just bad timing

Tag: writer

  • Christine In Twenty Eighteen

    On becoming Christine.

    It has been an interesting time, coming into 2018. Just Bad Timing is becoming a physical thing in less than a month and I think I’m going to have postpartum after it does.

    As you might know, Christine is my pen name. Except that some people now know that I am Christine. I’m having a hard time coming to grips with that. A lot of people have asked me if it’s changed people’s behaviour towards me, the facts they’ve learned here. Of course it has! Mostly in a good way. I get to have deep and meaningful conversations with more people than ever! Yet sexually, it’s done something a little odd.

    I did this insidious thing: I connected my personal Tinder to Christine’s Instagram. Talk about a way to get views and warp your gender stats! So now, on top of five super strategically angled pictures, Tinder dudes have access to justbadtiming. “Maybe I can be your next chapter?” I never thought this would be a recurrent pickup line!

    To be honest, I’m a little over the whole Tinder, ONS craze. I will never really be over it as long as I don’t pick a place to settle down, because you know, a girl’s gotta eat. I do however really feel tired of the whole game. I know I can pick up, I know the sex can be surprisingly good (or bad). It’s feeling like the same night over and over again, with slight variations. This is the problem with the game. Once you have enough market research under your belt, you spend your nights waiting for someone to surprise you.

    After trying so hard to be calculated, to be smart, to market myself over the past couple of months, I sit in front of this blank page again, drinking cold coffee, deeply unsatisfied.

    I don’t even know what to think anymore. Throughout the editing process for the book, I have had to go over my life, my decisions, my mistakes, over and over again. The rollercoasters, I’m told make for great story-telling. “Tell us more about that fight”, I’m asked. What is it about human misery, or about someone’s ability to take shit, that is so relatable?

    I have also had to prepare real people for some of the content in my book. No one prepares you for these conversations, especially when you didn’t expect to have to have them. In these conversations, I have had to defend myself, defend my choice to tell the story, defend my plea for vulnerability. How do you do that when you are presently uncomfortable with your own weakness? You push through it. You have to, no one else will.

    So you go home after a long night of explaining why you don’t have a house, why everything you own fits in your suitcase, why you have no money in your bank account, why you want the world to know your secrets… You go home and you sit there in front of a screen, ready to further the cycle.

    And all you can think about, while looking into your reflection, is how you wish someone was there to stroke your hair, to kiss your shoulder or the top of your head, and whisper: “you can do this.”

    It’s a stupid thought really. It’s not like I have anyone in particular in mind. And even if I did, what would I really do about it? Stay, go, leap? I’m craving those instant perfect connections which don’t really exist. The ones that do, they take a long time and building skills. I’m not that girl yet. I’m the girl with the suitcase, waiting to be swept of her feet in some hidden corner of her brain. Yuk, why?

    Why can’t I wish the rollercoasters away? I am trying really hard to be grateful for the glimpses of happiness, for the moments of connection. I am trying to take them as signs of hope, that it’s not so hard to find someone to connect with, that these people who get me, exist. But I’m failing. I’m failing, because I’m tired. I’m tired of having to go the hard way around. I’m tired of being one of those people who will have to go through hell to deserve what some people just stumble upon.

    Or is there such a thing as stumbling upon happiness? Do we just portray ourselves that way, not to let people glimpse into the hardships? After witnessing two “perfect” marriages this week, in their fifth decades of common living, I started to think it was just a relic of the past. Then, I spent more time talking to them, delving into said “perfect” relationships. Both of these women went through hell and back with their husbands. Liam and I’s relationship looks like a walk in the freaking park next to those. That made me feel even more defeated, a coward crippled by egotism.

    I can feel that “expected disappointment” rearing its ugly head and I don’t like it. I am sick of feeling like I need to reassess my decisions, my choices, my life. Can’t someone just want to fit into it? I know this wishful thinking isn’t helpful; I can’t help myself. Doesn’t everyone go through this?

    What are these glimpses for? What do these hyper-fast connections mean? What am I meant to learn from them? Fuck. Can’t one of them just surprise me, and be at least close to my level of crazy? My life feels like driving an old manual car in traffic: stop, start, stall, stop, start, stop, stall, start, stop, sigh. When’s the highway? When do I get to stick my hand out the window, play with the air, feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, while I grin stupidly, thinking: “how did I ever get this lucky?”

    “Why did I meet you now?!?!”, exclaimed the last perfect crush. He seems so perfect for me, it hurts sometimes. Dude, I don’t fucking know. I ask myself that on a regular basis, about many of you. Of course, I didn’t say that. I just asked when he would have wanted to meet me. “I don’t know. Earlier?” Well, yeah. But that doesn’t help does it?

    Just when I’m okay with being alone, just when I decide I don’t have to have sex all the time, I can take a break, that’s when I make an impulse decision to take a chance and end up on a perfect date with an impossible guy. Or am I the impossible girl?

    I’m sorry, you’re catching me on a bad day. Most of the time lately I’m good. I’m strong and ambitious and convinced I will succeed. The other twenty-five percent, fine, forty percent of the time, I’m pushing through. I’m putting a smile, my reading glasses and my brave face on.

    “Let’s do this, let’s conquer the world,” I say to myself, as though talking in the plural makes me less alone. I have to be mindful of the intention I’m gonna set for myself this year, it might just come true.

     

    “What is it that you want?”

     

     

    ***

     

    Welcome back my darlings, thanks for still reading. Watch out for the upcoming pre-release of Just Bad Timing, and for cool marketing stuff. 2018 Christine is here to get more naked than ever!

    Yours with all my heart,

    C.

     

  • Book Two, Chapter  One – A Romance For the Wild Ones 

    He undressed me as the wolves looked on from the distance. It all seemed too unreal. I was feeling numb for days until his tongue hit me like the sun hits your eyes on a summer morning through the mist, unexpected and unforeseen. So many unsuspected eyes might have been preying. My head was hanging off the wall, while my hair danced over the abyss. My lower back rested on the big bricks at the ledge, where his head played to music only he and I could hear. I was naked under the stars, as he toyed with my emotions, with my goosebumps and my heart, all confounded by the signals of my clitoris. He was as free as I was; it was part of the thrill. I could feel my back grinding into the stones, but I couldn’t ask him to stop. It was too good. Until the wanting was too much to bear. Swiftly, I was on my knees, with his perfection in my mouth. My hands were everywhere on him, around him, inside him. He pushed me onto the concrete floor, to nibble at my neck, while our bodies rubbed against each other in nonsensical rhythms. I finally slid him inside me, as my knees scratched on the rubble. I caught a glimpse of the wolves, as my eyes rolled back into my head. He was so perfectly thick, and slender, and nimble, and slow. He grabbed at my shoulders, he clawed at my waist. He stopped to look at me. “Should we take this to my place?”

     ***

    I promised myself I wasn’t going to go out. I promised myself. I even stopped at the pub straight from the train station with all my shit with me, so that I would have to go home. That’s when April invited me over for wine.

    “I’m so tired honey, I’ve been working like crazy this week and I have to be up at 8 am tomorrow.”

    “No sweetie, you don’t get it. You have to come to my house tonight. We aren’t going out on purpose, we’re just chilling,” she said.

    “I’d love to, honey. But that’s how it always starts.”

    “When I tell you, you have to come, I mean it. There’s gonna be a guy there, you have to meet.”

    “Alright, here we go. Who is it?” “A friend of mine. See?” She said, holding up her phone to my face. I have to admit, he was looking pretty delicious.

    “Fine, twist my arm. I’ll go home to shower first, I’ll pick up some wine and I’ll come over around 9.30pm.”

    Of course, I only got there around 10 because the guys were home so we caught up, and then I chatted with the girls at the wine shop. They picked out this “natural” more-than-organic Chardonnay for me, and I was weary because I really don’t like Chardonnay.

    I got to April’s and because I knew the others already, I assumed the last guy was Sebastian. He didn’t look quite like his profile picture, but he was cute. A little less manly than I usually pick them, but cute. To be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed. For about 15 minutes. When he guessed the Chardonnay without looking at the bottle, I was sceptical. I mean, I was already thrown to like the wine myself. When he started talking, I felt myself smiling more. He was surprising me with real talk, and comfortable body language. He oozed confidence, in the weirdest of ways. Later somehow, they all did a bit of drugs and decided to go to the bar. So much for staying in tonight. I was definitely not going to jump on that bandwagon, but I wanted to know more about this guy. I sat across from him at Smiley’s and got him talking. Very openly. Upon discovering his investigation into the pleasures of the male G-spot and his reluctancy to hiding the fact that he was supposed to be on a different date tonight, I was a little hooked. We had the most bizarre conversation and didn’t even notice that everybody had gone back to April’s for more drugs by this point. We then silently decided to pretend we were going to go check up on them. That’s when we detoured by the walls.

     It was strange, I felt like I had already kissed him when he kissed me. I felt like all night we had been touching, when we actually hadn’t. I guess the assumption that it was going to happen sort of took away from the mysticalness of that first kiss. It did not take away from the heat though. He kissed me and grabbed me by the little hair I had left at the top of my neck. We were almost eating each other’s faces out when his phone rang. I told him to pick up, it was his date. “Go on, cancel.” I teased. When I took mine out to check it, I had a message from one of my prospectives I had told I might see that night. I had forgotten about him. When I texted to cancel, he called. Sebastian and I looked each other in the eye as we both told people we were supposed to be fucking that we were “tired” and “going to bed”. It was such a turn-on, the blatant honesty between us. It’s a little fucked up that I felt special that I was given the curtesy of truth whilst accepting the assumption that all the others got lies. It made me feel good in a way that we both felt it was special enough to tell each other we were liars, in demonstration.

     Because I couldn’t bring anyone back to the house, I had to be creative. When I hung up, he was still talking to her. So I kissed his neck, stroking his arms, grabbing his ass, hovering my hand past his zipper. He pulled at my hair and kissed me passionately when he hung up. He took my hand in his, and motioned me to take a walk with him. So we strolled around the walls, and where the pathway is usually closed, it was magically open that night. The buildings up above would be the witnesses to our wilderness, as the unsuspecting strangers walked under us, past the bridge to the port. I didn’t even know he had a place until my knees were officially broken, and my head was fucked up from the art installation that had sprung up around town. The artist had placed random black sculptures of wild animals everywhere around town; it was incredibly spooky. When we euphorically walked back to his, I couldn’t believe the sweetness in him. It almost didn’t make sense, and that’s what he was running on. The total understanding, the likeness of our beings, but the chaos and the madness that reigned. I had to have more, I had to know more.

    The passions were soaring. Before the door was even shut, our clothes had flown off. We did it everywhere in his house. We fell off the sofa and continued climbing each other on the floor, contorted between the couch and the glass door that led onto the patio, where we later smoked, seeking each other out in the darkness. There was this silent, unbreakable, unwavering tension when we looked at each other. It was almost like hunger. We broke his bed, and swam in our puddles of sweat. He promised to teach me yoga one day. I promised we would dance one night. A few hours later, I couldn’t hide the bruises under last night’s clothes at work. A few days later, we would drink wine on the walls, feeling the beats of our hearts speed up as we played with the space between our bodies. I was soaking wet for hours, from his words in my ears, from his kisses on my neck, his hands off of my body. The touch was one of real intimacy, one of mutually wanted romance, without fear. Without fear, because we were the same peas in two different small pods. The road was unsure and adventurous, and of course individual. Yet there was this admittance to mutually restored faith, faith in connection, faith in realness, faith in two spirits singing the same tune. I think, to a certain degree, that we both silently admitted that the lives we chose lacked a bit of love, and we uncovered a source in each other that wouldn’t sour, like milk and feelings do. The rules were simple, because we both knew, that rules are obsolete.

    I drank a bit of the red wine he had picked out, looking at the sea, thinking there wouldn’t be a better way to remember this person and this moment. Until he held me under the running water, so I wouldn’t collapse as my legs gave out from under me. The orgasm he gave me in the fifth and final hour of our bodies speaking in tongues, it shook me. It was the small, subtle noises of his pleasure, the bruises on my ass cheeks, and the strength with which he pulled my hair, combined with the wetness of the shower, that took me out. If there are no further memories to be had with him, then he will always be the one suspended in time and space, the one that made me feel like I was flying, or falling, never quite tied to gravity. The big bang I needed, to finish the last chapter, and start with a whole new book, where timing would be irrelevant.