by Rae Earl
Sunday 14.10.90
10.24 a.m.
SLEEPING UGLY
I’ve looked in the best mirror,
My hair is down, unrestrained
My skin is pure, angelic, untouched.
I’ll just check the gas for the seventeenth time,
And switch off the discussion about the recession.
The front door shuts it all behind
I throw the key to the grass
And feel the fruit in my hand
My gown has attracted a thousand stares,
So misplaced amongst the Saturday shoppers,
I ignore the gasps, the glares,
I take a bite of my apple
And I lie down.
I can feel a thousand eyes over me
My hands are clasped to my chest
My eyes tightly closed
Don’t try to push me into the recovery position
I have fainted, read my note
Until this piece of apple is removed from my fat throat,
By him
This pedestrian precinct will be my home
I will sleep here till he arrives
So walk around me
He will come to know
Just make sure he comes before the police arrest me for obstruction,
Or the psychiatrists take me for therapy
Or the hire company come for their dress back
Or his lover comes baying for my blood
I know he’ll come
Because he bloody loves me.
He whispered that to me in jest
But I know he meant it.
Monday 15.10.90
9.02 a.m.
Yes Mum, I will go down the Jobcentre after Kilroy.
Do I want a job at Morrisons? Er. NO! American tan tights, zip up dresses and my mum watching my every move whilst people ask me where the Jif and Persil is ten times a day – NO THANK YOU!!
The Body Shop will be different because people actually want to be there and buy nice shampoo.
Tuesday 16.10.90
10.52 a.m.
POSTCARD FROM LEEDS
Dear Rae,
Colchester is just full of pissed Essex girls anyway.
Love Haddock X
And you wonder why I can’t get him out of my head and why he’ll probably be there FOREVER.
Wednesday 17.10.90
9.25 p.m.
I wish I could be that totally together happy person I am sometimes ALL of the time. Then I could actually be useful.
I’ve met hundreds of blokes and no-one sparks my soul the way that he does. I know I’ve put him way too high. He’s only a man!
Thursday 18.10.90
10.35 a.m.
Just got a letter – I HAVE THE BODY SHOP JOB! I GOT THE FIRST JOB I WENT FOR! STICK THAT UP YOURSELF MUM!
6.45 p.m.
Mum’s reaction was ‘Well done. You’ve got a job in retail.’
Oh sod off!
I start in November. EVEN MORE TIME OFF!!
9.35 p.m.
Did all my applying today. So in the end it’s unis – Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Sheffield.
Polys – Manchester, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield.
Top of the Pops had the Happy Mondays on tonight but it also had this bizarre woman in a kaftan and a hat from Canada singing something that should be on Radio 2. There’s no need for that shit Rita MacNeil – get back to feeding your beavers.
If Battered Sausage was here he would have a field day at me even mentioning the word beaver as he is mentally 12.
Friday 19.10.90
7.28 p.m.
1 candle makes such a difference to a room compared to a harsh light.
1 tape brings back memories of the person who made it and gave it to me. Every song is a memory. It’s a time. It’s us sitting there listening to ‘Function at the Junction’ by Shorty Long and throwing beer mats at each other.
I see so much bad in me. In the mirror I see a thing not cared for.
Equally sometimes, and I feel big headed even writing this, I see something that could be beautiful both inside and out. Something I could really grow to love.
I think that his love could cure this. But then I realise that he can’t cure this. No other man could solve my loneliness either.
If I don’t love myself nothing will cure my loneliness. So I have GOT to learn to love myself before I can enter anything.
BUT HOW? You go into Stamford Library – there are books on great orgasms, orchid growing, how to do the Rubik’s cube (does anyone care anymore?! – just take the stickers off!!) THERE’S EVEN BOOKS ABOUT LULU! But there’s nothing on HOW TO LOVE YOURSELF.
If somebody wrote a book called How To Stop Being a Twat it would sell a MILLION copies – especially to me.
But I’m sure to make it all add up I need someone to build me up a bit. The thought of him just chases all the bad away.
No Mum – this candle will not burn the house down and I am not ‘navel gazing’ again.
Saturday 20.10.90
8.34 p.m.
Status Quo – please fuck off with your Anniversary Waltz. You should not be celebrating.
This is now a Saturday night in Stamford. Shouting at Quo. Perhaps leaving university was the wrong thing to do.
Sunday 21.10.90
9.45 p.m.
Feel lonely, lost, confused and disorientated.
I so desperately want to be reborn to get rid of all the compulsions, the obsessions and to love myself. I’d be better use to everyone if I could just sort myself out.
Mum has bought the Rita MacNeil record. Of course she has. It’s about a ‘Working Man’. Endangered species here love – Thatcher has killed all that.
Monday 22.10.90
11.29 p.m.
I wish I could just hibernate through all this.
Mum is certainly nicer to hedgehogs and blue tits than me.
Tuesday 23.10.90
8.34 p.m.
Mum puts out fatballs and filled coconut shells for the birds. Yet when I eat anything these days she basically offers me the bill.
Bloody hell, things are bad when you want to be a robin more than yourself.
Wednesday 24.10.90
11.05 p.m.
Do nothing all day then wonder why I can’t sleep at night. Feel grotty tired yet can’t sleep. Bad thoughts.
11.53 p.m.
I just coughed up blood. I’ve probably got TB or something terrible from cows. I spend more time with farm animals than with real people.
My chest is so tight. It could be the 3 cigarettes. Thank GOD for Tiger Balm which I have smeared all over my chest. I AM SO SEXY! I smell like Boots. Not the perfume section. The pharmacy.
Thursday 25.10.90
8.45 p.m.
What really worries me is that music is ending or heading to some sort of crisis. Tonight’s Top of the Pops – ‘Unchained Melody’ by The Righteous Brothers AGAIN. ‘Take My Breath Away’ by Berlin AGAIN. It’s like people have run out of ideas. I saw this film once called The Seventh Sign with Demi Moore where it said that Jewish people believe that there is something called the Guf. All souls of people come from the Guf and when the Guf is empty the world will end. I think the pop Guf is nearly empty. Perhaps everything has been done and it’s only backwards now. The Roses were the end. Now it’ll just be Sonia destroying Motown.
I think I do need to go and see someone but it can’t be prompted by Sonia.
Friday 26.10.90
8.45 p.m.
First of all, let me give you an example, diary, of my unique screwed up mess! I am convinced that I have killed someone today by looking at them. When I write it I know it sounds mental but I had to go and pray in the fucking toilets at Peterborough station to reverse my evil. I had to kneel in a cubicle. It was vile but felt I HAD to do it. How can I tell a psychiatrist that?!
Then I had soggy disinfectant knees from kneeling and praying.
Mum told me to stop wallowing in self pity t
oday. She never tells me how though. How you can stop being mental? So I come to my bedroom and I write and I listen to music and I look out my window at people queuing at the chip van. Billy Bragg and ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’ by Brook Benton go well with people queuing up for kebabs.
Saturday 27.10.90
1.35 a.m.
The James Whale radio show proves that a man can be gobby and ugly and everyone loves them.
When will I be sorted?
Sunday 28.10.90
10.25 p.m.
Haddock’s girlfriend has just been round. God she’s lovely and I’m actually the biggest bitch ever. In my head I have slept with her on/off boyfriend about 5 million times and not just in beds either – On fucking trains!! In fields!! EVERYWHERE! I have done it with Haddock in my head in every country in the world. Except in war zones or potential war zones like Kuwait. I have the time. Have the fantasy. Will travel.
But I’ve done nothing and wouldn’t do anything anyway so I listen to her.
Actually, would doing it in a war zone make things even more erotic? Perhaps in a combat situation you think could be dead in the next hour so let’s have really HOT WILD sex because we might as well?!
I have a feeling that’s how my actual mum was produced in 1942. That was not a good thing. Not my mum being born. The circumstances. It was not good that when my Gran’s husband came back from war after 2 years my mum was in the cot. My mum paid a terrible price for that.
Sex in Kuwait, even with Haddock, is officially OFF.
Monday 29.10.90
10.47 a.m.
I have an interview in Hull on Thursday!! I CANNOT MESS THIS UP. This is the ONE place I just think I could be OK at. I don’t know why, I just have a feeling that it’s RIGHT. I feel like it’s meant to be. The Housemartins were from Hull. I LOVE the Housemartins. The Beautiful South are from Hull. I LOVE them too. There was NEVER a famous band from Colchester. NEVER. It’s not a music city. That’s why the University of Essex was never going to work. Nothing musically good will ever come from Colchester except from a military marching band thing that my dad will love.
Tuesday 30.10.90
9.35 p.m.
I told Mum about the Hull interview as I need some money to actually get there on the train. I told her I thought that Hull was my destiny. She wet herself and said that she thought that was the first time she’d ever heard anyone say that.
Wednesday 31.10.90
6.02 a.m.
I think that the basic problem I have, on top of being mad, is that fundamentally I am a lazy bitch. I wish somebody would pay me to lie in a field and listen to ‘The Boy with the Thorn in his Side’ and dream of Haddock. My CV for that is PERFECT.
University of Hull tomorrow. Rituals mad today. Please, please don’t let me mess it up.
Thursday 1.11.90
10.36 p.m.
I have had the most MAD day in history. I think I’ve been offered a place at the University of Hull. It was as simple as that even with my grades. I think but I’m not sure because it all went like a dream and I had to meet different people. And weird stuff happened – I’ll write tomorrow. Mum has made me Super Noodles.
Friday 2.11.90
9.23 p.m.
I needed sleep. I was gone last night. No energy these days for anything. Here’s what really happened . . .
I got to Hull (panic attack at railway station but got through it by breathing and listening to ABC’s ‘Look of Love’). Firstly met up with this professor bloke who said there’s no way you can get in here with those grades. I said ‘My teacher has written a letter – I was ill before my A levels.’ He said he’d go and see if the special admissions officer was in. She was, by TOTAL luck (I TOLD YOU, DESTINY!) She’s called Patsy Stoneman and we just got on brilliantly. I saw Ulysses by James Joyce on her bookshelf and I said ‘I’ve read that.’ Actually I’ve just read the back of it and a bit of it but we talked about that and Orwell. It was AMAZING, we talked about books for TWO hours. I told her about my life. I didn’t tell her about the psychiatric ward. There was only really Reader’s Digest books in there – it wasn’t exactly relevant. She was lovely and at the end I’m sure she said ‘I think we can offer you a place here despite your grades.’ I’m sure she said that.
Now I’m thinking that she didn’t but not even I could have misheard that?!
Could I? I had nothing to eat all day and things only made a bit of sense after the Super Noodles.
I think I’ve done it. A fuck up out-of-the bag epic.
Saturday 3.11.90
12.32 p.m.
No Hull offer yet but even if she’d posted it first class it probably still wouldn’t get here today.
Sunday 4.11.90
10.13 a.m.
No Hull offer!
11.01 a.m.
Mum has reminded me it’s Sunday. Lazy post office bastards – some of us are on tenterhooks here. It can’t be that hard to pedal round on a bike with letters!
Monday 5.11.90
8.59 a.m.
No Hull offer AGAIN. Perhaps somebody who had read bloody Ulysses all the way through came in after me and my place has gone to them.
I’ve just got to get on with it now. I can’t wait by the letterbox everyday – it will send me mental again. And it’s freezing because Mum won’t put the heating on. A homemade draft excluder in the shape of a sausage dog made from old tights is NOT ENOUGH to stop us freezing to death!
Tuesday 6.11.90
11.10 p.m.
It’s impossible to know where to start. There is nothing yet everything to write. I’ve gone over it 1000 times in my mind but as usual when it comes to writing it down I seem to have forgotten what I want to write.
I’ll start from where it ALL must start from.
Self love is the absolute core. YOU MUST LOVE YOURSELF.
This is not a suicidal entry. I am ‘down’. I am ‘sad’ but I feel, above all the confusion, curiously positive. There is a bit to love – just at the moment there is more to detest.
1) I hate myself for the betrayal of my sex. There seem to be 3 genders – male, female and RAE. I have to be at the centre of things. I have to cause a stir. I know I’ll never be a wallflower but it’s overpowering. I’m too much. Like a massive stinking bright flower. I HATE writing it but I’m not a girl and I want to be. I have this vision – she’s not perfection but she’s Rae and she’s a girl too! And she’s strong and if you fancy me GOOD but if you don’t – bollocks!
2) I hate myself for my weak screwed-up-ness. Sometimes I think it’s major enough to warrant more help. The terrible thoughts. I bash myself to pieces in order that the physical pain will replace the nasty voices in my head. But I’m cut and bruised. It’s not right. The compulsions – checking the gas, checking the tins so nobody has tampered with them. It’s ridiculous I KNOW! The hypochondria. I shouldn’t know so much about botulism. The hypochondria, the worrier, the neurotic. All these things partly inherited. Can I blame anyone though? Anyway, it’s there. Messing up good days and making bloody bad days shitter.
3) I hate the way I look. It’s an ugly thing. Uncared for, grossly fat and I’m NOT happy with it. I binge ALL the time. I’m out of control. I hate the fact I couldn’t get into a bed naked and say ‘Look, this is me mate and I LIKE IT!’, which brings me conveniently on to sex . . .
4) Sex. I hate myself because I’m frigid. When really in my head I do it several times an hour! I haven’t snogged anyone for nearly 2 years. That’s NOT NORMAL. And the one person I did snog felt sorry for me. Well sod that! FUCK YOU DEAR!
I feel as though a lot of things have messed me up. The event when I was 12 is just a part of it. The psychiatrists always go to that but I was mad before that. I’ve always felt wrong. Perhaps I’m a man in a girl’s body. I’m a total bloody gay if I am. I think I would be a better gay man than a girl. I liked my mum’s homosexual second husband’s wardrobe more than my own for a start!
My mum is mad but she’s had a life of TOTAL shit and n
ow she’s getting reborn. Just her adolescence is crashing head on into mine. She’s not a raver. She doesn’t go out and never drinks but men love her. And she swings from total neuroticness to pompous extreme self confidence. She’s either Freddie Mercury or that woman from the psychiatric ward with an itchy skirt. It’s all fucked.
Wednesday 7.11.90
4.23 p.m.
I had an appointment at the hospital today. My ovaries are still a mess but the doctor was really sweet and from Sri Lanka. He said ‘I am not saying you are terribly fat (I am) but I think losing weight would really help your condition.’
I’m getting Christmas over – then I’m losing weight. If I do get into Hull I’m not far away from you know who. Chocolate Brazils or . . . there’s no contest! Plus if I CAN lose weight I think it will slightly piss off Mum because she can’t!
Thursday 8.11.90
9.34 p.m.
The pop Guf is NOT empty! EMF are BLOODY AMAZING – in fact they are UNBELIEVABLE!! HA HA HA! What a song!
Paul Gascoigne, however, really needs to stick to football and crying because ‘Fog on the Tyne’ is UTTER shit.
Friday 9.11.90
7.12 p.m.
I start work on Monday. I’m totally wound up about it but it could be a laugh. It IS The Body Shop. Anita Roddick is always cool on TV – it’s probably going to be a doss.
The rumour is Battered Sausage is out tomorrow. I feel nervous about going out but I’m doing it.
Saturday 10.11.90
11.25 p.m.
I went to the Vaults. I saw the familiar back in an Aran cardigan (WHY does he wear those?). Battered Sausage was back and I had a blind panic but I ignored it. Then he dragged me into the bogs because he needed a serious chat. This ended up being about his problems with women and his weight gain. He said ‘Rae – how do I lose weight?’ WHY IS HE ASKING ME?! Do I look like I’m a slim success?!
Then he’s back to Exeter again. Everyone’s spread out. Gone. Me still here. Trapped totally by my own crapness and choice.
Sunday 11.11.90
7.58 p.m.
I just had a massive argument with Mum. She said ‘Good luck for tomorrow.’ I shouted ‘I don’t need your bloody sarcasm thank you!’ Apparently SHE says she wasn’t being sarcastic. Balls. Yes she was. She thinks I won’t be able to do it but I bloody will. In fact I could end up managing a Body Shop and doing my degree at the same time. It would be nice if someone in my family actually had some FAITH in me. Whatever I do I’ll just be the nuts one. I could become prime minister and Stamford would still say ‘She went a bit funny when she was a teenager you know.’ OH SOD OFF – I’m RUNNING THE COUNTRY AND STOPPING WARS.
