...my hair. Ack, my hair. It's short, and it's... short, and it's butch. I look like kd lang. Seriously. The first thing my brother asked me when he saw it was "You're *sure* you're straight?"

I replied by telling him i looked like kd lang. Avoiding the question, moi? ^_^

I celebrated the cut by smoking a lucky strike and giving a marlboro light away to some girl who must've been, what, twelve? But then i'm a bad judge of age

I can't stop playing with it... hey, now i can use dax! cool! my brother says it's the same haircut as some friend of hours we ain't seen in ages, who i was in choir with and who i used to meet up with every day before school, her and her girlfriend and a mate of theirs, and smoke and bitch for five minutes on *our* bench before continuing the walk. One time someone else was on the bench, and it felt really wierd, and we muttered abuse at them and crossed the road. I saw a piece of graffiti in the school toilets about how some sixthformer was a "lezbian. i saw her KISSING this girl in year 11 outside school" and i was shocked at the idea that this was considered to be *news*. When her girlfriend stopped meeting up with us at the bench, I worried that they'd split up and finally asked the mate, who told me that she'd moved and thus went to school from the opposite direction. I was relieved, although i didn't really like the girlfriend, because i didn't want my friend to be unhappy. I'd seen how it was when some bastards at a nearby school, convinced the girlfriend was *really* straight and in denial, tried to split them up by having some guy tell the girlfriend that my friend had given him head. This failed, because he said "your girlfriend, yeah, the one with the black hair" and she'd dyed her hair red, it was only black in the picture her girlfriend kept in her room.

Oh, the memories you get from going to a school "where the boys go with boys and the girls with girls". Except there weren't any boys. But if there had been...

I think they still call my school "the posh dyke factory", you know. At least that's better than "the virgin megastore". And the rumours that went round about my mates - x is going out with y, y is going out with z, z is going out with x, p is going out with y, q is going out with y... i don't know why they thought y was such a slut, i really don't. Considering she was the straightest of the lot.

Anyway, i'm gonna go off and play with my hair some more. This song is by new order? it's pretty...

I went out with my mates for a drink. Had jokes about my hair from J (i shall annihilate you with the power of BUTCH!) and compliments from cd (*hugshugslovlov*) and stupid stupid joking about stuff (welcome to man club. the first rule of man club is: you do not talk about man club...) and meeting up with cd's ex, strange barmen my mates know and random camden block people i ain't seen in about a year. Including Silent Rob, so called because his name is Rob and he's silent. And also from Kansas. He and I sat in the corner having sporadic five-second conversations and the rest of the time being, well, silent.

I was gonna go back with J to watch videos, but we got talking to her flyering mates outside the tube and when i phoned home to check if it was okay i realised that, late as it was, i wouldn't be able to get the last tube home and there might well not be enough space in her house to put me up.

So i went home.

To find out that my Uncle John (the Middlesborough, maternal-side-of-family Uncle John) has died.

He died in front of the telly, in his own front room, watching sport no doubt and i'm glad, because i wouldn't have wanted him to die in a hospital and he really loved his house and his sky sports. He must have been, what, 72? Longest living male member of his family. Four down, one to go: Uncle Ken's next. It hasn't sunk in yet, I don't think. Strange, the last funeral I went to, earlier this year, I cried and I don't know why, and I'm not crying now. And I don't know why.

And all the old family politics are resurfacing, because John was my mother's half-brother, his mother re-married after having five sons and had two daughters by this Irish (gypsy, tinker, ingrate) man who already had a couple sons and a daughter. Or maybe "is", i mean, the corpse is probably still related to my mother. And John was the one who held the entire family together, because Ken jokes - those jokes with real thoughts behind them that bite - about the irish tinker gypsy brood pushing in on their happy family, and the question is whether he'll 'accept' that him and my mother and my aunt share a mother, or whether he'll keep the family divided. Not through intention, obviously, just... the way things happen. You know?

I've never been to a wedding in my life, but i've been to about seven-odd funerals. This one will be the third on that side of the family. My grandmother, Uncle Ray, Uncle John. Perils of having 'older' parents: you get used to death. It happens. You start discussing the logistics perfectly calmly, as if nothing major's happened, and wondering which members of the california branch of the family'll come over, and thinking about buying a black suit.

Now, if you don't mind, I have an appointment with the huge teddybear my uncle Ray gave to me and my brother. He won it at a fair, and one time we visited he told us we had a present and hid it in the cupboard and it was taller than me and it isn't anymore