Ruby Stark

My dear Cat,

I am sitting in my kitchen in the dark, smoking a cigarette and listening to Bob Dylan’s Idiot Wind.

Thank you so much for the book. I have never read any porn, nor SM literature. I am going to tuck myself up in bed with it after I write to you.

It was really good to talk to you today: a contact point with caring.

It has been a strange, disembodied day. After work, I went for a sedate drink with some colleagues, then left to meet my new friend. I took the U-Bahn across Berlin, got a measured happy birthday text from Matte and then walked through the snow listening to increasingly brutal music: Lone Wolf and Cub, then The Blood Brothers and finally the raging Converge. I stood outside the gallery and smoked a cigarette, freezing cold, feeling increasingly disconnected.

Brown and her two friends arrived and we talked and looked at paintings. Then, we went for a truly fabulous Italian meal at a place that felt like a sort of peasant restaurant with people at long tables talking and eating as a part of their lives, rather than as a special event. The atmosphere had the texture of good, nourishing bread. I ate buttery spinach and ricotta parcels with melting Parmesan. I will take you there.

We went to a weird casual hipster bar and drank some beer.

It felt peculiar to spend my birthday with strangers in a foreign city in the dark, snowy weather. But it was living very close to the surface, very in the right fucking now. And they were so kind to take me out, and it was a good time.

Tell me about Kilroy.

I have begun work on your CD. It is an especially trickalicious task because I know nothing of your taste in music.

With Flick, I was slightly surprised we didn’t become more frequent lovers. Other than that, I saw him as a remote friend, but someone I could closely relate to. But I haven’t seen him in years.

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about Potential. And I think my life hasn’t moved on from hers either. Especially fashion-wise.

When is the queer party? Tonight or tomorrow? What are you going to wear with your shorts?

Sleep tight, dear Cat,
Many kisses
Ruby

when I was about to have a big operation to sort out what had made me die, I was pretty convinced that I wouldn’t make it through the operation, and he was there with me in the morning and he sat with me while I felt worried and he told me he loved me.

when I was about to have a big operation to sort out what had made me die, I was pretty convinced that I wouldn’t make it through the operation, and he was there with me in the morning and he sat with me while I felt worried and he told me he loved me.

so though I’d reached a perspective on our relationship, he surprised me
but if that hadn’t happened, I would still be happy to be his sister and to hang out sometimes and know he won’t call

to me, these people are like immortals

they’re different from the rest of us, and that means they sometimes don’t behave as we would wish

but the question with each one is “Am I happy to drink Ambrosia occasionally and then go hungry the rest of the time?” And, for me, with my brother, my friend Grain, Dusk, my friend Cayman, I have decided “yes”

because in the end, we don’t seek these people for their ability to mop up water

Dear Cat,

I hope you’re having a v lovely time with your friends. They’re lucky bugs having you cook for them. I want some Cat food!

Maybe the post will still come. Having said that, both my Dad and my new bank have sent things that haven’t arrived. I’ll give you my work address so you can send me things there, should I be so lucky. You may receive an enticing-looking parcel from Amazon next week, but you MUST NOT open it until your birthday, on pain of confiscation of your new sex toys.

Skinny-wise, I am lucky with my metabolism, I guess. Also, I eat sporadically, and am not particularly into chocolate or sweets. I do also kind of watch what I eat: I like preserving my self-image of a lean whip of a lad, or delicate reed of a girl.

I cannot wait to experience your portable radiator properties. Needless to say, they will be especially welcome in Berlin. You could probably rent yourself out here and make some fast money. Actually, forget that last – I claim all German rights.

I think you’re exactly right about small things getting a paragraph, and major events getting passing mentions.

Have you decided about going to the Sculpture Park with their highnesses?

I don’t remember anything about dying – not falling, not clutching my chest in a pantomime fashion. I have a few memories of the hack weekend a couple of days prior, but my last proper memory is of going to see my little sister’s band play in Birthtown a week before. I have very few memories of intensive care, where I was for a week. My first post-dead memory is of a nurse asking me how I felt and me sardonically saying, “Terrific”, and my Dad saying, “Hello, love.” Apparently, they’d just got me breathing on my own for the first time.

As a portrayal of honest feelings and real life, this blew my head off:

“‘be vulnerable with me and expose your weaknesses and i will glory them to the heavens and you will feel safe and special and love me’.”

And then, I laughed out loud at Strip’s riposte:

“except she said ‘what is this? some sort of teen quiz?’”

My, she is an acerbic one.

I am awaiting the lesbians’ decision like an anxious girl who has given her phone number to someone fit. I looked online for more apartments today in that “I totally have other options that I would be just as happy with” kind of way. However, I will have to wait until Tuesday for a decision.

I saw another place today, and it was fine, but the two co-housemates were a bit conventional and the place wasn’t nearly as nice.

I was thinking more about conventional roles in romance. I remember I once went on a date and then home with this bloke. He lived in Northerncity, but he was just a guitarist in a grind band and not a politico and it felt good to be outside the pond. We went back to mine and sat on the sofa and watched a couple of DVDs and it felt so straight with his hand resting on my leg, and in bed he was like an eager lad and it was all very refreshing. It felt nice to be straight, nice to be a girl and he a boy.

But, conversely, I remember this time before Matte and I were going out where we fucked at my friend’s house in his housemate’s vacant bed and I was the stud boy and she the delicate flower, me with my clothes on and then lying alone on the edge of the bed afterwards and her the wilting girl wanting to be held.

I hope you’ve had a splendid evening.

Love,

Ruby xxxx

—

Dear Cat,

Yes, I am fine. Not dead. Your concern = v sweet. I hope you’ve had a good walk on the Moor. I remember Puppy and I went to clamber around the Sheep and Lamb, me woefully ill-equipped in school-girl shoes and a dress. It got dark and we went to the pub and ate supper with his girlfriend at the time and a couple of her friends. It was a Sunday and everything had that cosy, sheltered feeling of autumn and safety and friendship. I think that at the time, one rarely recognises those moments for what they are: heaven.

I’m glad your friends got back to the land of wine safely. Wine for breakfast definitely has potential. We could give it a whirl when you come to visit.

“He’s not yours.” Wowchers. That is brilliant. My Mum says that holding her children for the first time was like falling in love. What was it like to hold your son in your arms?

Matte and I were in a monogamous relationship for the first year. She was faithful, I was not. I started going out with Cassette and saw her for a few months. Matte and I broke up. We started seeing one another again at the G20 in April. (It was very romantic. I was at the calm bit all day and she was at Bank. The last four hundred of us got thrown off Bishopsgate around one a.m. I rang her on a whim and went to meet her at the convergence space, a huge office block. And we sat up for hours, holding hands and talking. Eventually, we bedded down in sleeping bags on the floor. The police did an abortive raid about six a.m. and then I got up a couple of hours later, left, got searched by the police and then walked to work in the warm Spring sun.) That last month before I died, I helped run a geek hack weekend, went to another great one, saw a ton of bands, started falling in love with a very different Matte, saw a lot of my family, visited Matte several times, went to a protest and the London Zine Symposium for the first time and revelled in the hotting London streets. If that had been my last month, like, ever, that would have been OK. So, Matte and I were non-monogamous when we got together again. She started seeing a bloke called Abel and I had a very strange experience where I went to her house-leaving party and spent the weekend with her and her boyfriend.

Non-monogamy is not my natural state, I know that. However, I slowly got used to it with Matte. I have a jealous streak, but it is balanced by a ruthless self-possession.

I am v glad you had a lovely evening in. It sounds like you were doing some good Cattime like I recommended.

Yesterday, I went for coffee with a friend of a friend who kindly invited me to her birthday party next weekend. In the evening, I went to a huge squat in Friedrichshain. They are fighting eviction and are having a week-long festival to raise money and support. I watched a woman play a good set of ghostly noise and shimmering singing. I stood against the wall and watched the next band set up. They began with the vampire/angel/chiffon-wrapped singer reading out a piece of text in German in a witch’s voice. The noise began and it was that harrowing, grinding, bassy type of noise. It crescendoed slowly and I began to feel slightly worried. The singer began painting strips of a t-shirt with black oil and handing them out to members of the audience. After twenty minutes, I realised I was actually rather unnerved and so I walked outside to get some air. I smoked a cigarette leaning against the wall. Some people were standing around a barrel fire, adding smashed up palette wood and talking. Anarchos and punks and squatters and others filtered out into the street and I looked up and watched the sparks from the fire and looked at the huge squat across the road with banners and graffiti all over it and the occupied church down the road and felt like it was another world.

Love love love,

Ruby xxxx

—

C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-Cat,

Meep! The first weekend in May (Saturday 1st) is the one my friends are coming on. Second weekend (Saturday 8th May), third weekend (Saturday 15th May), fourth weekend all free. End of March-wise, I am free 22nd March to 2nd April (going on hol with family on 3rd April).

Top marks with resisting the pull of Strip.

Are you tizzing about the same aspects of the new job decision, or has your thinking changed? If so, what to?

So glad the walk was good. Sometimes that is just what is required to clear one’s head.

I sit in an office with five other guys, including my boss. They are all nice. Too early to tell who will become friends. Free lunch with the rest of the company is super tasty and you get to talk to people from other departments. If you are in Berlin on a weekday, you could come for lunch as my guest. Yay!

There is a posh coffee machine, and you can set your own hours. Most people seem to wander in about eleven.

I got talking to a lady in the kitchen about Neukölln. She said there’s a section of the street I might move to [I hear about the apartment tomorrow morning] where it’s all women-only Turkish places where they do saunas and massages and stuff. I said I’ve never been to a place like that because I’m always worried about protocol and that I’m still always going to the bar to order a coffee in Berlin cafes and getting ushered to a seat and then being waited upon and she said she’d take me there if I wanted.

I set off home about seven, my head still swimming with code, snow falling like billy-o. I got back and walked through the courtyard in my house and slipped on some concealed ice and did a proper cartoon-style spill backwards and ended up flat-out in the snow. Strangely, I started laughing. Perhaps because I was brought back down to the real world.

Wow, I’m sorry this is a lame email. I’m tired and I said I’d talk to my little sister about her boybrolio at half eight GMT.

Hmm, how can I spice things up in the last paragraph? Ah, I know, I’ll turn to Aimee. This song and this video make me want to cry, jump for joy, fuck, scream, hug my family and friends and kill myself all at once: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmYdix-XGmg

Love and kisses,

Ruby xxx

—

Cat, queen bee,

Perhaps you could suggest to Strip that the reciprocal of your food and washing machine and internet and warmth is her having sex with you.

Hmm, Berlin stories have been a bit thin on the ground this week. I’ve been working until seven or eight each night because there’s so much to learn and I want to make a good impression. So, I come home completely pooped and trough down some supper and then go to bed. But that’s OK, because work is pretty fun and it’s a great environment. This evening, people trickled out of the office, and lights went out one by one, until I was the only one left in a little pool of light. I had several small breakthroughs with the code and went home happy.

I hope you have a v lovely evening with Red. I think I might vaguely remember her. New friends = good.

V glad to hear that your present arrived. In order to ease the pain of waiting, I might just send you something else that you can open upon arrival. If you blow me a kiss across the Channel, that is.

My address at work is:

Yes, free lunch every day. Super tasty and nutritious. It was vegetable-loaded soup today, with salad and pudding (not in the same bowl – that would be icky). You will be my very special guest.

I bought a soft-pack of Lucky Strikes today and I feel very cool with them stuffed in my top shirt pocket. I also got asked for directions. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help, by I must be developing a cool I-totally-know-my-way-around-Berlin face.

Hey so I was wondering. You know when you have downtime, like on a bus when you haven’t brought a book, or when falling asleep, or when you’re in a boring meeting, what does your mind turn to?

There’s this scene in Goodfellas that has always stuck with me where Henry pulls off a big score and presents the money he made to his mentor, Jimmy, played by Robert De Niro. Jimmy smiles this huge grin and clasps Henry to him in fatherly-in-the-gangness and says, “It’s gonna be a good summer.”

I think it’s gonna be a good summer.

Love,

Ruby

I haven’t written much here for the last few days. I think this is because all of my introspection and revealing and reporting is going on in my letters to Cat. So, here they are:

Hi Cat,

I was thinking about what you were saying about scars: embarrassing vs prideful. Like, I’m kind of quietly proud of all the scars I have on my chest from heart surgery. But the one on my abdomen that was made when a surgeon removed my undescended testes makes me feel shame. If anyone ever asks, I say it’s from where I had my appendix removed (an inadequate lie: I still have my appendix and, even if I didn’t, they would not have been removed through an incision in that place).

I’m really glad you’ve appeared in my life, too. I’ve been thinking about you quite a lot ever since that first conversation we had a little while ago. I feel very alone at the moment. My friends and family are v. supportive, but there’s something that feels really good about getting to know you at the same time as getting to know Berlin.

And I totally didn’t ask about your shopping. What did you get? I don’t own any sex toys. What a loser.

Having your heart listened to is super sexy. “Shall I remove my shirt, first?” I fell in love with several nurses when I was in hospital. One was this Canadian lady who was super efficient and brusquely caring and who I talked about sitcoms with. Another was this woman from Scarborough or somewhere who was very pretty and curvy and innocent and motherly and just begged to be corrupted. I was in hospital for two months, which meant two months without coming. I almost forgot what sex was. Well, until I fucked Matte in the public loos in the hospital.

What job are you applying for?

I am slowly building up a calendar of things to explore in Berlin. Thus far on the list: a weird puppet show, a punk piano/violin band, a showing of The Trial, an all-girl, three-part harmony band, a visit to the local queer bar, supper at the Vöku at a squat and pizza at another Vöku. Other than that, I have been walk walk walking around the interesting streets to get a feel for the place and going to weird cafes and vegan restaurants and record and bric-a-brac shops and admiring the graffiti and the jaunty green men with their hats tipped back at the zebra-crossings. I have also been shivering.

Ruby xxxx

——

Cat, Egyptian Goddess,

No, no strap-on. I’ve always wanted to try one out, but somehow never got around to it. Maybe it’s like group sex: props seem like they would usher in the unwelcome real world.

Maybe I should sex up my weirdness. Unfortunately, I am very enamoured of dressing like a teenage boy, except for the few times when I dress up like a real girl.

Today, I queued for weeks to get my Einwohnermeldeamt, my residence registration card. Being in the Bürgeramt felt like how I imagine Eastern Berlin in the cold war: relying on the whims of a capricious official to give your paper a stamp that will let you cross the border to safety.

[Side note. I was talking to my sister, and she asked me if I remembered losing my memory (!) for the week after I came out of intensive care. I said I did, vaguely. She told me I'd told her the same story five times in a row one day when she visited me. My step-Dad had been trying to find my ward and was wandering around looking lost and a bit mad with his glasses perched on his nose and his hair awry. An Aussie bloke in scrubs came up to him and said, "Are you lost, mate?" And my step-Dad said, "I'm looking for the, um, the, uhh, the..." "The memory loss clinic, mate?"]

Now, I’m off for some supper at the vokü in Friedrichshain. More later.

I have returned. Forgive me, I’m a little drunk.

Food wasn’t being served at the vokü so I went to a squat bar down the road and talked to a nice American chap about squatting in Philadelphia. The punks were throwing booze about the place and there was death metal playing on the PA and candles everywhere and people smoking indoors. The guy went to play pool and I sat at the bar and felt badass. I tried to go to the queer bar near my house, went into the wrong door and had a drink alone leaning against the bar pretending I was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a rent boy in Mysterious Skin. I found the right place and it was v. nice and queer and I got talking to a German woman about music. I ordered a lemonade in French by accident and worried about how far my German is from actual usability. I staggered home and talked via Skype to my little sister about her boy troubles. She’s heartbroken, poor thing.

Your imbroglio with Strip is a tricky one. Is it only that that is making you feel maudlin? Was it purely because she is in love with this Miles chap that you stopped seeing each other? I’ve always been in the if-it-doesn’t-happen-at-first-it-won’t-ever camp with love. However, writing that, I realise that Matte and I were friends (with benefits) for years before we started going out. I think we kind of grew into each other. So maybe I should revise my theory.

If things weren’t that great when you were seeing Strip, how would you like them to be if you got together? What do you imagine? (Besides Yorkshire Gold and hot sex.)

Yes, that is all of my address. There are mail boxes on the ground floor of all the apartment buildings here, and Ruby Stark should get it in the right one. I am v v excited about what you are going to send me.

You still haven’t told me what sex toys you bought.

I think you’re so fucking right about what I am searching for when I move. There is something about the period before I make any friends where things are simultaneously terrifying and filled with possibility. And I am obsessed with not stagnating: in politics, in the music I make, in my friends, in my pastimes, my abilities. In my head, it goes: got Unitown sussed so off to Northerncity, got Northerncity sussed so off to London and so forth.

I think of you very fondly at your house in Northerncity, or running about. In fact, it kind of feels like I’m going through Berlin with you in a part of my head: thinking about what you would think of some of the things I see, or what we would do if you were here.

Love,

Ruby x

———

Cat,

OK, the lasagne is in the oven, I have a cigarette and I am ready to write.

What is lindamc sausage? Your meal sounds delicious. I wish I was coming to dinner! I am sure your lad and Strip will be swooning in your arms after they eat it. (Swooning with love, not food poisoning, obviously.)

Sadly, I am pretty much always Ruby. A childish person occasionally comes out when I drink a lot: water/beer fights, scuffles etc. I have a kind of alter ego when I write my anonymous blog/diary. It’s still me, but because I write about sex and love and private stuff and how I feel, it’s the inside of me. I think your idea of using an alter ego in tricky situations is great. I will try and invent someone and see what comes out next time I meet a stranger.

My name is just chance. My Mum and Dad both agreed on Ruby, and my Dad conceded to my Mum on Rose. I like how my names all have the same number of letters.

Cripes, your poor friend. Goes to a riot and ends up braining herself on the way. I read an excellent novel called The Secret History where the protagonists have a bacchanalia and afterwards, one of them is struck dumb. When she finally regains the power of speech, her school French comes back first, and she keeps pointing to la fenêtre and l’armoire.

What are love eggs?

You are totally right about my theory about love: it’s bullshit. Thing is, I have this notion of love at first sight that I just can’t shake, despite the fact that I’ve never experienced it. It might come from when I was in my mid-teens. I realised I liked girls and not boys, and I read all the lesbian novels I could lay my hands on. They were filled with women clasping hands and staring into each other’s eyes and kissing and the earth moving and would make my heart-string shimmer like nothing else. And so I have this feeling of love and desire that I’ve never quite been able to shake, nor reproduce in my own experience.

The closest I’ve ever come is with Matte. I remember one time, a few months ago, before I broke things off with her for good, she was visiting me in London for her birthday and we went to see Peter Pan in a field and it made me cry and afterwards we walked through Kensington Gardens and jumped some fences and raided the blackberry bushes and came home and she made blackberry and apple pie and we drank mojitos and beer and then I fucked her with my hand standing up in the corridor drunk off my head and it almost gave me that feeling in my tummy like those books from years ago.

But, you know, I think I’ll find it one day.

V. glad you crow-barred “imbroglio” into your day. I like it because it’s what Bertie gets into in P.G. Wodehouse novels. I think it’s super important when one meets someone who brings out new stuff, and it sounds like Strip is doing that with you. Why do you think she is doing emotional stonewalling? Because she just wants to concentrate on your friendship? Because she doesn’t like examining her emotions in general? or in this case in particular? Or because she likes maintaining a sexual frission? Does this situation – in love, tension, friendship, will-they-won’t-they – happen to you frequently?

Love,

Ruby xx

—

Dear, dear Cat,

Thursday, early evening

I really wish I could be like you and be able to act without thinking. I very rarely do things I regret, rarely feel embarrassed about something I’ve done, try to maintain my dignity at all times. It’s rubbish. Maybe my alter ego should be harddrinkingfasttalkingdrugguzzlingshootfirstaskquestionslatercomehungryslut Ruby.

Ah, my anonymous blog is entirely anonymous, I’m afraid. It’s like those little girl diaries with the tiny locks on them: laughable security, but, nonetheless, secured into order to signal that intrusion would not be welcome. I would very occasionally read entries to Matte that I wrote about us fucking. So, you know.

I have two little sisters. It was Soph who made the joke. They’re both great and two of the lights of my life.

Maybe Strip won’t comment on other people because she avoids gossip. Or it might be emotional stonewalling.

People who are locked up tight are extremely appealing, I think. They bring out the conquerer in us. “I will cut my way through the brambles to her heart, forsooth! Oh, do mine eyes deceive me? There is a stone wall within the brambles. I will strike it down with my mighty trebuchet, on mine honour! Nay, there is an inner moat I must ford. It is but nothing to my faithful rowboat!” etc.

The thing is – and I’m speaking generally here because I haven’t met Strip – I kind of swing between thinking it must be great to be locked up and knight-in-shining-armoured, and thinking it must be terrible. It hinges on whether the control is conscious, in which case it’s probably all rather fun and enjoyable like teasing a kitten with wool, or if it’s innate, in which case it implies you have very few conscious strong emotions, which is why you can stonewall. Or is this theory just poppycock? Maybe it’s better described as damaged alphas (Matte’s phrase): strong and competent and authoritative, with occasional, enticing glimmers of vulnerability and secret pain.

Anywhichway, I think it will be extremely tremulous+fun for you to explore and find out.

I certainly did read The Well of Loneliness, and I rather enjoyed it. My favourite was Tipping the Velvet. Jiminy geejaws, my fifteen-year-old self used to get so wet reading it.

I totally troughed my lasagne. I had four helpings, including one in bed just before going to sleep. It’s like drugs. Fortunately, I have some left over for tonight.

Friday morning

It was funny to get your email this morning. Because, out of character, I had decided to do something irrational. I had cooked up a plan where I ask work for Friday 12th February [my birthday!] off, and if they granted it, I would speed to Northerncity and stay for a few days to spend some time with you while Vinyl is away. However, I find that you have awoken in your sensible hat. And it matches our mise-en-scène very well. Vinyl and the excitement of Berlin are big considerations, and so April it is.

Today, I am going to a weird puppet show at a bar around the corner. Apparently, it’s a soap opera about Berlin. I played a gig at the bar when I was over here a couple of years ago. And I think I am going to go and explore more of Friedrichshain.

I saw a little baby on the U yesterday with the cutest, chubbiest cheeks ever. He kept on giving me and the other two queers who were hanging around these baleful stares and we would all go completely to pieces and beam like idiots at him.

Love,

Ruby xxx

—

Dear, lovely Cat,

Your abandon is so fucking great. I wish I could show desire or affection without first being sure it will be well received. Your unguardedness is both extremely lovely to me, and also makes you my hero.

I am home from my two-bar crawl. I went to the first bar and the puppet show didn’t happen, so I sat drinking beer and smoking cigarettes next to a group of people having a conversation in German. Then, I went to the queer bar and leant against the side and looked at all those people with friends and alternated between feeling like a badass loner and a loser, a self-sufficient island and a sunken city. I didn’t manage to strike up a conversation with anyone, despite the girl who sat next to me and cast side-long glances, despite the girl who kept glancing at me from the corner. I wondered what I looked like to the other people: weird? someone having a drink? a scared little girl? a stony-faced boy?

Oh, I forgot to reply to one of your things. I have been in love – with Matte. But it just didn’t feel like my literary feeling of perfect love.

And, yes, you have featured in my blog. Several times, in fact.

Your evening with Strip sounds v. lovely. Putting up shelves. Colour-coding books. Heaven. Since I moved to Berlin, I’ve really missed the easiness and corporeality of hanging out with people who are close. The frequent contact with you is so important. Thank you for it, and thank you for our blossoming whatever.

Love,

Ruby xxxx

—

Dear Cat,

It is very sweet what you said about what I might have looked like in the bar. I like being in a gang, too. However, quite a lot of the time, I want to do things that my friends don’t like, and so I go out alone.

The queer lot used to tease me about my lifestyle, too: my job and my car and my nice shared house. I always found it quite funny, and thought it fair enough – I hated my job and felt terrible about using a car. On the other hand, I met a couple of Matte’s squatter/anarcho friends ages ago. My attempts at talking to them were met with monosyllables. I asked Matte whether they disliked me, and she said she thought I might be too clean and too conventionally dressed for them. I felt a bit angry.

I’m really sad to hear that you were weepy today. You poor thing. I would send you a virtual hug, but they are make-believe. So, I will save up a real one for when I next see you. I’m not surprised you feel tremulous: you have a love imbroglio, funding won and funding to win, an ended relationship. Perhaps you need a few days of R&R (are there are any Thai whorehouses in Northerncity?).

With you and my blog, I have mainly reported the outline of what has happened, with a few emotional annotations. I said that I thought about our first conversation on Facebook repeatedly for several days afterwards, that I thought about you while I was lying in bed, that I giggled like a schoolgirl when I read your letters, that knowing you adds warmth and solidness to the cold, uncertain days in Berlin.

I like Tipping the Velvet the best by far. Fingersmith is fine, but just too gothic and clumsy for me, Affinity is a twist with a novel attached to it, The Night Watch has one great scene, and The Little Stranger is a boring novel about a boring relationship between two boring people.

Today, I made another lasagne. I’m not a comfort cooker, or a comfort eater for that matter, but there is something very soothing about cold lasagne from the fridge at two a.m. Then, I went to see a band in a labyrinthine bar that is jam-packed with dogs and sells pints for just over two Euros and has candles for stage-lights. The band were a pianist and violinist who both sang.

Can you believe that it was -11 when I was out, and it’s now -14? My nose was like the Antarctica of the world of my face.

Sleep tight,
Love,

Ruby xxx

—

Cat,

Yeah, I read The Little Stranger in hospital. Also Ringolevio and Stephen King’s book about writing. I read mostly non-fiction at the moment: books on Lisp and Python (programming languages) and David Foster Wallace’s collected essays. Have you read Potential, Ariel Schrag’s autobiographical comic book about being in High School? It’s really good: brutally honest and sad and funny about being in love and being lost. It is one of my favourites.

Thank you for sending your short story. You write well. I liked the mood of it: you captured people who have very different sets of views in the same period. And I loved the revolutionary sex workers.

I didn’t know you’d written some novels. That is very cool. Are you still working on getting them published?

I am v excited that you nearly asked Strip about what is going to happen between you two. I mean, I know you didn’t actually make it to the finish line, but that’s v exciting that you set off in the race. In all honesty, I’m not sure you will need to actually reach the chequered flag. From what you say, I think she is slowly falling for you, and might just hand you the gold medal. (I’m really sorry about that laboured, extended metaphor. They’re like drugs to me.)

Yeah, I am obsessed with lasagne. I’m like Mark in Peep Show where he’s going through all the craziness with Sophie. “Why do you keep on making roasts?” “Who doesn’t like a roast?” “But that’s the third one today.”

I admire people who can produce tastiness from three half-eaten avocados, a bag of walnuts and two tins of pre-war peaches. My brother is like that. I threw a dinner party a few weeks ago, got way too drunk and he stepped into the breach and rustled up a meal for eighteen.

Are you feeling less weepy today? How was your Burns lunch?

Was sorry to miss you online. I have spent the day reading about Python in preparation for work the week after next, and listening to music.

Have you seen the film of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal? It’s got Patricia Hodge (yow!), Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley in it. There’s a bit where Ben Kingsley’s character is talking about what good friends he and Jeremy Irons’s character used to be:

“He used to write to me at one time. Long letters about Ford Madox Ford. I used to write to him too, come to think of it. Long letters about … oh, W. B. Yeats, I suppose.”

Ruby xxxx

—

People don’t seem to start their nights out until one a.m. here in Berlin, so I will probably leave the house quite late. This early evening’s entertainment: troughing lasagne and watching The Sopranos. xxx

—

I was thinking about regular sources of comfort. It struck me that even the faithful Sopranos failed yesterday. I watched the episode where Tony gets shot and goes to hospital and it brought being dead all flooding back and I sat there sobbing like a loser for most of the hour. Maybe I should start watching Peep Show again.

xxx

—

Ah, tonight I’m going to be a geek with some new colleagues: some sort of coding/algorithmic music performance thing at a hack space. Hopefully speak later if I get home before your sleep-o-clock and I can still function for all the 1s and 0s swimming before my eyes xx x xxx xxxx xxxxxx 001001101xxx

—

Dear Cat,

I walked up into the centre of Kreuzberg today and saw two people wandering about on the river, one holding out a long stick in front of them (a patently unnecessary water-divining device? Or some sort of hippie crack-in-the-ice early warning contraption?) I had a veggieburger and then drank lattes in a coffee shop on Orangienstr. and read The Chrysalids. I walked home, dizzy and almost laughing with cold, my frozen-toed feet like the runners of a rocking-chair.

I’m so fragile here. I make every day from raw materials: there are almost no reliable sources of comfort or fun or happiness. Joy and sadness are so close: a moment ago, I cried at how I had nothing and then laughed at how everything is possible.

I began looking for my next apartment today. Lord.

Have you had replies to your inquisitive emails? I think nervousness about the unknown is to be relished because it means you are striking out into newness, and that is v good. I am super excited to find out what happens in Northerncity’s answer to Ramsay Street. Do tell me how it goes. You could set up a tin-can phone with Strip and whisper sweet nothings into her ear from the safety of your own bedroom.

An internet romance. Wow. Is this the new non-monogamy?

Yes, Potential is a way of life. Matte once said Ariel Schrag is my fashion idol. I looked down at my bottom-level jeans, skinny t-shirt, sneakers, hoodie and glasses (well, I looked down through the glasses) and had to agree. The sad thing is that I’m twenty-eight, whereas Ariel was eighteen.

I have a kettle and tea-bags, but haven’t made a cup of tea, yet. All my days are so fucked up: I want to eat at three p.m. and drink tea at ten p.m. and smoke at four a.m. and relax at eleven a.m. I’m also sleeping a lot: ten hours last night. I think it’s because of the cold and super effort.

Am I still in love with Matte? Well, I was still in love when I broke up with her. But, I don’t walk around being in love because I don’t see her anymore. I miss her very much sometimes. But we’re both in different and equally-preoccupying universes. She adores being in the tree and is swallowed whole by it. I am in the craziness of Berlin. Plus, we are so different it’s unbelievable. There’s lots of elements of difference, but it’s best characterised by her love for wilderness and my love for cities.

By the way, I was looking at my diary and discover that, April-wise, I am free from 12th April to 29th April cause of a hol. w/ family and a friend visiting.

OK, it’s time to go and find some food and eat it like it ain’t no thing.

Ruby xxxx

PS Have you seen this essay? http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/insurrection.php I love the picture of the two sexy blokes holding up the sign that reads “Liberals: Can we riot now? xoxo<3(A)<3″

Cat, Goddess,

Jiminy shitting mother of all geejaws. Your travel story was incredible. The mis-en-scene I had in my mind can be summarised by a dusty road with a corrugated-iron stall on it and scrub-grass for miles, the sun getting low and bringing your cheeks out burnished and smeared with grime, your hair mussed and a very incongruous wheelie suitcase at your side. Your story is like something from a novel. I hung on every word (well, I do that a fair bit with your emails, but this was a hanging in an exciting narrative sense). What struck me most was your ability to improvise, to ask for stuff, or, alternately, to let things work out in a way you would not have chosen but that was necessary. You are my hero (again).

Did you feel scared during all this, or resigned, or detached, or something else?

Danke danke danke for the sexy protestor picture. The U-Bahn has quite a few sexy anarcho types. I saw a lovely black-bloc type girl with a non-fake moustache today. I also opened an account with GLS, an ethical bank who invest your money in “good” projects and then donate the interest you would have earned to charities. Anyway, this lovely lady filled out my forms for me. She had shining blonde hair pulled back in a sensible clasp and a sober pinstripe skirt suit and these eyes – oh, man, her eyes – which met unblinking with mine and just seemed to stare into my soul and had very charming tiny lines underneath. As I left, I said, “Thank you very much for your help,” and she said, “I enjoyed it very much” and smiled this face-illuminating smile and I nearly passed out.

I haven’t got your post, yet. I anxiously check the mailbox each morning. I will keep an eagle eye out. I’m v excited.

I’m v glad your sex-toy test run produced the goods.

Children are born with a remarkable ability to say endearing things. I think it must be some sort of evolutionary thing. “Mummy, I’m your egg.” Soph went through a phase of meeting any teasing or horseplay with a firm, humourless, “Don’t like jokes,” which precipitated sighing and cooing from all sides.

I watched one episode of The Mighty Boosh years ago. It was OK, but I’m not really into surrealism, or weird for weirdness’s sake.

I’ve just had a brilliant notion. Maybe Strip could come and stay in Berlin for a few days and I could live in her house and come round to yours and do my washing and eat the food you cook for me and babysit your boy and drink and talk talk talk with you on the sofa and then we could have a right laugh putting up Strip’s shelves.

Honestly, Cat, the thought of you blushing like an oyster girl makes me blush like an oyster girl. The thing is, is Strip really oblivious? Or is she like the girl who “innocently” washes the car in front of the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke?

I am usually a man-up-old-chap sort of advice-giver (I’ve finally given that advice to my love-sick little sister). However, I have this image in my head of the fireworks and epiphanies that will burst forth when you and Strip finally do mutual pouncing. Though it is an imaginary image (is that one of those lazy, tautological phrases that result from a section of the English language reaching a nadir of fucked-uped-ness like “really real”?) is quite convincing in my head.

So, I sallied forth into -15C (yes! Do not adjust your computer screen. -15C. Can you believe it?) and went to meet my boss and two colleagues at the hackspace. The music was just some guys playing some instruments, sadly (I think I might have to start footnoting all these parentheticals like David Foster Wallace; I saw some livecoding at Shunt in London where the person improvises code that generates sounds and then builds it up into music over time), but we had a nice conversation about the precursors to the internet and then played this crazy game on a massive touch-screen where you had to work together to untangle a virtual ball of wool. I am now back home and my Berlin-competence-self-perception levels are high again. I’m listening to A Silver Mt Zion and I’m starving but I don’t have any real food so I’m eating Fruit Pastilles, chocolate raisons and teaspoons of Marmite. I remember one day in the summer I went out drinking after work and got very drunk and came home and ate a box of cherry tomatoes and spent the night with my stomach a painful, roiling sea of raw vegetables and beer. The next day, I went to an internet company’s offices and spent the weekend hacking code with a bunch of other geeks (three hours’ sleep on a beanbag) and then the day after the day after that I was dead.

Love, dear,

Ruby xxx

—

Cat,

How are you feeling post-squat-party? A little better, I hope. Have you been nurturing yourself? I hope so. If I was at your house, you would be surrounded by soothing cups of tea, slices of home-made cake and I would be fanning you with one of those big palm leaves like in James Bond films. It’s the very least I can do, given your delightful kiss on my oh-so-cold nose.

I’m v glad that you are getting support from Vinyl and Alex. And that is a v cunning ruse with the number deletion business. My strategy in such situations is to forget I have a phone. You can guess how well that works out.

I went to see a potential apartment this evening. It is in the centre of Kreuzberg, just off Orangienstr. (look at me abbreviating “strasse” like a total Berlin native – I’m so fucking cool). The place was lovely: wood floors, a little balcony, big west-facing room, bookshelves everywhere. The other two living there are a lesbian couple, but not in an annoying way. One works for a journalist support organisation and the other is doing eco research. We had tea and talked about Berlin vs. London and our jobs and their cats and politics. I felt very at home there. I’m going to tell them I’m game if they are.

I spent the afternoon doing laundry and cooking. I trekked to the laundrette, loaded down with clothes, and asked a cute boy to translate the instructions. It seems that we are losing these shared places of domesticity. Almost everything that used to be communal – bathrooms, laundries, houses, food stores, churches, town halls – has become private. Sitting there, reading and watching my clothes go round and round, I felt a ludicrous sense of pastoral joy and simplicity and connectedness. Levity returned as I lugged home my clothes.

Like you, I’ve been wondering what it will be like when we see each other in person. Your laptop-face idea made me laugh out loud and then I looked round and realised I was alone and my laughter echoed against the boards and then died and I felt a bit silly.

My boss and colleagues are really nice. Cool geeks, basically.

No, I don’t think my death was beanbag-related. One’s heart is supplied with blood by three main vessels: one down the middle, one left and one right. I was born with a defect where the right-hand one is connected to the wrong artery, thus delivering de-oxygenated blood. Most people with this just die as babies, but my heart compensated by growing little mini vessels from the centre across to the under-oxygenated area (go heart!). However, for some reason that the docs couldn’t fathom, the oxygen supply suddenly became inadequate, a section of heart tissue died, I went into ventricular fibrillation (wild, ineffectual beating), collapsed and died.

I do sometimes get scared I’ll die again. The docs considered installing a defibrillator in my chest that would automatically fire and restart my heart, should it stop again. They decided against it because a) my skinniness makes it difficult to find anywhere to put it and b) there is a high risk of infection. I occasionally get upset if I’m reminded of being in hospital.

I haven’t read Lost Girls, though I want to. Is it good?

Have you seen Me and You and Everyone We Know? If not, I think it might be just the film for you at the moment. It is great for reinforcing faith in unusualness. Because I’m not sure you’re fully aware of how wonderfully unusual you are.

A kiss for your warm nose: xxxxxxx