balancing

The Chinese State Circus - now there was beauty, faded a bit and slightly forced like a tea party but not like a tea party at all when they started actually doing their thing. Ten girls on a bicycle, tumbling men and boys. Strange shambling locals lifting and carrying props and in the background the old Chinese man in the black Chinese suit. Arms folded. Just watching. Seeing him made me watch for mistakes - made me worry for them some how, but I could see only the odd shaky landing - no one actually dropped a ball or missed a footing or mistimed a step. My favourite act was the big built girl who lay on a wooden board and spun balls and parasols and red velvet circles with her feet. Silent but always moving, checking, balancing but keeping it all graceful. She looked like she could do it in her sleep. Perhaps at any moment, walking or sitting on a bus, if she starts to drift off, in her mind she is always keeping those parasols spinning. All around her, invisible objects spin and balance.

Later L and I met R in a bar just off Hanover Square. Some of her friends were there and I caught the attention of a manic little Irish man, who had hundreds of photographs in a plastic bag. Most of them were of his ex-girlfriend. He began to tell me about his degree show piece - Nine 3 metre photos of video clips - the moment when the woman has an orgasm in a porn film - a close up of her face. He took them off the internet and then enlarged them to epic proportions. He was trying to work out some problems with male identity. Not his own, well not totally his own, but male identity after feminism. What I found strange is that he concentrated on a female action in order to do this. I think his point was that men could never know if a woman faked it or not.

We left the bar and went back to this guy’s house. Ended up taking a quarter pill and some vodka - went to the shops for cigarettes and snogged the Irish guy on the way - he was so short I could wrap my arms round his head but he was a nice kisser. Back at the party though, things got really strange. At one point I was asleep in a bed - alone, and then I was awake and shaving someone’s head - some beautiful Australian boy who talked like a girl, he stroked my thigh as I pulled the razor over his scalp. I was pursued by this boy - he kissed me and pulled my hair and grabbed me wherever I went. He wanted attention but there was an asexual quality to it. His girlfriend, I discovered later, sat and watched him do this. At eight in the morning he wanted to go to Brighton, but I was too tired. I put my hands on his head and he immediately fell asleep. I felt as if I had just hypnotized him. The next day, L fainted on the underground and cracked her head on the wall. The noise it made was so loud, guards ran onto the platform. We went to St Thomas’s by ambulance. There was a six hour wait in casualty so I went to get food for us, sweets, anything. I ended up standing by the London Eye, eating an ice cream, searching for a shop amongst crowds of tourists and Chinese men giving massages.