A Comparative Analysis of Pepe Carvalho and Hannibal Lecter

While Hannibal Lecter may seem like an odd choice at first for comparing Pepe Carvalho, it is through extensive examination that the similarities will become evident. Despite their obvious similarities: both are European from countries once ravaged by war (Carvalho in Franco-era Spain and Hannibal in World War 2 Lithuania), both worked for one of the US secret services and both left for varying reasons. But it’s the core of their characterisations that makes them so similar. They share a love for fine-dining and high culture, they are both voyeurs in the professional sense and they both have complex relationships which are very untraditional.

The most obvious point of comparison is found within the subject of culture and hedonism. Both men are extremely self-serving characters who go out of their way to improve their lives through culture. They also subscribe to the philosophy of hedonism, but they never go so far as hedonism taking over their life. This is further proven when even Hannibal Lecter’s incarceration merely slowed him down instead of stopping him completely. The most abundant example found is food. All throughout ‘Los mares del sur’ we see Carvalho eating at every given opportunity and when he’s not eating, he is discussing food or thinking about food. And of course, Hannibal Lecter is famous for what he eats – humans.

The concept of being cultured is very important to both characters and it even plays into the main plot of each book (Los mares del sur and Hannibal) especially Italy and the Italian language. ‘Los mares del sur’ takes its title from a poem by Salvatore Quasimodo, an Italian poet. Alternatively, it was named after Cesare Pavese’s poem ‘Los mares del sur’ who is also an Italian poet. Within the book we see Carvalho discussing the poem over paella with his two friends Fuster and Beser, and its significance for Pedrell. Carvalho does all that he can to understand Pedrell’s obseunderstand Pedrell’ssion with Paul Gaugin and French Polynesia as part of his assignment to retrace Pedrell’s life during the year he went missing. In ‘Hannibal’, Hannibal has escaped custody and hides in Florence, Italy under an assumed name. The Florence plot of the book involves a disgraced police officer, Rinaldo Pazzi, hunting down Lecter to collect the bounty on his head. Many references to Italian artists, writers, poets and philosophers are used throughout the book as a means for Hannibal to both indulge in his desire for high culture as well as manipulating the plot to move on. Dante Alighieri’s ‘Inferno’ becomes an important tool in the novel where Pazzi befalls the same fate as the two Pazzis in Dante’s work as well as Francesco de Pazzi from Italian history. Another point involves Hannibal and Pazzi’s wife discussing Dante’s ‘Vita Nuova’. From discussing this Dante piece, Hannibal decides to return to America to save the protagonist, Clarice Starling, from the true antagonist, Mason Verger.

There is one aspect of their hedonistic lifestyles that separates both characters quite substantially: sex and sexuality. From reading the book, we know that Carvalho loves sex or rather, he loves having orgasms. He masturbates quite frequently almost to the point of being described as a chronic masturbator. But as well as his love of masturbation, Carvalho loves women just as much. Charo and Yes are just two examples of sexual relationships that Carvalho has with characters in the book. Despite all this, Carvalho does prove that he does not have a sex addiction as his desire for sex and orgasms never prevents him from working and he also maintains standards. A sex addict generally wouldn’t care who s/he has sex with so long as they’re having sex. Carvalho expresses how disgusting he finds anal sex, or at least bottoming (on the receiving end) in the book as well as showing he is quite homophobic. Hannibal, on the other hand, expresses little to no sexual attraction in any of his portrayals. He does show romantic interests (which will be discussed further on), but the interests are purely romantic, not sexual. Hannibal however does partake in one aspect of hedonism that Carvalho does not: cannibalism. Many scholarly works state that sociopaths will use murder as a means for sexual gratification or as a replacement, but we know that Lecter is unclassifiable due to his personality and he has no sexual relations with any of his victims either peri-mortem or post-mortem. Rather he removes his victims’ organs with surgical precision and uses them as fine-dining ingredients, which leads to the most famous quote, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone / a nice Chianti.” The act of murder and cannibalism can be taken as a sexual act without being intrinsically sexual, but intimate.

Part of what makes both characters so compelling is the jobs they have as both their jobs are extremely important to their characterisation. Carvalho is a dick, a private detective, and his series of books revolve around him trying to figure out the mystery of the story. In the case of ‘Los mares del sur’ what happened to Stuart Pedrell. Lecter’s job is important to his characterisation as well, as in ‘Hannibal (TV series)’, ‘Red Dragon’, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter acts as a profiler who aids the protagonist in looking for the antagonist. But we can see that both men have had jobs that led them to their current profession: Carvalho used to work for the C.I.A. and Hannibal studied medicine up until he became a psychiatrist. But obviously, we can’t negate the obvious links between how both jobs would be connected in a parallel universe were they exist together. As a private detective, it would seem possible that Carvalho could use Hannibal’s expertise on the criminal mind to help him track down whoever it is he is looking for. But both men’s careers are more similar than one would presume upon first glance. Both Carvalho and Hannibal are, in essence, voyeurs. They are paid to get intimately acquainted with the lives of people, they have to get to know the subject with as little personal interaction as possible and then they have to make decisions and come to conclusions while looking from a distance. The whole plot of ‘Los mares del sur’ involves Carvalho finding out what happened to Pedrell during the year he went missing before his death. Obviously with Pedrell being dead, Carvalho is learning about his life from a distance. He starts with Pedrell’s family and from there he moves to Pedrell’s friends, acquaintances, rivals and lovers. Every bit of intimate detail that Carvalho learns is from second-hand sources. Hannibal acts as a voyeur with both first-hand and second-hand sources. As a practicing psychiatrist he had to deal with the personal lives of his patients, he would have to get to know them quite intimately to offer them advice on their life. Working as a profiler, he had to get himself acquainted with the killer in question through second-hand sources. He would use police reports, crime scene photographs and the protagonists’ own opinions. Another interesting point to note is how both characters use their respective jobs as a means to further their own desires and these desires border the line of immoral if they’re not already classifiably immoral. The most obvious example in Carvalho’s case is Yes, the daughter of Stuart Pedrell. Maybe Yes was in her right state of mind, maybe not, but Carvalho and Yes do have sex and it can be taken that Carvalho takes advantage of the emotionally distraught Yes. They have sex, they do drugs, Carvalho cooks her a meal and then he kicks her out of his home. Upon Yes’s second attempt to hook up with Carvalho, he flat out refuses and she leaves quite quickly. Hannibal uses his job to realize his own desires too. Hannibal follows his own code of ethics and his main one being that he will only kill the “terminally rude” if possible. The most infamous example was his patient, Mason Verger, a paedophile and a rapist and Hannibal’s patient. Hannibal used his sessions with Verger to gain his trust then he went back to Verger’s house where he proceeded to drug Verger and made him mutilate his own face and feed it to the dogs. Obviously that is far past the point of morality, but then we see examples of Hannibal genuinely helping people such as Abigail Hobbes in the TV series whom he goes out of his way to protect. Although it can be argued that he is only protecting her so that she won’t reveal his secret.

As previously established, both Carvalho and Hannibal are ultimately self-serving characters which has a direct impact on their relationships with others. Some relationships serve both characters for a higher purpose whereas others are more akin to a master and slave type relationship. Moreover, both men actually have very similar relationships to other characters in their respective series fulfilling similar roles. As mentioned above we see Carvalho discussing the case he’s working on over paella with two of his friends /associates and the significance of ‘Los mares del sur’. Here it is quite clear that Carvalho considers them to be of equal intelligence and he’s comfortable enough to discuss poetry with them as well as the case. We see Hannibal has a similar relationship with Will Graham in ‘Red Dragon’ and ‘Hannibal’ (TV series) and Clarice Starling. Both men however manage to get something out of each scenario as well as information: Carvalho gets a meal that he thoroughly enjoys whereas Hannibal negotiates the information he has for better amenities (including a meal) in prison or to prolong his being discovered as the Chesapeake Ripper. Both men establish a master and slave relationship with certain characters in the book as a means to assert their dominance. Carvalho uses Yes for sex, drugs and a companion to eat with, but once he’s finished with her he treats her indifferently. In fact, Carvalho more-or-less kicks her out of his home and into the streets and he is completely indifferent as to what would happen to her. It isn’t until Biscuter convinces, or rather, makes Carvalho realize what he’s doing isn’t good that he follows Yes into the streets looking for her (on an interesting side note, a case for Carvalho being a sociopath could be made considering his personality). Hannibal’s master and slave relationships are a lot more pronounced than Carvalho’s. Most people are easy targets that he can manipulate into doing what he wants such as convincing the lunatic Miggs to eat his own tongue or convincing Mason Verger to cut his own face off. Both men do have romantic interests in their books, or as romantic as is possible considering their characterisation. Carvalho has Charo, a prostitute, and while their relationship easily could have started off as purely sexual, he does show to genuinely care for her which is evident in the time he spends with her in non-sexual scenarios. Hannibal’s relationship with Clarice Starling is just as untraditional as Carvalho’s with Charo. Clarice originally uses Hannibal to catch serial killer, Buffalo Bill, and then she is later charged with capturing Hannibal seven years after he breaks out of incarceration.

The two men have more in common than one would think initially. Their characterisations and personalities make them more similar and at times it is possible that the two men could switch places with very few consequences. Their mutual love for high culture and their complex relationships with others make them close and almost spiritually connected and their jobs as voyeurs link the two men professionally. Carvalho is more akin to the sociopathic Hannibal than any other detective in any series. In the end, their main difference is what would draw them even closer in a parallel universe: the killer and the detective.

Word count: 1,990

Bibliography

Furia, Carlo A. “References to Dante in the Movie Hannibal.” Dante Alighieri on the Web. Great Dante, 2008. Web. 05 May 2013.

Crystal, Garry, and Niki Foster. “What Is a Sociopath?” WiseGeek. Conjecture, n.d. Web. 06 May 2013.

Carich, M., D. Fisher, and M. Kohut. “Sexual Murder and Sexual Serial Killers: Towards A Mind-Body Developmental Theory.” Rocky Mountain Way Writing. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.rockymountainwaywriting.com/PDF/SEXUAL%20MURDERS%20AND%20SEXUAL%20SERIAL%20KILLERS.pdf&gt;.

My Success Story: Overcoming Anorexia and Bulimia

I originally considered just giving the bare minimum because I didn’t want to give people any ideas, but I don’t think it would be fair to leave out anything. Each person’s experience with an eating disorder is completely different. How it affects us and those around us, the sneaky ways we invent to not get caught and the struggles we go through to get better.

I first became aware of weight when I was 14 or 15. All it took was one comment. A friend of mine made a silly little remark that I was a lot fatter than I realized. And that’s what set me off. I was already suffering from depression at this point so I think that’s what made me think of the comment even more. I am the thinnest person in my family by about two stone. Everyone else is larger than I am. My friend’s comment led me to develop body dysmorphic disorder. I thought I was a lot fatter than I really was and it made sense. My family were all quite large so maybe I was fooling myself into thinking I was thinner. As the years went on I began to see the “truth”. I was obese and I needed to lose weight.

I began dieting when I was 16. I would skip meals or I would eat less and just tell people that I already felt full. One trick I used to always do was drink as much water as possible. It would trick my body into thinking I was eating more food than I actually was. By the time I was 17 I was skipping meals altogether. I would skip breakfast and only have one Slim Fast diet shake for lunch and another for dinner. My goal weight was to be 6 stone (38kg / 84lbs) because in my head that was the healthy weight to be. But no matter how hard I tried, I was always stuck at 6 and a half stone (41kg / 91lbs).

When I moved to Spain I had complete freedom. I didn’t have to hide that I wasn’t eating. It was great. At least I thought it was. I never once thought I had a problem with food. I was well aware of my depression and my cutting, obviously, but I never thought I had a problem with food. One night I was working and I fainted. I lied and told my co-workers that I was simply not sleeping properly, which actually wasn’t that big of a lie. But after a few days of getting spells of dizziness I decided to go to the hospital. I thought I was sick, like I had gotten a virus or something. After going through all the motions, my doctor told me that I had anorexia nervosa, and that it was a miracle I was even functioning. I had damaged my body so badly from food deprivation that I was barely able to function. I left the hospital and soon after I returned home to Ireland.

I still wasn’t willing to admit that I was mentally ill, but I did reach my goal weight. At 18 years old and 5’ 8” (173cm) I weighed 6 stone (38kg / 84lbs). I was “happy” and so I thought it was best to eat something healthy to maintain my weight. I also started taking up some cardio to keep the fat away. Then I met the abusive ex. As the months went by with him I began to feel like I had no control over my life. The only thing I could control was what went into my body and what came out of it. I started participating in bulimia. My method to avoid being caught was to drink in excess. I used to drink so much alcohol that vomiting was involuntary. It happened whether I wanted it to or not. This went on for 9 months, the relationship I mean.

I finally broke it off with him after he got physical. I realized it was time to go, but I still didn’t accept that I had a problem with food. My idea was that it wasn’t affecting my daily life. I could still go to work no problem. I just didn’t realize that it was affect all other aspects of my life. And I kept up the bulimia with the anorexia making a return. I once more became obsessed with counting calories, calculating fat content and skipping meals. But then I had the added affect of binge eating, smoking 30 cigarettes a day, drinking too much alcohol and then throwing up. I did of course go with the traditional method of using a toothbrush to make myself vomit. Once I was so desperate that I used a razor.

When I was 19 I finally met my first love, Julien. He was, and still is, the sweetest and most caring man I have ever known. If there is one thing to say about the French it’s that they are sharp to what’s going on around them. He figured out early on in the relationship that I had a problem with food, he just never realized it was as bad as it was. I of course had the other problems commonly associated with depression and eating disorders, jealousy and paranoia. One night the two of us had a huge fight and I accused him of cheating on me. I did the only thing I could do to get the release that I needed, I went to the bathroom and I purged. I can’t explain what happened next. It was an out-of-body experience. I was honest to God looking at myself through someone else’s eyes. I was sitting on the floor crying, with a toothbrush shoved down my throat and my head stuck in a dirty toilet. That’s when I realized and accepted I had a problem, in that very moment.

I committed myself to finally getting better. I spent so much time in and out of hospitals all my life for various reasons and I didn’t want to spend more time in them, so I did it alone. I realized that my 6 stone was nearly low enough to kill me and that shocked me into eating properly. I forced myself to eat at least three meals a day, five at the most but averaging at four. I also did plenty of exercise to make sure that I put on the weight healthily. I quit drinking and I cut back from smoking 30 a day to less than 15 a day.

The last time I purged was two years after that. Julien and I had broken up, I was facing a lot of stress from school work and my old friend depression decided to pay me a visit. I was so ashamed of myself, but I accepted that I’m only human. I can and I will make mistakes. It’s still something I have to deal with from time-to-time. There are days when I spend a few seconds too long looking in the mirror or days when I have to force myself to eat something. It’s been two years now since I last purged. In those two years I have only had the desire to purge once and I made the decision not to. I now weigh 8 and a half stone (54kgs / 119 lbs) and I’m doing quite well. My weight still isn’t what I want it to be. I want to be at least 9 stone but I should be 10. Still, I am very happy with all the progress I have made. I am only half a stone away from a healthy weight and I have managed to suppress the urge to purge. My life is still ruled by food but this time it’s not about avoiding it, now I desire to taste as many new things as possible. I have an appetite for food that is only matched by my new appetite for life no longer ruled by my sickness.

I want to offer some advice to anyone reading this who is suffering from an eating disorder. There is nothing to be ashamed of. It is an illness and it can be cured. But in saying that, you should not be glorifying your illness. It is dangerous and it affects a lot more people than you would care to realize. There are so many reasons as to why you develop an eating disorder and you are not to blame. But getting cured? That’s entirely up to you. Only you can get better but that’s if you choose to. You have to work hard at it every single day. Accepting you have a mental illness is the first step, but please don’t stop there. Just accepting you have an illness and doing nothing about it, when it is completely curable, is selfish and damaging to those around you. My mantra is simple, but maybe harsh: If everyone around you has a problem with you, then maybe you are the problem. Never give up hope. You will get there, just please hang on, please go get professional help and please let those who love you help you because there is always someone who loves you. Remember: love is louder than the pressure to be perfect.

Identities versus Labels

Lately I’ve been thinking about identities; sexual identities, gender identities, cultural identities, national identities, etc. What is the difference between an identity and a label? I think the answer to that can be both simple and complex. In its most basic form; point of view is the answer to this. A label is usually something we are given by our peers and /or by society while an identity is something we ourselves associate with. There is a lot of responsibility that comes with accepting a label. You have to live up to the standards and the baggage that comes with it. But that’s only if we accept the label handed to us. A lot of times we don’t. We strive to fight against others opinions of us. I think a lot of you reading this, and I myself writing this, went through a period of self-discovery but in the most annoying way possible. “I don’t want to be labeled as anything. I just want to be me.” and similar nonsense. Now looking back I realize how silly I was to think that. A lot of the labels I once fought so hard against are now part of my personal identity.

For me, people who are a salad bowl of different identities are far more interesting than someone who only has one identity or someone who only lives according to the labels they were given. I’m not hating on people who only have on identity, I just feel that they can be quite boring because each identity is a different layer to the personalities that make who we are. I’ll give a brief list of the various identities I have that make me who I am:

• I am a cisgender male which is my gender identity.
• I am a homosexual male which is my sexual identity.
• I am Irish which is my national identity.
• Due to having lived in Spain, briefly holding Spanish nationality and my father’s grandfather being Spanish, my cultural identity is Spanish.
• Up until I was 17 or 18 I was legally deaf and while I’ve had all the operations I still identify as part of the deaf community.
• I am a writer and a comedian, and I want to be a teacher too. This would be my professional identity.
• I consider myself a Christian but not necessarily Catholic. This is my religious identity.

These are a few of the various identities I have chosen that make me who I am. I haven’t written all of them. I asked this question of “What is your identity?” on Tumblr and I got some lovely and interesting responses. One person identified as a Londoner and European, but not as British or English. Another person identified as black and not as African-American. Another person identified as European and not as French. He didn’t identify as being from his département in France, which is a huge source of pride for most French people. One other person identified as male and not as trans*. One of the above also identified as epileptic which is an important identity to have. A few people who answered all mentioned that they were atheist, one identified as Buddhist and another as Muslim.

These are some of the real life identities that I wanted to share. But I think it’s important to compare these identities to labels of the same name. As I said above, a label usually given to us and it carries a lot of baggage with it. To accept a label is to accept certain social responsibilities. I identify as being gay. I love men and I love having sex with men but that’s as far as my sexual identity goes. If I were labeled as gay then I would be accepting the stereotypes that go with it. Part of the gay label involves going out clubbing all the time, loving all kinds of pop music, always being well dressed, being sassy and being dangerously promiscuous. These are some of the baggage involved with the gay label. I love rock and metal music. I would rather go to the pub or to a house party than go to a club. I dress well because it is usually a necessity. Making good impressions to help me achieve my goals. On the rare occasions I go clubbing I have worn and I would still wear sweatpants and a hoody. I prefer comfort to anything else. The same can be said for the Irish label vs the Irish identity. I love my language, I my heritage and I love the cultural significance Ireland has had on the world (modern rock music has its roots in Irish traditional music). The label associated with that is that I would be ginger (which I am), I can’t take anything seriously (which is true for the most part) and that I drink excessive amounts of alcohol which I don’t do. I would drink maybe two pints total a month if even that.

I apologize for talking about myself so much but I feel I can only describe what I mean through using myself as the example. But I think you get what I mean. A woman can identify as a cisgender heterosexual woman but she could hate cooking, hate the colour pink and maybe she loves playing football and listens to country music. Here her gender is an identity she has crafted herself rather than a label society has pushed on her.

Each label and each identity we have is just a small part of our personality. If living by a societal label is something you accept then all the power to you, just don’t let that one label be all that you are. Within each of us there is an unlimited source of potential and we unlock more and more with each identity. I feel like I should mention this one last time just to clarify; an identity is something that we ourselves craft while a label is something that is pushed onto us by society. Go with whatever works for you but instead of accepting a label and all its responsibilities, why don’t you craft your own unique identity with certain labels as the basis. You don’t have to love shopping just because you’re a girl or a gay man. You don’t have to go to religious service every week just because you’re of a particular faith. You don’t have to get plastered every weekend just because you’re Irish or drink ridiculous amounts of tea just because you’re English. I would like to finish off with one of my all-time favourite quotes from anthropologist James Clifford:

We’re all Caribbeans now living in urban archipelagos

We’re all a mix and a mish-mash of each other. How we portray ourselves is a combination of our individual identities fusing together.

Story Telling And Hows

From time-to-time, new writers ask me for advice on how to start writing or what my inspiration is to write. They usually ask me the same question too, and by that I mean the question is almost always the same word-for-word. “I always have these great ideas, but I never know how to put them onto paper. How do you turn your ideas into reality?” My answer to this is the well known proverb, “It’s not the destination, but the journey.” While this may not initially seem helpful if you will allow me, I will show you what I mean.
Recently I watched a talk given by the Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss. He made such a beautiful point at the start of his talk, we’re all story tellers. Whether you’re recounting the events of a night out to friends, telling your family how your day went or even when you’re attempting to woo a certain someone. In all these scenarios we are telling a story regardless if it’s fiction or not. In my experience, it’s not the information being relayed to us that makes the story, but how the information is relayed and I’m not just talking about grammar and vocabulary choices. How we tell a story is far more important than what we’re actually telling, but don’t get me wrong, the actual story itself is obviously important too.

I am a natural klutz. Disasters happen wherever I go and it is guaranteed that I can’t go two days in a row without something embarrassing happening to me. I will often use these embarrassing moments as sources for my comedy material. How I tell these embarrassing moments will change what my readers think of me. I could tell them in a way that would seem utterly mundane and no one would laugh. I could tell them in a way that would seem as if my life is completely depressing. Or I could tell them in a way that would make people laugh. Nearly every joke I’ve ever written about myself or people I know has actually happened. I may tweek the timeline of certain events, I may exaggerate a different event slightly or sometimes I don’t need to do anything. These are all “hows” in the story telling process. It’s very rare that I will make up a joke that hasn’t happened unless I’m writing fiction.
We all have the ability to tell stories, I just personally believe that those who can’t write a story simply haven’t found their voice yet. Your artistic voice is just as important as anything else. Do you think Harry Potter would be as successful if J.K. Rowling tried to add a little bit of spice into nearly every page? No. And that’d probably be classified as child porn if she did. Similarly do you think ’50 Shades of Grey’ would have been such a success if E.L. James had written about so-and-so’s “pee-pee” and “hoo-ha”? No. Although to be fair, that probably would have made that piece of shit called “literature” better. She could have passed it off as a comedy then instead of her writing techniques being the joke.
I would like to return to the employment of how to tell a story but in relation to comedy. The best (and I’m aware how controversial this may turn out) example I can think of is rape jokes. Rape. The taboo subject. It’s a horrible thing that can happen to anyone, of course it is and I’m not saying it’s not. Comedians talk about “taboo” topics for one of two reasons, a) they’re going for the shock factor or, b) they’re trying to open the forum to a delicate subject in a light-hearted manner. I have made jokes about Rohypnoll with myself as the butt of the joke. No one gets offended and people have a laugh at my expense. We’ve opened the discussion and no one is hurt. Now think about what would happen if I told that same joke but I used someone else as the butt, maybe a random girl from the audience. It’s gone from being a light-hearted means of dealing with a sensitive subject to almost being a personal attack. This too is all part of the “how” of story telling.
To be honest, I think when people ask me how to write, they’re expecting a step-by-step guide on how to get from A to B. Unfortunately there is no step-by-step guide. Every writer has their own method of writing and what works for one person might not necessarily work for another. What I’ve written above might not necessarily help you either. I’ve been called the “King of Common Sense” plenty of times. I have the distinct talent of being able to express something so basic and simple yet people are unable to do it themselves. I then write down the common sense idea in an eloquent yet interesting fashion. Here we have another “how” involved in writing. The point I’m trying to make is that you can make the most boring thing imaginable be enticing and provoking simply by changing how you tell it. In order to do that you need to look at the “hows” of story telling and discover your own personal voice.
Just to make this worth your time, I’ll try give an example involving fiction. Let’s say you’re writing a story about two people meeting and falling in love. How did they meet? Don’t tell me what you think people want to read, I don’t care what they might want to read. What do you want to say? I’m more interested in what you want to tell me about your characters. What seems real to you? Did they meet in a supermarket? How did character A get from point A to the supermarket? Did anything interesting or funny happen during the trip? Why is character B at the supermarket? Look at the macro scale of the story. Now break that into the micro level. Getting character A from point A to the supermarket is the “what”, the story line. Turning what may seem like a mundane trip into something interesting and worth reading about is the “how”. But don’t take this as religion. Maybe stopping an evil super genius during the journey is necessary to the plot, or maybe going to the supermarket really is just as boring as it sounds. It’s possible that your characters need these boring events that define them.
My final point, and I’m well aware that I am slightly contradicting myself here, is about presentation. I write stories and jokes for myself. I don’t write them to appease others unless I am being commisioned in which case I work around what I’ve been asked to do. When you write a story you should do it for yourself and for no one else. If you are writing with the intention of showing it to other people then there is one final tip. Write what you want. It’s your story. But if you want to show it to people then they have to want to believe the story is real. Happiness and good times can’t always happen to your main character unless you’re writing a children’s story. Sometimes your characters need something sad or boring to happen to them so they can grow. Look at stoner comedies. Stoner comedies are more-or-less built on the foundation of bad luck. Characters get high and then a series of unfortunate events befall them. But look at all the parts that don’t make you laugh. They are “boring”. This is important because these non-exciting actions is what makes the story somewhat more believable and more enjoyable. You could easily mistake a stoner comedy for a horror movie due to a lot of what happens. The “how” of the stoner comedy is what makes it a comedy. How the actors portray the characters, how the editor or director does their job, etc.

Kyle Jones’ Diary: Round-up of the Year

It’s getting close to that time of the year where we reflect on the year that’s gone by and we think about the year that’s coming. We make ourselves promises to work less, see our friends and family more, put more time into that special relationship, promise ourselves that we’re going to go to the gym to lose weight or get fit, travel more, learn a new skill, etc. These are all well and good, but how many of us ever actually fulfill any of these resolutions we’ve made? I think it is a lot more realistic and much healthier to reflect on the year gone by and realize what it is we really need to change. This post is going to work three ways; to reflect upon my own year and how much I’ve changed, to see what I can change about myself and the situations I find myself in, and to share with you, my faithful readers, my highs and lows. To show you all that things do get bad but we just need to keep marching on. So, in order to do this I will need to channel my inner Bridget Jones.

Weight: 8 stone
Alcohol consumed: Roughly 20 units
Cigarettes smoked: A gazillion
Men kissed: 6
Number of times purged: 0
Number of times self-harmed: 0

I will admit that I started off the year on a complete low. After everything that had transpired in October and November, I spent most of December, January and February desperately trying to prevent myself from self-harming or from putting my fingers down my throat. Thankfully I was successful and that’s when I knew that I had finally overcome my problems with eating disorders and depression. In saying that, mental disorders are with you for life but they can become manageable through sheer force of will. University still wasn’t going so well either. I hadn’t made any friends and my anxiety was flaring up a lot more. I stopped focusing on trying to make friends and just focused on getting my school work done. I didn’t care if they all thought I was an antisocial cunt. I didn’t trust them enough and by them not making an effort with me it only further fueled my perverse thought that I was right. I was very wrong. Around the time of February I finally made my first friend, Aoiffe. She was in the same boat as me. She had a list of problems a mile long and so we were perfectly suited for each other. Going in and out of university didn’t seem like such a bad thing anymore. Plus I had Aaron.

Aaron was a great guy and one that I so desperately needed. He needed me too though and I don’t think he’ll ever admit to that. He was beautiful, funny, intelligent and dangerous. I mean that literally, he had been arrested for aggravated assault and for me that was a turn-on. I haven’t had much luck with guys, I always choose the wrong one. Everyone but one actually. After being in an abusive relationship for nine months I had lost the will to live. I wasn’t suicidal (anymore) but I knew I wouldn’t have cared if anything happened to me. Julien, my first love, fixed me. Or as I like to say, Julien repaired the hardware but it was Aaron who gave me the software upgrade I needed. He took no shit. Whenever I was having a bad day he would have none of it. He would give me the slap of reality that I needed, especially when it came to my social life or lack thereof. He was only sympathetic to me twice during our entire relationship, when my aunt was diagnosed with cancer and on my birthday when all my friends cancelled on my plans at the last minute. Aaron and I stopped seeing each other shortly after March /April. I honestly believe it was because he was falling in love with me, a man. He hated himself for who he was. He always told me that if he could be straight then he would have chosen that. I wasn’t too upset over losing him. We never had any difficulties we were just too different people.

Life went on and I had changed. I felt more confident and I felt the desire to live and experience the world, a desire that I had lost many years ago. University was also going a lot better too but only because I finally had one friend in university to talk to. Things at home were pretty difficult, especially with my friends and it was great to escape. I lost one friend that I had known for years in January because she made it well known that she considered us to be different. The fights we had were always about money, she had it and I didn’t. Things got a little difficult with Andrew and Ruth because they had both hit rock bottom. Thankfully they are now both two completely different people too but it’s not my place to say anymore on the subject. Then, because of the dynamics and the fighting in the group I had lost contact with my friend Rory. His was a friendship that I needed more than anything else. He was the “normal” one in our group. It was pretty difficult to feel like I was losing the people I cared the most about to reasons outside of my control. I’m not a controlling person, I’m just pro-active. I would rather do than spend too long thinking about something.

At the end of April /start of May I started seeing a new guy, Rob. We started off pretty good. We had a lot in common, there was always something to talk about and he was a good kisser. He also said that he wanted to wait a while before we did anything sexual because he just wanted to date. That suited me perfectly because I needed that. A lot of you won’t know this but I used to be a whore. There’s no sugar coating that. There was a time when I was going through two or three different guys a week. A week. How I never got sick is beyond me. So I thought it was really romantic that he wanted to wait. It turned out that he wasn’t romantic, he was dating another guy and fucking a third guy. And to make things more interesting, technically I was the “other” guy because he was seeing the other two before me. He was very open about it and I thought it was OK because we weren’t boyfriends, just dating. After a month or two of dating all the problems started coming through and I realized we weren’t going to work. He was incredibly rude to everyone. There’s being honest and then there’s being rude, he was just rude but claimed it was honesty. He also maintained a double-standard between us. It was OK for him to date another guy and fuck a different guy (which wasn’t exactly safe) but when I had NSA sex once (that was protected) I was a disappointing slut. I broke it off with him but I said we could try the friends thing just to see if we worked any better. We really didn’t. I ended our friendship though as I thought we clashed far too much over core things.

My exams went well and I was able to enter my final year of university. I was excited and nervous. I never forgot anything Aaron had taught me. I was determined to finally make friends so I joined the LGBT society in university. The first three weeks of society meetings were terrible. I quite literally ran away from two of the coffee mornings because I was so shy. I always find it funny how I am perfectly capable of standing on a stage in front of a group of people and tell jokes for 15 minutes to an hour but put me in a room where I’m supposed to make friends and I cant handle the pressure. The people in the group made such an effort to be nice to me despite me being a bit of a cunt to them at the start but they persisted anyway. Around week four of the semester I found that I was looking forward to going to university. I finally had friends, plural, and I was looking forward to seeing them. They make me (as in they still do) want to get up in the morning and go to university just to hang out. Plus, some of them are really good looking. It’s nice to look at good looking guys all day. (Sorry girls, not that yous aren’t beautiful but you know, the magic V…) In fact we all took a trip together quite recently and that brought us all together and made us really close. What cemented the relationship for me was how kind they are. I’ve said it many times but I did not have an easy childhood and an even worse time as a teenager. The only lesson I had ever learned was that people will eventually hurt you so trust no bitch. My grandad got quite sick (and he still is) and despite making jokes about it, a few of them did a lot to make sure that I was OK even though they didn’t have to. This was mind-boggling to me. Now they, along with my friends not from university, make me want to be a better man, to be a better comedian and to learn how to be a better friend. I’m still having problems with the last part. I will protect anyone I care about whether it be listening to their problems, taking a beating for them (which I have done) or dish out the beating on a homophobic asshole (which I have done too). I still just haven’t reached that level of being able to ask them if they want to hang out outside of school. That part is still a little foreign to me so God help me and then when my birthday comes.

I don’t want to mention anyone in particular from the society solely because I love them all equally. They have all tried their best to make me feel a little less lonely and more capable of handling university. I would like to give a special mention though to someone who’s not in the society but has really helped me a lot too and that is Siobhan. She’s always there to greet me with a smile, a smoke and a good laugh.

I have also applied to be a teacher in Japan. It’s quite exciting. I mean, I’ve lived outside of Ireland but only in Europe and Japan is Japan. Different language, different alphabet, different customs and from what I’ve been told, it is quite possible that I will be the only white person around for miles. I do love a good change and I can’t imagine how exciting it would be to finally work in a school with “normal needs” children. That’s not to be offensive, by the way. Being a special needs teacher is really difficult and you need to be thick skinned because it can be heartbreaking especially when they have a fit and need a hug, and you legally can’t comfort them. So I’m hoping that I get the job because I suffer terribly from wanderlust. I feel as if I should have mentioned this earlier but it just didn’t fit in but back in September, myself and Rory finally met up after months of not speaking. We don’t hang out as often as we used to but it’s nice to have that friendship again. Sometimes you just need a straight male friend. That’s not to say that I’m only friends with him because he’s straight, that’s just an added bonus for me.

Written above are all the important things that have happened to me over the last year. I have changed a lot and I have learned even more than that. I’ve learned to take risks, to a degree. I’m still single for a reason and that’s because my level of self-confidence, while high, is not that high. I’m oblivious to when people are attracted to me and I would never have the courage to ask someone out. I think it’s mainly the fear of losing good friendships and not really a fear of rejection, but rejection really does suck balls. I’m not upset that I’ll probably go into 2013 without a boyfriend or even a New Year’s kiss but I am happy that I will go into 2013 with new friends, old friends who have always been there for me and a plan for the future career. Maybe what I need to learn for 2013 is to trust people more. I should believe that not everyone is going to hurt me, some people just want to be my friend and, dare I say, some guys might even be attracted to me. If it weren’t for my friends in university, the LGBT society, Andrew, Ruth, Helen or Chris I think this year would have been a lot more difficult. So thank you, all of you. Yous have helped make me the man I am today and I can’t thank yous enough.

My Grandfather

My grandfather always says that a good speech should be like a good miniskirt; long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep you interested. This is going to be one of these posts that are purely personal, there will be nothing educational to offer today. The last few days have taught me a lot of lessons that I definitely was not expecting. Firstly I have learned that this is the time of the year where things seem to go bad for me. Two years ago I was gay bashed and had my nose broken, last year my best friend’s father died and a couple of weeks after that another really close friend lost her baby. This year has proved to be no exception. My grandfather has been sick for the last little while and yesterday we found out that he has “a touch of the lung cancer” as my grandmother calls it. I would love to say that the news shocked me but I honestly had my suspicions for a while. Although my grandfather is one tough bastard so I think he could easily get over it.

The other thing I have learned is that people will always surprise me. A lot of you reading this will know from previous posts that I have not had an easy life. I’ve had a lot of terrible things happen to me and I became rather distrustful of people; friends and strangers. Last year with the baby and my friend’s dad I got really bad. I hadn’t had an “episode” in well over a year but the two events ricocheted me back into depression. The pressure of not allowing myself to cry so I could be the strong one for my friends is what really got me, I think. The point is that I really needed my friends then but alas, only a handful were truly there for me. It is an important lesson to learn, who your real friends are, but it is a painful one too. Especially when you are in the throes of a serious illness. With the support of my friends I was able to restrain myself from harming myself in anyway and they really dragged me out of my stupor. I have since done away with the “friends” I had and have only kept the ones who were truly there for me when I needed them. When I got the news about my grandfather I was terrified that the same thing would happen again but, and this is where I learned my lesson, I was surprised. All the friends I’ve made in the last three months have all been there for me. These are people who I have known less than twelve weeks and they have gone well out of their way to make sure I’m doing OK. There is another guy in our group who is going through a similar situation and they have shown him the same amount of love and support. This is a bizarre notion for me. For years I had learned that people only want to hurt you but here I have people who are (relative) strangers who want to support me because they consider me a friend. That’s not to say that the friends I’ve known for years haven’t been there for me either, because they have. Because of the love and support they are giving me, I actually feel OK about the whole situation. I won’t allow myself to cry because my family needs me. A lot of people find it surprising how close my family actually is. My family needs someone to hold everyone together while they mourn and with my ability to compartmentalize any situation, I’m the one.

I’d just like to say a few words about my grandfather and try keep this from sounding like a eulogy. I just wish to portray the kind of man that he is. Everything I learned about being a man, I learned from my father. Everything I learned about being a good man, I learned from my grandfather. My grandfather is a true gentleman. He will go out of his way to help anyone who asks for help. He does not judge people based on their religion, their colour or their sexual orientation which is extremely odd for an Irish man of his age. I know I said he is a true gentleman but he is also a true patriarch. My entire family revolves around his wisdom, his experience and his sense of humor (my grandmother’s too). His death will leave a void in our family that shall never be filled and like a monarchy, my grandmother will have to step up and take control. He will be missed but for now we are just going to spend as much time as possible with him. Let him know how much he means to us. My biggest fear (and it’s a selfish one) is that he will pass when I’m in Japan. It would be nigh impossible to get back but like I said, he is one tough bastard. None of us would be surprised if he lived another 10 years.

I’ll Fuck Anyone But A Kiss Is Special

I often say there is no question I hate being asked more than anything is, “Are you top or bottom?” but that is not true. The one question I hate being asked more than anything is, “How is the love life?” I know when people ask me this they are only asking out of genuine curiosity and not to be malicious but that still doesn’t mean it’s not a hard question to answer. Especially when the person who asks is in a relationship and the only answer I have is, “Well, Myself and Ben & Jerry’s are thinking of going steady.” Don’t get me wrong, I would never begrudge anyone for being in a relationship (unless it’s Taylor Swift but that’s another post for another day). The thing is, I find myself to be in a little love-life stump and I thought this would be an excellent time to do a post about it. This is not a post where I’m looking for pity, by the way, I just wish to express what’s going on in my head and hopefully some of you can relate.

Looking back on my love-life there have only ever been two guys who have ever been genuinely decent guys and even then only one of them has never done anything seriously illegal. Yes, every guy I have ever dated except for one has done something seriously illegal. That’s not a good pattern to have especially if people assume that you participated in said illegal activities. When it comes to what I look for in a guy I’m not particularly fussy. I want a guy with a good sense of humor, a decent taste in music, a love for food and who prefers to sit in with pizza and video games rather than go to a club. I haven’t been on a real date in well over a year now and sadly I have become complacent with that. Sitting in on the weekend, every weekend gets boring. It’s exciting to get ready for a date with a guy you barely know. The butterflies slowly build when you’re on your way to meet him and then they are at their busiest when you actually see him. I remember with my ex, I got butterflies everyday for 6 months at the start of our relationship.

It’s difficult for me to meet a guy and not just because I don’t go to gay clubs. I am extremely oblivious to when someone is attracted to me. I would genuinely never know if a guy fancies me and even if he told me directly I’d probably still need written confirmation. But even in the clubs I have no idea how to meet guys. My friends always tell me I should just go out on the dance floor and just kiss a guy but that’s not something I could do. A kiss is special for me, I need to really like a guy to want to kiss him. More simply, I’ll have sex with anyone but I’ll only kiss a guy I really care for. I don’t know whether that’s romantic or just slutty. Even talking to a guy is a daunting experience. I am easily one of the clumsiest guys in the world so I always do something really embarrassing and that usually ends up with me on the floor or running away. But on the plus side that does provide an endless source of hilarious stories for you guys. Plus online dating is just not practical. There are so many reasons as to why I am against online dating.

As I said above, I’m not too fussy about the kind of guy I want to date. He just has to be passionate about what he does (including me), have patience (most of you who know me in real life will understand the necessity for this quality) and preferably have never done anything seriously illegal. I can’t stress enough how much I want to break that pattern. My ideal scenario would be to meet a guy in university. And I say university because I am a terrible victim of cliches, the whole “college sweethearts” shit. He just comes up to me and asks me out on a date. I’ve only had two university experiences; one of them was a one night stand and the other one told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was the “half-two, you’ll do” candidate. Hardly relationship material (although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t flattered that I was considered for the last minute desperation).

I may come back and add to this post later but for now that is it. This is how I feel about certain things for now.