So, instead, I do nothing, and in dark moments tell myself I'm happy doing nothing, and that the reason I don't try to give myself anything more interesting to do is because I'm happy being a fat, slobby useless bastard who hates his job and does fuck-all with himself.
Last summer, long weeks of climbing hills and sleeping under the clouds and stars, and of hunting food and living in the wild, seems like more than a lifetime ago. I rarely think about it, and I never, ever, wake up dreaming about it.
The other wild living, the feral living, that I did in a forest nineteen years ago… that still comes to me at night. All the time. And during the day.
I know I need to face up to it, to look at it, think about it, talk about it, accept responsibility for it, but deep down I just hope to fuck that I die before I have to do any of those things.
*
Sitting in Costa. Bad day today. Bad evening ahead. I'm here to hit on the waitress, no other reason. It's time. Time must be running out. Whatever the fuck time is.
Sometimes I come here because I'm positively trying to drink coffee instead of vodka. Today I feel reckless and depressed and I don't care. I don't care what happens. Tonight is an evening for getting completely hammered, for falling asleep with a kebab in my lap, and waking up at four in the morning in a cold sweat, feeling like complete shit.
Feeling recklessly horny. So before I go home and get wasted and stupidly drunk, fuck it, I'm going to get laid and if I have to pay for it, then to hell with it, I'll pay for it, and I'm not going to think about the ways in which I might have to do the paying.
I asked Constable Grant. That was fate avoidance right there, that's what I'm talking about. Just out and out asked her. Nothing subtle. Do you want to come by my place tonight? She said no. Didn't even feel that she needed to give me an excuse.
Couldn't blame her. What was I thinking? And I look like death. Nothing attractive about me. Whether there normally is, who knows? Maybe. A certain look of having been places and done stuff. Now I just look tired and old and fat. Three stone heavier than I was last summer, an increase that's showing no sign of abating. That's what being middle-aged does to you, especially when you eat fish suppers, drink vodka and do sod-all exercise.
'Everything all right for you today?' she says.
I look up at the waitress, having been staring morosely at the floor. She's smiling. A nice smile. I like that she smiles and that she asks if everything's all right. It's not in her job description. She's not singling me out or anything, I hear her asking all around the shop. Happy in her work. A genuineness and generosity about her that the rest of society could do with picking up on.
No, really, it could. It's easy enough to see your own faults in others.
'Pretty miserable,' I say, breaking the conventions of polite conversation.
'Aw, too bad,' she says. 'What's up?'
Look up at her. She's holding an empty mug and a plate with muffin crumbs on it, the wax casing twisted neatly at the side. She has a small towel over her arm, as if she's the waiter in an expensive London hotel bar.
This is the moment to ask. This is the moment to come out with the latest clumsy approach. The latest desperate attempt to get laid; or the desperate attempt to grab the future. And it all just disappears. Whatever it is that it takes, it all vanishes with a snap of the fingers. Seeps out of me, runs out of me, courses out of me, races from me. The confidence, the chutzpah, the desperation, the energy, the desire, the lust. It all goes, leaving behind a wave of suffocating darkness, the kind of sorrow that bleeds you dry, makes you want to collapse to your knees. Vomit. Makes you want to vomit. And give up.
I answer with a small wave of my hand. Nothing to say. Nothing to do. Nothing.
'You want to come back to my place tonight?' she says.
Look up at her again. She's taking pity on me. That's my first thought. I'm sitting here feeling utterly pathetic, wallowing in self-fucking-pity, and she's been sucked in. I don't think about the other thing.
'You don't have to do that,' I say.
'What?' she says, and she's smiling, that lovely smile, although this time there's a bit of an edge to it. Not a nasty edge though. Not sure what the word is for the kind of edge it is. Naughty maybe. A naughty edge.
She lowers her voice.
'I don't have to take you back to my place and fuck the life out of you?'
Now that is not something I've heard her say to the other customers.
'All right.'
Life is sucked back into me.
'I get off in about half an hour. I'll get you another coffee while you wait, Sir. On the house.'
And off she goes, flashing that lovely smile again.
*
I like lying on my back in bed because it makes my fat stomach flatten out. Five minutes earlier I was behind her, ramming my cock inside her as far as I could, my hands on her hips and loving every second of it, every moan and every thrust and every gasp from her as my cock slammed into her. It was absolutely glorious, but I'd look down and my bloated fat middle-aged stomach was there in front of me, fatter than I'd ever noticed it before.
Now she's on top of me, ten years younger than me at least, and slim. Beautifully slim, with delicious small breasts. The breasts I've been thinking about since Gostkowski made me picture her naked. And there they are, moving around in front of me as she fucks me with fabulous, wonderful energy, an energy that I seem to have lost.
She started off slowly, just for half a minute or so, half a minute of complete deliciousness, but then she got carried away, as you do, couldn't stop herself, and for the past couple of minutes she's been frantic, closing in on her orgasm, moaning loudly, taking all of my cock, taking it as hard as she can, her hands all over me in her frenzied, erotic desperation.
I'm watching her face, watching her breasts, watching the movement of her nipples, trying not to come. Don't want to come yet. This is just what I needed and I want it to last so much longer. There are so many other positions I want to fuck her in, I want her tongue all over me, I love listening to her orgasm and I want to hear it again and again.
And then, with an 'Oh fuck, yes!' she reaches her climax, her shoulders straight, nipples pointing into the air, her hands raised to the side like she's just scored the winner in the World Cup Final.
Holy crap, I wish there was video. I really wish there was video.
Finally she stops moving, after grinding on to me for another short while, and she lifts herself off and kneels down beside me. She looks at me, that smile even broader.
'Fuck,' she says, then she leans over me and takes the entire length of my shaft into her mouth, and I gasp and squirm and am so glad I stopped myself coming.
I've just put my hand on her hair, when she straightens up and looks up the bed at me, devilishness in her eyes. She hesitates, I smile.
'What?' I say.
'I've got something,' she says, and she looks so wonderfully fucking naughty I could spank her.
'Go on.'
She giggles. She actually fucking giggles. I could shag that laugh of hers.
She reaches down under the bed, struggles to find what she's looking for, and so steps onto the floor. I lie there waiting for her, my cock hard and aching and desperate
She stands up. She's holding something in her hand. So completely out of context is it that I don't immediately recognise it. If I'd seen it in the office, I'd have known straight away, obviously. Fuck, I've even used them. Not only that, when they were first introduced, I had it used on me as a demonstration. So that we'd all know what we were doing when we used them on the drunken scum of the streets of Glasgow.