Modern life is shite. It is almost universally accepted that things are not as good as they used to be. Nuclear war is ever imminent, terrorists keep trying to spoil our fun at national events, and any young girl under 16 doesn't stand a chance of not being sexually abused at least 3 times before she turns 20. Add to that the fact that you have an 87% chance of being stabbed on your way home from work every day; the constant reminder by our fat, coughing bodies that we all eat, drink, and smoke too much; mutated flu viruses threatening to wipe us out on a daily basis; and the ever present looming threat of the sun exploding just for the hell of it. But is it really so bad as the papers make it out to be?
We want this stage of the relationship to last as long as possible before having to deal with all the inevitable baggage. Most comedians and comic writers will constantly tell you that, due to the recession, various nutters running various countries, and the fact that your neighbor is probably an axe-wielding, Jimmy Saville impersonator with a homemade nuke in his shed, we are all resigned to a life of misery and reality TV. I, however, have always found myself to be quite upbeat. Life isn't that bad is it? There's still good music, films, and TV out there. The weather is occasionally quite hot, I'm in pretty good health, and there's always the existence of true love out there to keep us going through the dark days. Yep, all in all I would say I'm mainly an optimist. I have a spring in my step and a cider in my hand and that can only be a good thing. Or so I thought.
I have recently started dating a pretty, young 19-year-old. We are keeping our relationship fairly low-key and secret for now. Not because she has two heads or is a secret racist but just because it's more fun this way at the start. We're still in that early magical stage where everything is exciting and we get a nice feeling in our stomachs when we see each other rather than the one of dread and inevitable death that most long-term couples get. We want this stage of the relationship to last as long as possible before having to deal with all the inevitable baggage. Her exes, my exes, our friends and families, and my massive fear of committing to anything even remotely serious without the promise of at least 8 pints of premium strength lager first. I believed this feeling went both ways but last week she sprung a surprise topic on me.
We were sitting in a pub out of town (part of the fun of the relationship being secret is that we have to go to places we normally never would, so we don't spend our evenings in Wetherspoons and Nandos like most couples). We were just having a casual chat about who would win in a fight between Lois Lane and Michelle Obama when she suddenly came out with a statement that was both scary, sexy and surprising all at once:
"Eastwood," she said (for that is my name), "I want to get to know you."
Now I was fairly sure she had stolen this line from a film but still I….
Hang on, scratch that. This is both bad manners and narrating.
My name is not actually Eastwood. It is Clint Easterfield but Eastwood has been my nickname for around 6 years now. To be honest I don't like it too much but I definitely prefer it to Clint, since when I close my eyes and think of "Clint" I get the image of a man in a white string vest drinking a can of Stella while reading Zoo magazine on the sofa in his pants. One of the reasons why I really like the lady I'm currently dating is because she calls me by this nickname. I don't know what it is about women but they never seem to call any male friends or boyfriends by their nicknames. I have no idea why. I'd love to go out with a girl with a cool nickname like Scarlett, Blaze or Crackles. Well maybe not Crackles—sounds too much like a pet chinchilla. Some of my friends who have nicknames that are basically versions of their own name or their surname get called it by their women pals (my good friend Tom E, for example, who has kindly let me take over his blog for a while). But find me a girl who calls her boyfriend "Squirrel" or "Perky" and I'll buy you a shot. But I digress.
I didn't really know what my lady friend meant by "I want to get to know you." Surely the sharing of our body parts was a lovely way to get acquainted. I questioned her cautiously. She told me she wanted to know what went on inside my head. What made me tick and what my innermost thoughts were. Of course I just told her to check my Facebook updates or ask what I'm thinking before giving me a suitable amount of time to make something normal up. But she had clearly been thinking about this for a long time and had something she wanted us to do as a couple.
She took out her University dictaphone which she uses when she is too hungover to pay any sort of attention in lectures. She passed it to me and said that she wanted me to record all the thoughts I had for the next week. It didn't matter what they were about or how insignificant they were, she wanted to know me and wouldn't judge anything I said. I mulled it over for a few minutes. If I was going to do this I was going to do it properly. No faking it and no leaving anything out. I kissed her on the forehead and accepted the challenge. What could possibly go wrong? Like I said, I'm an optimist. Surely my thoughts are that of happy, positive things and nothing negative, pessimistic or weird at all. Right?
Wrong. As it turns out I worry about things on an almost minute to minute basis. From the tiny to the impossible to the downright dirty and weird. The next week when I sat down and played the tape for my lady friend she began to look at me in a very strange way after the first 20 seconds. Here are a few choice things that I worried about over the past 7 days. Make up your own mind if you think I'm a pessimistic weirdo or just a normal human being.
- Why is this song constantly in my headwhen I walk to work as a sort of Macabre theme tune?
- Why can't I grow a proper beard? It just grows in groups of three or four hairs likea big toe knuckle.
- What if my train crashes on the way to or from work? Or it somehow mounts the platform while I'm waiting for it?
- Is it wrong that certain songs I've made love to in the past instantly arouse me when I hear them?
- Is there a chance aliens could actually invade us? What if they do, and enslave the whole human race as gimps fed only on tuna? I really need to invest in a light saber in case that happens.
- Do women really prefer a man with a good sense of humor who can make them laugh? Because I have yet to see any proof and am fairly sure they prefer a six pack and a 9" erection.
- I'm fairly sure at some point a plane is going to crash into my bedroom window.
- What if I got cancer? I'd look terrible bald; my scalp's too white. Like a hard-boiled egg with the top cut off.
- What wouldI do ifI woke up one day, looked out of the window, and saw another planet Earth on a collision course with our planet?
- I've got a bad feeling about this.
- I don't watch Top Gear. In fact I actively hate it. Does this make me homosexual?
- Two of my friends haven't returned my phone calls. I bet they're having an affair and planning to write a horrible article about me in a national paper.
- I really hope I'm not a pedophile.I mean I don't fancy kids or anything but I bet those dirty old men didn't know they were a nonce until it was too late.
- If I ever got framed for murder would I commit suicide to avoid being bummed in prison?
- Why do I still have the sex drive of a 16-year-old boy? I swear it's supposed tocalm down by now. And why am I stressing about something that is technically a good thing?
- I'm not even half as funny as the guy who wrote this book I'm reading and it's not even a very good book.
- Why am I too much of acoward to pluck my own nasal hair?
- Is it a bad sign thatI have no idea who themusicianall my friendsseems to be discussing at the momentis? Also, it's too loud.
- Who the fuck are Spencer and Heidi? Because "Speidi" sounds like an infection you get from sailors.
- Am I slowly turning into my dad? And if I am does that mean he slowly turned into his dad? Are we all just like some really old original dad?
- Is there a slight chance that The Matrix is real?
- Should I be voting for Ukip? Will they know if I don't and throw me out of the country?
- What if there is no God?
- Even worse what if there is a God and he knows about that time I got an erection in a church?
- What the fuck are Pinterest and Instagram?
I looked up at my lady friend after the tape finished. She drummed her fingers on the table a bit and looked into her glass of wine. Clearly I'd screwed this up. Note to self: never be honest with anyone. Ever. Then out of nowhere she grabbed my hand and kissed me on the cheek. Everything is OK again. But what if she has the MRSA virus? Or AIDS? Or she supports Spurs? God life is hard.
Clint "Eastwood" Easterfield is a semi-fictional, semi-alter ego, and a blogger, writer and icon. ?Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.