Morning: I wake up. Head clear, didn’t drink last night. Chest a bit heavy though. Am I eating too much dairy products? I hear on the radio there’s a traffic jam on a road somewhere, a cattle lorry overturned. Injured animals strewn across the tarmac.

A Tuscan woman gets elected to lead the biggest democracy in the world. It seems like a good sign. Any move away from sectarian politics is welcome, in my book. Blair’s madness seems terminal, he’s backing his friend George all the way. My hatred for them both flares up again. It is visceral.
I get out of bed, make coffee. My cats are taking industrial action. I’ve got them a more expensive and supposedly better-quality food in bulk from the supermarket, but they don’t like it – they prefer the cheap’n’nasty packets I get from the corner shop. So I mix the two together. Their protest has become quite sophisticated now, they watch me in silence from a distance if I fill the bowl with the good stuff, wandering disdainfully, reluctantly over to sniff at it after a minute or so. But as soon as I rattle the cardboard packet of Friskies, they’re crying and jostling each other for position around the bowl, salivating. By the next feed, the good stuff is left behind in the bowl. I throw it out, and try again.
I’m fed up with my cats, which means of course that I am a Cruel and Monstrous person. The animals really couldn’t give a damn about me, and all interactions are one-way – on their terms, meeting their needs. I’ve had them seven years now. A neighbour of mine is grieving over the death of her much-loved cat, whom she adored and anthropomorphised like nobody’s business. I’m half tempted to say: why don’t you take mine? But she’d be shocked. It’d be like giving away children, in her eyes. My cats are sweet-natured dumb animals, and they are each other’s best friend. Children they are not. Maybe that’s why they’re getting on my nerves now. It’s humans I want to interact with, goddammit.
I check my emails. A call for papers invitation on a conference on Queer Analysis. If it’s Queer Theory, goodnight, I’m not interested. But psychoanalysis is getting interesting these days about homosexuality – the real stuff, working with real people, not the largely academic Critical Theory that seems to have an overly cerebral life of its own. I reply asking for more information. Would a paper of mine on “The Creative Spirit of Perversity” be what they’re looking for?
I check what’s happening on www.outeverywhere.com. A discussion entitled “Is chubby chasing a fetish, or a genuine sexual preference?” gets me thinking. Fetish is selfish sex, I decide. In fact, the problem with sex these days is that it has all become fetishised, not just the kinky stuff. Vanilla smoochy cuddly sex is the new fetish – something to achieve of a weekend. Nothing to do with getting to know anyone new, or really liking someone. Just performance and reward. Hold that thought. Another question: “Do gay people understand long-term love?” is being hotly debated. But it degenerates into a bitchfight about grammar. Someone says: “Love hasn’t been fashionable for decades”. No one can agree. Is it homophobic to ask that question? Is it unrealistic to ignore the reality of so many short-lived relationships among gay men? And there’s no answer. There’s nothing new on the new “Area: Europe, Ireland” board. I log out. Enough of that.
I check out someone’s profile on eBay, just to see what he’s up to. I’m apprehensive. He’s got something I won in auction. He’s a newbie, and therefore highly risky to deal with – no reputation, no track record of good deals, no sense that he is who he says he is. I’m buying a ticket for Morrissey in Dublin Castle from him and for all I know it could be a forgery, he could be a con artist. But I want to be there that night, so much. It’s a leap of faith. Let him come up with the goods; please, please please, let me get what I want. But there’s nothing to cause me worry. Two people have bid for some old print cartridges I’ve got that belonged to an old printer. Hey ho.
Enough of the Net.
The weather’s good. I’m cycling to work these days, since Christmas, and it’s roughly a 22 minute journey. I load the bike up with my gym gear on one side, and my briefcase-cum-pannier on the other. It’s not the lightest of bikes, but it’s sturdy and has shock-absorbers, so it’s comfortable. I’ve taken to wearing dayglo hi-viz jackets because they really work, and most London cyclists wear them now. My eyes are always drawn to someone wearing that fluorescent lemon or orange, and I presume that I’m visible in the same way.
One thing about cycling on a pushbike is how much you can see on the road. I’m higher than most, except for lorry drivers, and I’ve got the freedom to rubberneck and gawp. I tend not to dart through traffic or break lights like the couriers on tiny racers with dreadlocks and tattoos, head down and arse up. I’m more sedate. But I enjoy the view.
And the view is mostly of men, in my world. Busy, focussed men, sharp-suited men. Chisel-jawed handsome men. This is the City of London I’m cycling through. Wealth is on display, although I imagine the wealthiest don’t bother with walking on the streets. But, mostly, the men are as motley as anywhere else; pudgy, spotty, tired, not awake yet. Smokers having the last cigarette before going in to work, watching the world go by. I always catch their eyes, invariably the only ones I do.
I’ve been watching motorbikes these days, looking at the machines, putting myself in bikers’ boots. I’ve an idea that I’d like a BMW R-1100, for its sound as well as its character, for long-distance country rides. But I look at the crouched frozen posture of the biker, and the increased tension of coping with the speed and risk of zooming along the middle of the road, overtaking traffic that can’t see him, and I think I’d be knotted with tension after a city journey. Besides, on some heavy rainy days, I’m as fast as a motorbike, and I’m fitter for it. But I want to get away from the city, I need to.
I pass St Paul’s Cathedral every working day. It never fails to impress. Past the Bank of England, over London Bridge. The view East, of Tower Bridge, the wide river, and Canary Wharf in the distance is always spectacular, and this morning it is quite stunning. As I lock the bike, and figure out whether I have enough time to go to Starbucks, a man dismounts from his motorbike beside me and crosses the road. He’s in full leathers, the proper stuff, not the nancy-boy fetish gear, and he strides over to a modernist black water feature, a giant wet marble oblong, takes off his helmet, and stands beside it, confidently, as if directed on a photoshoot. I am transfixed. He is magnificent. I linger awhile with my lock and bags.
There is nothing to be done.
I go in, and start my day’s work.