Stardust Diaries

by Swan, Tarn

  He felt obliged to tell me I always make everything sound much worse than it was, talk about splitting rabbits...that was a joke by the way...I wasn't laughing and neither would he be if he didn't get upstairs to bed pronto. Sensing that I was slightly put out, he rubbed the handprint I'd just walloped onto his backside and gathering his skirts retired with dignity as I gathered up the pieces of the smitten chair. I would have spanked him if I didn't think the sound of crashes and screams in the middle of the night followed by the sound of smacks and yells would bring the police tearing to the door on suspicion of murder taking place.

  I didn't spank him this morning either. The exertion would only have set me off coughing. I did something else to get the think before you act message across. I grounded him and I do mean grounded. He isn't even allowed to wander the shops in his lunch hour at work. He has to stay in the staff room. He is not best suited. He thinks I'm overreacting. He doesn't think he deserves any kind of discipline. He thinks I should have laughed it off. Here's my view: aside from the fact that he took five years off my life with fright, he killed a perfectly good chair and mortally wounded a light fitting. It will have to be destroyed and replaced with a new one (thank God, Big Mary is an electrician and will fix it for us at trade cost) and more to the point he could very easily have hurt or even killed himself. I therefore disagree with his assessment and see little to be 'laughed off.'

  20th May 2006: Bird Watching

  Twinkles didn't complain about being restricted last week, not overtly anyway. He employed more subtle means to express his annoyance thus ensuring I couldn't accuse him of being directly defiant. He would look at the clock or his watch every five minutes while emitting great sighs about the slow passage of time. While flicking through the TV pages he would make gentle comments about how there was nothing worth watching on the telly and wouldn't it be nice if he could visit friends, or go out for a run round the park. This from a man who wouldn't lower himself to run for a bus never mind run round the park.

  In addition to the sighing was the bird watching. By Wednesday he'd taken to tripping around the house like Bill Oddie with a set of binoculars strung around his neck. He kept peering through the windows and claiming to have spotted everything from an albino Blackbird, which turned out to be a white paper bag caught in a tree to a new species of miniature hawk that was living in the front privet hedge. I informed him that it was in fact a common hedge sparrow. He immediately demanded that I go out and evict it, as he didn't want anything common pecking at his front privet, thank you very much.

  What finished me off completely was when he called me upstairs to look at the pretty pair of blue tits sitting on the bedroom window ledge. He made me stand on the threshold of the bedroom in order not to scare the birds off by going too close to the window. He then handed me the binoculars and quietly told me where to focus them. He was right, there was a pair of blue tits nestling on the window ledge, but not of the ornithological variety. They comprised of a pair of his falsies encased in a blue lace bra that he'd popped on the outside ledge. I lowered the binoculars and glared at him. He smiled sweetly put his hands over his nipples and made tiny flapping movements with his arms. I tried to remain straight faced, but we both ended up sprawled on the bed helpless with laughter. It felt wonderful. It does you good to be silly together once in a while.

  Once I'd stopped laughing long enough to speak I put my arms round him and told him he was very naughty. He grinned and snuggled up to me asking what I was going to do about it? He loves it when I tell him he's naughty, especially if I'm smiling at the same time. He claims it takes him back to the day I finally asked him out. I used to go in the shop where he works and ask to look at various items, as an excuse just to talk to him. He’d flirt outrageously, but as I'd observed him doing the same with other customers, both male and female, I was still, at that point, uncertain as to what it signified. He employed it as a sales technique and it worked well on several levels: either the customer in question would enjoy the game allowing themselves to be charmed and flattered into buying something a little bit more expensive than they originally intended, or it scared them into signing a cheque or parting with cash just to get out of the shop.

  One day I went in to buy a new watchstrap, as I'd lost a spring bar from mine (strictly speaking it was more deliberately thrown away than lost) I knew what I wanted and how much I wanted to pay. There was one in a display cabinet that fitted the bill. I pointed it out to him. He brought out every one but the one I wanted. I solemnly told him he knew exactly what strap I was interested in and he was to stop being naughty and do as he was told. He said later that his knees went weak at those words and he was glad there was a counter between us to hide what was happening in the front of his trousers. He complied with my request. I bought the strap and stood talking with him as he fitted it.

  As we chatted I studied him while trying not to make it obvious that I was doing so. Part of me was still trying to get to grips with the attraction I felt for him. I had met plenty of men with lovely eyes and gorgeous smiles who didn't have the affect on me that he had. I concluded that looks were the least of it. It was something behind the eyes, something which spoke to some hitherto hidden aspect of me. As I looked him over I suddenly noticed his tie, or more precisely what he had on his tie. It was a Pride tiepin and all at once it clicked why he'd made such a meal out of the watchstrap thing. He’d had to bend forward every time he reached into the display cabinet. He'd been trying to make me notice the pin on his tie. He said later that he'd begun to think I might be a bit dim, either that or in need of a trip to Spec Savers.

  I was light-headed with pleasure to have my suspicions confirmed. As I put my watch back on I casually asked if he were seeing anyone. He shook his head and taking a deep breath I asked if he would like to have dinner with me that evening. He did, thank God. I would have been crushed if he'd said no. That was something of a digression, but never mind. I know I go on about him a bit, but then this diary is about my life with him. He is my life, even when he's being a boil on the neck.

  Getting back on track. I spent some long moments whispering in his ear about all the things that naughty boys deserved to have done to them, and then after we'd thoroughly enjoyed putting a few of them into practice and were cuddling under the duvet, I told him that if he promised to be a good boy he could consider himself unrestricted again.

  Funnily enough what set off as a windup on his part had an outcome he didn't expect. It made him more aware of the birds in the garden and more interested in their doings. Yesterday morning he went outside to hang out some clothes before we left for work and then came rushing back in to tell me we had a pair of blackbirds building a nest in the peg basket hanging on the line. He's named the pair Doris and Eddie and is keeping a close eye on their progress.

  21st May 2006: Sneaking And Fitting

  I caught Twinks ferreting through my wardrobe this morning and landed a swat to his nosey backside. I just about had to peel him off the ceiling, not because it was a particularly hard swat, but because he'd been so busy snooping he hadn't heard me come into the bedroom and got a fright. He denounced me as an evil swine, and not just for sneaking up on him, but also for laughing at his reaction. I know what he was after. He was trying to get a sneak preview of my wedding suit. It isn’t even in the wardrobe yet so he was on a losing wicket to start with. It's not quite finished. I'm going for a final fitting this afternoon. I'm quite excited about it. I couldn't find anything in the shops that looked special enough without actually being the full penguin suit sort of thing. Brian suggested a friend of his might be able to help me out and as it tuned out he did indeed. I won't describe my suit, not with Twinks on the prowl. He's already had a shufty through the diary to see if I've mentioned it here.

  He's got all the girls coming over this afternoon to have dress fittings done. At the moment our dining room is off limits to me. It's the official centre of dress production and has frocks at various stages of creation hangi
ng all over the place. It was decided it would be easier (given that two of the bridesmaids are men) and less costly to make the dresses rather than buy them from a shop. Lulu is chief bridesmaid and then there's Maryann and Natalie. Yep, you read that right, Natalie. Twinks claimed to need someone to act as a foil to his beauty and who better than his archenemy, and anyway her alter ego Kevin would have been hurt if he hadn't asked him to play a part in the wedding. And of course there's Gabby as our little flower girl and Dominic as pageboy. Janet is too tiny to play an official part. It would just unsettle her.

  My aunt Helen got a bit huffy because we didn't ask my cousin Debs to be one of the bridesmaids, which was a bit rich when you consider she told mum that gay weddings weren't real weddings, but just business arrangements. Mum retorted that all weddings were business arrangements of one kind or another. Debs phoned to beg us not to appease her mum by asking her to be a bridesmaid. She wasn't wearing a dress for anyone, and certainly not one designed by a drag queen. Twinks rather bitchily stated that it would need a marquee maker to design a dress for Debs…in private of course. He wouldn’t dare say something like that to her face, not without armed protection.

  I’ve got some news about Lulu and his boyfriend, but I haven't got time to journal it at the moment.

  23rd May 2006: Let It Rain

  It's done nothing but pour down here for the past four days and yet the media are busy stirring up hysteria with reports of impending water shortages, hosepipe bans and standpipes in the street to dole out rationed water. Lulu and his dad are having a hard time trying to convince his mum that stockpiling buckets of water in the garage will serve no real purpose at this stage. Twinks blames the crisis on Ray Brownlow. He claims to have seen him watering his geraniums in the middle of a rain shower. The trouble is he also blames Brownlow for his beloved mules not being as fluffy as they used to be, the eruption of Mount Merapi and the situation in the Middle East. That boy of mine never allows facts and commonsense to get in the way of a good personal hate campaign.

  Speaking of my boy, he’s currently giving me the silent treatment. It's hard, but I'll weather it. He's annoyed because I've banned him from watching the new series of Big Brother this evening. I utterly loathe the programme, but he loves it, as do most of the folk who frequent the PP. They all yak about it non-stop. I don't mind him liking it. It’s his choice. There are plenty of programmes I like that he loathes, so I just go off and watch something else while he watches BB. However, what I do mind is when he gets carried away, as he did this morning when watching an update from the BB House before leaving for work. He got annoyed at one of the contestants and threw what he held in his hand at the TV set. It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been a cushion he was holding, but it wasn't. It was a small dumbbell. He’s using them to tone up his arm muscles, which leads me to believe his wedding dress must be a strapless number. Fortunately his aim being what it is, it missed the screen and landed with a thud behind the telly. I was vexed all the same. He just doesn't THINK. It gets on my nerves. I told him if he didn’t have enough self-restraint to watch the damn programme without shouting, swearing and throwing things at the screen, then he couldn't watch it at all, certainly not this evening.

  He referred to me as a prim, uptight old biddy who needed to consider spanking the monkey a bit more often in order to loosen up. I told him I'd spank the bloody monkey all right if he broke another television set. I also told him he was lucky I was only banning him from watching the programme for one night and not for the duration. By way of retaliation he’s changed the bedding in our room. He's put on a duvet set I particularly dislike. It’s nauseatingly frilly and flowery and horrifically pink with gushings of ribbon and lace. I keep expecting to wake up next to Barbara Cartland, which makes me afraid to go to sleep. He's a wicked little sod sometimes.

  Lulu was supposed to be coming round this evening, but he got a last minute date, the latest in a long line. The boyfriend he told everyone about turned out to be plural. He’s joined several gay dating agencies, but didn't want anyone to know in case it made him look desperate. It certainly cleared up some confusion with regard to his 'boyfriend's' name. There was almost a punch up at the PP on Friday night with regard to it. Twinkles said it was Tim and Natalie said it was Dave. I backed up Twinkles and Big Mary confused the issue further by saying he thought it was Trevor. It turned out to be all of them and more. Sadly, none of them have so far turned out to be Mr Right.

  27th May 2006: Excess

  It's been one of those weeks. Twinks has developed into something of a twitcher and is keenly following the progress of Doris and Eddie, our resident blackbirds. They’ve built a nest in the clothes peg basket attached to our washing line. It means that even when it isn't actually raining we can't dry clothes outside for fear of disturbing them. It's a small price to pay for the pleasure of observing the birds from our back bedroom window. Doris is currently incubating a clutch of about, we think, five pretty blue-green eggs and Eddie is busily providing her with food. Really the birds couldn't have chosen a more opportune time to move into our peg basket. They’ve provided Twinkles with some much-needed distraction. He's getting a bit hyper about the wedding and is torn between excitement and anxiety.

  Just how anxious he’s feeling was brought home to me late on Tuesday night when I heard him being sick in the bathroom. Naturally I was concerned but was told not to worry, he’d just picked up a mild bug. I was suddenly suspicious. For a start he'd never mentioned he was feeling off colour, usually at the merest hint of illness he demands I pander to him. Nor did he look ill as such. He was a bit flushed, but there was no waxy sheen to his skin. Moreover there was a certain lingering smell in the bathroom, which suddenly jogged a memory.

  A quick foray of the linen cupboard yielded a carrier bag of assorted chocolate bars plus a clutch of empty wrappers. Under interrogation he confessed he'd been gorging on chocolate and then making himself sick to lessen the risk of weight gain prior to the wedding. I was not happy.

  A few years ago he had a severe infection, which had to be treated with a combo of drugs that temporarily altered his metabolism and caused him to gain quite a bit of weight. He only had to look at a bar of chocolate and he'd put weight on. He was understandably miserable even though the doctor assured him that his metabolism would right itself eventually. Unbeknown to me a 'friend' introduced him to the concept of self-induced vomiting and laxative use as a method of weight control. If he wanted chocolate he had chocolate, in quantity, and then he brought it back up, as well as down. When I discovered what was going on and I made him see his doctor who told him a few graphic home truths about the long-term damage he risked doing to his body with such techniques. It did the trick. Twinkles stopped the self-abuse and promised never to do it again. He also promised to tell me if he ever felt tempted so we could work through it together. He'd broken that promise.

  He tearfully apologised and assured me he hadn't misused any laxatives and it was only the second time he'd made himself sick, the other occasion being Sunday when I was out with Brian. He'd eaten a couple of mars bars as he waited for the girls to arrive for their fittings and had suddenly panicked as he read how many depressing calories and how much ugly fat each bar contained. Next thing he knew he was in the bathroom with his fingers down his throat. He hadn't planned it. He just couldn't bear the thought of not being able to get into his wedding dress.

  I accepted that Sunday had been an impulse born of panic and it was unfortunate I hadn't been there for him to talk to. However, he should have told me about it afterwards. Nor did I accept in any measure what he then went on to do…deliberately buying a multitude of chocolate bars and secreting them in the bathroom closet. There was nothing impulsive about that or about him sneaking into the bathroom to greedily gorge on them and then regurgitate them while I sat all unknowing downstairs. It was calculated and I considered it to be unacceptable behaviour.

  I made him unwrap every last bar of chocolate and then drop it in
to the dustbin. I forbade him to buy any more. Bent Barry's famous confectionary stall was deemed out of bounds until further notice, as was the confectionary aisle of every shop in the United Kingdom. I made it coldly clear that if he bought chocolate and I found out, not only would I paddle his arse until he begged for mercy, I would take away his finances again so that shoplifting would be his only means of getting his hands on any. He accused me of being excessive. I disagreed. To my mind the definition of excessive was stockpiling chocolate for the purpose of binging and then purging away the unwanted calories. It was not only excessive it was irresponsible and a clear indication that his self-control required some external moderation. He was very fortunate to have his very own moderator on hand, namely me.

  I think he was relieved that I found out what he was doing and nipped it in the bud. We had a talk and he confessed to being afraid that something awful was going to happen and thus prevent our ceremony going ahead. I sat him down and went through several checklists to reassure him everything was in hand on a practical level. It seemed to help.

  Next morning we discovered that Doris had laid her first egg. It really gave Twinkles a kick and took his mind off premonitions of disaster.

  Sadly it was Doris and Eddie who in all innocence triggered an incident that got Twinks into bother on Friday morning. We were setting off for work and had no sooner stepped outside of the house than Ray Brownlow materialised like a genie from a bottle and not with the intention of granting us three wishes. He launched a verbal attack on Twinks defaming him as a pervert and accusing him of spying on him and his wife through binoculars from our back bedroom window. Despite my instruction to let me deal with the situation, Twinks piled straight in and told Brownlow he would sooner scrutinise a pile of festering faeces than spy on a pair of flabby bastards like him and his wife whom he likened to a hippo and a walrus.