Lapdogs

"He the only damn man who could give ma pussy a lickin' when he standin' up straight," said Crystal, and as one we girls gazed silently at all 4'11" of manager, skulking in the corner like a ferret. Yeah I went back. Fuck the waitressing job. Still doing the yoga teaching, but not getting much cash from it. Went back before they even knew I left. Went back so I could smell the sweet tang of marijuana mixed with cheap perfume and B.O., the hot, tangy, garlic stench of his breath mixed with too many sour Buds, eyes widen, a shift, a sigh... The same old shit - safe, familiar, dirty. The same old fucking shit. I went back sober, didn't drink a thing, didn't smoke either, sipped my mineral water all night, made money, talked a bit, just watched, smiled, felt safe, and when I slipped out early at 2am the guy on the door smiled at me. "I ain't never seen you so quiet. You sick baby?" and even as he spoke I heard Miranda roaring in the background, Those fuckin' Russian bitches stole my fuckin' champagne room, and now I can't find the fuckin' weed... They thought I was sick that night because my eyes shone brighter than ever, my skin was flushed, I wasn't curled up, dehydrated, a thin drunk rasp of a creature. I argued with the manager to let me go early.

"I gotta go, I can't stay any longer, I'm not in the mood," I said, and he stared up at me until his neck cricked right back.

"Well, I ain't in the fuckin' mood and I still have to work"

"You don't have to grind cock though, do you?"

I went back and it made me smile, all the urgency gone now, all the need, just skating somewhere over a scratched and dirty surface I could walk away from. I left and it made me smile, skating over that scratched and dirty surface, barely pentrating it. I went to bed and I woke up without a hangover, without the dead smell of nicotine coating my tongue. I checked my email, and the subject line caught my eye 'Richer than when you went to sleep!'. I knew what it might say before I clicked on it, and it felt good. I found out what it did say and it felt better. A relief. The waiting over. It felt better than good. Better than any goddammed fucking good you could imagine. It felt like coming home.

The UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to my book, Lapdogs, were sold to HarperCollins UK yesterday in a pre-emptive deal. I want to thank my amazing agent Simon Trewin at PFD, and Claire Gill and Sarah Ballard who were absolutely fantastic throughout. And of course HarperCollins for making me feel that I can now (finally!), without question, put down 'writer' when someone asks me what my profession is.

And now I need a goddammned fucking drink and I'm on a detox until next week.

Billy Mark's

It started at Billy Marks. It didn't end there yet, so far as I can tell it's going OK. You walked into that bar, they could tell. Ceiling fans wafting the dark stench of sweat oozing through cheap polyester; six ripped black motherfuckers staring at you with blank faces; a slim, tired blonde bitch with a bad perm sitting quietly in the corner - if this wasn't your fucking world, they could tell. It was our world, so we sat, played pool with the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of dilapidated ceiling fans slicing through warm, melted butter air, caressing our bodies like the soft whistle of the Dominicans - sour, sweet, curdled. "You looking at my ass?" I asked the biggest motherfucker. "You wanna mess with me bitch?" and they fell about laughing at 120 pounds of white pussy clutching a Corona and a pool cue talking their shit in Scouse English. The blonde bitch sighed, and it seemed like with the exhalation something moved, stirred inside her, just as quickly dissipated in the hot summer air. "Got a cigarette?" I asked, and we went outside, leant against sticky, whitewashed walls perspiring with the blanket dark.

"They think he's my pimp 'cause he's black," she said with the lethargic twang of Atlanta Georgia. She spoke so soft you had to lean in close, before you realized you were almost touching her head, her soft, badly permed hair, her limpid brown eyes with pupils so huge they wrestled you lazily into pity if you stared too deep. "He ain't my fuckin' pimp. I'm a dancer. He's my boyfriend. I used to escort. Still do when I need the money. But I like dancin'." The fake hair was trailing off my shoulders, eyes crayoned into a caricature of a Ho's, I looked like a Ho, a Ho at 2am in Billy-fuckin'-Marks. I looked like a stripper. So she knew, and she told me this shit. Dancer. We're not fucking dancers. When, in the history of time, has grinding cock ever been dancing? In the world of the fucking American club that's what. You go into a club, a bar, some shithole on 27th and 10th, you see all these bitches with their Prada handbags grinding cock on the dancefloor and they call that dancing. They'd be offended if they knew what they were doing was being done on the opposite side of the street for a lot more fucking benjamins.

"You thought about working in Manhattan? Like, at XXXX club?" I asked, and the smoke from my cigarette puffed out as I spoke, hot breath, loaded with tar and decay.

"You work there? You'll help me get a job? I need money. I don't like escort work. It's kinda boring. I gotta two year old son, I need money."

And it hung there like the smoke we exhaled; distilled and loaded and heavy in the front of our faces like a mask of death, or maybe just Manhattan, but I took her number knowing I wouldn't call, and we went back in and we sat at the bar, two blonde bitches waiting for their men to finish playing pool.

"Hey Mimi, he your boyfriend?" yelled the bartender, and I shrugged, and the old Puerto Rican lady married to the young dude from Cuba started singing, her addled hands floating elegantly around her face as she mimed along to Patsy Kline on the jukebox, and the big black motherfuckers stopped for a second, and everyone paused, held their breath, and it was kind of beautiful in this fucked-up lunatic place way out on the West Side, filled with pimps and Hos and people like me who just came along for the ride. Kind of beautiful, a lotus growing from crap, and when the old Puerto-Rican lady stopped, the blonde girl started texting her friend, the black motherfuckers picked up their pool cues, my guy took a swig of Jack, and the old Puerto-Rican lady stood, smiling beatifically, shining like she knew there was applause even if we couldn't hear it, and she sat down again, downed another shot of tequila, and then went outside to cry, because it was too fucking beautiful not to.

"Call that girl again?" he smiled, cradling the pool cue as the Puerto Rican lady sobbed and her husband dressed in one-piece camouflage gear slowly peeled the label off a Bud bottle, rolled the paper, sticky, damp, in his hand, so I picked up the phone and called my black bitch up in Harlem. "He ain't picking up the damned phone the fat fuck," she screamed, even before I said hello. "I can't find him. Listen, if you guys want coke or weed, that's easy, but this shit ain't going down well. There ain't no one in Manhttan beside that fat fuck, and he won't get off his fat ass to fuckin' deliver." I could feel the waves of cheap beer coursing through me, and the guy was talking to Billy at the bar, or maybe it was Mark, or maybe Billy. So I got another beer, went outside with the blonde bitch again and danced salsa with the Puerto-Rican lady in the lewd heat of a Manhattan night, dancing like we were lovers, laughing and cussing out the menfolk.

We waited until the next day. Ordered a take-out of Diesel to keep us going, hand delivered straight to my apartment by some dude I stared at like a child, my eyes glazed by too much liqor, too much sex, two straight days of drinking. I called in sick. "You ain't working? You gonna get in trouble girl. You left early Thursday night too." I left early 'cause I got sick of the bitches and their shit. "I can't give blowjobs," one said, a bitch from London, and her eyes widened with horror at the thought. "I can't even imagine puttin' that thing in my mouth. Fucking disgusting. My friend told me to imagine it was a lollipop, but I can't. It's just sick." And then she looked over at some guys, slipped elegantly onto their laps, hand slid between thighs, a gentle lick on the ear. I left. The Diesel was working its shitty little magic as undulating little waves started to wrap around me, claw down the thoughts and replace them with that sunk, smacked feeling of disconnection which comes from being so connected, so in tune, it's almost unbearable. "I'm so fucked up," I whispered, and he just smiled, and there was a moment when I had a twinge of something - horror? fear? fear and loathing in the lower east? is this right? and then it's so right you don't need anything else, just the warm, intense, safe pressure of prolixity and from somewhere the tinny sting of the music worming its way into your brain, and the waves just kept rushing, and rushing, and I couldn't help but think, "Fuck, I waited four goddammed years for this shit?"

"Let's go get Indian food," he said, and it rippled through my consciousness, a moment of hesitation. Could I function outside this room? Could I keep walking, speaking, even as I lolled into a marijuana induced haze, the prickle of the a/c the only thing keeping me from drifting off to another place I partly wanted, partly feared?

There was a tabla player, and a sitar, and it all seemed pretty cool. And we ordered two bottles of Pinot Grigiot, and it fitted the mood (fucked up) perfectly, like the coconut samosas and the guy who served us, Ray, nodding his head like Indians do, and I can't recall now what we spoke about, the beat of the tabla dominating the rhythms of conversation until everything just clicked into one incessant, relentless, rolling beat. We ended up several hours later wearing different clothes, in the club downstairs. "Call again," he said, and I did, someone different this time, and it was the same answer, so I used the tricks I learned back in France, and I stood and watched and waited and talked shit on the street, and hit the jackpot. Inside he was sitting waiting on a black, cracked leather chair with a bottle of Veuve Clicqot on a formica table, two plastic flutes smudged with fingerprints, and the black dude who owned the place slid into the booth next to us.

"This little white bitch cracked me up man. She just stood outside and came straight out with it, 'Can you sort me out?' in that hot little accent. I don't do it for everyone, but I looked at her and knoo she was special. Gimme eighty bucks. I'll sort you out."

So he did, without asking, and I loved that about him. The club was filling up, and there were a bunch of Hispanic girls with their asses hanging out of teeny-tiny skirts, there were too many girls, a lot of girls, and the music was old school, riding somewhere between Bob Dylan and Gorillaz, not even eclectic, just fucking wrong, and I loved that too. When the waitress came over she was sad and listless and Russian, something between her and the black guy. We didn't know what, and were too fucked up riding the waves to even care. And then the other guy came back and we were led into the back room, sigh, exhalation. I love this shit, loved it, left it, and now it's back in NY to haunt me, another fucked-up night in shit city, but I guess it was OK this time because he was there. We were all there, in some black room in the back of a club and the manager chopping out lines of something with a sharp, metallic stench, free drinks, we're flavor of the fucking-month. That's why I like this guy. That we sat on a Friday in SoHo Grand, scored shit on a Saturday in a dive club with two black pimps, and then we went downstairs, played some drums, danced to some hip-hop. The place was full of trash, we were trash, white-fucking-trash, middle-class-trash playing it dirty because it was the place we felt at home, we felt ourselves, and it's weird when you find that person you can be yourself with, be that contradiction without questioning. And then that blissful, fucked-up tsunami of chemical endorphins blasts into your system, and your ego expands so painfully it's like you're going to explode, and I looked over at him, playing drums in the middle of this fucking shithole in Manhattan we found without looking, and he looked up and just smiled. Smiled at his little white-trash fuck grinding along on the dance-floor with some fat dudes and loving it, feeling the inevitable, ineluctable pump of chemicals coursing through the system and melding indefinably with the memories of times past, the beat of something you've known before, that sweet, orgasmic pleasure of living in a way you really shouldn't, and loving it, loving every damned fucked-up minute. He got up and he started dancing with a slim, tannned girl, hotter than me, but that was cool as well, everything was cool. The end of the night approached, but it still wasn't over, even as we got locked into the club and fed Red Bulls to pump our over-hyped, exhausted, frazzled souls into something even higher, and then we went back to my place with the tired, sad Russian girl and the two pimps, drank Stella and black tea, smoked some weed, and the sad Russian girl leaned over to me, and I clutched her hand, cold and unloved, and she asked me if I'd help her, and I told her she sucked as a waitress, slipped her my card, and the black dude smoking shit slouched against the wall, his eyes rolling in the back of his head, and my guy laughed, and when they left, we lay in the bath, let the music assuage our abused bodies, let ourselves drift gently down and into each other as the water trickled gradually down the plughole, The Drifters played on....

It started at Billy Marks, and I should probably take that as a warning. Ceiling fans wafting the dark stench of sweat oozing through cheap polyester, six ripped black motherfuckers staring at you with blank faces, a slim, tired blonde bitch with a bad perm sitting quietly in the corner; this has become a world in which I've found a place oddly, strangely right - even as I start to vomit the darkness crawling into my soul back up on the page.

Yeah, it started at Billy Mark's, and call me stupid, but I know, just know, it's not going to end there.

Like a Complete Unknown

When I first saw her, the eyes weren't so much lobotomised as scared rabbit. Rippling folds of baby pink flesh nestled beneath buds of breasts - dangling like a suckling cow too young to be reproducing but forced into it by the cattle market. She's scared this bitch; scared beneath the thick, black lines painted round blue depths of inane youth. When she dances, it's with a fixated grin boring into your face to distract from the body she doesn't want to show; the body her parents probably think is still covered up with cheap H&M even as she sends back the big fucking dollars to pay for their post-communist rent, their American beers. "How do you dance, plis?" she asked me, and I just shrugged, nodded to the vodka clasped in my hand, the glass misted from the heat of my palm, ice crackling and fizzing, emitting little puffs of gas into the arid, chilly air. She took the drink and she grimaced, the little rolls of flesh rippling up from her baby stomach up through her baby breasts, into a face whose cheekbones sank beneath pre-pubescent pudge.

"Listen sweetheart," I said, and I leaned in urgent, like I gave a fuck, grabbed her hand, stared into those pretty blue eyes, felt my hand tighten against a round, pink forearm, saw my skin ghoulish, white and taut against this fucking honey-blossom oozing the nectar of nineteen and new in Nueva York. "Get out. Get your fucking money, get back to Russia. This place isn't for you. Drink what you need to do the fucking job, keep your wits about you, don't suck cock and you'll be fine."

She looked scared, now I think about it, but her brain was still working because the pupils contracted as she shrank away, disappeared to a corner, thought about the cash, got back to her pathetic faux-grinding in mid-air. That same fucking grin, the blonde hair, dark roots delineating the stark white flesh of her scalp bobbing up and down in the white light, the disco flashes from the sad glitter ball, there since '83. Familiar. She was always there, in her corner when the lights tracked across the club. Another crappy stripper. Kind of gawky, kind of cute.

I didn't give it another thought, just turned up for work, saw her around. Didn't notice that shy, sly smile slowly flailing like a weak sapling beneath the cancerous weeds of something sicker.

When I went back it was all different. Different because you get away and you become the person you were before, the person slowly asphyxiating beneath the thick, caked layers of shitty panstick. You become daughter, sister, friend, whatever. You become what you aren't when you're in that fucking place, caught between the rapid beats of bad house music like a heart patient on amphetamines, the jarring, listless gyration of the dance. The two never meld, surprisingly. You'd think if you spent 40 hours a week in this place you'd get some fucking rhythm. Just a discord. A discord like the sour taste from too many cigarettes counterpointed against no food for a week, the dark stench of alcohol roaring out of your mouth like a sewage drain, drenched in Orbit sugar-free. So I got back and probably I noticed more. Saw things. Felt things more, released for six weeks from the ritual of dousing my liver to make my head go away. She was the first one I saw, but now the pretty blue eyes were lobotomised with the scalpel of money, hard fucking cash, and she led the old dude with the bad breath up the fucking stairs to Never-Never Land, 'cause I've never been there and I don't intend to go, the private private rooms, more private than the others, where your dick up her peachy-ass costs 300 bucks, and ramming the back of her throat will go for a Ben Franklin, and straight-up pussy probably about 250. And you wonder what it was like for her - the first time. Whether it was as bad as her stage show, as transparent as the scared rabbit eyes which were a glass mirror right into her fucked up little Russian head, allowing the sense to leak out like a soft-boiled egg cracked swiftly open. It seeped out as easily as that dress peeled off, that spangly, glittery g-string curled up in the corner of the room like a dead spider, that dignity was shed.

Before the night was over I went quietly upstairs, past the girls drunk and waving cigarettes around in the locker room, talking about their asshole boyfriends from the Bronx fucking bitches while they earn the rent. I dressed, scrubbed the crap off my face. I left the shoes for the girl I shared my locker with, but I took my name off the door and threw it in the trash. I didn't say goodbye to anyone. It's not a big deal, retiring. We all do it, when we're too old, when the fucking stink has gotten too much, when the new ones barely bleeding and out of their fucking training bras undercut you 'cause scared eyes looking up from the end of your cock are so much more satisfying than the middle finger pointing between your screwed up little piggy gaze, in a pathetic gesture which says more about you than them. But I wondered as I walked home through the East Village, the night pouring onto me with damp, false caresses, warm, stinking sweat - I wondered if it was all worth it. If staying someplace, trying for what I wanted - or not even wanted, something I had to do, have to do because it's all I know - I wondered if trading in ignorance for this unbearable sadness, this knowing, this dull, deep ache - is ever going to mean anything besides poverty, a Bob Dylan song, spending my last twenty bucks on a six-pack and some cigarettes, sitting down and doing what I know best. Ratcheting it up from my dark, boiled heart as the a/c whirrs and Manhattan starts to slowly wind down in preparation for the reprise, which continues regardless.

Dear Potential Employer

Despite having an exceptional degree which may lead many to presume that I am, in fact, quite intelligent, I have managed to spend the last six years doing absolutely sod all with my privileged education. However, I feel that my experiences as a drug-taking chalet cook, a sailing chef, a waitress, a shop assistant at Marks & Spencer's, a telesales representative, the person looking after your kids on the long summer vacation, a barista, a check-out girl at Tesco's, a sandwich maker, a bakery assistant, a bar tender, a punt chauffeur on the River Cam, an unemployed, hungry writer and finally, the piece de resistance - A Stripper, do demonstrate a certain flexibility on my part, if not a willingness to completely embrace new experiences and skills.

Unfortunately, I don't possess any prior knowledge of Quark Express and have only recently discovered how to work the spell check on MS Word, but I can text up to 20 words per minute using predictive text, and always sport a well manicured bikini area, whilst I have also developed an unerring talent for tolerating those itchy, spangly g-strings comprised mainly of plastic sequins. My people skills have been impeccably honed due to two years spent on various large sailing yachts with multiple stinking, farting men, and combined with 14 months grinding corporate cock, I feel perfectly qualified to work within the high-stress, male-dominated atmosphere of Corporate America. I have an ability to compromise, perfected from the lengthy and demanding negotiations involved in my former employment (eg "Give me a blow job", "No, fuck off", "Give me a hand job", "No, fuck off", "Give me a lapdance", "OK") and yet a steely determination of where my goals are and how to achieve them ("It's 850 bucks for a private room, no fucking freebies").

I don't have any formal journalistic training, nor would I be conceited enough to count my small resume of published works qualification enough to adopt the title of 'journalist' - yet my illuminating writing on specific topics display a remarkable and ingenious departure from the usual female schlock produced en masse by Conde Nast (see my blog posts on 'anal sex', 'The Masturbator' etc). Indeed, I feel the height of my writing achievements, displaying my strong and sophisticated style, is aptly demonstrated by such works of literary genius as this.

I must profess that I lack both the positive attitude and willingness to make the coffee that an entry level position might require, and while neither a 'go-getter', nor a 'team player', I can't help but suggest that perhaps your company might not have to advertise for employees quite as often if they didn't insist on making the criteria so rigid. Having been exposed to the shocking rigours and unflagging enthusiasm of 'go-getters' and 'team players' throughout my various forays into the world of employment, I personally have found that the lazy fuckers sitting out the back having a sneaky cigarette are often the most fun at the office party, and never fail to supply the requisite xeroxed ass-shot, while they are frequently the most willing to blow the boss after too many Bacardi Breezers.

I have a demonstrated ability to multi-task - I am a modern day spiritual guru and yoga teacher with an excellent cock-grinding technique and impressive eka pada rajakapotasana, not to mention a huge capacity for alcohol, self-loathing, insulting people I care deeply about and drunken text messaging in the early hours of the morning - all the while managing to complete several great works of fiction yet-to-be-published. In fact, as a hungry, ambitious, attractive female with absolutely no suitable skills for useful employment besides a willingness to skive as frequently as possible and look up porn on the company computer, I am utterly unaware as to any reason why anyone would not find me employable, or indeed, why you are not begging to work for me.

I look forward to being rejected by your company as yet further affirmation that I am destined never to have a salary,

Yours Sincerely,


Mimi

P.S. If I do get the job, how much vacation time do I get?

Avec Date

I had a date with the game Sunday; me, myself and a bar sweating and heaving with drunken hipsters, Eurotrash released from their chi-chi bars on Avenue B, the hangers-on who just want to party.

"Football," announces the preppy guy grandly, swaying slightly in the humid, distorted heat rising in waves from the asphalt, "is so darn cool. I've watched every darn game in the World Cup. But damn, what a moment in the last ten minutes of the first quarter when the ball hit the pole and bounced off."

"Yeah, totally."

"I darn well love the EPL"

I snort. Can't help it. "What the fuck is the EPL?"

They turn and regard me, a small, sarcastic English girl in American Apparel and flip flops, drinking warm beer and giggling at them. They don't get it.

"The English Premier League. The EPL. I thought all you Brits were like, real soccer fans?"

I text the Publisher all the way through the game. 1st half over, mass exodus. D'you think the yanks realise there's 45 minutes to go?

Sports in America has never been so much fun. I move bars. This time I'm swallowed up by a writhing mass of sweating fashion students who seem anxious to buy me beer. It's a code; "Who d'you support?"

"Italy"

"OK, tell the bar tender what you want."

Later I meet the English Publisher in Wine Bar. We hop to the front of the queue (full of frogs) for answering the question correctly - pledging our allegiance to Italy because our own country sucks at football. No, not soccer. Football.

"The yanks cheer every time a player kicks the sodding ball." he says.

"Nice to have that kind of ignorance. So, you getting laid yet?"

He doesn't blink. We're English and this is our social convention. And I miss it so fucking much sometimes.

"Well, I was seeing this woman. But she's 34, and that to me just says..."

"Babies."

"Yes."

Pause. We hover over what's behind this without ever quite articulating it - maybe waiting for the alcohol to kick in. Sans date, avec date, the relief when you have a date - any date - even a friend date to fill the void and stave off the single worries we can't ever admit to, being hardened commitment phobes who never return their calls.

"The stupid thing is," he continues later, after the topic has been swirled around our tongues like that first taste of Pinot Noir, "is that actually, when it comes down to it, even though I treat women like shit, never return their phone calls and really don't want to have babies yet, I think I actually quite want someone to be in my life."

"I think we all do," I sigh, and look deep into my vodka soda - Ketel One, Lime, Crackling ice. "So tell me what happened with Roxy the stripper you met at Sophisticatz again?"

The next day I'm avec date - with Mr Benjamin Franklin, who effectively stands me up, because I don't see his face all damned night. I receive a text message from the Publisher. Remind me to tell you why I was naked in the lobby of my hotel at 3am this morning.

You got laid? I text back, and go back to being stood up by Mr fucking Benjamin. My date sucks, and in the greater scheme of things, I have my own date which is worrying me even more - the date I've given myself - and if that date passes, and nothing happens, then it's time to leave.

And contemplating that makes me very, very sad.

Bombings

I just realized.... 7th July. My thoughts, love and best wishes go to everyone affected by the bombings last year. Peace.

drunk dialling

At 4am it's important. Imperative even. You weigh it up. Parents asleep. Sister abroad. Friends married and conveniently placed in Hoboken. Who do you call? Who is the person situated in your existence who can take the 4am phone call which is the difference between a bad night, and a night hovering between the ok and the acceptable?

I'm not the reciprocent, and I want to be. I want early morning rings which awaken me to the scent of shitty bagels, a hangover, the insidious hum of the a/c. It reminds me of Cambridge, that warm, pissed-off feeling of blargh when your friend called to tell you he got laid 2 hours previously - and it was shit. I want messages from frenzied people at unknown hours to tell me their life sucks, to reassure me mine doesn't, to make me feel there's life after a cursory nod, hand over a 20, tuck the change in your garter, dream of better days. Life - you smile, laugh, take it in your stride. Turn - glance - look for the next asshole, close your eyes, breathe, open them again, keep going. It's life, it's fucking life, and that dawning need for human contact which isn't wearing a g-string and glittery eye-shadow just grows, so insidious until it becomes unbearable, and you reach for the phone. Seduced by the need for a hollow, distant voice, mechanized by drink and false assurance - you call.... text - think - and it all feels uncertain. Life is uncertain at 4am and you need someone to tell you it's OK, and that they've been there, they know. Get home, turn the music on, click on Word, make some tea, don't think, whatever you do, don't fucking think. I wish I had more people to drunk dial. More people who flooded my inbox with inebriated regrets, introspective abbreviations, more friends I could piss off at 3.47am on a Manhattan morning. I wish time didn't happen so slow, so that you - I - had friends here, but they weren't new, and life is where I wanted it to be, and I didn't feel weird about being me, being yourself, the person I was before, or want to be afterwards, the person who isn't lost in a fiction of their own making. A person living - not just existing.

But in a really odd way, it's all part of the journey, and you remember the sharp smack of the cab door, the stench of weed, the click of a key in the lock, the sweet sting of solitude, that perpetual prick of existence - and you're alive.

Apart from that, I have fucking cystitis.

Life sucks.

Yoga

For clarification's sake, here's what I believe:

1. I don't take drugs (knowingly anyway), nor do I condone taking drugs. But I don't condemn other people for taking drugs or think that they are morally lesser beings because they do so.

2. I don't drink every day, and I don't get drunk everyday. But I do drink, and occasionally I will get drunk. I like to think that one day I'll give it up completely - maybe a little further down the path. Times when I haven't drunk - in India, in Nepal and in Argentina - I didn't miss it, mainly because these are cultures which don't integrate alcohol into socialising.

3. I smoke when I drink and only when I drink. Otherwise - you try breath of fire or a 90 minute asana practice after a pack of Marlboros. Not good. Not good at all. Smoking is something I really dislike and I'm working on meditating it out of my system completely. I used to smoke about 20 a day, and the fact I don't now is entirely due to yoga and its emphasis on the breath.

4. I used to be a vegetarian, but now I eat meat, because I have an intolerance to raw food diets and suffer from iron deficiency. I need the protein, plus I had severe, very painful colitis from a purely vegetarian diet. Not good in the asana room. Ugh. I think most serious practitioners of yoga who eat meat do so for health reasons, rather than because they're greedy. I prefer fish to red meat though. If I was a little richer, I'd just eat fish.

5. My writing on the blog doesn't at first seem to have a lot to do with my spiritual beliefs and practice - but it does have a lot to do with what I observe and record from my interaction with the world. In this sense it is part of my practice, even if sometimes it's irreverent, careless, flippant, sad, dark, mean, funny or tragic. Writing, for me, is like assuming a different personality, a different voice, a different take on the world... it's my job to dig into what I see and observe and efface myself in the words, or bring out a different part of my personality which I think is interesting, worthy of note, deserving to be examined and exhumed in sentences. It's different from yoga or meditation, but it makes me analyse things in the same way, and often what I see in the world, myself, other people, isn't pleasant. But this is what fascinates me, what I'm compelled to write about. I just can't write from a puritanical, spiritual lofty throne because this isn't what I want to do as a writer. I study human nature in all its flaws - not attempt to impose some kind of hypocritical moral perfection on my world view. Often I'm just being flippant and irreverent and sarcastic - and this too doesn't mean I don't take spirituality seriously. It's the human condition. I think my favorite teachers are those who realise this about me, and they, too, have this fascination with the workings of the human condition, our own foibles - and don't try and pretend they're morally perfect in an absolutely amazing postmodern ironic twist which would have Derrida and Baudrillard shitting themselves in admiration.

Because I write like I do, does it mean I can't be a teacher? No. It probably means I'm just more in touch with reality than others, and this can only, I think, be a good thing in the long run.

Yoga teachers are normal people. We're on a spiritual path yes, and as teachers we have an example to set, but we are students as well as teachers. In all honesty, I don't tend to teach my beginners the spiritual aspects of yoga because they'd run a mile if I started spouting off about samadhi and making them chant krishna songs all the time. But I personally have a daily physical practice, a daily sitting meditation practice and also try and integrate my interest in Buddhist philosophy into my yoga practice. I recognize, however, that the majority of people in Manhattan who practise yoga just want to touch their toes and stay thin, and as a teacher I respect that. I'm not going to force anything down anyone's throats. Should anyone wish to go further down the path they know you're there, that you can answer questions, take the practice a little deeper. Otherwise, you give them what they want. A practice which makes them more flexible and calms them down after a rough day in the office. A practice which is welcoming, non-judgmental and non-sectarian.

About my personal philosophy? I've lived a crazy life, and it's always pointed me back towards yoga and Buddhism, so it's certainly telling me something. I don't regret drinking, smoking, dancing, falling into bushes.... because it's led me to where I am now, in a position to practice yoga daily, and write, and meditate, and plan trips to Nepal. My crazy life has enabled me to see a middle ground between being a spiritual zealot and a drunken asshole who strips for a living. In life you have to do things which aren't always pleasant or easy - and the yoga practice, the Buddhist practice, is there to help you get through that. It's not something you pick up when life is perfect and clean and packaged properly. It's something that, if you take seriously, you live with everyday, and you screw up even as you strive towards enlightenment, or being a better person, or whatever your aim is. My whole life has been an exercise in observation, an experiment in living, an anthropological study, a 'spiritual journey' as they like to say in yoga class. It will keep on being so, and I will keep writing about aspects of life which are unpleasant and dark, as well as beautiful and moving. It's all yoga. And knowing how much my teachers, my meditation, my asana practice and my spiritual beliefs have helped me through the darkest times of my life, I feel more than qualified to point out to others how they, too, can use it as a tool for personal survival - and personal liberation. I myself prefer teachers who acknowledge the darkness in life as well as the light - who worship Kali as well as Krishna. But that's just me.

This blog's about how difficult it is to get to where you really want to be in life, or even who you want to be. It's about how you have to keep going, no matter how many obstacles are put in your path, regardless of how hard it is to navigate samsara, how many people judge you or how many insults are thrown your way. It's about fucking up as well as succeeding. About learning as well as teaching. It's about being true to yourself.

And isn't that, after all, exactly what yoga is?