There are times

...that words are dry and brittle, like dead leaves. And one feels that it is useless.

All I can presently think of is Nuare's exquisite pallor. "Like a drowned nymph, or a dead lily with human veins."

I need to find Baudelaire in English.

I need drugs

Hard drugs. And a big fucking gun. And two official translators: one to translate my Greek to simple Greek and a second one to verify in case someone missed it. But what I need most is someone to rub my back. Not my tits, not my fanny, not my ass. Just the back, if you could. Thank you.

Maybe if I post a very revealing photo of me I will find someone willing to cover all my expenses and send me to a place far away for weeks of rest. But I have the gnawing suspicion that the place will have padded walls.

Fuck it. I go to fantasise about my heroes fondling the buttocks of my other heroes. And if this doesn't make my mood better, I'll just sleep.

Melancholy

I honestly don't feel so well, and anger and tiredness rise in my throat to choke me like bile. It's late at night, Saturday, and I slept at 22:00 hoping to catch up with lost sleep so that I manage to go out later. Yeah, right. I woke up at 01:00 am, too broken to be able to move even my toes. All I managed to do was force myself out of bed to take a bath, and now that I smell better I sit here and write, too pissed off to be able to sleep. I will do that later. There is always time to catch up with lost sleep: when I am dead. Although lack of rest does reduce my mental faculties to that of a dead person, I have to admit that sleeping is not an option now.

I am trying to find the little invisible thread of humor here, otherwise I'll just start screaming and wake the rest of the people in my block too, to share the "joy".… It just becomes too much after a point of time, being so trapped, so unable to do anything I want, so shackled and desperate that I go mad. I go mad with all my strength, coming to knock myself against my invisible walls and howl my pain and disappointment. I howl and howl and nothing comes out of it save maybe for a sore throat. Kari Rueslatten fills my room with her mellifluous voice and all I can think of is my ire and hurt and the need to break free at all costs.

A friend unknowingly initiated this, by bringing me a 2006 diary called The Women of the Camarilla. Upon opening it, I find out that the 'Camarilla' in this case is a role playing fan club for players of Vampire: the Masquerade and other White Wolf related role playing games. I also find out that they are organized in a club that includes six continents and thousands of people, from UK, US, Canada etc, and members can participate in more or less any local, national and international event in any continent, taking their characters with them. For example, if my character is a man called Serge, I can take the airplane, go from London to Seattle, Washington, and introduce myself to the players there as Serge, and be recognised as such. I can take part in the local game as Serge, affecting the local story line, and then return to London and players there will treat me accordingly. If my character screwed up or did something truly spectacular, they will behave to me accordingly when their characters find out. Just like it would happen in real life with me and other people. What they actually do is create an alternative space within reality much like a sorcerer would do, force themselves upon it by using the most potent weapon: creativity. They bend reality and force it to recognise them no matter where they are and how they travel, the same way a shaman would put on a mask and 'become' the animal the mask represents. And reality obliges, if only for a few hours. And I hurt like mad because I am stuck here, in Greece, and I cannot even manage to go out for a single Saturday night after months, let alone participate. I cannot even meet people that if not friends, I would at least call them like-minded. I cannot do shit. Reality spits me in the face, reminding me that the last word belongs to it, and I feel weak and enraged and constantly brood. And bite people's heads off the next day at work.

I looked myself in the mirror before I got into the bathtub and saw that my body is falling apart for lack of care and enough exercise. My hair grows longer, but that's about the only good news that I have. Other than that, my eyes are haunted and dark underneath and my lips grow thinner and sour and twisted, my hair fills with white and I am still here, trapped, gagged, maddened. Who would believe that this 28-year-old would harbor so many people within her head and so much pain within her heart? Only those close enough to hear her stories and pained enough to understand. Who would see Serge, my protagonist, sharing my frail body with me and knowing of my mental pain cause he goes through the same and much worse in his case? Who would see the infuriating little beam of Etielle in me, which he uses to hide his tiredness and searing anguish? Who would ever see Nuare in me, who knows that if he lets himself relax and get attached again, the person he gets attached to will sooner or later die?

Nothing lasts forever, they say, and yet this situation has lasted nearly forever. And still what I want to write about isn't on the page yet. I want to write about my worries and gnawing fear that I will never finish the story I am writing now, or even worse, that it will be the single shittiest, most soppy and inappropriate piece of work that any unfortunate man has ever laid eyes upon, a fucking gay vampire soap opera. I tremble at the thought that I might never manage to escape this existence and be trapped in the gray little nothingness I abhor so much, growing old and biased and insignificant and bitter. I do not want this happening to me. I do not want to end up like that. Yet I don't seem to be getting a single chance to run away, not even a crack in the walls of my cell. Nothing yet. What else is there to be done? What have I missed? What am I doing wrong? What must I do? Is my mind playing tricks on me, refusing to show me what the real situation is? Am I living in self-enforced misery?

I remember seeing this dream a few months ago, where I was in the service of Lucifer/ Saturn, a very stern and impeccably dressed man in his fifties, dark wavy hair and mainly blue-grayish hues on his clothes. I handed him over the list with the things I had to do for him, and there were only three or four tasks left (out of something like fifteen or twenty) and asked if I could be dismissed. He shook his head and showed me the last tasks, pointing out that I had not done them. (If only I could remember what these were, I would throw a party). I protested that they were not so important after all, and even if I did not do them they would be done on their own in some sense, with the passing of time alone. No, he had said, these must be done. And off he had sent me. And here I am still.

If hardship is some form of initiation, I am sure I have failed mine spectacularly, or I am destined to become the next savior of the world. Or something. Or my ass has to grow bigger and very hairy, in order for me to invoke it more effectively to dismiss situations and people.

Thankfully I am not looking for a boyfriend.… Now that would have been verrry funny.

The road to success is paved with lipglossed saucers

I accidentally glance at the cover of a fashion magazine and see the x or y starlet with blond hair and blue eyes and ‘juicy’ lips (like she’d been stung by wasps, it seemed to me.) I take a look at another magazine, this time for men, and find the same type of beauty rubbed in my face, only she’s wearing her garters and high heels and nothing more. I take this discreet means of promotion more seriously and start looking at all the covers, one after the other. Tits, boobs, breasts, bosoms, udders, hips, loins, assmeats, asscheeks, asses, bums, buns, butts, bottoms, buttocks, nether regions, behinds, hindquarters, rumps and most certainly lips. Lips with ‘devious’ makeup so that they look fleshier, lips with silicone, lips with subtle latest fashion shades of neon fire brigade ‘sexy’ red or been dead for a week ‘mysterious’ white or brown. Monstrous lips which from a point onwards remind me of those natives who insert those saucer looking thingies in their lower lips cause they find it sexy. And it may well be for them, but this is Greece in year 2005, and women my age all try to look like Pamela Anderson. Yes, yes, we must stretch our faces, fill our lips and breasts and asses to the point of bursting and be hungry for sex 24/7 and always impeccable and perfectly dressed/ manicured/ depilated, but why? What about the brain department? Why struggle so much?

There is nothing wrong with taking care of one’s self, and I do not weigh four hundred pounds nor look like the protagonist of Nosferatu, but these things from a point onwards are empty. Like the years these sex bombs live when their star no longer shines. It’s a futile struggle against time; there will always be someone younger, prettier, easier. These women find themselves more desperate with each passing year, or early dead. And a corpse is a corpse: good looking or not, it only bothers those few fanatics of necrophilia. Is that what they are interested in?

At least both male and female life style magazines do agree on one thing: they are not looking for women, but inflatable knick-knacks.

The hidden joys of queuing

Art by Joseph Vargo

I was waiting in the Post Office the other day to pay some bills and get a parcel. It was the one with the Vargo art book. (Nipples harden and breath catches; goths will be goths...) In my backpack was Poison Elves #6, and from time to time I'd glimpse inside and smile knowingly. My coherent thinking consisted of the fact I was too grumpy and sleepy (I hate waking early in the morning) and that as soon as I was back home I would roll my body all over the pages of the art book. The only other trail of thought I could follow with some success consisted of a string of swearwords related to me working endless hours daily, and something immensely insulting concerning capitalism, money, responsibilities and adults. They feed people with success stories which mostly consist of somebody being able to buy whatever one wants. But what does one really need? Substitutes of happiness in the form of things amassed around one? A new mobile every three months? A happy family with two kids and a dog? (Personally, I would swap this anytime for a little talk with Mr Marilyn Manson; I have spotted a few surviving brain cells which I want to eradicate from existence. Meh.) Empty promises of fame with one's naked body as a passport? Where does this stop?

Capitalism, success stories and priorities my arse. Which is neither big nor hairy, but adequate for the needed statement.

Drooling (in secret)

Saw one of my ex today, the one I could end up in jail for dating by age difference alone. Kiddo looks good. Big lie. Kiddo looks downright gorgeous, making me wonder what drugs the creators were on when they added the finishing touches. Whatever it was, it was some fucking good shit, you know? They should buy from the same dealer a whole lot more often. Anyway, kiddo says he owes me a hug, and I have to admit I am tempted to ask for more. It's really hard to still be mad at him, though he sometimes does have the tendency to let his mouth flap unchecked. What do you expect, woman? He is only 19, godsdammit. Well, I have stopped trying to be mad a long time ago. I just can't. He makes me proud just by being himself: tall, gorgeous, smiling like a kitten, so very intelligent. His thirst for life betrays his true age. Oh, fuck it. He grows up and I grow old, but can't help but smile whenever our paths cross. Keep up the good work, kid. Kick them in the nuts. Way to go luv.