Ruby Stark

On Monday, I came home and went into a cooking frenzy and made spinach and ricotta cannelloni and banana pancakes for my housemates and I. I listened to Bob Dylan and sniffed because of my cold and fended the cats off my pots and pans. As I cooked, I pretended I was making supper for a boy who was waiting patiently in the sitting room and that maybe I would serve him his meal and then give him a blow job.

We sat to eat and it was very lovely.

Since Wednesday, I’ve been out four nights running. I have finally had a week in Berlin where I had nothing planned and was busy. Things have happened under their own momentum.

On Wednesday, I went to see Yeasayer. Natasha and her bloke were there, but I didn’t manage to find them, and I invited Malt, my boss, and forgot I’d invited Cal, and bumped into a guy from work and went with him and Cal for a delicious, greasy fried-mozzarella burger in a punk rock place and then got to the venue and bumped into four other people from work so we were a big gang.

We talked about the first track of the album Cal and I are going to write: The Time I Got Thrown Out of The Lesbian Bookshop/The Lesbians Said No. Malt talked about a visit to Kit Kat Club, and so we were able to name track two: I Went to a Sex Club With a Gynecologist.

I wrapped myself up in Malt’s attention, snuggling into his alpha maleness. He is tall, and has an arresting way of towering over me and looking down into my eyes with a half-mocking, half-tender expression on his face.

We watched the gig. I was completely carried away by their rendition of I Remember as the singer’s voice echoed up high high in the rafters. Malt put his hands under my arms and momentarily lifted me up so I could see what his view of the band was like. I am starting to feel that two-people-revolving-around-each-other-within-a-group feeling. I am starting to feel that luxuriation in his company that I feel with Dusk and my closest boy friends from University.

After the gig, Cal, I and four others from work set out into the night. We hiked across a large barren area around the gig venue that felt like no man’s land, like machine gun fire was about to burst out from the darkness. We surged along, a happy gang, laughing and talking and shouting. We got to the bar and I spoke at length about pop music to one guy, and about online-dating to another girl. We drank beer and talked about the Bible and places we’ve lived and drug-dealers and the German language. The beer went down easy and, suddenly, it was two a.m. so I picked up and walked home along the wide, deserted, still, crisp streets listening to I Remember which goes, “You’re stuck in my mind. All the time.” I reached a cross-roads and stood in the middle of the street and looked down at the stillness in all four directions. I got to my apartment building and leaned against the wall to finish my cigarette, and my head flushed with the beer and smoke and filled with happiness and my smile was so wide and I couldn’t help but laugh.

I came inside and wrote all this to Cat, ending with, “I wish I could lie down with you and whisper all this in your ear.”

On Thursday, Dust came for lunch at work. I met him a while ago on the organising committee of those unconferences I was involved with in London. He looks very like Dusk: same smile, same colour hair, same shape of face, and I think my attraction to him is at least partially owing to that. Anyway, he, Malt and I talked about our jobs and it was good.

A little later, Dust asked me if I wanted to go to see Alice in Wonderland with him and a friend. I had put on a dress that morning, chiefly for Dust’s and Malt’s benefit. I now walked to the cinema in it, freezing fucking cold. We sat on a wall like a group of kids slumped on the pavement while Dust and his friend smoked a spliff, then went in. The film was terrible. We went to a Turkish place afterwards and I ate a falafel sandwich and then I walked home, yet again basking in the wonder of living in such a central and lively place.

On Friday night, I went for some drinks with people from work. We drank in a Russian place and cracked coding jokes (from fist import pain) and talked about Wally’s old job as a theatre technician (or, honk, a person with no special skills – “OK, I’m going to need three honks to set up this lighting rig”). We laughed a lot and drank a lot and talked about Dark Star and John Carpenter and the third song, Just Call Me Hank, on Cal and I’s record. A few of us went onto another bar in Kreuzberg and played table football and I walked home drunk again listening to Between the Buried and Me that I discovered on some geek’s blog.

I slowly recuperated on Saturday, making it out of the house for long enough to buy some food. I went up to Prenslauer Berg for Brown’s extremely genteel, grown-up party. The occasion was the installing of her new sofa that conspicuously lacks a boyfriend to sit on it. I talked to the journos about the dying newspaper industry and drank yet more beer and had a long, jokey conversation and half fell in love with with a pretty, blonde-redhead editor who looks like Lauren Lee Smith.

Malt texted me and said he was at Kottbusser Tor and I yipped excitedly inside and left the party about twelve a.m. On my way out, I walked through Brown’s apartment building and felt like I was in a bombed-out Russian hallway heading out into the unknown.

On the way to the U-Bahn, I thought about and interview I’d read with Al Pacino. He said that when they were making the film, he was in love, for one of the few times in his life. And he would come home from the horribleness and the violence to his girl and they would just be together. It made me wish for that railroadedness, that sanctuary, that marked-out-of-timeness.

Malt picked me up at Kottbusser Tor, and, in an endearingly formal move, held out his hand for me to shake it, and brought me inside. He was there with a very old friend from school, an interesting man who told me about his job as a diplomat, a girl he knows from University, and a third woman who, when I smiled, gave me an astonishingly blank expression that felt like a challenge. Later on, she warmed up a bit.

The bar was upstairs and small, and we were wedged in a corner on stools, surrounded by people and head-nodding techno. After more beer (my tolerance seems to have gone up quite a bit), everyone else left and Malt and I were left alone. We talked my perfect mix of bullshit and serious: his ideas for a terror trombone replacement for the Death Star, my puppy-drowning career and membership in the top 1% of programmers (a running joke), gender politics of the German language and spandex suits. We leant against each other, my legs tucked against his, laughing close and lovely.

Then, the conversation took an alarming and baffling turn. I began on a dissertation about why I think Rails is much better than TurboGears and he attacked my arguments, speaking in a tone of voice that bordered on angry. We vigourously debated the points for a while, and he trotted out the old argument about it not being OK to trust €XX million of the company’s business to default configs. I felt anger rising inside me at the feting of the earning of money. I wondered whether I was talking myself out of a job, and thought I didn’t much care if I was. Fortunately, we were able to get back on track, and had a good laugh again.

We left the bar about five a.m. and I walked home.

On Monday, I set off north from my house. I walked up through Kreuzkölln and saw a few squats and went into a record shop. I got to Orangienstr. and went into another, good punk/hardcore record shop that sells CDs for stupideuros. I went to a vegetarian restaurant for a really tasty veggie burger (I had to tip an imaginary glass to my mouth to find out what drinks they have) and read David Foster Wallace on the annual US porn convention.

I was just walking up through the squatting district of Kreuzberg when my landlord called and said they could mend the internet if I came home. I rushed back, they did mending and then I was connected again. I can’t tell you how worryingly normal I feel now I can tweet, research Berlin, email my friends, talk with Cat via Facebook and write Ruby Stark. I was even able to have supper with my step-Dad and little sisters over Skype.

The next day, I went to get my Einwohnermeldeamt, my residence registration. I queued up in the Bürgeramt, a big office building full of long, linoleum-floored corridors that feel like a hospital or like University. I waited and waited, trapped in bureaucracy, and finally got the stamped piece of paper I need. I felt like someone trying to get across the border to safety and having to put my life in the hands of a capricious official.

I came home and hung out and then went to the vokü at a squat up in Friedrichshain. I finally found the right door, went in and nervously asked where the vokü was. An old punk rolled a cigarette and told me that they weren’t serving tonight and recommended a place down the road. I went out and down the road and found a promising-looking bar. I went in and it was like a punk heaven: candles everywhere, a mix of hardcore and crusty and squatter people, red walls, pool, people milling around behind the bar, some serving drinks and some just hanging out. I sat on a stool and drank a Becks and smoked some cigarettes and looked at the tall, skinny, bleach/black-haired bartender. I struck up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me and we talked about squatting in Philadelphia and England. After a while, I slipped down from my stool, put on my coat, said goodbye and caught the U home.

On a whim, I went to find the queer bar near my house. I went in and found myself surrounded by straight looking people. I drank a bottle of Pilsner and asked the barmaid what the place is called and she said something that definitely wasn’t the name of the queer bar. So, I leaned against the bar and pretended to be Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a rent boy in Mysterious Skin. I went out into the street and found the right place right next door. I sat at the bar and drank limonade and then asked the woman next to me for a light that I didn’t need. We smoked and talked about music and Berlin. She was nice.

My little sister texted me to ask if we could talk on Skype. So, I left, and we talked for an hour about her dicksuck ex-boyfriend. Then, I re-read Cat’s letter, then I went to sleep and dreamt about Allure again and I touched her in the hollow between her leg and her hip and she sighed with pleasure.

Now, I’m going to make a lasagne for lunch/supper/supper.

Yesterday, I went to see the Dieter Rams exhibition at the Design Museum. I walked through London in the freezing cold and my new leather jacket and all I got was memories: booking a table at a former-squat cafe in Vauxhall for my old girlfriend, Cassette, and I; Matte telling me that she’d slept with that guy; sitting with Matte on some steps opposite Liberty’s on the first weekend she came to visit me in London, when she was head-over-heels in love with me; running with Matte along the south bank, through the rain, to the Design Museum to see the Jonathan Barnbrooke exhibition.

I liked Rams’s designs, especially the hi-fi equipment. He seemed to be a designer who thought appliances deserved their space in the home, rather than having to apologetically blend in with the furniture. However, you could see that even he would adorn old designs with his current pre-occupations: note the change from straight to curved record player arms.

I walked around in the cold for an hour and then went to meet Archigram, and his housemate and girlfriend at a Vietnamese. We troughed down some tasty food and then sat and talked in the corner of an underpopulated pub next to an expired log fire.

We then moved to a gay bar in Dalston that seemed to have a surprisingly number of straight people in it, and no hot lesbians. But, it was great to sit at a table, surrounded by friends who are all in the same moment and level of drunk and mood of party, laughing and pouring back beer as the bar raged around us.

We went back to Archigram’s and sat in his kitchen and drank a disgusting concoction called chai latte and then went to bed. I caught some sleep on a mattress in the living room, woke, went down and talked to Archigram’s other housemate about Australia and then ate toast with everyone.

I can’t stop watching this video of Des Ark:

So, I went to see Matte in Leeds. The train from Cambridge to London was delayed, so I missed the train to Leeds, and then the one I got broke down. Train rage welled up. I watched Jim Jarmusch’s film, Stranger Than Paradise. It’s in black and white and each scene is filmed in one static shot and nothing really happens, but not in a good way.

I arrived and Matte and I were deferential and danced around each other. We went for some Japanese food and she told me about being in the forest. It sounds like she is happy: she is exactly where she wants to be. She mentioned that she is hardly seeing Abel anymore. Apparently, things kind of fell apart after they started spending extended periods of time together.

We wandered around in the cold and then went to a pub that had a fake fire. We talked about how things felt a bit weird. I figured it was because we were seeing each other for the first time where there was no romance. It was so fucking different from when we last saw each other again after we broke up the first time and we couldn’t stop touching. I said something, and I can’t remember what it was, and tears welled up. Later, I said I missed her so much, and that I was really worried about meeting the paramedics who saved me, and that I was totally discombobulated by the thought of moving to Berlin. And then I got even closer to crying so I went to the loo to do that in private.

The thing that became clear, and that made me cry repeatedly over the next few days: she has basically moved on.

I wanted to tell her about this scene in Stone Butch Blues where Jess takes two children to the zoo. It’s snowing and freezing cold and the animals are forlorn. One of the children asks her whether she’s leaving and she says, Yes because I have to, and the children cry. And the whole scene is suffused with that strange hopeless sadness of childhood that comes when something bad happens that is completely beyond your control. My Mum said that when my Dad left home, she told me, Daddy’s leaving, and I cried and said, No, and, though I don’t remember that moment, when I think of it now I get the same feeling as that scene.

So, I wanted to tell Matte, but I kind of knew in advance that, like some of the other really strong things in my head, she just wouldn’t get it. Very few people do.

We wandered around in the snow by the canal. She showed me where she used to smoke weed and snog her friends, and her favourite bridge to stand on and look at the old factories (now all office buildings). At last, we went to the station and hugged and kissed once on the lips and then I got on the train and cried most of the way home.

I listened to the recording I made of Efterklang’s Cutting Ice To Snow, and thought about how tears rolled down my cheeks as they played, and that the lyrics, which I heard as, “You’ve gone too far, despite my city walls”, were, for me, about Matte becoming a person I was no longer compatible with, who existed outside my borders: in the wild, away from big cities, polyamorous.

I went to a “queer” bar with Frost on Tuesday. It was my second time there and just as gay. There were a few interesting looking trans people, but mostly just ugly lesbians and gay gay men. A woman read poetry and emoted for forty five minutes on stage. A cute trans boy asked for clothes for their trans swimming group. A hip hop band from Manchester were super heartfelt and good. I got kind of drunk and then we left.

Last night, I went to a party thrown by my friend, Alice. I took my housemates, Camden and Olivo, and I wore the long, sheer, plain black dress that I got in a free shop at a squat where my friends had a queer cinema weekend and that I left to go an Alice In Wonderland party where palled around with and then kissed Allure in one of those successful nights where everyone is in love with you.

We arrived in the pouring rain and I spent the evening talking to my sister and old friends, Lucie, Richard and Charlotte, casting occasional glances at the pretty, straight girls milling around. I think I might need to just put my dislike of gay people aside and start going to stuff where lesbians go. Lord help me.

I talked to my sister about my worry that I’m starting afresh every two years. She told me she thinks I live an exciting life and that I conquer each city I move to. I was very flattered. I said I worried that I wasn’t having a successful long-term relationship and she said she thought it would happen. She said she has been the happiest ever over the last three “settled” years. We decided that maybe settled equals more happy but breeds wow I’m not cool enough dissatisfaction when you examine your life.

My housemates and I got home at about four-thirty a.m