what is wrong with you, put a sock in your gob and just SHURRUP!’ I can’t stop though, its like I’m possessed by a demon of ill grace which I’m powerless to control. I’ve noticed since keeping a medical journal that such niggling moods often come a few days after an episode so maybe it’s to do with chemical balances in my brain, I don’t know for sure, though what I do know for sure is that I get on everyone’s nerves, including my own. In the end the men folk didn’t so much leave for work as form an escape committee both electing to leave earlier and together rather than endure anymore of my irritable petty bitching and who could blame them, I would have gotten away from me too if I could. Before leaving Shane instructed me to put some sugar on my sour temper and sweeten it or else. I decided to go out for an early run to see if that helped work the worm out of my tail, but it didn’t. It was cold and the streets were populated with hordes of people walking pooches that I had to constantly dodge around. What is about dog walkers, they’re like zombies they all emerge onto the streets in packs at exactly the same time of day. By the time I got back home I had a sinus headache and I’d tweaked my knee by pulling myself out of a potential fall when I skidded on a patch of black ice on the road after bypassing a German Shepherd dog that was hogging the pavement. Really I could have done with a nice long soak in a hot bath, but I’m not allowed to bathe when there’s no one else at home. I did once suggest to Shane that I could call him on my mobile once I was in the bath and keep the line open, to which he snarled that yes, that would be perfect, as in the event of me having a fit he’d be able to listen to me drowning as he raced out of his office to the car park in order to begin the drive home in time to fish my corpse from the water. The rule is written on tablet of stone, no bathing or showering when alone in the house, he doesn’t care if I smell like a Gym Waller’s jock strap; I wash at the sink or stay smelly until someone comes home. After freshening myself up I then decided that a pull on the one armed bandit might help disperse some of my negative tension, come on, we all do it, de-stress by masturbation, so I Googled up some porn, but it didn’t help, the models seemed more lukewarm than hot. The truth is I wasn’t really in the mood and the one armed bandit just wasn’t paying out. Men, even gay men have days when their libido is limp, so, sticking my limp libido back in my pants before it got a friction rash I turned my edgy energies elsewhere. For some idiotic reason I decided to make kedgeree for dinner, kedgeree is one of those dishes that really should only be attempted when you’re in a mood of happy relaxation, for example on a Sunday morning after satisfying sex, because it’s fiddly and all of the component ingredients, rice, fish, eggs etc, can be temperamental, it is not a dish to make when you’re rampantly grumpy. Really I should have just opened a few cans of soup and slung a frozen pizza in the oven, but no, idiot that I am, I decided to half-heartedly fart around with kedgeree. Putting some eggs on to boil I got on with some housework, scraping the bathroom sink free of toothpaste spittings and such like. I was in process of changing the sheet on our bed when I just about cacked my kecks as an almighty bang sounded from below, it sounded like a small bomb going off. I galloped downstairs and into the kitchen just as another explosion shook the windowpanes. I’d forgotten all about the eggs, the pan had boiled dry and the scorching eggs were exploding like hand grenades. I was showered in shell shrapnel. Grabbing the pan I chucked it in the sink turning the cold-water tap on. The kitchen was a mess, there was egg and shell everywhere, even on the ceiling and the smell was vile, burnt eggshell is like burning rubber, it’s unpleasantly acrid. In the event the kedgeree was a disaster and not just because I’d blown up one of the ingredients. The rice was sticky, the fish was overcooked and tough and I’d put too much curry powder in it. However I couldn’t be bothered to do anything else so I chucked some extra salt and lemon juice on it in a vain attempt to make it taste better. I served it self-consciously waiting for negative comment, and it wasn’t long in coming. Shane was typically blunt and to the point, after a couple of forkfuls he declared it revolting, inedible, an insult to the serving dish I’d piled it on. He said that I had taste buds for heaven sake I must have realised the kedgeree wasn’t fit for consumption. Dick agreed. I was offended, even though I knew it was foul, I was offended that they rejected it. To my mind they should have appreciated the effort I’d put in and forced themselves to eat it just to please me, but no, no one ever pleased Gilli, it was up to Gilli to do all the pleasing in this house of gay inequality! I displayed my feelings by aggressively stacking their full plates one on top of the other and toting them off to the kitchen banging the door behind me before dumping the plates in the sink and breaking both in the process. Shane followed hot on my heels intent on making plain his annoyance. He’d been at work all day and he expected to come home to civil company and a decent meal. It was my job to provide both and I’d failed abysmally. Daddy did what he said he should have done that morning. He sorted me out. Taking down my pants he hauled me over his knee and utilising a plastic spatula as a makeshift paddle set about adjusting the attitude of his ill-humoured boy. He didn’t spare the spatula. It hurt and I cried. Afterwards he made me a promise: next time I got of bed with a face on me like a smacked arse, he’d give me a smacked arse right there and then, that way it would save everyone, not least me, from prolonged tension and grief. Despite having a dinosaur bottom (a megasorearse) I did feel a lot better afterwards, especially after a cuddle from Dick. I was released from the grip of my brutal irritability and able to get on with things without feeling weighed down with inappropriate aggression. The rest of the evening was much more relaxed. I apologised and then re-made dinner serving up salad and pizza and while not exactly gourmet it was at least pleasant. Thursday was altogether a nicer day. This Valentines I got cards from both bf’s, plus flowers from Shane and a very plush cuddly teddy bear from Dick, it’s fuck ugly, seriously, I don’t know where he bought it, an underground store for teddies that might terrify children from the looks of its face, but I love it to bits. The boyfriends don’t usually do Valentine’s Day. They didn’t send to each other, they never have, it just isn’t their way, but they sent to me, no doubt last year’s debacle helped them decide that while their romanceless tradition of not bothering was fine for them it wasn’t for me. The card from Dick had a message of love written in his elegant back sloping script and a sprinkle of kisses, but the one I got one from Shane was signed simply and starkly with his name, there was no fancy wrapping around it, it wasn’t tarted up with wasted words such as: to Gilli from, it was just his name written under the simple printed greeting of Happy Valentine’s Day. Of course I knew that Dick was behind it, that he would have encouraged Shane to buy something Valentine for the houseboy lest he sulk and feel unloved, but still, it made me happy and I think Shane was touched by how happy it made me. I’ll make a romantic out of him yet. I acknowledged and indulged my own romantic instincts and sent them a card each and I also made a very special dinner, candlelight and roses and it was lovely. I have carefully stored away my Valentines cards, my first, but hopefully not my last. Shane has gone to visit his father today, he went early and he’s staying overnight with Penny and the Muppet, who is on the mend after his chest infection, and should be home in time for a late lunch tomorrow. Dick played golf this morning and is currently working in his studio. We’re going out for dinner later, which I’m looking forward to. Well, I’ve tarried here long enough gossiping, I’ve got my gob shite head on today, no wonder Shane went away and Dick locked himself in his studio. I’d better go wash up the breakfast and lunch things that are still cluttering the kitchen up. |
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