Don’t write these thoughts down on actual paper that much. Used to. Back when I was a younger man before the arrival of grey hairs and the stains on my teeth and the rings around my bleary eyes that keep growing no matter how much I wish they wouldn’t. It’s a Sunday. God’s day, or something. Cup of tea and a newspaper in bed doing my best to shake off a hangover coupled with last night’s dreams of werewolves and castration and the lingering stench of disinfectant. Need to take a shit that will place me among the stars. Maybe I’ll go for a walk when I’m all wiped up, or perhaps just mooch around waiting for the bomb to drop. While I do, I’ll trim my fingernails and send the clippings to X along with some pubic hair and a soiled lump of tissue paper with an accompanying note that reads ‘I was thinking of you when I spunked this’. I try being a good man, but sometimes being dirty is far better. Another tea and a smoke. Old movies on my new 4K TV. Jason X. First saw it at uni. Now it looks so sparkly and I smile all the way through thinking about cryogenic stasis and what my favourite episode of Red Dwarf is. Probably season five, episode six. The one with the squid. Imagine if I were to smear myself over these white sheets of paper containing the riddles of my strange heart before decorating them with my fingernail clippings so they resemble the petals of a flower, or the unseen pinky lips of X. Many I’m sure would deem it madness, but only those touched by the maddened hand know what it’s like to love with more than just an appetite for flesh and blood. Only those that have glimpsed the other side know there’s more to this than mere lust. Lost in thought, I visualise the wonder of a bottle of white and then car rides by the coast and the cake shop near my old school that was a Mecca for my childish sweet tooth. Can’t remember the name of it, but the more I think of those sugary donuts the more I’d love to see her take a bite out of one, and as the grains of sugar were to glisten on her lips, the laughter lines around her eyes would make this heart of mine feel so warm and alive like it hasn’t for so long now.

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.co.uk

A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon.com