Entry #24: Mama Told Me Not to Come

I'm way behind working on stuff for my site. That's OK though, I tell my despairing inner-geek. I really can't complain about my life presently, over the past few months I've been going out somewhere for a new experience at least every fortnight.

Last week I met up with Mike on Wednesday for a couple drinks. Alex cancelled, so I felt a bit apprehensive because it's never just been me and him before. What if we had nothing to say? The conversation flowed well as did the drinks, becoming more than just a couple. When I realised it was 23:15 I said I had to go to catch my last tram, but Mike offered to pay my taxi. Waiting for a taxi we called Alex and I gave her orders to “flick da bean!"

I said goodbye to Mike and that we should do that again sometime, him being a cool straight male friend I can see parts of me in. That sounded wrong — you know what I meant. I called up Alex myself in the taxi home to reinforce her orders and left her to fulfil the mission objectives. I eventually got home about 01:30 and stumbled around my kitchen to iron my shirt for work. I remember waking up and thinking, “groovy, I've actually woken up to be on time for work."

And then I woke up again and I was half an hour late. For the past two months—with the exception of the previous Friday when I was 15 minutes late—I've been about ten minutes early every day and commenced work upon arrival, so weighing it up I've given more than taken. So, I felt less stressed than I would have when I was frequently late in years past if making it into working at all. Punctuality's been an ongoing issue of mine, but I am much improved. Most of my clocks are set 15 to 20 minutes ahead.

A large majority of my mornings are their own wonderful disaster, but somehow lying that the time's later than in reality is more effective than this feeble concept sounds. Yes, I know it's not the correct time, but when I panic that I should be walking to the bus stop I realise I have another 15 minutes to make myself run late, or rather a swift stroll being a more apt description of me trying to beat the bus to its stop. I babysat Friday night and got up Saturday morning with time to saunter the bus stop home.

I got distracted by Woolworths along the way and was going to buy Mika's debut album Life in Cartoon Motion. I opted to get the single of Love Today this weekend because it looked to have several remixes on it. When I got home and peeled off the label covering the track list and preventing opening to see the list inside, I found the CD single has two B-sides and a remix, which is shit. I shall return this Woolworths demanding an exchange of the £4 single for the £9 album. I bought the single for remixes. Great song though, listened to it a lot on Saturday.

We went out for Natalie's birthday, first for a meal at the Mezzaluna Italian-Mediterranean restaurant on Wilbraham Road in Chorlton. We all enjoyed our food and Natalie's boss had bought her two bottles of champagne for us all. We had a drink in Argyles on Barlow Moor Road and moved on to Uluru down the road on the opposite side, where we stayed until midnight before heading back to ours for a bit of a party. Love Today had a few plays as did Don't Matter by Akon.

Colette stayed over and we started playing a game called In My Pants. All you do is say the name of a song and append “in my pants” to the end. The results can be humorous, we explored many possibilities over several hours. In my room Tom Jones & Stereophonics' cover of Mama Told Me Not to Come came on, and there we found one of the best ones: Mama Told Me Not to Come in My Pants! We also had Wannabe in My Pants, Keep on Movin' in My Pants, U Can't Touch This in My Pants, and many more.

Call us immature but it tickled us, we could not stop giggling. We had a Chinese and watched the entire first season of Queer As Folk because Colette had neither heard of nor seen it before. The first series was on Channel 4 in 1999, when I was 15 and would not watch intentionally watch it because that might make mum think I'm gay. Seeing this whole thing about Canal Street, I wouldn't have come out until 2001 and been for a night out there until 2002.

To think of how I've grown, what I've experienced and learned over a decade since 1997 to now, I really can't complain about my life presently. I see there's a lot wrong in the world I live in that I want to help change, but at least I have the opportunity to distract myself from this on a regular basis. I really take for granted how easier things are having Canal Street and being in Manchester.

I've been bullied on the streets of Manchester, have been told that I'm lost because Canal Street is the other way just because my hair's a bit funky. But I've also pulled a guy in a straight a club, snogged a guy on Market Street, walked hand in hand around Piccadilly without consequence. It's not as free as this in other parts of this country, let alone other parts of the world.

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Entry #24, published on Wednesday, 30^th of May 2007 at 00:08 local time (Swatch Internet Time @003 .beats)

Returning in 2008 ;-)