This Is My Year For Sure

It’s 2010 now. How about that eh? What are you saying, out of disinterest, two-thousand and ten or twenty-ten? It’s a frightening thought but there are actually people out there who talk about that kind of shit as if it's important. Hmm… Mine was a bizarre one this year, I’ve got to tell you; all-male nipple licking, a long-distance phone call from the Caribbean, a mid-afternoon steam-out in my friends’ in-house sauna… all that plus more besides. I fucking hate new year. I actually do, I don’t know why. Last night I had a very good time, but I just have never enjoyed New Year’s Eve as much as other nights. Anybody want to speculate as to why? I think it’s the anticipation you’re supposed to feel about it even if you don’t really care. Anybody out there get really, genuinely excited about what you know is almost certainly gonna be just one more mediocre fucking night? Or even think about it? Is this important at all? “Anticipation has a tendency to set you up for disappointment…” Who said that again? When I was younger I always got really fucking sad every seventeenth of October* when I realised, man it’s just your fucking birthday. It’s one more day, why all the excitement? I don’t know.

Anyway, here’s a curious story… One New Year’s Day, I think it must’ve been ought-seven or something, I was driving from Edinburgh, where I live now, to Dundee, where I lived then. So I was driving through town about ten minutes from my house and by the way I was desperate for a piss. That’s not important, I’m just trying to put you in the picture. Well it was a little wet that day, the rain had stopped maybe the day before but there was a hazy sort of mist lying over everything. I stopped my car at a traffic lights and before I knew what was happening this girl got in. It was pretty strange but I was tired and sleep deprived and still slightly hungover so I was in a haze, everything just happening, you know? And there’s no thinking or anything you just go along with it. So this girl was a lesbian and she smelled of stale cigarette smoke and she was drunk as hell. She told me she had a few problems but she was pretty cheerful about it; she had to go somewhere and meet someone and she was drunk as hell and she had no way to get there, so she figured she’d go ahead and get in my car and asked if I’d drive her. Her name was Laura. So we set off and she talked a lot, I can’t remember what she talked about. It wasn’t too interesting. We were about five minutes away from what I assumed was her girlfriend’s house and she said “what star sign are you?” I thought “Oh good, astrology. She’s almost certainly not an total fucking idiot if she believes in astrology.” So I told her, I said “Libra.” She looked at me for all of about two seconds and then said “the seventeenth of October.” I don’t say much most of the time but that doesn’t mean I never have anything to say. Well at this point in time I was completely fucking lost for words. If you haven’t been paying attention the seventeenth of October is my birthday. I didn’t understand it at the time and I don’t understand it now. This girl who I had never met in my life, had never seen before and haven’t seen since, was able to guess the exact date of my birthday just from my fucking star sign. Let’s be clear about one thing: astrology is almost certainly a massive load of bullshit. Star signs and planetary alingnments and all that, what the fuck can that possibly tell you about a person? And what does it matter what date you were born? It’s just another fucking day man. It means nothing. I don’t know where this is going, I don’t have a point here I just wanted to tell the story. Laura the psychic lesbian. I actually had her number stored in my phone for a long time under “Laura Psychic Lesbian.” That to differentiate her from “Laura Cousin.” So the tale ends like this: she asked for my number in return, I sold her a bluff and went the fuck home. It was one of the strangest moments of my life.

Happy new year.




*When you first read that you probably thought “Wtf lol, why did he write that? Why didn’t he just write ‘on my birthday’ or something like that, why is the date important?” Well it was important, asshole. It was important to the fucking story. Never doubt me again.