pill. This is the perfect chance to let bygones be bygones.
Wednesday 10 August
Serge says that although my neck doesn’t hurt any more, I should keep seeing him just a couple more times to ensure that everythinghas settled down. The subtle movements Isabel says Astrid says he’ll be making to realign my spine have become so subtle, I’m not sure there are any. He may just be holding me now.
Had a terrible nightmare. Serge isn’t an osteopath at all. He went to osteopathy school but was thrown out after a late-night experiment pushing the boundaries of osteopathy to the limit went very wrong. In the intervening years, his grudge against the world of osteopathy has developed into full-blown hatred. He has become a serial killer who only kills men whose spines are perfectly aligned. The plastic skeleton in his office that he uses to show new ‘patients’ how vertebrae work is not plastic at all. It’s the skeleton of his last victim, replaced each time he kills again. In my nightmare, I work all this out while he’s holding me—that this isn’t a surgery, it’s a cellar, that the skeleton in the corner has hair, that the diploma on the wall has another man’s name crossed out with the word Serge scrawled angrily above it in blood. I try to get up and escape, but my legs don’t work. So I try to grapple him off, but he just presses something in my neck and my arms fall useless to my sides. Whispering calm osteopathic clichés—‘keep your back straight, don’t arch it’, ‘there’s no quick fix when it comes to bones’, ‘breathe in, and hold, and breathe out’—he produces a surgeon’s scalpel and starts his serial killer’s work at my feet.
Saturday 13 August
That’s it. It’s all over. It’s definitely a trend. This morning, I passed up a perfectly decent opportunity to have sex. I hopped out of bed at an ungodly 8 a.m., said something terribly middle-aged like, ‘Come on, darling, it’s the best part of the day’, and bounced off to the kitchen to do the washing up. Last night, I couldn’t be bothered to do it—sex, that is, not the washing up, although that as well—because it was too hot. Eight days until I’m thirty and I’m nowregularly passing up opportunities to have sex. And I’m the man. Men are supposed to want it all the time. The average red-blooded heterosexual male thinks about sex every two or three milliseconds. Isabel hasn’t started coming up with excuses.
It’s me.
Maybe I’m not red-blooded? Maybe I’m yellow-belly-blooded? My libido is in free fall.
When I confess to Isabel, she doesn’t bat an eyelid. She says it’s a cliché that men always want sex and women never do. It’s just something people write in sitcoms.
‘But we used to have sex every day.’
‘Only for about a week.’
‘Well, we used to have sex every other day then.’
‘It’s probably only a blip.’
‘I think it’s a trend.’
In her experience, men never want sex as much as women, particularly when they get older. This is, on the one hand, disgusting because I don’t want to have to think about Isabel’s experience with other men ever, particularly older ones. On the other hand, it is reassuring. Why else would they have invented Viagra? The older we get, the more support we need.
Monday 15 August
Saskia’s flight landed this morning. I’m in Finsbury Park, not East Timor. Knowing my luck, I will bump into her, so when Isabel and I walk to the Tube, I suggest we take an alternative route through the park. Just because I fancy a nice stroll with her.
I refuse to have lunch outside the office.
I refuse to go to the pub with Johnson, even though he’s having an argument with Ali about which day they should have fish and chips, and which day they should have curry.
I sneak home via the park again. Tomorrow, definitely wearing sunglasses and a beanie.
Tuesday 16 August
I’ve told Serge it’s all over, this has to stop, we can’t go on like this. It’s not him, it’s
Wednesday 10 August
Serge says that although my neck doesn’t hurt any more, I should keep seeing him just a couple more times to ensure that everythinghas settled down. The subtle movements Isabel says Astrid says he’ll be making to realign my spine have become so subtle, I’m not sure there are any. He may just be holding me now.
Had a terrible nightmare. Serge isn’t an osteopath at all. He went to osteopathy school but was thrown out after a late-night experiment pushing the boundaries of osteopathy to the limit went very wrong. In the intervening years, his grudge against the world of osteopathy has developed into full-blown hatred. He has become a serial killer who only kills men whose spines are perfectly aligned. The plastic skeleton in his office that he uses to show new ‘patients’ how vertebrae work is not plastic at all. It’s the skeleton of his last victim, replaced each time he kills again. In my nightmare, I work all this out while he’s holding me—that this isn’t a surgery, it’s a cellar, that the skeleton in the corner has hair, that the diploma on the wall has another man’s name crossed out with the word Serge scrawled angrily above it in blood. I try to get up and escape, but my legs don’t work. So I try to grapple him off, but he just presses something in my neck and my arms fall useless to my sides. Whispering calm osteopathic clichés—‘keep your back straight, don’t arch it’, ‘there’s no quick fix when it comes to bones’, ‘breathe in, and hold, and breathe out’—he produces a surgeon’s scalpel and starts his serial killer’s work at my feet.
Saturday 13 August
That’s it. It’s all over. It’s definitely a trend. This morning, I passed up a perfectly decent opportunity to have sex. I hopped out of bed at an ungodly 8 a.m., said something terribly middle-aged like, ‘Come on, darling, it’s the best part of the day’, and bounced off to the kitchen to do the washing up. Last night, I couldn’t be bothered to do it—sex, that is, not the washing up, although that as well—because it was too hot. Eight days until I’m thirty and I’m nowregularly passing up opportunities to have sex. And I’m the man. Men are supposed to want it all the time. The average red-blooded heterosexual male thinks about sex every two or three milliseconds. Isabel hasn’t started coming up with excuses.
It’s me.
Maybe I’m not red-blooded? Maybe I’m yellow-belly-blooded? My libido is in free fall.
When I confess to Isabel, she doesn’t bat an eyelid. She says it’s a cliché that men always want sex and women never do. It’s just something people write in sitcoms.
‘But we used to have sex every day.’
‘Only for about a week.’
‘Well, we used to have sex every other day then.’
‘It’s probably only a blip.’
‘I think it’s a trend.’
In her experience, men never want sex as much as women, particularly when they get older. This is, on the one hand, disgusting because I don’t want to have to think about Isabel’s experience with other men ever, particularly older ones. On the other hand, it is reassuring. Why else would they have invented Viagra? The older we get, the more support we need.
Monday 15 August
Saskia’s flight landed this morning. I’m in Finsbury Park, not East Timor. Knowing my luck, I will bump into her, so when Isabel and I walk to the Tube, I suggest we take an alternative route through the park. Just because I fancy a nice stroll with her.
I refuse to have lunch outside the office.
I refuse to go to the pub with Johnson, even though he’s having an argument with Ali about which day they should have fish and chips, and which day they should have curry.
I sneak home via the park again. Tomorrow, definitely wearing sunglasses and a beanie.
Tuesday 16 August
I’ve told Serge it’s all over, this has to stop, we can’t go on like this. It’s not him, it’s
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