Darby and Joan: January 2013
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| Darby & Joan are the quintessential middle-aged British couple, characterised by knitwear, hours of scrabble, and a penchant for staying in on Saturday nights. Darby and Joan are, in fact, @calummcswiggan and me. Read the Darby and Joan back catalogue here. |
Dear Darby,
This time last year (because I’m
forever playing that game, the “where have I been in this moment before now and
where will I be in this moment next year TELL ME THE FUTURE PLEASE” game) we
were reunited in a blaze of graduation diplomas and French family dinners and
champagne that we didn’t pay for but knocked back like, woah.
Curious: the stolen booze thing is a
bit of a theme in my life.
Also: remember how much crying I did
that weekend? I used up all the
tears. Hashtag overwhelmed.
How far we’ve come in those twelve
months. It would have been unimaginable to me as we sat outside McDonald’s in
Derby at 6.35 a.m., drunk and happy and miserable and full of achievement and
sticky because we’d danced like loons, that today I’d type this from a
Shoreditch café whilst sipping an antioxidant blend smoothie as part of a
fucking JUICE CLEANSE and using a MacBook Air that my actual paying job gave me,
and you’d be living in Spain and working as a bingo host for the Internet and
meeting all the boys as you recover from a 52-cities-in-a-year trip.
Everybody I know asks me about you.
They do it kind of concerned, worried for me. “And can I ask… How’s Calum? Do
you talk often?” and I’m always like CAN YOU ASK ABOUT CALUM? HELL YEAH YOU
CAN! YOU TRY AND STOP ME! And I explain that you’re saving up money to work
with tigers in a Thai monastery in May and how I talk to you more than I do my
own brother… and I live with my bro.
I find myself telling our stories to
dates just so I can relive them. Hey, want some advice? THAT’S A MISTAKE.
Example:
Right before Christmas I emailed you to
say: JUST HAD A LADY FORCE ME TO DO A PREGNANCY TEST, to which you were all,
LAURA. COULD YOU JUST… JUST START AT THE BEGINNING BECAUSE JE NE UNDERSTAND
PAS, which is our fake made up French for ‘I don’t understand.’
I explained to you I’d been at my new
doctor’s getting a check-up and my necessary oral contraceptive prescription,
and that it sort of came up that it’d
been a while since my last period.
I really enjoyed telling you that,
because even though you’re a gay you still can’t do thinking about my lady
garden bleeding because WOMEN ARE JUST GROSS SHUT UP EWWWW I’D HATE TO BE A
STRAIGHT MAN YUCK.
Anyway, I explained that I’d been all,
“Lady, I’m not having a baby!” and that she’d been all, “But you haven’t had a
period in seven weeks!” to which I was very calm about as I explained, “J’know.
I have a very bizarre cycle and have also been the pinnacle of all that is
safe.” The lady raised her eyebrows and got all, “Oh, so you’ve been doing sex
then?” and I had to be all like, “…”
She handed me a cup to pee in without a
word.
It was the weirdest experience of my
life (also: dramatic hyperbole.) My tube of piss sat on the desk between us for
the most exaggerated three minutes as
she dipped in her swab and then we both stared at it in what became a complex
traverse of every emotion ever invented.
Basically, you nearly had to raise a
non-existent child with me.
Thing is, when I explained this to you,
you reflected that we’d have the best child ever, because
NO, SEBASTIANO, YOU HAVE TO STAY IN PHUKET WITH DADDY FOR A FEW WEEKS WHILE
MOMMY GOES TO A WEDDING IN CHICAGO and then before I knew it I’d decided my
unborn imaginary child would call me Mama LJ- for no other reason that I just
think it’d be cool- and then you said that since we’re largely the same person
it makes sense that we’d have an imaginary child together.
So like, okay!
It sort of escalated then. I started
typing, CLEMENTINE TAKE OFF PAPA CALUM’S GLITTER WAISTCOAT, STOP DANCING TO
YOUR REFLECTION IN THE OVEN DOOR, AND COME FINISH YOUR PAPER MÂCHÉ STEINER
SCHOOL PROJECT TO FULLY EXPLORE WHAT YOU BELIEVE TO BE YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE AND
DRIVE. YOUR GRILLED VEGETABLES WILL BE READY SOON.
At the mention of grilled vegetables
you explained that our kids would eat meat when they were under your care, and
you weren’t even sorry. I told you Clemmy would be all sick and sluggish, and
the next time she came to visit she’d list all the reasons she decided vegetarianism
is the best and most healthy choice and actually, can she show you a recipe for
really cool soy smoothie Mama LJ did for her, and then you’d be all, “Clemmy,
you’re four years old. Shut up.”
You told me Sebastiano loves steak, and
that he’s sat on the naughty step because he threw Clementine’s soy smoothie on
the floor and won’t apologise for it, and that’s when it hit me:
I’m going to be single forever because you've ruined me.
I love you still (nobody else will have me),
Your Joan x
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