Extracts from my personal diary (part 4)

Bastard and bitch, aged 31.

God I’m a bitch. Having beefed up, porked out and generally grown into my looks over the past few years, having become the person I always dreamed of becoming, and having now plenty of opportunities to meet, court and make love to women, I seem bent on acting with all the bad grace of a bitch, and I feel so spiritually dead and hollow, the quiet, studious, hard-training me of old being replaced by a tougher, meaner yet all the same spiritually rottener version of myself.

If that wasn’t bad enough I met my cousins the other day and even only in their mid-thirties, they have aged so drastically, look fatter, balder and have lost that spark that once so characterised them. I’m really so sorry for this. Yet I can’t help thinking that I wished this on them, the old me, inferior, casting an envious eye on the great looks bestowed upon them, wanted and hoped, in the belief that it would never happen, those good looks to fade. I feel so hollow and empty, so depressed to see them like this, I now somehow more superior, more the alpha-male. Ripe fruit eventually turns rotten. I am now ripe. In future I will be rotten. It’s so depressing.

The other day in town, seeing a pretty, young girl, I happened to see how she exposed her stomach in the way that fashionable celebrities do. Although by no means fat, she didn’t quite posses the toned, athletic waste of a superstar, that one would see in a magazine or on TV. Anyway I looked at her, in my bitch like way, and shying under my pressurising eye she then pulled her t shirt down as though she were ashamed.

I was really disgusted with myself for this, this sub-conscious bitch behaviour of mine, for I can have no complaints with women these days, absolutely none at all, and especially not with young girls, about whom I can genuinely say, speaking with my hand on my heart, I like; and especially because in that little piece of behaviour exhibited by that girl – the desire to look good, the shyness under my scrutinising eye, the belief she had made a fool of herself – I see myself exactly as I was, when I was just a wannabe.

Yes, having spent so many years as a wannabe, is I think the main reason for my cattiness now, my bitchiness.

I am a narcissistic, temperamental, raging, crazy son of a bitch. Seeing, out in town the other day, two bespectacled men, one about thirty, the other fifty – arm in arm with exquisite, elegant, fashionable women, almost sent me mad. God I was loathe to see it! It really, really drove me mad to see those geeks with girls, I hated it!

One incident today left me feeling utterly hollow and empty.

Standing at the metro station with a woman of mine – a red haired, thirty-seven year old woman, who wears a leather jacket and is looking for a second youth – standing there together, the both of us out of humour to be honest, sick of one another actually, sick of ourselves, we happened to see across the way, a young man in a suit and glasses. He started singing.

At first we were absolutely astounded by how badly he sang – he was utterly terrible. Two charver youths, boy and girl standing next to us, also heard this and expressed their contempt, unmodified by any adult behaviour or civilised good manners, criticising the awful singing, and mocking the man as an X-factor wannabe, X-factor being the wannabe-celebrity show in which members of the public are invited onto TV to (by and large) sing badly and make fools of themselves.

Like I say we were all surprised to here this young man – who outwardly in his suit and glasses looked like a respectable, normal citizen – sing so stupidly and horribly. But within seconds we realised that in fact it was a cry for help. As the song continued it became evident that the young man was having one of those moments, moments I knew often in my youth, when you feel so mad and sick of the world, so irritated by the coldness of all around you, that you finally breakdown, start screaming wildly and hysterically, as if you just can’t cope with life anymore, as if you can’t bottle up your feelings any longer, and you have to let other people know you are unhappy.

The song turning into a mad-man scream, we heard him say something like ‘I want a girlfriend’ followed by ‘I’m going to kill myself.’ By this time, a gang of youths on his side of the platform, cottoning on to what he was saying, approached him: he ran off around the corner, and a minute or so later, the youths cried out ‘he’s cut his wrists!’

I had watched the charver boy and girl on our side of the tracks, as they had contemptuously looked on and watched this poor guy. And, after their initial contemptuous remarks, I had expected them to give the guy some more stick; and I had been poised to give them a good haranguing.

However, I now watched on as he and his charver girl, genuinely moved by what had happened, and in their uninhibited teenage way, went to show their concern for the man. I watched them cross the tracks, illegally as charvers do, the youth followed by his girl, and in their extrospective way, oblivious to all else, I saw how like a pair of primates they were. But as well as being intrigued by the event, they were genuinely sympathetic with the guy, and I was touched by how good they truly were in their hearts, and how they genuinely felt empathy toward the guy, as if they knew exactly how he felt. I was touched by how all the youths, all the charvers, came to help this guy when he needed it.

I was more so impressed by their humanity, as when the next train came, my woman and I boarded, selfishly concerned with our own lives, having expressed no sympathy with the guy, or even caring to see if he lived or died – though I’m sure it was an (intentionally) failed suicide attempt.

Another young woman who had stood on the platform waiting alongside us for twelve minutes or so, did however have conscious enough to forget about the incoming train and go around to see what had become of the young man. She needn’t have done this, she needn’t have cared: but she did.

In the behaviour of these people, in the way they cared for the young man and seemed to truly be aware of his feelings, as if they understood perfectly why someone in our society might suddenly have a wobbler, might scream and cry for help like that as if to say ‘I just can‘t take it anymore’, I find a reassuring humanity in people that is missing in myself.

For my woman and I boarded the train only thinking of ourselves. I wondered whether myself and Gina were in fact the trigger to the poor guy’s cry for help; to see me cockily standing there, somehow a nerd like him, but possessing something else, more mature, more experienced, with my sassy women Gina – who by the way, during the whole incident expressed not an inch of sympathy, but just bore a look of contempt – I wonder whether seeing me, so like him in one way, yet with a woman as I was, so unlike him, I wonder whether that was the final shock, the final turn of the screw for him.

I feel so utterly worthless. I knew of all that guy experienced, I understood him perfectly; I was like that in the past. But only in the past. Now I am something more, that part of my life is over, and I confess to looking down on him somewhat, to holding him in contempt, for being what I once was. I really hate myself today and rightly so. I have become something I don’t like, hanging around and courting favour with women like Gina who I don’t really care for. We spent a miserable evening together, she is such a hard-faced miserable specimen. What have I turned into?