when was the last time i went ice skating?
at the old Romford ice rink,
it was one of my high school friend's birthday
party... i was perhaps... 13...
today was my second time on ice...
well... this time round i managed to walk
upright on the skates...
the skates didn't fold in on me
                        like i might be a *******
walking with the aftermath of polio...
i.e. my feet didn't buckle, and the skates didn't
push into my ankle bones...
giving my excruciating pain...

ice-skating is unlike the other gravity found
in either cycling or swimming...
one can look the complete fool when ice skating...
it's so simple: it's so simple the more adept
skaters say... i asked for clarification:
so which part of the legs does most of the work?

the top part... for a 2nd timer i advanced pretty fast
upon doing a second round, round the ice rink...
self-taught magic... fear of letting go
of the railing...
but that's not the point...
i was on a "date": or rather i "think" i was...
it wasn't a date...
          it was... gelling together of coworkers...
i've worked with some of these people for almost
a year...
it took a year for something remotely socially
related to be "established": i know:
calculative, frigid tongue of formality is my
go-to release, jargon: i know...

        outside of the realm of the brothel
where we are immediately imitate and touching
each other to this almost grotesque spectacle
of timid, lonely people, playing "chess" over pints
of beer, talking,
i'm more used to: nakedness and *** comes
a priori, all the other nuances of talk and mingling
come a posteriori... hell...
the world of interaction was standing on its head...
i had to remember:

as a man i'm not to talk about myself,
i have to ask the girl all the questions...
i can't revel in any details of me:
even though she might be a "cage-fighter" looking
woman... that she might be a lesbian
i still have to keep some contorts of manhood
in this interaction: i wasn't even overthinking
anything, there were no awkward pauses just
details of awaiting prompt...

first she asked me whether she put her right foot
into the equivalent right of the skate...
i told her: i see an aligning curvature...
she had them on the right way... took them off...
ridiculous: they were right of right the whole time!
so i told her: and you asked me to go ice skating
a second time in my life while you can't
even put on your skates on the right feet!
ugh...

walking on skates was fine... until i stepped
onto the ice... ugh oh... like i told her...
i'm going to make a fool of myself...
i'll be like that Harry Potter scene in the Prisoner
of Azkaban... were Wesley imagines
that cupboard demon Ridiculous emerging as a spider
made pointlessly scary by having
skates attached to its legs...

that was me...
    1h on ice... three or four more sessions and i'll
get a hang of it...
but there's an authenticity on ice...
unlike when swimming or cycling...
self-taught... well: i don't expect a grown man
to be endeared by getting skating sessions...
can't imagine that... it's not out of pride...
it's out of: i taught myself how to swim:
even for all the dearest of things in the world
my father wanted to teach me...
peer pressure got the better of me...
i'm guessing peer pressure is going to kick in once
more...

but she filmed me pretending to fly on ice...
sent the video to a few people... from 8 people...
400+ views... now she wants me facebook details...
i don't think it's such a good idea...
i internalise my experiences and i...
i don't mind talking to strangers... in a pub...
even today after the ice-skating she wanted
to go for a pint... we had three...
she noticed a Fred who works in the metal-scrap
industry near Rainham: has to wake up
at 6am get to Walthamstow for 8am... pick up
a tonne of copper... drive back... blah blah...
works an imaginary 80h week...
even train drivers... hell... surgeons can't work
the legal hourly limit of 60h per week:
fatigue... you can't work tired:
might as well allow work to be done by drunkards...

no... it wasn't a date... i was 14 and she was 13...
we went ice skating...
**** me: might as well have been a cinema "date":
but it wasn't reading each other's CVs
over food i'd end up paying for...
in the pub i realised i was going to be 37 in May...
i noticed all the young girls...
they spotted me with my "date": it wasn't a date...
she's a lesbian and i'm a brothel frequenter...
from one end of the pub.... we sat beside
Fred the scrap-metal-mogul and disappeared from
view... what happened?
three of them with one beta-buckle-buck sat near us...
suddenly an older lady... with artistic inclinations
of dress started hovering near the bar...
walking past her to the toilet she sort of excused
herself for being in my line of sight...
i'm just here to go to the bathroom...

        being human, like so, is weird to me...
i'm not used to it...
  i'm used to being alone,
not in a solipsistic / autistic sort of way...
  it's just weird that i can pretend to be a clown
without putting on any clown make-up...
i'd rather put on some clown-make-up
and disappear into: a film best not made...

has it really been that long? it had to be a lesbian
to (do i need to stress the fact that she is?
most people these days stress their little somethings
of identity politics, for example...
clinically "schizophrenic": in a Lingua Inglese world
of commerce... bilingualism is a quadratic /
a "clear" disability... two tongues too many!)
ask me to go ice skating and then have a pint of beer
with her? no... able bodied, no able minded female
had the stomach or the courage to ask for
something pretty and simple as, this?!

let's go ice skating! let's go cycling!
let's have a picnic in Hyde Park!

i came home, said sorry for being late... i was only expecting
to go ice skating...
gave revelations of my lateness...
spoke to mother (dear)... waited for my father
to finish watching Match of the Day 2...
saddled myself in the chair before a computer
and started writing out my father's invoice...
tomorrow i'll be working on his VAT and sending it off
to a new accountant...
my mother started sobbing...
why? i'm already the freak i was supposed to have
become...
    base: closeness with others?!
is that, even, remotely, possible?
if all the world is a stage... i'm playing the role of actor
pretty **** well...
i'm not going to allow myself the frivolity
and the escapade of not entering the arena of intra-personal
relationships with... former, youthful... hopes...
naive feelings off of: FUZZY-THRILLS...
what once was mammalian has become
lizard... cool, cold, calculative...
that's how you adapt to the environment presented
for you to digest...
everyone is playing some sort of game...
the Thespian intrusion into all expressions
of art... hell! beyond mere art...
this... Thespian Dictatorial Reign makes all other
expressions of art obsolete...
no wonder painting suffers the most...
why has painting suffered the most under the Thespian
Dictatorship of appealing to the masses
while poetry is... a hiding demon in a dank, drab...
petty 3 x 3 x 3 cubic expression of cut-out yet still waggling
like a decapitated head of a chicken sort of:
magic act?!

no amount of Paul Celan
in the mouth of a Norwegian super-star of literature
could ever fathom-dim
this fabrication of close-relation-ship? ahoy!
ah... **** it...
                      tiles and count the loaded bullets...

this ordeal of the everyday lived:
from the tumultuous ordeal of the body:
thus, summoned to give presence-count
of the "grieving" grave...
my own told woe being unaware...
of the woes of others...
such the price: of a life short-lived...

prior to the said engagement...
rereading some snippets of Spinoza's
Theological-Political Treaties...
because... i own a copy of the Ethics...
but not in English...
i like to imagine myself gloating
on what's readily read contra what' readily
available: and not...
      
i'm not dating material.. trying to imagine, thinking
might have curated me better...
she gives me ice skating...
i want to give her... a Walter Sickert exhibition...
we're not going to match...
over a pint i tell her: i was never
into these DATNG APP matching...
these window-dressing exhibitions:
and how many have you met, face to face?
2?!

i didn't tell her but i was sort of going to:
there's me and this gall from Hawaii...
she sent me honey and dried pineapple...
i didn't... we're mismatched...
she's lesbian and i'm a brothel frequenter...
life since my idea of teenager dating has
become, serious, ugly...
i don't want to have anything to do with it...
for almost half an hour i felt like...
a lion bound to a cage...
impossible to conjure up a lion
without a cage... classifying it as: pet-worthy...
something to make people pretend....
a wound for a heartbeat...
this beast better perform...
  prior to the details of boys
sending girl their ****-pictures:
oh no, no prior to the hard-on...
some variation of a p.s.:
when the blood runs dry...

                  they send their ****-pics after having
*******, when the blood is "drying up"...
not prior, shrivel, limp, lacklustre, prawn-curl whittle 'ichard...