Primperfect (4 page)

I think I might be in love with Fintan. Either that or I really want to sleep with him some more. Definitely one or the other.

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

MESSAGE TO KAREN
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private-messaged Karen this and when I went back to see if she'd replied I realised she had blocked me. She must have blocked me as soon as she read it. I'm so angry I could punch her in the face. Again. Oh, God, that really does make me sound like a bully, doesn't it? Even though it was almost three years ago and I was defending Ella and it didn't really hurt Karen at all.

I can throw a really good punch now, though. I could probably do some real damage after all those kick-boxing lessons I took last term on the advice of my therapist. I kind of like the way Caroline gives me head-fixing homework. Like – I go to kick-boxing because endorphins will make me happier and punching and kicking will be a violent thing I can do that does not harm me or anyone else. Not that I've ever harmed anyone. Except my own hand when I made a complete hames of punching Karen.

Like the way people think about someone else's unopened box of chocolates in their fridge. Like I shouldn't but I kind of really want to. What is it about being blocked on a social networking site that's so IRRITATING? I'm surprised Joel hasn't blocked me yet. He did un-friend me though. Which hurt a lot. Because I felt, like, he can't just un-friend me – we've been friends since we were four years old. That is, like, three-quarters of our lives. It seems really dramatic. (Although my life does tend to swing that way, what with the cemetery break-ins and the self-harming and the manslaughtered mum.)

I love my friends, though. I don't see how you can just cut someone out of your life (except for Kevin, whom I probably should, from a kissing point of view at least). I am a nice person and he knows full well that I'm not homophobic. I've helped him through so many things around his sexual identity and him being OK with it and other people being OK with it and other people not being OK with it because they are stupid and wrong. Dad took him for post coming-out-related-drama

for God's sake.

Crepes are the most supportive food there is, next to toffee-pops. Joel is good at being angry and mean, but even if he was the kind of angry that involves yelling at me, I could win him around. I know I could. I'm very good at being friends with Joel. But he has never not talked to me before. I've always been the one who didn't talk to him. I don't like this shift in the balance of friend-power. It makes me feel like things might actually be over for us. And that doesn't bear thinking about and leads to over-analytical thought spirals where I try to rewrite the past by regretting it and am no good to anyone.

I think getting with Kevin was a big mistake, friendshipwise. Friends shouldn't kiss other friends' crushes, even if there is no actual way that the friend with the crush could get with his or her crush and the friend who is supposed to get away is feeling vulnerable and also a little bit tempted to keep kissing the first ever boy to show any sexual interest in her in the hopes of getting an actual boyfriend. I really wanted Kevin to be my first boyfriend. I wanted him to like me as much as Syzmon likes Ciara and to want to do stuff with me that we both enjoyed. Sadly, he is a teenage boy. (I know Syzmon is as well, but he doesn't really count because I suspect Ciara and he are mutants whose super power is happy-ever-after-getting and monogamy.) And I don't want ‘a boyfriend'. I want the real thing. Love, or something that I think is love right now. Someone who likes me and wants me and thinks that the stupid stuff I say and sometimes do is somehow charming. Someone who will be as close to me as Joel is but who I will also want to do sex things with and to. Not loads of sex things. But some definite sex things. Cosy, consensual, mutually enjoyable sex things.

Reading Mum's old romances has given me strong guidelines as to how it should be. Except without the brawny (yet weirdly progressive in terms of open-mindedness and personal hygiene) Viking protagonist kidnapping me and taking me to his keep as a hostage, with whom he ultimately falls in love. Not that that isn't nice to think about sometimes, but I have no desire to actually be kidnapped, even if it is by a sexy Viking with a booming laugh who will shower me with mead and gilded pleasures for years to come. However, I do want to have a love story, even if it's a tragic one. I don't think anyone will ever make me as sad as Dad made Mum, though.

I think that my losing her has made the worst sad happen early and maybe everything else will hurt, but not as much, because after that it all has to be less. I can't feel any more grief than I already have. I think my body would refuse it and shut down and just stop responding to stimuli. I'm not sure, though. It's just a feeling. A hunch. I think I'm right, though. I think that I am bullet-proof somehow, in terms of drama. Except for the whole not-talking-to-Joel thing, which makes me cry like maybe once a week.

It has been six weeks since I walked in on Fintan with his tongue down Gillian's throat. She's going to move out as soon as she finds someone else to take the room. I would like to kill the both of them. But I am not going to because I am the bigger person here.

Quote from Prim's mum's diary

ast-Dad is a horrible man. He has been steadily making moves on Mum's house-mate, and Mum has been pretending not to notice, while totally noticing and obsessing about it. She's just walked in on him with Gillian and he's pretending that it's nothing but it is very, very something indeed. It is all quite sad. I feel kind of weird about talking to Dad about the cheating, though, because it's all over and done with and in the past and he has been a pretty good dad to me, even if he is hardly ever a good boyfriend to anyone. I don't like to think of him being a friend-groper, though. Shudder. I wish I could talk to Joel about it, but I suppose I'll just have to hold it in and bring it up next time I see Caroline.

Which is Thursday week. I wonder if I can hold it in that long? I'd tell Ciara, but I'm not sure she could keep it secret and also she has a big thing about cheaters and how they are scum and all that, so I think she would probably get quite snotty with Dad if she knew about his historical handsy-ness.

I love reading Mum's diaries. I love that there are bits of her that are left to me, that I can still learn from and love. But at the same time, there is a reason that parents don't share everything with their kids. And that reason is because they probably don't want to gross them out completely. And also their entitlement to a private life, etc.

	Dear Joel I have found some scandalous gossip from the past in Mum's diary. If you will accept my apology to Karen and be my friend again I will tell you what it is. Prim
	Dear Prim I can't BELIEVE you're using your dead mother's diaries to blackmail me. That's low, even for you. You are a selfish person and I am better off without you in my life. Joel
	Don't be like that.
	I am the way I am – a proud gay man, and your homophobic bullying of Karen and general bad treatment of me in other ways has made me realise how much you were holding me back.
	I have never not supported your sexual identity. I love you and I am so proud of you. If you are talking about the Kevin thing, you know how much I tortured myself over that. I wish I had not outed Karen, I was not thinking clearly – she just makes me so angry. I shouldn't have done it and definitely wouldn't have if I knew it was going to be the catalyst for a rift between us. You are my family, Joel. Even if you decide never to talk to me again, I will not stop being here for you. Your friend (even if you aren't mine) Prim

That last one didn't deliver, because he had blocked me. I'm going to print it out and post it to him, though. I will have the last word. Even if it could result in embarrassing feelingsy notes being read out loud in a silly voice to horrible Karen.