Sexless in the city

Today is the first sunny day in London for what feels like a millenium and still I have found myself devoting this tragic sunday to taking the crater in my sofa another inch deeper. Anyone who has ever ingested adderrall knows that you have to be doing what you intend to do for the next four hours the moment the medication kicks in, or else you'll find yourself buffing the kitchen floor with a sonicare toothbrush, color and shape coordinating your closet, and plucking your leg hair from ankle to bikini line incapable of stopping until either you've got them all or the adderall wears off. A similar phenomenon occurs when I write. Not even the prospect of a ball of fire to melt my frigid heart and warm my face could unglue me from the keyboard in those moments I start to marry thoughts to the page. I suppose I like it because i can disguise myself as having done something when the reality is having been unwashed and bedbound until 5pm. 

Have you ever seen those $20.00 pop up tents? They are marketed toward amateurs (in life, not just camping) for taking only two minutes to pitch, but what they fail to mention is that they also take a lifetime to pack away. There's a metaphor to my love life there where the first time I really fell in love it took about 2 minutes and seemed like the most incredible, easy thing ever, and then from the time it was over has felt like an immoveable feat. AND THEN just when you think you've gotten the last corner into the box, BANG that little shit pops up again to startle you and you have to begin again.

In the process of trying to find novel ways to destroy that unnatural, nylon jack-in-the-box  style habitat , getting a text like this when you're a single person living in London is really the best thing that can happen to you in terms of romance: 

Seems like a paradox in a city with 9 million people, a significant proportion of whom are highly educated, successful, beautiful, cultured, and interesting. But it's equivalently easy to be anonymous in a city so large and furthermore British people are not exactly romantic. I guess this is what happens when you get older. My love life went from being beautiful and unadulterated by baggage to terrifying and sad and also really fucking weird with loads of allegorical suitcases of every shape and size (albeit Prada branded). The last date I went on in London was with a guy who would have apparently ticked a lot of boxes, but who in the first ten minutes lamented being accused of homophobia at work (where there's smoke there's fire people), then ordering an orange juice at DINNER at an italian restaurant, then asking the waiter if there were any chips  on the menu (again, this was an italian restaurant), then gulping the entire orange juice instead of actually chewing his food before ordering a SECOND orange juice to wash down the rest of his meal. He even tried to intellectualize this by saying "I don't understand why people drink wine with their food, it doesn't help you get the food down". Dates like this render me almost hopeless when it comes to matters of the heart and commission me instead to the sofa in my robe on consequential saturday nights, massaging my roommate's feet and eating bowls of cereal for dinner while I reflect on the fact that the most productive thing I did over the weekend was charge my vibrator. 

So who is going to scoop my body off the ice when I eat shit at the Somerset House rink this Christmas? The answer is nobody. I will be sexless in the city which is still better than another handbag or a third glass of orange juice. 

35 is on fire

Since my last post I have turned 35, started a new job, gained three pounds, received and ridded myself of tonsilitis, and partaken of a family vacation. 

My birthday was by far the least eventful of my adult life. Kicked off by an email from E*TRADE wishing me a happy birthday, serving also to remind me about the shitty investment I made courtesy of an ex-lover's "hunch" about the stock market and concluded with a mini existential shiver spawned by the fact that I'm the age my mother was when she birthed me as well as the age when conception becomes physiologically more risky and complicated (and in my case also immaculate/further complicated by singledom). I woke up and had some cereal, then spent the day in inductions at my second day of work, before going out for a bite to eat with my lovely (former) fiancé (number two). I swapped birthday cake for tuna tartare on a rice biscuit. And you know what? It was one of my best birthdays ever. Because in the absence of any kind of extravagance I was deeply happy and grateful for everything good bad and ugly that had led me to that moment of feeling unfamiliarly at peace. I also got a birthday card with a tenner in it which is just the best. 

I moved out of Fartford (!!) and into a great new flat in London that is perhaps just a bit noisy but totally worth the excitement of the neighborhood. My bedroom faces the courtyard of the building so I started sleeping with earplugs because the neighbors have a habit of exaggerated late night sexual intercourse. My bike hasn't yet been stolen and only once in a while does the hot water tank stop working AND the engineer pulled an entire ecosystem out of our laundry filter last week which means the spin cycle now works like a breeze! Still can't figure out why my towels have gone from soft to irreparably crunchy after a single wash, but there is a tequila bar opening next door in October so it really feels like divine intervention has befallen upon East London!

My new job is great although partially if not totally indirectly responsible for aforementioned weight gain secondary to the alcohol consumption that is expected though not explicitly written into my contract. Sometimes  at after work socials I have to lie about the fact that I'm drinking gin and tonic when it's actually just sparkling water with lemon because at the end of the day I am still a doctor and trying not to die of end stage liver disease which in my personal and professional opinion is really one of the worst ways to go. I guess it also seems that the whole of England was traumatized by a few isolated hot days this summer and consequentially left the AC and fans on maximum despite the office temperature being colder than the Soviet Vostok Station. But I fucking love my job and the people with whom I work and it's the greatest decadence to actually have time to drink a cup of water in the day and then pee it out! 

And then there was the family vacation in Greece. I haven't had one of those for 17 years and it was as lovely as it was cataclysmic. Start with twelve family members of a common surname of which myself and my 23 year old cousin were the only two not coupled up. I always thought the piteous attitude implied with flying solo was too cliche to matter but now I have changed my mind and wholly committed to avoiding romantic or family functions in the future where it implies holding the candle. Loneliness and boredom aside, this country still requires toilet paper (which is ONE-PLY AND VERY COARSE) to be binned rather than flushed, there is also an infestation of stray cats and wasps that preclude one from eating a meal in peace. A simple lunch of french fries requires a racket that electrocutes those satanic pests, if you're fast enough to catch them. 

Then on Friday the 13th the ants invaded all the walnuts and cereal, and the electricity went out due to a fire on the island (suspected arson!) This for some reason also meant that the pump on the pool stopped working, causing the water level to go down by almost half in a few hours. And then the water supply to the villa went which meant no handwashing, no pooping, no showers. My aunt had to wash my cousins hair for her with sparkling water. I guess I didn't mind that part as much because it gave me an excuse to pop a squat and go for a whizz behind the tree in the backyard. Peeing in nature I find really connects me with the universe. On a positive note, when I developed a wicked sore throat and diagnosed myself with tonsilitis, all it took was walking to the local pharmacy and demanding a course of amoxicillin which they gave me for €1.90. I mean, this kind of uncomplicated healthcare really suits me. 

Now the winter is coming and I'm starting to dream of the next escape, somewhere with no ants, a functional sewage system, less subject to arson, and where I can pee in nature. 

Parachuting

And just like that, my foundation clinical training was complete. Well to be fair it wasn't really "just like that". Even through a slightly stiffer upper lip that the Brits have taught me, my inner drama queen knows for real it was two years of debilitating anxiety, fear, tears, anger, hysteria and paranoia. Night shifts, weekend shifts, long day shifts, thankless shifts, thematic cardiac arrest shifts, and heart wrenching soul destroying 'i can't do this anymore' shifts.  But thank God for the innate fortitude of humans , plus the psychological therapy, strategically placed vacations, pills, Google (for all the times i searched "how to love yourself"), and of course the most amazing colleagues, friends and family who supported me to survive these years that could have otherwise rendered my gene pool extinct. It feels good to be done! I am now taking a year away from the hospital to pursue a desk job where I've got 99 problems but a pager ain't one! A job that doesn't enforce being bare below the elbows, nor prohibits hand jewelry or nail polish, and allows me to wear my hair down. I'm about to be fabulous and spring back 100000X extra for years of repression by painting my nails every which way and wearing all the jewels I own at the same time. 

At one point last January I did try to intercalate some fabulosity by getting eyelash extensions. I worked a night shift that same day and remember how ashamed I felt with my peacock feathers batting away like a stripper in scrubs as I told a family that their relative was dying. (by the way I LOVED those extensions, 5 stars would come again). When you are a doctor, you are never off the clock. I first learned this just weeks after I graduated from medical school and was in a liquor shop in the Hamptons and one of my friends told the shop owner I was a fresh MD. The shop owner then told the next random customer who entered that I was a new doctor, inciting this patron (without a margin of hesitation) to confide in me that she hadn't opened her bowels for 3 weeks and could I please give her some advice? I certainly wouldn't call up my plumber to ask for some free advice, but hey ho, it's an honor to be entrusted! 

I have skated off to Hungary for a few days to spend some time with family. I have been sleeping loads especially during the day which I attribute to finally being at peace but also to my tiny mother's monstrous snoring the last two nights. I can't even believe that a noise like that could come out of such a tiny head/body and even overpower my earplugs, melatonin and benzodiazepines. Meanwhile my poor competency in Hungarian limits my communication with my grandmother and all I can manage to get out is how much I love her baked goods. Bless, she's trying desperately to thicken me up and prepare me for uxorial life before it's too late. The first of which manifested by her dressing me up like the Real Housewives of Eastern Europe:

Then she tried to give me these:

I started laughing hysterically and she rebutted by telling me these panties were very beautiful, of silk and lace! I told her there was no way she would ever have grandchildren were I to accept them (and my mother chimed in that they were too small for me anyway), but that I would take them back to London in the event I ever conquered my fear of sky diving and could avoid having to pay for the parachute. 

If anyone knows a good boyfriend, please let her know. 

detox

Another month down and only one to go before Fartford becomes a vision of my past. Between a manic stretch of back to back day and night on-calls coupled with the miracle that is the capacity for human adaptation, the time has passed faster than a libidinous politician could disgrace his own reputation. 

Further to this, I have received my first gifts from a fan! As a side, I implore any of you who read this blog and benefit either by laughter or engendered gratitude knowing that by comparative analysis your home life is really actually very nice and mine is really actually very shitty(!) to please also send presents. I just love presents! In this month I have received a very decadent memory foam pillow to support a situation that put into question my heart health. I also received an American-sized jug of bleach to detox my dormitory, and a container of melatonin gummies that are so delicious I can't stop ingesting 1.5mg a pop artificially flavored grape somnolence buttons and then snoozing in inappropriate places and times. I also received some wine and Prosecco to keep me entertained in my own company, because those who know me know that to enjoy my own company my brain must be maximally silenced. Oh, I even got a spray painted skull of some unknown wild animal with tiny horns. Not sure what to make of that one. 

I did another mandatory load of laundry. Turning underwear inside out to avoid a wash cannot be applied to bath towels. So I threw them all in, closed the door and hit start. This was met with immediate regret, and whilst I rushed to abort the mission and remove my dirty but soulfully untarnished towels, the machine was resolute in holding my items hostage until the cycle had been completed. And when it was, three hours later, I retrieved my items smelling this time not of fried potatoes, but of fresh human excrement. 

I finished my last long stretch of on calls on Wednesday at 11pm, and had an early morning flight out of London on Thursday, for which I had to pack the morning of because the suitcase I use for travel is also the device I use as a makeshift set of drawers to contain the items that cannot fit in my "closet". The suitcase occupies 85 percent of my floor space which means I also can't fully open the door to my room, turning micturition into a creative display of me sucking in and shimmying through the crack in the door to access the bog. This also means I have to empty the suitcase of the things unnecessary for travel and store them on my bed. Hence I can't pack in advance. Well I could, but then I'd have to sleep in my suitcase. But this is all just to say that I have now fekked off to Milan and carted straight up to Switzerland, into the arms of the ones I love, the pine trees, the mountains, and the smell of bovine excrement, which I can say from experience is far superior to the human equivalent. 

home is where your underwear smells like fried potatoes

It's been one month since I moved into my new space where it's christmas year-round and mini ponies shit on the sidewalk to my doorstep, and I'm pleased to say it's already starting to feel like home! Today the eminently terrifying Romanian girl with whom i share a kitchen not only leant me two onions but also insisted I try an entire cutlet of the pork she made for dinner. Maybe it doesn't seem like a tale worth telling but this is the same girl who on day 3 of my tenancy I was certain would have decked me for very stupidly having used one of her plastic bowls which I thought was communal. Imagine that! A flapping piece of piggy flesh acting as a metaphorical olive branch! Putting money down that by next month we'll be braiding each other's hair and slamming bubblegum daiquiris at the local TGI Friday's. Watch this space. 

Train home from dads today. Got lost and ended up in some terrifying suburb where you definitely wouldn't want to stay for longer than absolutely necessary. But I'll tell you what, I found this little gem that seems  to shamelessly recall one of my great loves and suppliers of Kentucky Fried popcorn Chicken.  This one advertises "a unique taste" and offers not only burgers but also indian cuisine so I'm thinking about going back.

I digress. 

One of my first orders of business moving to Dartford (or as my black operations pocket telephone coincidentally autocorrects "Fartford") was joining a gym. Physical activity is the only way I can combat my natural tendency toward a very bad attitude. I found a no frills spot where I can push around iron slabs for £20.99 a month.  No poser males sporting armpit cutout tank tops to their waist apparently unintentionally revealing pepperoni sized nip slips to other patrons while admiring their own reflection. One of the reasons I suppose it's so cheap is that there's minimal staffing. Instead of someone manning the desk, there are two "pods" separating the outside from the inside of the premises: 

You enter a personal code to get in, the small cylindrical pod opens up from one side, you step in, the sliding pod door closes behind you, and then the sliding door opens permissibly in front of you allowing you to walk out. So basically for a fraction of time the capsule holds you captive in that space designed to be tight so people don't sneak in twos.  It's enough to make a claustrophobe poop his pants which I guess is what happened the other day when I found myself trapped in said vessel and obliged to the stench of the last person's fermented colon contents. It was so pervasive my eyes are still watering. 

Fartford. 

Did you ever suffer that recurring nightmare during childhood where you showed up to school fully unclothed? I have been having a biweekly nocturnal scare where I am roused to find my bare ass poking out from underneath the duvet, on full display for my bosses to see. The grossly unsettling thing about this is that moments later I actually wake to find my actual arse (not just my dreamed one) poking out from beneath the covers and facing west toward the hospital only a few hundred meters away where my bosses COULD be. Like, if there were no walls my bosses would actually be able to see my butt. It's like a totally fucked up merging of my subconscious with reality. 

I sleep on a twin bed with an unstable headboard that gives way to the pressure of my back against it merely from sitting up to read a book. You can't imagine how annoying this is. Like, you are a headboard and you have ONE JOB. The hospital pillow gives no neck support which means tossing and turning against its synthetic fibers that squeak to the pattern of my shiftiness.  I’m so flat in bed I can’t breathe and wonder whether I may be cardiopathic????? I have to stuff my Hungarian down duvet (which I obviously supplied myself) under my neck to use it as a pillow and sleep in my robe for survival.  

I did my first load of laundry here - a typically enjoyable activity - that now makes me cringe with anticipatory dread. I did a 14 minute power boil of my clothes so as to minimize the chance of infection by cross contamination of strangers' pubic hair. I mean, can you imagine how many people must have washed their sticky unmentionables in this drum? Only worse,  I hung my own out to dry just outside the communal kitchen and all my panties ended up smelling like fried potatoes. I blame the romanian. I hope she doesn't read this.