Enter the Bad Men, Part 1.

When it comes to relationships, my friends tell me that I’m a cautionary tale. While I may not necessarily agree with that assessment, I can kind of see where they’re coming from. You’ve already been introduced to Forrest, to Lloyd and to Antonio the bad Jehovah’s Witness. Allow me to introduce the first of the three of my other memorable exes, whose presence in my life helped to shape that kind of thinking.

Enter Ed the Nudist. I started seeing him during my first year at uni after meeting him on a website. That year, along with discovering that a number of males in my immediate vicinity found me attractive (which went to my head a bit) I also discovered dating websites – both the ones where you claim to look for ‘friends’ when you actually mean ‘sex with no strings attached’ and the ones where not only is sex on the menu, but you get to specify what kind of sex you’re after – dirty phone calls, an illicit affair, sado-masochism, threesomes…

I can’t remember which type of website Ed was from, but I can tell you that he was a petulant, stroppy 30-something year computer specialist who lived with his mother, whom he took on honeymoon with him when he got married, and who insisted on being nude as much as possible. Now, I’m no prude and have nothing against nudity: at uni I was a life model for the Warwick Art Society, which was the only time in my life I’ve ever been referred to as ‘the model’ and which was a very cold and uncomfortable way of earning £7.50/hour. Furthermore, one of the artists used me for her project, which was the most unflattering nude portrait imaginable. I had no idea that I had so many folds and wrinkles.

Also, when I was eighteen, I discovered naturist beaches. When I went to my first one – Wreck Beach in Vancouver – I was terribly self-conscious at first, convinced that everyone was staring at me, but then I realised that they weren’t (nude beach etiquette dictates that you shouldn’t look below the neck if you’re talking to a woman), and that it was the best way of enjoying the sun and the sea without getting half the sand on the beach inside one’s bikini, so whenever possible, I do seek out beaches where clothing is optional. The only unfortunate bit was when I got propositioned by a dodgy guy as I was leaving. To entice me, he told me that he hadn’t had sex for ages (angling for the sympathy vote) and said: “I don’t stick my dick in just anyone, you know” (that was to make me feel extra-special). To get away, I told him that my name was Zelda Pinwheel and gave him a wrong phone number.

Furthermore, I’m all about equal opportunities, and believe that women should be allowed to go topless in public in the summer, should they so desire, just as men are allowed to. However, I also believe that there’s a time and place for nudity, and I can’t quite forgive Ed for traumatising my then sixteen-year old sister, who caught him sunning himself in our parents’ garden in all his (modest) glory. Having never seen a naked man before (to the best of my knowledge) she later asked me: “Is he supposed to be well-endowed?” and I had to give her the facts: that no, given that the world average erection length is allegedly five inches, barely scraping the average is nothing to be proud of, especially if you’re a black man. She absorbed that information, wide-eyed.

(Actually, I’m not too sure that the statistics are accurate. Not too long ago, I did an erection survey out of scientific curiosity (i.e. my own personal amusement): I questioned my male friends regarding erection length and the degree of shrinkage/extension between the dormant and non-dormant state (my theory: if your ancestors come from warmer climes, there’d be less shrinkage/extension. My results: inconclusive) and from the erection length results I’ve concluded that either my friends are liars, or the accepted statistics are bogus. I mean, unless there’s actually been a mass worldwide erection study, how on earth can they say that five inches is the average? It reminds me of someone saying that no two snowflakes are the same – something I repeated as a kid, parrot-fashion, thinking it was really profound, until it occurred to me that there’s no way anyone could look at all the snow flakes in the world at the same time.)

In any case, Ed had hang-ups about his size and because of that, he enjoyed getting attention from random women. He introduced me to that den of iniquity and sin that is ‘Rios’, a so-called ‘clothing-optional health spa’ at Kentish Town in London. For the most part, it was alright; since it was very quiet on weekdays and women got free entry due to the gender imbalance, I’d stop off in London on my way to and from uni to have a peaceful soak in the Jacuzzis. However, when it was busy, it was a meat market, and you had to watch out for people who’d try and grope you underwater. Usually a swift kick and a glare did the trick, though. ‘Rios’ has several little rooms upstairs where people could retire for a ‘massage’ and you quickly learned to differentiate between people who were offering a straightforward back rub and those after a ‘massage’ massage. I had no objections to having the perpetual knots kneaded out of my shoulders, and on one occasion accepted an invitation from a young man who I thought was offering me a bona fide back rub.

The exchange went like this:

(We come into the little massage room)
Him: “On your knees!”
Me: “I beg your pardon?!” (He must’ve been watching a lot of porn in order to reach the erroneous conclusion that women like to be ordered around and enjoy giving head to random people they’ve just met).
Him: (less certainly) “Erm…on your knees?”
Me: (indignantly) “You haven’t offered to give me head first!”
Him: (looking down at his feet) “I’ve never given a woman head.”
Me: (sternly) “How old are you? Twenty-four?! Well, go away and learn!”

That incident kept me amused for a long time.

On Saturday nights, a large room would open up upstairs and Ed brought me along one time because it was ‘couples night’ only, which translated as ‘swingers’ night’. I wasn’t a participant; merely a spectator and it was certainly an eye opener. I couldn’t figure out how people could have unprotected sex with others they’ve just met; weren’t they afraid of catching STDs? Apparently not.

Now, Ed wanted some attention from a middle-aged woman who came along with her partner, a fat, hairy, balding guy, and it just wasn’t my thing. I didn’t have an issue with the woman touching Ed, but I wasn’t going to get anywhere near her remarkably unattractive partner, and said as much. We left with Ed in a huff, but not before the guy said: “Hope to see you again some time…when you’re more open to new experiences”, and laughed nastily. The whole thing made my skin crawl and I wanted to get out of ‘Rios’ as quickly as possible. It was 3am, and Ed said that he’d put me up at his place if it were a matter of life and death, but the thing is, he was renovating his bedroom and he had nowhere to put the giant teddy bear that his ex-wife had left him but on the other side of his bed, meaning there was no room. To be honest, I didn’t particularly want to be near him either at that point, so I told him to drop me off at Kings Cross, not realising that the train station wouldn’t open for another three hours. In the end, I curled up on the ground near some homeless people who were playing cards, and fell asleep. No one bothered me, but the incident really bothered Xerxes* who gave me a lecture on how dangerous it was and how foolish I’d been and that I should’ve called him.

That was in April, and yet it wasn’t until December of the same year that I cut Ed out off my life completely. The question is, why did it take me so long?

On second thought...

Do you suppose that bluntly propositioning someone would intimidate the propositioned party?  It's just occurred to me that my little Captain Carlos spiel was a bit like a scene out of  Star Trek: Voyager, where the statuesque Seven of Nine, half-woman, half-Borg, finds out that Ensign Harry Kim has a crush on her and corners him, poker-faced as always: "Do you wish to copulate? Don't worry. I will not hurt you."  Kim doesn't know what to do with himself.

Do men prefer a direct approach or do they prefer to be seduced in a delicate and roundabout manner?
One of the reasons why I favour the direct approach is because I''m a bit fick when it comes to matters of the heart (or the loins) and the other party has to make it abundantly clear that they're interested. Their taking my hand and placing it on their thigh usually does the trick. A direct approach means that there's no room for misunderstanding, but it also means that there's no room to retreat with honour, should things not go according to plan. Perhaps humour is the way to go. Many a true thing is said in jest, after all. 

Captain Carlos returns to torment me.

Captain Carlos is once again brought to my attention. I’ve had a recent cyberchat with Hermes* about the elusive captain, and I’ve been agonising over how best to present this as a blog entry. I’ve decided that it may be quite fun to leave it largely in its original form (with minor commentary from yours truly).


Hermes*: Dobroi nochi

Anna K: Buenas noches

Hermes*: Cecilia* and I had a conversation with the Capitán yesterday that even made me blush (It actually doesn’t take that much to make Hermes* blush, to be fair)

Anna K: Really!! What about, pray tell?

Hermes*: he was describing in quite graphic detail his preferences in bed

Anna K: what does he prefer?

Hermes*: his tastes are nothing perverted, but he is certainly experimental (Details! I need details!)

Anna K: You're giving nothing away here! How did you get onto that topic? And can you keep him in Lima until late June?

Hermes*: he was telling us that as he gets older, he shags for longer - 4 hours is his record (Be still, my beating heart.)

Anna K: Am having heart palpitations here!!

Hermes*: I don´t really know how we got onto the subject - it was like a "recommendations" session where Carlos told us exactly what we had to take advantage of while we are still young

Anna K: It seems he still takes advantage of things, young or not!

Hermes*: he mentioned that he really loves giving head to women (Oh, my.)

Anna K: Come to mama!

Hermes*: absolutely - at the moment he is chasing his 28 year old god-daughter

Anna K: So much for going for older women! Isn't it kind of incest if it's with your god daughter?

Hermes*: Probably

Anna K: So he does make exceptions for some younger women...The bugger still hasn't written to me! And now you're tormenting my libido!

Hermes*: He also said that he would have no problems being with a 13 year old girl, as long as she was sexually mature and in love. When I said he could go to jail, he said that he would relish the opportunity of standing up in court and arguing the morals of his actions (I bet he’s just playing devil’s advocate.)

Anna K: I'm mature! Oh pick me! Pick me!

Hermes*: Are you mature???

Anna K: I sure am! More mature than a hypothetical 13 year old, anyway!

Hermes*: Anyway, I thought you would like the story! Some thoughts to keep you warm at night.

Anna K: You torment me! When is he planning to leave? Will he not linger for another month or two?

Hermes*: I think he is looking for reasons to delay his departure - he is a bit scared to take the first step into the unknown

Anna K: GIVE HIM THOSE REASONS

Hermes*: how long do you need him to delay by?

Anna K: Oh, until June 24th or so. Possibly a few days earlier.

Hermes*: That´s not so long, i´ll see what I can do

Anna K: Thank you. It would also help if you were to embellish my best qualities and lay it on thick about how intelligent, funny and attractive I am.

Hermes*: I might

Hermes*: By the way, a while ago the Captain told me that I was cruel to torment you about him and asked me not to

Anna K: You ARE cruel, but I did enjoy hearing the above details. Now to use my feminine wiles on him...

Hermes*: I made a judgement call on that one - I reckon you are happier in the long run if you know things like that

Anna K: Good call.


What I don’t understand is why on earth the captain thinks I’m madly in love with him. I’m not. There’s treachery afoot, methinks. I do, however, think that he’s a very attractive man and I wouldn’t mind staying the night. I currently lead a monastic existence, but would be prepared to make an exception for Captain Carlos. Perhaps Hermes* can suggest to him that it’s in his best interest to wait for me to turn up because as someone well-travelled, I can give him good advice on planning his epic journey around the world.

Since I don’t know how to flirt, and subtlety is not my strongest suit, if he is in Lima when I get there, perhaps I should just say to him: “Please don’t be afraid. No matter what certain people may have been saying, I’m not in love with you. Nor do I wish to marry you, have a long-term relationship with you or tie you down in any way. I just want to go to bed with you.”

Too blunt? Too clinical? Too devoid of romance? I wonder what his response would be. After all, I’m not asking for much. Quisiera apprender hacer el amor en español and who better to teach me than El Capitán…

The Ketchup Incident, or Why Good Women Go For Bad Men.

April 13th was the fifth anniversary of the last time I set foot in the United States. Five years ago, in the wee hours of the morning, I found myself lying in the road amidst broken glass near the junction of Imperial and Fourteenth, in the crack district of San Diego, California. A large puddle of dark red liquid was spreading beneath me, and the same liquid was bubbling out of my mouth by the time Forrest, my then partner, approached me. However, I was not dying, and nor was I grievously injured. “Don’t try to move!” he told me in a panic. He didn’t know what to do. He was very cross when I finally stood up and he spotted the telltale bottle lying nearby. “Ketchup!” he exclaimed in disgust.

You may ask: what on earth would compel a seemingly sane and intelligent young woman to pull a stunt like that, to the point of filling her mouth with ketchup to be ‘coughed up’ as an extra realistic touch? Well, by that point I’d reached my tether with regard to Forrest’s crack addiction and, having gone through all the motions – the anger, the pleading, the reasoning, the guilt-tripping - it was my attempt to shake him up a bit, to try and bring across the message that he was playing with his life and possibly with the lives of those who cared for him.

Ironically, I actually didn’t feel at all concerned for my own personal safety because at that point in my life I still felt immortal, protected by the cloak of fury I wore every night when I stalked the dark streets in search on him. The reason I gave myself at the time was that although Forrest’s health withstood almost twenty years of excesses, something finally had to give, and if I happened to be nearby when he had a heart attack or suffered respiratory failure due to his crack use, I’d at least have the presence of mind to perform CPR and try to get him to a hospital, unlike his cronies, who’d just rifle through his pockets and leave him for dead. I couldn’t rest peacefully, knowing that a loved one was out there somewhere on the mean night streets of San Diego, harming himself, and I had to do something, anything, even if it involved lathering myself with a condiment and playing dead. In hindsight, it was probably all a manifestation of my need for control and my past tendency to accept responsibility for other people’s actions and circumstances out of my control in order to beat myself up endlessly for the inevitable failures.

“You can’t save me!” Forrest yelled during one of our many rows. At that point, after weeks and weeks of sleepless nights, exhaustion, pleading, cajoling and impotent anger, I was finally beginning to accept that I may not be able to drag another human being out of the quagmire of his addiction through the sheer force of my will. It was up to him.
“No, but you can save yourself.”

He didn’t like my going after him because he was more concerned for my safety than I was. I had one semi-hairy incident when one time, walking along a deserted and poorly lit night street, I noticed a large dark SUV creeping behind me with no headlights on. I stopped. The car stopped. I turned a corner. It turned a corner. At one point, the driver – a diminutive latino – got out and said: “I’m not following you, I promise.” Yeeees. In spite of his assurances, the car seemed to be tracking my movements very accurately indeed until we got to Market Street. I popped into the 7/11 and he parked across the street. I had two choices: to try to stay in the 7/11 until morning, which wouldn’t have worked if he had a gun and wanted to force me into his car at gunpoint, or to make a dash for it. I waited until the driver came into the 7/11 and then sprinted the five blocks separating me from our apartment and safety. What a rush!

On another occasion, when offered some crack by a young black guy, I told him that I didn’t have enough money. “You ain’t got five bucks?”
“It starts with five bucks, and then it takes your life. You know that.” He didn’t dispute that.

Forrest was absolutely furious with me over the ketchup incident because even though it’s not saying much, he actually cared about me as much as he could care about anyone. It also very nearly cost us our residence in that apartment block: in the morning, we got a letter under the door, telling us to leave by the following day. It took all my charm and all my grovelling skills to persuade the man in charge, an ex- Marine with little tolerance for drama, that it was all a stupid prank on my part. “I run a tight ship,” he told me. “I ain’t got time for troublemakers.” I told him that the receptionist got it wrong: that I came back in the wee hours covered in ketchup, not blood. I showed him that I was unscathed and offered to fetch the ketchup-soaked T-shirt. “You wouldn’t be dipping it in ketchup for my benefit, would you?” I assured him that I would not. Finally, I milked my Britishness for all it was worth when it turned out that the manager was a fan of “Faulty Towers”, doing my best Manuel impression until he relented with a hint of a smile.

It should have ended there, but it didn’t, which begs the question: why did I persevere with this trans-Atlantic relationship for another couple of years, even after being banned from the States - worrying about Forrest, calling him, arranging to meet up with him in the dreary Mexican border city of Tijuana at great personal expense before finally coming to a peaceful realisation two years ago that it was completely and irreversibly over? Why did this man, with whom I ultimately had little in common, end up playing such a major role in my life?

Harun al-Rashid* told me once that I treat my life as play in which I’m the star, and if I find that things are getting boring, I do something suitably wacky to liven things up. That used to be true, and I did thrive on drama, on the extreme highs and lows. If my life didn’t have angst in it, it just wasn’t complete. My entanglement with Forrest certainly appealed to my sense of drama. We met by chance, when I wandered into a barbershop on Broadway, San Diego, in the summer 2001, to get a haircut, and ended up staying in San Diego for several days longer than planned. So many variables: if I’d decided to have my hair cut on a different day, or by a different person, or if I hadn’t accepted Forrest’s dinner invitation – my life might have worked out very differently. I may not have met my death row friends, or worked in Ukraine, or been banned from the States – since all this stemmed from a chance fling many years ago.

Perhaps I should never have tried to turn this fling into something grander than it was, but I did, and for six years, it gave me focus and purpose, as I paid my annual visit to the States and then to Mexico. I realise now that I loved the idea of crossing the world for love, without stopping to ask myself if that’s what it was. Plus, I once found him very attractive, before crack weathered his handsome features. When I met him, he asked me how old I was (presumably to check if I were legal given my youthful appearance) and told me his age. I was a couple of weeks short of twenty; he was fifty. It gave me a few seconds’ pause, since I thought he was in his early forties, but in the end decided that it made no difference. On the spot, I made up the ‘guideline’ that I’ve abided by up till now: it’s okay as long as the man in question is no older than my parents. That gives me a nice 35-year margin to play with.

There’s no question that I really cared about Forrest, but I also suffered from white-knight-in-shining-armour-itis, wanting to rescue damsels (or crack-addicted barbers) in distress. When in 2004, I arrived in San Diego, not knowing whether I’d find him since we’d fallen out the previous year, within two hours I knew that he was doing time for drug possession at the Otay Mesa County Jail out of town (in the States, addiction still largely counts as a crime, rather than a disease), and I’d booked a time to see him for the following week, before returning to San Francisco. My play even had a sountdtrack: when the Greyhound bus was flying through the night to San Diego the following week, I had “Holding Out For A Hero” playing on a loop. Then came the euphoria of the reunion, followed by his calling me upon his release, and our long heartfelt conversations during the brief period of time when he was clean, and living in a church-run halfway house. Then when I came to stay with him in 2005, his sobriety lasted exactly one day. I was slow on the uptake because I was in denial about the extent of his addiction and also because I then still believed in ‘positive conditioning’ – that if you nurture and encourage the best in someone, it will flourish, just as negative conditioning can reduce someone to whatever other people say they are. Maybe positive conditioning does work, but the subject has to be receptive.

I was asked recently: “Why do you think you used to go for the men that you did?” and I responded that perhaps since I have a bad relationship with my father – a traumatised man unable to get emotionally close to anyone, and couldn’t fix that, I tried to ‘fix’ other traumatised men, though it's not as simple as that. Another reason is my being drawn to the dark side of humanity – psychological problems, emotional frailty, addiction. I want to know what makes people tick, though treating my lovers as interesting psychological cases is probably not the way to build a healthy relationship.

I certainly found Forrest interesting for as long as I wanted to get to the root of his trauma or perhaps I projected onto him the qualities I wanted him to possess. One of eleven children, he grew up in relative poverty, beaten regularly by his father, dodged the draft when the Vietnam war came about, worked as an engineer in Iran until the Americans got kicked out in '79, was married twice, then turned to drugs in his early forties when the second marriage broke up, and was on the run from the law the last time I spoke to him, having dodged an order to enter rehab in California and having fled to Vegas. He’d been running all his life, and I suppose it’s quite fitting that a psychologically traumatised and emotionally unavailable man should get involved with me – someone who’s also been emotionally ‘on the run’ for years and who used to be so terrified of real emotional involvement that going for men unable to ‘threaten’ me with such seemed like the ideal solution. We certainly made quite a pair!

We tend to gravitate towards people we instinctively feel an emotional resonance with, and I must’ve felt a connection with him. My relationship with Forrest came to an end for several reasons: we could no longer see each other, because while I could see him across the border in Mexico, as of 2007, US citizens can no longer cross land borders without a passport and a fugitive from the law can’t get one. I also came to see that my ‘enabling’ did more harm than good; that by trying to protect Forrest from himself and from the consequences of his actions I prevented him from hitting rock bottom and making the decision to sort himself out. Finally, once my emotional patterns changed, he was no longer what I wanted or needed.

Okay, so the above explains why I was attracted to Forrest. But what about other characters – Pantera, Bill on death row, Ed the Nudist…?

To be continued….