Lost element

Two more envelopes awaited me today: in one a long letter from Grant, in the other my long awaited tickets for the Fall concert this coming weekend.

Grant’s letter was disjointed and depressed: “I’m pretty sure my parents are trying to undermine me psychologically. Booze, cigs, books, music, people—nothing gives me any real comfort anymore. I’ve suddenly realised how transient pleasure is. Previously I could get really lost in things and experience them with such intensity. That element now seems lost.”

He mentions a girl who keeps pinching his backside at college. “If I did the same to her (and it’s not as if I would) she would complain like hell.” The letter is littered with drawings, capitalised declarations and lines from songs and what I would’ve termed as ‘poetry’ if he hadn’t written “Sorry, can’t finish it and no, it’s not a poem . . . Perhaps all we seek in friends are extensions of ourselves, therefore in this pig-fucking fiasco called life we are as alone as we were before birth and as we will be after death. I don’t want to believe this—please tell me it’s not true. Yours, ever the cool hedonist, Grant.”

It’s difficult to know how to reply.

I collect records like so many lifeless lumps of wreckage; at the mini-market I bought three more albums and blew through another fiver. I’ve spent much of the day kicking myself.

It's Shelley’s birthday, so this evening most of us went down to Watermouth to celebrate at Masquerades, a club on the seafront. The girls wore their festive finery while I deliberately draped myself in black so I would blend in with the shadows. Masquerades the typical dark club interior and glowing bar with quite a few of the Uni. trendies about. A fairly enjoyable evening: we left at closing time and caught taxis back.