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Collecting Crises on Old Compton Street and Beyond
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Advice
If I had a penny for every time I've been told to cheer up, then I would be a very wealthy Stranger indeed. Sorry, my dears, but if you want insufferable chirpiness, and unbounded enthusiasm on demand, then I suggest you run off and get yourself a Bonnie Langford workout video instead. Drama queen that I am, I would, of course, love you to think I am carrying the weight of the world on my designer-clad and manly shoulders, or, at the very least, harbouring some glamorously tragic secret, but the fact is that this is the way my face is made, OK? A look of perpetual bewilderment, if not an off-with-the-fairies vacuousness, is its default mode, and should not be taken as an indication that I'm halfway to sticking my head in the gas oven. Besides, were you to spot me grinning inanely over nothing in particular, you'd rightly conclude either that I've gone gaga after one too many late-night benders, or that I'm laughing at you, and then you'd only want to punch me on the nose, which would get me looking even more depressed. So the reason I'm not smiling, Mr Concerned-Person-In-The-Bar, is because I am merely contemplating Solemn Things, such as my lost youth, which Findus I'm defrosting tonight, and exactly how I found myself waking up in a tree-house in darkest Hertfordshire at seven a.m. on Bank Holiday Monday. I might also point out I am a sophisticated and metropolitan gay man, and Not Smiling is what we're really, really good at, coming on all aloof and unapproachable and wondering why nobody can be bothered to come up and say hello. And if you want me to get really depressed, just tell me that it might never happen. Because that, my sainted and well-meaning dear, is the whole bloody point. |
