2004-12-08 - 12:16 p.m.

I've mentioned before that my best pal Phoe went through some serious shit several years ago and that I gave up my life as I knew it to move away with her to help her cope. Well, she was kinda well known for a time and we received a letter yesterday from a writer who wants to do an article on us both concerning our enduring friendship and all the shit we've been through. It would be a great 'feel good' story about 2 people thrown together, overcoming adversity and all the odds to forge a friendship so solid that nothing could break it.

....but I don't want to be involved, so if Phoe agrees to it (and by God we could do with the money) I won't be interviewed or photographed. I stopped getting involved in this side of things several years ago after THE ARTICLE. I think that Phoe will probably agree with me once I remind her - not that she'll need reminding.

Shall I tell you about THE ARTICLE?

We were approached by a national Sunday newspaper's magazine section to do an article about, you guessed it, our enduring friendship and all the shit we've been through. The female journalist was lovely and very enthusiastic about wanting to convey the strength of our friendship and the sheer hell we'd been through and overcome. She said that our story was like something out of a Hollywood film and that we should write a book about our experiences etc. The photographer took loads of smiley pictures of us with our pets,on the beach and around the house. They LOVED the house which was an old stone coke house in some woods within the grounds of a huge private stately home. Phoe had fallen in love with the house partly because it was so isolated and hidden away and she really was still quite ill at the time and wanted to hide away.

I did like the house too but there were some bad vibes around the place which eventually forced us to move. The only other problem with the house was that it was really too small for us both and we had to share a huge bedroom. Me being a slob and her being a tidiness nazi caused quite a few ructions and my half of the room was like a bomb site whereas her side was pristine. Still, we'd laugh about it and the journalist said that we were like the Odd Couple. That's it, a good day was had by all including a nice lunch at the local pub.

Then the article came out.

Apparently the journalist's editor didn't think much of feel good stories and thought that it was boring and needed 'sexing up'. He scoured the journalist's notes to see what he could play with whilst not setting himself up for any litigation. He found something and whilst the actual body of the article remained the great feel good story, the headline was I SHARE MY LIFE AND MY BEDROOM WITH ANOTHER WOMAN to insinuate that we were gay as Sunday newspaper editors like to imagine every woman is. We were devastated, especially when the local papers back in home picked up the story and ran the headline throughout the region. My Mom was getting people asking her if I was in a gay relationship with Phoe as no one had bothered to read the actual article. The headline said it all and I was tried and convicted by the thing. I called up the journalist (who had been lovely) and shouted down the phone at her until she wept. I told her that all the strength Phoe had been building up was wiped out because of her and that she was back to wanting to hide herself away from everyone again. She tried to explain that it was her editors fault but I wouldn't have it and called her all the expletives under the sun for not sticking up to him for us and making the story look seedy.

Sigh, so that's what happened last time we agreed to give our story. Oh and if any lesbians are reading, I really don't have a problem with you. I'm not some kind of anti-gay protestor or anything, I just don't want to be labelled as something I'm not for the titillation of some small minded tacky editor and his moronic readers.

Blimey, it's been ages since I recalled that incident. Phoe is 99.9% better now by the way and we sold the tiny bad vibe house. I'll have to tell you about the weird things that happened in that house one day.

In other news: I took the dogs to the creek again yesterday so that I could do my cross country run and try to blast this cold out of my system. Unfortunately some bloke and his dog followed us most of the way through the woods which pissed me off. I can't run if I feel like I've got an audience. I lost him at one point only to happen across some other bloke crouching behind a tree doing, what I can only guess at, a huge dump. He'd left his bike near a duck hide and was crouching behind what was little more than a sapling, so he couldn't have been hiding and his hands weren't, y'know, fiddling with anything so I can only conclude that he was emptying his bowels.

Uuuurrrrrrgghhhh!

So that's that I guess. I was up all night coughing. My chest aches, I've got 3 ulcers on my tongue which are agony and keep knocking against my teeth (especially when I sneeze) and I've got big, unattractive and itchy lumps on my face. I guess that when your immunity is low EVERYTHING that's been hiding away within your system gets a grip. I might seek out the rest of my snake venom tablets and see if I can blast away my internal poisons.

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