Nothing happened all day. Well, nothing worth noting. I sat around, or rather, lay around feeling physically drained looking at things on the Internet. Morbid fascination led me all over the place.
Decided around 4pm I would go out as much just to appear to have some semblance of a life to my housemates as for my own sanity. What was there to do on a Monday night? There was a trad Mass on in town. I hadn’t been to one for ages and I had planned on going to Mass on Sunday for similar reasons but didn’t make it in the end due to my inability to get up.
Crash
Oh, before I forget, I almost had an accident as well today – a car accident that is (I witnessed another “accident” of sorts in church later, but I’ll talk about that later).
Basically I headed out at 4pm to go and pick some bits and pieces up from Tesco. Turned out there were massive traffic jams all the way round the town so after spending 15 minutes gridlocked I decided to turn off. I signalled to move into the left lane then signalled to pull into the side street, but I forget that buses use the bus lane from time to time! Doh! The next thing I heard was the sound of a tires skidding across the road as the bus hurtled towards me. It was eerily quiet actually. No high pitched screeching, just the sound of a huge vehicle kind of sliding to a halt several meters to the left of me. I decided to quickly speed off up the road and not face the “consequences” – whatever they might have been. To my surprise rather than feeling rattled, I started laughing! How strange I am. I was shaken a little bit, but not nearly as much as I should have been. I think the excitement kind of took hold and it was a welcome change from the utter lack of excitement of the last 10 years of my life. It’s interesting, something similar happened in 2000 when I locked myself out of my house and had to go on a little adventure to try and find a ladder, knock on neighbour’s doors and climb through windows.
Church
So anyhow, I headed out again at about 5:45. The Mass began at 6:30 so I was running stupidly late. And the reason? Once again I had to virtually go through my entire wardrobe before I found an “ensemble” that I was happy with. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Everything just looked bad. I couldn’t handle brown trousers mixed with black, grey with black, grey with a blue shirt. In the end I decided I couldn’t handle any colour combination and settled on all black – black coat, shirt, trousers, shoes, socks and bag.
Because I was so late I decided to attempt driving again, but the traffic was still mental, so had to leave my car near the chinese on the main road about 10 minutes walk away from the tube station. Once I got to Leicester Square I quickly headed over to the church weaving through the people obstacles littering up the pavement. Surprisingly the whole journey didn’t take that long – I was only 10 minutes late in the end.
Mass
The Mass was an unmoving experience. I found myself feeling angry with people around me and the priest and the ministers in the sanctuary. Also because I was late I didn’t get much chance to choose where I was sat and I ended up sitting right in front of a tramp who had found his way in there off the street. He stunk of piss, but I though I could handle the smell at first. He kept mumbling, falling in and out of sleep and sort of half singing to himself when the priest sung anything. Then, to my utter disgust, he started to piss himself. I could hear the sound of it splashing on the floor and the smell was horrendous. But it was weird, no one around seemed to notice. Either they took it as a penance, they were deaf/lacked a sense of smell, or they were so deep in prayer they didn’t notice. I think it was probably a combination of all three. Anyhow, me not being a real Catholic and all and just being here for the vibes, I had to move and ended up behind some pillar on the right side of the church. The church building was one of those old ones where no thought appears to have gone into making the sanctuary visible from 50% of the building. Crazy.
Anyhow, other than the homeless church pisser the only other things worth noting were the thoughts going through my head about the other people at mass and the priest and servers. I just couldn’t concentrate on anything remotely spiritual. I found myself nitpicking the errors of the servers – ‘he shouldn’t have done that’, ‘why does that man think he knows everything when he so clearly doesn’t', ‘these people are play-acting’, ‘the thurifer is supposed to accompany the MC and the priest at the altar during the incensation’ etc. Then I found myself nitpicking the people around me. There was a man in front of me who seemed to rather enjoy making all the server responses aloud in a spoken voice just loud enough for everyone around to hear. Why I ask myself? To show off that he “knows his mass”? Or it just innocent force of habit? I think probably a bit of both, but even in that diluted state such displays still sicken me. And it wasn’t just the Latin, there were all the gestures he had to make just at the right moment or as he preferred just slightly too early so as to telegraph that he knew exactly where he was in the Mass and this was all old hat to such a pious experienced soul as him. Again, sickening. He wasn’t the only one mind, there were other people around making similar displays. The effect it had was one of self-consciousness on me. I worried I was doing things a little too deliberately: Was I pulling out my missal just to prove that I have one and am therefore a “real deal” trad Cath? Was I standing and kneeling a little too attentively and therefore just showing off? Was I watching the altar a little too much thereby telegraphing inexperience at all of this? Ugh. It was just ugly. And how much of it was just made up in my head? Maybe that poor man was just innocent. Maybe I was just some kind of angry demon in the midst of these good people.
I stuck anyway. Didn’t feel any compulsion to pray. Wasn’t moved by the ceremony remotely. In fact even the music which usually moves me had no effect – all I thought was that the singers did a bad job. But I stuck around anyway just to kill time. After Mass I remained in my pew for 15 mins or so contemplating informing the “head MC” about the homeless pisser. I played the ensuing conversation through my mind and imagined him being typically breezy with me so didn’t bother.
To kill a bit more time after headed out of church, I decided to take a look in Waterstones. I hung around there a bit. Contemplated buying Thomas Crean’s ‘A Catholic Replies’ book written in response to Dawkins. I didn’t in the end as it was 9 quid.
After Waterstones I decided to head to China town where I got conned into buying a rice wrap thingy for 2.50 when the assistant had said it was 1.50.
After China Town I decided to walk home down the Southbank before getting on a tube at London Bridge. Walking back I felt ridiculously self-conscious so I decided to record my “automatic thoughts” on my mobile so that I could listen to them back at home later and write a CBT thought record.
On the way back from the tube I called Cor and organised meeting up tomorrow night with her. I really wasn’t feeling it though. I am just not attracted to her, it’s a simple as that. I keep getting these flashes of that first meeting we had going through my mind, of seeing her and feeling disappointed about her appearance. Then the image of tying to kiss her with those hideous teeth went through my mind. Yuck. But then I am faced with the dilemma of calling it quits. But if I do that I think I’ll miss the feeling of being wanted and I’ll feel completely lonely again. It’s nice to have some company, or at least the option of some female company on a lonely night.
