‘Put your tongue away,’ I said, adoringly.
It was a wonderful day. They wouldn’t even let me pay. And when finally I returned home, I was a changed man, more than ready and one hundred per cent willing to face the challenges of a new year and, if it wasn’t a tad too pretentious, a new life.
I felt like dynamite. In fact, for the first time in thirty years, I no longer felt afraid.
Or at least, not cripplingly so.
CHAPTER FOUR LIKE A LEOPARD ON A DOVE
Crippled by withdrawal, I ache, itch, shiver and whine. I’m beginning to think that stopping both smoking and eating, at the same time, was asking maybe just a little too much of my central nervous system. I think I may—ironically enough—have bitten off more than I can chew. It’s almost 11 a.m. Ordinarily by this time, I would have polished off three bacon sandwiches, a bowl of Sugar Puffs and at least two cups of coffee. Plus biscuits. And right about now, looking forward to my third or fourth cigarette, I’d be heading to the kitchen for another pint of coffee and a pair of chocolate croissants. No wonder I’m such a bloater. I’m lucky to be alive.
The lack of nicotine is beginning to make me edgy. I’d kill for a cigarette. I’d maim and torture for a joint. But they’re right when they say it’s a gateway drug. If I had a joint now, by bedtime I’d be out of my mind on Maryland Cookies and Häagen-Dazs.
In response to the nicotine withdrawal, my fingers are twitching and I’m coughing like a consumptive, spitting up phlegm till I’m retching and short of breath. When my breath does come, it’s bad like a butcher’s latrine, and as I belch away heartburn, my mouth actually tastes brown. I feel awful. My mouth didn’t taste brown when I smoked. What’s going on? Nothing is right. I feel unhealthy, thick screams welling up in my head. I belch more brown and recoil from myself, shaking my wretched face and shivering.
‘Enough!’ I yell.
Pablo jerks his head and looks at me as if to say, ‘How many times have I told you not to do that? Jesus.’
‘Sorry, Pablo.’
But balls to January. I’m better than January. I’m better than one measly month, and I can beat these cravings. I made a promise to myself. I know I make promises to myself at a rate of two or three a week, and I know I really mean it every time, especially in January, but this time—I swear by St Münchhausen—it’s different.
This year I have eschewed New Year’s Resolutions in favour of the infinitely more grandiose ‘New Life Resolutions’, which are as follows:
1 Lose 8 Stone in Excess Body Fat and Become Fit and Healthy
2 Stop Smoking Cigarettes Completely and For Ever
3 Meet and Fall in Fully Reciprocated Love with the Woman of My Dreams
Furthermore, I have enlisted the help of the internet to keep me on the straight and narrow.
I have, as threatened, started a blog. As well as keeping track of my progress with the above resolutions—which I feel fall foul of neither trifling nor unfeasible—I hope that the blog will add monster strength to my convictions. Thus, I have confided in it in much the same way as one might confide in one’s harshest, most mean-spirited friends—friends you inform that you’ve given up smoking, just like that (you may click your fingers for emphasis), making a really big deal of it, shaking your head when they doubt your willpower, smiling all smug and wholly self-satisfied. You are Jesus. ‘O ye of little faith,’ you say, maybe even making a bet or two for good measure. You do all this knowing full well that if you fall from the wagon and fail, they will mock you and sneer at you and publicly humiliate you with a venom that will bring tears to your eyes. They will poke you mercilessly with verbal sticks of shame and cruelty until you weep openly, destroyed by their schadenfreude. Of course, this is exactly why you tell them in the first place. The fear you feel of your friends’ bitching and barbs spurs you on, perhaps even more than your fear of being eaten away by cancer.
So this is why I have started a blog. The blog will take the place of the mean-spirited friends I do not have. I have made grand claims on this blog. I am Jesus, smiling smug and self-satisfied, and fear of the potential opprobrium of feisty strangers is already keeping me focused and incentivised.
What this means, of course, is that I have to find readers. Apparently, the thing to do is to visit other people’s blogs, link and leave comments, create a trail of virtual breadcrumbs and ‘establish a presence’. So this is what I’ve been doing and, so far, I think it’s going quite well. People are coming. Also, interestingly, those that have come—so far, at least—are predominantly female. Which leads me to confront the very real possibility that if I blog well, which I fully intend to, there’s no reason that the Woman of My Dreams won’t happen upon my words and fall instantly, eternally in love with me.
No reason at all.
We shall see.
Of course, blogging is just one way in which the internet can aid me in my search for True Love. There are others. Which is why a few days ago I signed up to Love and Friends, ‘the online dating site for thinking people’. This sounds perfect. Not only does the term ‘thinking people’ describe me to a T, but also, almost certainly, the Woman of My Dreams.
Filling in the profile took me most of a long Sunday evening, but you can’t rush these things. Also, I think it’s essential to be honest, and if at all possible, brutally so. Asked to give my thoughts on the subject of ‘Sports and Exercise’, I wrote: ‘I’m a big man, but I’m out of shape. Horribly out of shape. In a word, I’m fat. In fact, I worked out my body mass index recently and I’m ashamed to report that I’m actually “severely obese”. But before you start sending me your salacious winks, you chubby-chasers, you should know that all this is about to change, just as soon as my coccyx is healed. Indeed, by the end of this year, my body will have become my temple, and I want you—yes, you!—to be first through the doors on worship day. (Friday.) And you don’t even have to take off your shoes. Although it would be the polite thing to do.’
I was, and remain, disproportionately pleased with that.
Asked to describe an ‘Enjoyable Evening Out’, I plumped for the following: ‘Buckets and buckets of dim sum followed by a film premiere in a swish Soho screening room, accompanied by the woman I love. Oh, and she’s in love with me too—I’m fed up with all that unreciprocated nonsense. Incidentally, I wrote the screenplay for the film we’re watching—I may even have directed it—and when it ends, the whole audience jumps to its feet and starts cheering. We can’t hear them, however, because we’re too busy doing it.’
Seriously, what thinking woman in her right mind would fail to fall for that kind of pizzazz? Well—as it turns out—all of them. In the four days since I ‘established my presence’, I’ve received precisely no interest. Neither an unsubscribe nor an ironic poke. I don’t really know why I was anticipating some interest, but I was. I guess I’m really not as amusing as I think I am.
Or, of course, it could just be the fact that I didn’t put up a picture of myself on my profile. I did consider it, but then I thought that doing so would be rather like praying to be picked for the school football team while sitting at the edge of the pitch in a wheelchair. So instead I put up a photo of the Elephant Man. Which, thinking about it, is rather like praying to be picked for the school football team while sitting at the edge of the pitch in a wheelchair, dressed as the Elephant Man.
I know it’s potentially counter-productive—although not necessarily—but I’m really not ready to put my face on the internet yet. Actually, there’s more to it than that.
In a nutshell, it’s a reaction to the fact that