Diary early 1992

 

Thursday night I went out with my students, the advanced class.  Mariam, Peter, Boba, Lydia, Lilly, Duchana etc.  We went to Bernolac, the B club.  All the discos are just just called S-club or A-club it seems, well all the student ones.  The music was the worst I'd ever heard worse than elam.  Lots of OMD and other songs which I can't mentionThursday night I went out with my students, the advanced class.  Mariam, Peter, Boba, Lydia, Lilly, Duchana etc.  We went to Bernolac, the B club.  All the discos are just called S-club or A-club it seems, well all the student ones.  The music was the worst I'd ever heard worse than elam.  Lots of OMD and other songs which I can't mention.  We didn't have a single drink.  They gave me a wooden hedgehog which they all signed and Boba gave me a smal round pig of indeterminate material.  We went back to Mlada Garda about midnight and got a drink then.  We coloured a piece of paper and cut it up as a souvenir for everybody.  I got really drunk.  We played "I never" but I can't remember half of the things that were said. Before that in the afternoon I'd been having my last lesson at Palma the fat/margarine makers.  It was a bit slow but I got a buzz.  We had wine and loads of food.  As usual a lot of the course centres around food, it's so strange.  They were really nice and bought me a stick with some ribbons on it and a blown egg, the stick's for beating women on Easter Monday.  They wrote their names on the ribbonribbon, then embarrassed me by saying I didn't know their names.  Well the stick's in the bin, the ribbon's in my bag and the eggs are hanging on the flush handle on the toilet in Mlada Garda. I remember when they showed me round the factory.  It's like, well it looks like it doesn't work but it is still very noisy.  There's a half an inch of brown gunk. Oil, fat, dirt, seeds, on all the walkways.  And it smells a bit strange.  Jane (I'm not sure that's right) was just somebody who had a totally physical affect on me. I felt like there was electricity zapping back and forward between us.  Sometimes I'd just get this look from her that was awesome.  I remember going upto her office after looking round the factory and there was maybe 3/4 hour before the lesson and I just had to get out and go bakc to Mlada Garda to remain sane. We did group juggling second last lesson.  They were really quite good, but when we did the individual lessons it got a bit harder.  Eva (the person that organized it) was just in a total fluster whenever (everytime) she dropped a ball.  Her friend, the clothes designer- whose name escapes me - who get embarrassed easily is funny.She just sits there and plays dead cool until I say something to her. Mariam, I didn't so goodbye.  I wouldn't say I was particulary hurt. He just really began to **** me off this course.  When he makes a joke or a comment in Slovak it can **** me off something chronic.  He got better the last couple of days or week or so.  We were doing more games then.  On Wednesday we went outside did alphabench, group juggling and hand-knot game thing. Boba is brilliant and she's really cool.  I even like her despite the way she dances, a kind of cross between an aerobics session and "hot legs" the dance team they had on top of the pops when I first started to watch it. Yes, basically it's not a pretty sight, well that's not true, I've learned to dig and even respect the way people disco dance in Slovakia.  I remember in the first couple of weeks when I came here I thought she was really cool, then I got convinced she wasn't.  It was when we played the "love game" called something like "seduce me" that I went off her.  Stupid me! Always taking people by appearances. It was only last Sunday I went to her dockyard, it's so strange, it seems like it was such a short time ago, or even better it seems like a dream to me now.  I remember now I'd got really drunk on Saturday night, I can't quite remember who with.  I think it was those two English girls.  Anyway I got up and went straight down to P.K.O.  Originally we planned to go canoeing, Max didn't want to go and I'd probably have puked if you'd have put me in a boat, so we went for a walk down the river.  Boba said we were going to throw all our clothes off and roll in the mud in the riverbank but we saw some trees instead.  It was really nice, I had a kind of bad body feeling and we just sat up trees and it was warm and there was hardly anybody around.  It was kind of shallow banks, sandy with big trees and dry, white flood wood and hot sand with ferns and whispy grass. We sat up trees and talked about different things nothing particularly important, but wait she talked about her family problems.  Her father died drunk driving and her mother's on her last legs with heart problems.  We talked about feeling shit and I meant I had a hangover and we ended up talking about self-image problems.  She's probably one of the few people I've really talked about anything important as I usually say.  Feelings, that is.  I must quickly mention that there's a real git on the bus a confident young tennis player, just dead cosmopolitan, he talking to a Belgian woman about different places in Europe.  "I don't like London much, it's very industrial."  Ho ho ho, I would have laughed is I wasn't crying. I must get everything down, it all goes so quickly.  When we had the last day party, we walked off to get the guitar and the beast.  Oh I must write about busking.  Yes we went to get the guitar and she said (Boba), that she was down.  We talked around the subject.  She's really afraid that other people won't want to hear her problems.  Anyway we got it down to her family problems.  She's got a photographic memory.  We played that children's game matching pairs.  Okay so I was a bit drunk but even sp she was cleaning up, ain't that strange now? Oh yeah, busking. Actually I think it was Wednesday we went busking and Tuesday we played games by the fountain.  Anyway we went out to St.Michael's gate with a guitar, the beast and one talented musician. We got there and started playing.  Catherine and Sandy Pepper came by in the middle of some drinks session-pub crawl type thing. Max turned up with his students.  Me and Max jammed along and the studetns went about there task of extorting as much money out of hapless Austrians as possible. We all went to the pub afterwards and had a bad time. I got the beast on Wednesday.  It's a little battery powered organ that makes absolutely horrendous noises, it's great! I want to busk in Bath with it when I get back.  It's been done up a little bit, but it can only get better. Let's talk about Slovak nationalism.  There are some people (young) who wander round without much hair, big boots, green shiny jackets and football hats.  They dance to crap Slovak ska music, which has put me off the genre for life.  As I see it, they don't pose a threat to anybody on a political level.  I've heard worse.  Xiao Bau and friends got beaten up.  A sweet guy who likes making good food and thinking great thoughts getting his chest kicked to a deep purple.  Okay so the more I do think about it the more angry I do get.  I remember the independence demonstration.  It seemed pathetic more than anything else.  Some people at the front chanting like morons and waving flags around with five times more standing around looking unimpressed.  I went to the counter demonstration at Primacalric which is a much nicer place to have it, it's got nice buildings on two sides. SNP is horrible with Dunaij and a horrible big television screen showing mountain-bikers and Phillips camcorders.  There's that ****ing ugly statue of a kind of superman figure with a cloak and a big mallet in his hands, but he's got a ridiculously small head and pinprick eyes. The ideal worker looks incredibly dim.  Two women stand back, suitably submissive.  Anyway back the demonstrations.  The road between the two was cordoned off and there was a fair old few policemen around. All the hipsters and groovers started to turn up an hour before the concert, as it was, started.  There was a real alternative scene happening there.  My painted t-shirt, leather jacket and ripped-to-shreds jeans seemed quite tame.  They got the P.A. working and before the bands started they put on.....Phil Collins! As Todd put, "When you think of famous protest singers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Phil Collins, Joan Baez...."  So the mood I had before was destroyed for a while.  The bands started up, they were very bad.  Some skinheads came and went without incident and it was very cold so I went home.  The nationalism demonstration was firing on 2 cylinders as I went past. No seriously, the people that give me the creeps most are some of the creeps that got to N.M.C. Typically 6ft2, a bit overweight, but necks that are too thick, about 2-3 days growth hair on their face and looking 30-35.  They always seem like they're planning horrendous things.  They wear these big long raincoats.  They seem to move in circles of power and are often very aggressive.  They give me the willies. Tell them about the music, Giles. Tell them about the bands.  Okay, already, I saw a band 2-3 weeks back Lilac confusion.  I have to describe it in detail.  We went (Me, Todd, Kyle + others) to the UNIC club in Mlynske Dolino or whatever.  There was a disco happening the music was very good and the people dancing alright, the clothes were good but perhaps everybody was looking to see what everybody else was wearing, to see how they were acting, a little too much.  Anyway the disco went on for much longer than I thought it would.  I drank vodka and orange squash that glowed.  Everybody say down in front of the stage about 11pm.  We were right up at the front in the second row. Suddenly the front row got up and went on stage and became the band!  A singer, 3 guitars, bass and a tape recorder. The tape recorder started off..  Strange noises very loud and I think the other noises were drums. Then the guitars came crashing in with an affect like the unstoppable force meeting the disposable hanky.  The lead guitarist, some long blond hairthe front in the second row. Suddenly the front row got up and went on stage and became the band!  A singer, 3 guitars, bass and a tape recorder. The tape recorder started off.  Strange noises very loud and I think the other noises were drums. Then the guitars came crashing in with an affect like the unstoppable force meeting the disposable hanky.  The lead guitarist, some long blond hair, sex? Could have been anything, was widdly-diddling loads.  The other two, a girl who'd perfected a bored, "I don't want to be here" look and a guy going for the naive look were sliding the plectrums up and down the strings.  The singer joined in with a moan denoting the pain of a sensitive artist.  Okay so it's the intro, it's bad but maybe the song'll be alright.  The intro lasted 10 minutes and then stopped.  The singer shouted out, "If you don't like it you can ****ing leave"  Nobody understood but most people did as he suggested. I don't want this to be the diary of my journey back but I guess I'm quite happy now.  I remember the night when we (me and Max) went to Ingrid's (tall, skinny blonde/brunette) house for the party there.  There was Max, IngridIngrid, Mariam and Duchana (Ingrid's friend with straight black hair and big, big, brown eyes).  We sat around and got drunk, went out into the garden late at night and sat around playing guitar and singing.  It was quite relaxed until we went when Ingrid came and lay down next to me and telling, me how she loved me.  I was saying, "You don't know me." and "I'm not worth it." Ha ha.  I was very drunk and perhaps a bit down on self-esteem.  So next morning we cleared up, got wax from the candles off tables, chairs and the carpet and drove back to town in Ingrid's father's old BMW.  When your out in the countryside in Slovakia it looks and feels pretty similar to most places in Europe in the countryside. The previous time I'd been to Ingrid's house, was in the town and the same people + Boba were there.  I felt we were there for some kind of amusement.  Nobody talked to us until they asked us to play some songs on the guitar.  It was Friday night and we were bored.  We got up to say our goodbyes about 11 or 11.30 and everybody was saying you must stay, you must stay.  I just wanted to get out and Ingrid wouldn't talk to me, it was really bizarre, the whole thing.  Let's just say I didn't enjoy myself.  The first, and only other, time I went to her house was much better.  It was about 7 weeks ago at the end of my first set of courses.  We had the end of course party and there was me Ingrid and Olivier, this quite cool dude from the beginners course then.  Ingrid had made some really good dips and as Paul would say, if a woman cooks food for you in Slovakia, she wants to (crossed out) you can sleep with her.  We played guitar me and Oliver.  Cleaned out a bottle 1/2 of Bechovoka.  We stayed upo all night and we talked some.  I had a much better time.  There were good vibes. The market.  I got the bus out with Jane, from my 3.30pm intermediated one Sunday.  We went out away from town on the tram to Raza.  Then we got the bus out to what was or maybe still is an airport.  There's this big market there were people selling loads of different things, though it's at least half of it clothes.  The first time I went there was probably February and it was really windy and absolutely freezing.  So we couldn't stay for long.  The second time I went was a week ago on Sunday.  It was warm and apparently on of the special weeks where more people come to buy and sell than usual.  Everything's laid out on trestle tables or plastic sheets on the ground.  I guess what I felt most when I was there was isolation.  Hundreds of people trying to screw more money out of me because I'm English.  I bought some tape there, though. Well I'm in the train to Gillingham now.  Catherine.  Catherine came in the middle of January. We (me+Max) didn't talk to her much to start with.  I remember being in the kitchen the first day she got here.  We'd all cleared up especially because the kitchen's such a state normally we deemed it unfit for a member of the gentler sex.  Carl was talking to her and I was munching away on some bread that tasted of vinegar.  They got to talking about relationships and Carl said, "I don't think I'll ever have a relationship with a Slovak."  When asked why - "I'm not into using people." So that's the kind of talk Catherine must have had to deal with generally when she first came here.  Loads of bullshits for hardened eurotrash. She started coming into mine and Max's rooms to talk as did Todd to a lesser extent.  Max and her became quite close, although it was clear for different reasons.  Max's interest was kind of romantic, Catherine's was just that she needed somebody to talk to because she'd been going through ****, an abortion and break up with long-term psychopathic boyfriend, before she came out here.  After things were starting to go sour between Max and Catherine. She politely told him was interested and was getting off with other guys, and had fallen in love with Eddy, she started to talk to me more.  It's that I think we're alike.  We **** people of without realising but are always ready with a story of how tough life is to get around any direct accusations most of the time, but we never do anything that ****s somebody off knowingly. We are good friends that can't talk to each other alot (crossed out) some of the time because we're often on different planets and it's usually a drink or two that brings us back down to earth.  When she'd been having problems with Max and hadn't met Eddy she made a pass at me one night coming back from N.M. we were both totally as I recall.  We'd (about six of us) been playing "I never" and the talk got a little detailed.  I "lied" at what I thought were the appropriate moments.Anyway we got out the door and she pinned me to the wall with strong arms and a big kiss.  Well, I'm exaggerating, I was only slightly passively compliant, but she's a big girl, our Catherine.  Anyway there were some Americans sleeping in Max's room and me and Catherine we in bed and we'd begun to touch each other and Max came in and lay down in the floor to go to sleep.  We didn't know quite what to do.  We were v. drunk.  I think we went back to sleep and woke a little while later and were fooling around.  It came to the point where it was obvious we needed a condom.  But I either baulked or thought I couldn't have sex because of her more as a cool person to be friends with.  So I lied; I said the condoms were in the cupboard Max was lying against.  It was a good line at the time because Max seemed to be a big contraceptive in his own right just by being in the room so that to put something else onto his physical prescence didn't seem that big a deal. The next morning I woke and dressed feeling a bit dum that maybe I'd got myself into a situation I wasn't going to like.  I felt **** when Catherine kissed me and I walked out.  I went shopping or something.  I came backed and expressed very badly that I didn't want to kiss Catherine again.  I think I made some throw away line about, "only when I'm drunk." And she enough a week or two later as I was lying on a bench in New Model only halfway conscious she kissed me again. I pulled away. The conversation then went something like this, I remember it well.  "Why don't you want to kiss me?" "Well how can  I say this......?" "Just say it"  "Well let's analyze what kissing is." We came to the conclusion that in that situation it was a preamble to sex. "......and I don't want to have sex with you."    "Why not?"  I was ****ed off with the whole conversation so I said a half-truth.  "I don't find you attractive to me." and that was that. I guess I'd forgotten most of that until I really started writing.  So for a few weeks things were perhaps a little bit tense, or maybe stand-offish is a better word.  But then she started thinking about Eddy and Max out of jealousy or whatever it's none of my business and I won't think about it much, wasn't anybody to talk to and so Catherine talked to me more again. Ever since she's been the best confidante I've had for a while and the relationship doesn't seem to involve sex.  Although I do remember shouting to her across a dance-floor, "You're great, I just want to spend the night with you naked." but that was in no way sexual, well not true, she is attractive, but if it had of happened I'd have wanted a definite light-heartedness to the whole affair, no intense getting off with each other session. Occasionally she would stumble into my room drunk and wake me up and we'd talk about something. After this had happened a few times I started doing it to her. What else can I say?  We frequently dig the same things in a major way and when we don't we disagree totally but it's not important. I don't seem to share the rapport for light-hearted conversation that I do with Max but hell she's not as hung up about things as he is bad we talk about things without the same intensity factor that comes from talking to Max. Oh **** I think I'm out of steam for a bit now.  I've probably had about 15 hours sleep the last 3 nights. Hang on though I've just thought of something to write about, Prague.  It's so totally different from Bratislava.