SAM CAN’T WAIT TO YELL HIS WAY THROUGH TRAFFIC THIS MORNING
_ You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been posting some crappy drawings like these lately. You can see more of them on Instagram: @deanblakeauthor.
MIRACLES IN WEST END
I had become a mess so Christie told me to visit a lady in West End who performs miracles. Apparently, she helped cure a lady of her cancer, she helped cure a friend of his chronic back pains, she returned joy to a broken person’s life. I went to the hall and sat down among a small group of others. …
SELMA HAD LONG LEGS
Selma had legs that could kill a football team and all the guys loved her, and they all flirted with her, and one day, when we were all walking towards the Pancake Manor I lifted up her skirt, and she had this lacy thong on, and poking out of the thong were both sides of her pad, and everyone roared …
SOMETHING IN YOUR STOMACH
Someone from work once gave me a moleskin, and for some time I just let it sit at the back of my car. “If you don’t want to write in it, why don’t you draw something in it?” Christie asked me from her hospital bed. “Yeah okay,” I complained. “Like drawing is so fucking easy.” She got mad, so I …
GUYS IN AN ALLEYWAY
Christie and I were walking along the city and this guy snatched her purse. “Let’s chase him!” she said and we ran and found him in an alleyway, where about five or six of his friends were waiting. “Let’s get out of here,” Christie said and we ran off. It was a quiet drive home. _ Book I’m reading: …
JANINE’S FOREARM
Janine has bigger forearms than I do. I mean my forearms aren’t that big, but when I compare her forearms to the forearms of the men and women in my life, her arms are monstrous. My friends say her forearms became that way because she likes to eat ribs and she likes to play tennis. I say her forearms became …
VALENTINE’S DAY LOVE
Christie told me that she fell in love with Barry Edgar about four years ago. He didn’t know that she’d fallen in love with him, and understandably so: she didn’t tell him and she didn’t change anything about the way she treated him. Barry Edgar was a waiter who once travelled to Europe. He also once travelled to India. He …
LOVE CHECKLIST
“Being in a relationship is an easy yet complicated process.” This is what Christie started our conversation with. “Really now.” “At first it’s easy because there’s no checklist yet. There are no rules – you’re soaked in this, this unshakeable high. But then, once you get comfortable with the other person, a checklist emerges, and all of a sudden you …
THE END OF EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD
Are there two Christians with the exact same ideals? Are there two atheists who believe in exactly the same things? I wonder how Jesus meditated. I wonder how he prayed and what he asked for on a daily basis. I wonder what Buddha would’ve looked like, if he would’ve been taller than me, and if he was bald and always …
LOVE IN EVERY LINE
“He loved her,” she insisted. “No, he’s in love with her.” “No, no, no.” She still wasn’t listening to me. “This is what he said: ‘I loved her.’ It was love in the past tense.” “People don’t say things like that unless they still love them. Once you stop loving someone, you never mention them again. They’re not even a …
DRINKING WINE ON A BALCONY BEFORE CHRISTMAS
“Have you ever spoken to God on Christmas?” This is what Christie asked me as we sat on my couch on my balcony. It was some time in the evening, and beyond us, beyond the railing, were buildings and trees and lights, and beyond that was the city, and beyond that was the universe, and beyond that was time, and …
HAPPINESS AND ARMPIT PLUCKING
“You know what I’ve realised?” Vail asked me. “What?” “I like the idea of doing charity work more so than actually doing it.” Vail had just finished an afternoon of volunteer work with troubled kids. “It’s a lot of work.” She sighed, sipping on her latte or whatever the hell it was. “It’s so much work.” “You know what I’ve …
YOUNG AND OLD LOVE
Romance always changes. It’s different when you want the girl, and when you have the girl, and when you’ve had the girl. It’s different when you’re three months in, and when you’re a year in. It’s different when you’re twelve and when you’re eighteen and when you’re thirty. I wonder what love will be like when I’m forty. Will I …
LICKING FOR FIFTY THOUSAND
We ended up hanging out with this woman who cut my hair in South Bank once. She was this loud ball of fire who loved to talk about sex and dildos a lot, and that night, in the back of an Uber, she described her dildo collection like a guy would describe his sword collection: she had this proud, dazed …
I KNOW THIS IS A TYPICAL THING TO SAY, BUT…
I know this is a typical thing to say, but I like to look out at the stars. I look at them when I arrive home at night. Some nights they’re barely visible, and other nights they’re like ash tapped from the tip of a cigarette. I stare out at them while not really thinking anything. Some people tell me …
“KIND OF FAT”
Riki was kind of fat but she hid it well. She dressed well and did her makeup well. She’d wear these largish, fashionable black clothes that sheltered all of her secrets. But her secrets left obvious clues. She was always eating, always inviting me out for snacks, and then drinks, and then dinner, and then dessert, and then snacks. Once, …
WHATTA FUCK YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?
“It’s my birthday soon and I’m all grown up,” I yelled to Jude over some blues track playing from his car stereo and a freestyle by Eminem streaming loudly from his friend’s phone in the back of the car somewhere. It was about two in the afternoon and Jude was speeding along some road in a suburb in Logan that …
WATCHING CAROL SPIN
This is my second last story about Carol. It starts off quite simply, and it ends quite simply. It starts at South Bank, during an evening, a Wednesday, with the both of us in a large Ferris wheel. I’d been with Carol since the night before, and during that time I’d made her breakfast and she’d helped me buy some …
FIRST DINNER WITH CAROL
And then I ruined it all by saying, “I don’t want a relationship”. You shrugged and said, “That’s exactly what the previous guy said,” and you told me about this guy you met on Tinder who was in a long distance relationship. You told me that he was a decent guy with a pretty good body and pretty big dick, …
DINNER AT CAROL’S PLACE
Carol lived with a few people, so I would always enter her place through a back door. She had one of the biggest rooms in the house, and I liked it because unlike my cramped room, she had a large bed with plenty of floor space. In the dark, from her bed, a few things would lay huddled in the …
THE TRUTH
There’s a particular spot I like to drive to near the Valley. I won’t tell you exactly where it is, but if you turn right at a certain traffic light and keep driving straight you’ll end up in a private area full of expensive apartments overlooking the river. I like it because of the view, and I like it because …
A LOVE STORY: DONALD TRUMP AND ALEJANDRO ALEJANDRO
A FANFICTION LOVE STORY ABOUT DONALD TRUMP AND ALEJANDRO ALEJANDRO I’d like to quickly interrupt my own love story with a much more important one. It’s a love story that isn’t often told, and when it is told, it’s never told properly. They met a few years ago, when Alejandro ran a taco restaurant chain and Donald was busy with …
LOVE
“I don’t believe in love,” was what Carol told me when we were at Carol’s home, having late dinner that she cooked, listening or not listening to music that may or may not have been playing from a small speaker in another room. “You believe in love,” I told her. “I don’t.” “You do.” She sighed. “You can’t just dictate …
I DON’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC
“I don’t believe in magic,” Carol said. “I just don’t.” “Why the hell not?” Carol looked at me like it was something that didn’t need explaining. When I didn’t say anything: “Where have you seen magic? Tell me, where have you seen magic, Dean?” “I saw it the other day.” “Really? What happened?” “This guy.” She scratched her arm irritably …
8 DINNERS WITH CAROL
I knew that things were never going to work out with Carol but I went along with it anyway. I met her at some place I don’t remember and she was drinking some drink I don’t remember. “We won’t make a good match,” I told her, showing her a photo someone took of us. “We just won’t.” “You’re right,” she …
Book Recommendations / Book Suggestions
These books have shaped me in one way or another. In a way, these books may shape you, too. So read them at your own risk. Norwegian Wood By Haruki Murakami. I read this when I was freshly dumped and overseas, on my own. Murakami writes a lot of weird shit, but Norwegian Wood seems to be one of his …
PART 3: KAZAA VIDEOS AND CIGARETTES
My friendship with Hayley grew stronger as my friendship with Jason began to fade. It was exactly how it was that year when we both turned sixteen: she’d call me in the middle of the night and we’d tell each other everything. It was love, but it wasn’t the love you’re thinking about. “What are you doing here?” She asked …
PART 2: HAYLEY
There were plenty of things I thought of while up north: money, girls, boxing, the point of it all, the ups and the ups and the downs and the downs. I spent most of my time and money on driving and music CDs, and it was always sunny, and something about the heat and the beach made everyone tired …
ABEL’S HAIR
“I just spent fourteen hours looking for the right shoes to go with my new chinos,” Jude said. “No you didn’t.” “I did.” “Fourteen hours,” I said. “Fourteen hours,” he repeated. “Fourteen hours straight.” “Yes, fourteen hours straight.” I faced him, thinking about how stupid he sounded. “It’s impossible to spend fourteen hours straight looking for shoes in the shops.” …
SILENT PERIOD
It was a few minutes past midnight, and this guy, Bill, whose boyfriend was supposedly a “scam artist slash DJ slash art dealer from like, London who had like, fifty thousand followers on Instagram,” had some kind of cover of Earned It by the Weeknd playing loudly from a gigantic iMac placed on a pile of magazines, and I was …
ANNA’S PHOTO AND JUDE’S FIRST GIRL
Anna jumped in my car and we went for a drive and we parked somewhere and she went wild on me and everything seemed okay. Her mobile phone background, which used to have an image of her fiancé, had been replaced by a giant photo of a polar bear. Photos of him had vanished from her social media pages. But …
ANNA AND THE BREAKUP
One day I might stop writing about this bullshit. One day I might settle down with one woman. One day, when that woman decides to eventually stop showing me her vagina and I realise that I’m stuck with the same job and the same person for the rest of my life I’ll write a children’s fantasy novel. Or a crime …
ANNA: HERE’S TO WHEN I LIKED YOU
“That’s why I like you,” she said over the phone. “You like to dream and talk about things only kids do. My fiancé will think it too immature to talk about building a fort out of pillows, or like, starting a family in Mars.” She rested her head on my chest. “He yells at me a lot and gets jealous …
ANNA AND THE DEFINITION OF LOVE
I remember once knowing exactly what love meant. I was about nine years old, I think, and to me, love was what my parents had: it was being happy with each other once in a while, it was being upset at each other once in a while, it was posing happily in photographs, it was a guarantee that they’d be …
ANNA: THE GIRL I WILL END UP HATING
Anna and I continued to text each other every five minutes or so. I learnt that she was twenty years old and got engaged when she was 19. She worked at a dollar discount store and didn’t know what to do with her life and didn’t seem to have any ambition to find out any time soon. She thought that …
ANNA: THE GIRL WITH A MEATY P****
Dear Carlos Fuckface, This started a couple of months ago, and I haven’t really told anyone about it yet, but given what’s going on right now I think now would be the perfect time to let you be the first person to read this story. You see I was sober, and it was a Friday evening and I was …