Prose Club
My friend R is a writer. So is my friend E. My friend J isn't a professional writer, but he is a writer of sorts. We all went to Oxbridge. Once a week R insists we go around to his beautiful basement flat in North London and write frantically for half an hour while his small wire haired dachshund gambols around our feet. When we have finished writing, we sit around in a polite circle, drink tea, and read out what we have written. Everyone else says 'Barth' and 'Frarnce', though I do not hold this against them. Indeed as I live in Crouch End I have thought it prudent to adopt the long vowels of the native species so that they do not suspect I am a foreigner (worse, an expatriate), one who has spent nearly three years slagging off England and London in the relative comfort of a smoky, shitty stripclub in downtown Manhattan. I think I am achieving my aim. No one has yet enquired if I am American, though they frequently ask if I am Oriental, because apparently my new brunette look renders me exotic looking. Exotic looking in a card-in-a-telephone-booth-busty way, or exotic looking in a cute-pixie-underage way, I have not yet ascertained. I suspect the latter.
I find Prose Club very taxing. Now I am in England I think I should write about English subjects, things I find peculiar about this country I have not lived in for seven years. The number 41 bus features heavily in my prose. I like the number 41 bus. James MCavoy also occurs, because he lives near me and he is quite hot and although his wife is famous and talented, I feel that it is time for them to get divorced so that he can marry me. Characters drink tea instead of coffee. And no one speaks in dialect because after reproducing the speech patterns of New Yorkers for three years, London talk, aside from RP, is beyond me. Humour does not feature very much, for fear that I might be branded anti-British for poking fun at the Prime Minister or something, but then the fact I don't poke fun at the Prime Minister renders me more American than English, and really it's all very confusing.
We played around for a while after prose club ended, sang a few Whitney Houston songs to lift our spirits, and I looked at my friends and thought 'Really, what healthful, wholesome people', and then I caught the Number 41 bus home, and had several emails from all my less wholesome friends in NY waiting in my inbox - ie the druggie journo friend and the ex-Dominatrix friend who used to shit on guys for a living, and the arsehole ex who cost me a lot of money, who is not technically a friend, but he boosts the numbers so I include him. It pleased me to think that I can move between these odd worlds, the beautiful, clean aesthetic world of North London living and wholesome well-educated friends, and that other world I lived in for so long it will sit in my heart until I die. And you know that in six months, I'll go find another world to write about too, because that's just the way I am. And then let me know if you want to rent my apartment because I'll probably be in Calcutta instead and will need you to pay off my mortgage.
Feeling rather soppy, I wrote a nasty email to my ex, and went and sat in the evening cool feeling rather content and at peace with the world.
I find Prose Club very taxing. Now I am in England I think I should write about English subjects, things I find peculiar about this country I have not lived in for seven years. The number 41 bus features heavily in my prose. I like the number 41 bus. James MCavoy also occurs, because he lives near me and he is quite hot and although his wife is famous and talented, I feel that it is time for them to get divorced so that he can marry me. Characters drink tea instead of coffee. And no one speaks in dialect because after reproducing the speech patterns of New Yorkers for three years, London talk, aside from RP, is beyond me. Humour does not feature very much, for fear that I might be branded anti-British for poking fun at the Prime Minister or something, but then the fact I don't poke fun at the Prime Minister renders me more American than English, and really it's all very confusing.
We played around for a while after prose club ended, sang a few Whitney Houston songs to lift our spirits, and I looked at my friends and thought 'Really, what healthful, wholesome people', and then I caught the Number 41 bus home, and had several emails from all my less wholesome friends in NY waiting in my inbox - ie the druggie journo friend and the ex-Dominatrix friend who used to shit on guys for a living, and the arsehole ex who cost me a lot of money, who is not technically a friend, but he boosts the numbers so I include him. It pleased me to think that I can move between these odd worlds, the beautiful, clean aesthetic world of North London living and wholesome well-educated friends, and that other world I lived in for so long it will sit in my heart until I die. And you know that in six months, I'll go find another world to write about too, because that's just the way I am. And then let me know if you want to rent my apartment because I'll probably be in Calcutta instead and will need you to pay off my mortgage.
Feeling rather soppy, I wrote a nasty email to my ex, and went and sat in the evening cool feeling rather content and at peace with the world.
MIMI IN NY | 3:59 PM |
