my first kiss....

And so we spoke again. After all these years.

That soft easy voice. Those little infectious giggles precipitating a wholehearted laughter. God. You are still the 17 year old I had known all these while. Easy. Fun to be with and to talk to. Soft. And loving.

Probably you grew up too early. Or it was just me who refused to grow up. Perhaps I was scared shitless to be away from you. May be deep down inside you saw what I might become. Or perhaps we were just too young and things were just not to be. If you had asked me, well, I don't have the answer. Frankly, I think I suddenly had the urge to be free as a bird. I don't know really.

Whatever it was, one day, I took your hands, looked into your eyes and said, "this is goodbye"! It must have hurt, I know. You were grasping my hands and squeezing them strongly. And I could see the tears welling up. Suddenly you released the grasp and let go of my hands. It was as if you had no energy left. It was as if you had no will left. I still remember those hurts in your eyes. Those little sobs in between whatever words you were trying to utter. It hurts, I know. And I wouldn't even dare to think how long you carried it with you.

It might sound plain apologetic for me to say this. But I must say it. You are gracious to even speak with me. For that I am grateful. I just want to say I am sorry. And I am glad you are living well. It would be a cliche for me to say that I wish I could erase that moment from your life. But I do.

Because I can't bear the pain of hurting you, my first kiss.

Dara #7

dalam sepi begini perlukah kau bersuara
biar saja mata dan senyum melukis rasa
aku hanya mahu duduk kaku merenungmu
membelai helaihelai rambut lembut dibahumu

dalam dingin begini perlukah kau berselimut
biar saja nafas kita panaskan suasana
aku hanya mahu duduk rapat memeluk
mengintai rahasia mahu mengerti semua

dalam gelap begini perlukah kau terangi
biar saja kuraba dan kurisik segala rahasia
aku hanya mahu genggam jari jemari
mendakap erat mimpi mimpi lama berusia

dalam sunyi ini perlukah kau bernyanyi
biar saja aku duduk bersamamu di sisi
aku hanya mahu merenung bulat mata
menyentuh seluruh gemuruh di dada

dara,
sepi pun tidak aku kesunyian
dingin pun tidak aku kesejukan
malah,
gelap pun kadangnya tidak aku kekelaman
dan sunyi pun aku masih tidak kebuntuan
kerana sebenarnya
kau selalu saja
ada...

In Silence

I feel like a dam full of emotions which you ignited, pregnant until bursting. I want to explode into you. Passionately, violently as you ripped me from the fabric of life's drudgery, its weariness, its cynicism. It was complete acceptance or eternal banishment. There was no compromise. Compromising meant being untruthful. Everything that came before was forgiven and everything thereafter accounted for. That you filled me. Reshaped me. Breathed me life anew. You make me invincible.

Sometimes I wish I could say these things to you.

But I'm just not good with words. Just not good at them.

They just don't come out right.

without and with...

Without flash...



And with...flash.

The face a woman looks best in

The face a woman looks best in is when she is in the throes of pleasure. That look of vulnerability and sensuality on her face, of a willing and utter surrender to the pleasures assailing her every pore. Those closed eyes spoke of wanting to achieve a depth of feeling, of being able to trace the faint outline of the contours of her pleasure. That frown of indescribable pleasure. Sighs that slowly emerged and rose into a crescendo before gently fading away, washed over like a fresh wave on the beach by her full throated mouth wide open moans that tittered at the knife edge of pleasure and pain, betrayed by a body that could not contain the pleasures coursing through her, demanding that she vocalize her enjoyment. Occasionally, she manages to restrain herself by biting her lower lip only to surrender to her soulful cries again. Each one a lick more sweeter than the last. And there is a radiance to her then, as if pleasure itself glowed in her and overflowed out of her every pore. As if she were made for just that one moment of inconsolable pleasure.

She is never more beautiful than she is then.





(The real wan ah! Not the fake wan!)

Tarts in Bondage

Home
October 2008

Bonzo and the Raging Moon (Part 1)

The date was September 24th, 1980. The place was The Old Hyde. He was picked up by the band's assistant, Rex King, that morning and was to be brought to the band's rehearsal at Bay Studios. It was a part of the band's preparation for an upcoming tour of the United States, the first US tour since 1977.

At that time, he had just overcome a heroin problem. He was taking a drug to treat his anxiety and depression. While on the way to the studios, he asked King to stop for breakfast. Legend has it that he downed 4 quadruple vodkas (which is of course equivalent to 16 vodkas!) and ate a ham roll. Taking a bite at the roll, he said to King, "Breakfast!"

When he arrived at the studios, he was obviously drunk. The band's singer remembered that he was "tired and disconsolate". He continued drinking throughout the rehearsal and the band later called off the rehearsal. He would tell the singer, "I don't want to do this. You play the drums and I'll sing."

After calling off the rehearsal, the band convened at the lead guitarist's house in Windsor. He drank some more double vodkas before he finally passed out at around midnight. The band members moved him to a spare room. The next day, in the afternoon, the bassist together with the band's tour manager, Benji LeFevre, went to wake him up. He never did. They found him dead. Apparently he had rolled over in his sleep, vomited into his lungs and choked to his death.

John Henry "Bonzo" Bonham. The drummer of Led Zeppelin. He was born on May 31st 1948. Found dead on September 25th 1980. He was 32.

*** *** ***

Apparently, when Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, who were then in the Yardbirds, flirted with the idea of forming a group with John Entwistle and himself as the drummer, he jokingly remarked, "it will probably go over like a lead zeppelin!" He was non other than Keith Moon, the drummer for the Who, a group consisting of Entwistle, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey.

Keith John Moon was born on August 23rd, 1946. As a teenager, Moon was into surfing music, such as those which were popularised by the Beach Boys. He joined a surfing music band called the Beachcombers and became part of a club circuit to which, coincidentally, the Who also belonged. Moon's drumming style was unorthodox, to put it mildly. He was loud! He later realised that he was kind of out of sync in a band which emphasised tight-knit harmony. The fact that he could not sing well served only to exacerbate the situation. The band would ban him from singing although sometime, in the heat of the moment, he would instinctively joined the chorus to disastrous result. While performing "Behind Blue Eyes", which requires precise harmony, Moon would be sent offstage just in case he forget that he wasn't supposed to sing!

At the time he joined, the Who was known as the Detours. The band consisted of Townshend, Entwistle, Daltrey and Dougie Sandom as the drummer. The Detours later became the Who, the High Numbers and later, the Who again. Upon hearing that the Detours was having problems with Sandom and had later sacked him, Moon "laid plans to insinuate myself (himself) into the band", to borrow his own words. He went to the Oldfield, a pub where the Detours was playing, had several drinks and summoned up enough courage to go on the stage to tell Daltrey and gang that he could do better than the sessions drummer who was standing in for the night. The band told him to go ahead and play and he then played drums in one song, "The Road Runner".

In an interview with the Rolling Stones in 1972, Moon vividly recalled what happened. "I'd had several drinks to get me courage up, and when I got onstage I went arrrrrggGHHHHHHH on the drums, broke the base drum pedal and two skins and got off. I figured that was it, I was scared to death." While sitting at the bar later, Townshend came to ask him whether he was free the next Monday as there was to be a gig. He said he was and the rest, as they say, would be carved in stone and hung in Rock 'n' roll's historical archives. "And that was it. Nobody ever said, "You're in." They just said, "What're you doing Monday?", said Moon.

*** *** ***

Suddenly, there was no Zeppelin. Robert Plant said later, "the band didn't exist, the minute Bonzo died." The band was in a stupor. No statement. No news. No plan. The music and history were left unfinished. "It was so . . . final," Plant said. "I never even thought about the future of the band or music."

Finally on December the 4th, Atlantic Records issued a one-sentence press release: "we wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with the sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were." It was simply signed, "Led Zeppelin." The world lost a truly great band that day. A band which had managed to infuse super stardom with real talents and British white rock and the North American deep blues culture and music. A band which had managed to marry Plant's rasping voice with Page's emotive riffs backed by the towering musicianship of John Paul Jones and of course, the power, energy and anger of John Bonham on the drums.

Twelve years earlier, in 1968, Jimmy Page was in the Yardbirds with Jeff Beck on guitars. Beck's temper tantrums caused all the band members to leave the group in the middle of that year. Page assumed the band's name and he set out to find new members. His search for a singer brought him to Terry Reid, a former singer of the group Jaywalkers, which had then disbanded. Reid declined Page's invitation and suggested that Page check out Robert Plant instead.

Plant was from the English Midlands and was a singer who dabbled in American country-blues. While Keith Moon had a deep interest in surfing, Plant had a thing for Lord of the Rings, which explained his band's name, Hobbstweedle. Listening to Plant's rendition of Jefferson's Airplane's "Somebody To Love", Page immediately knew that his search had come to an end.

Meanwhile, John Paul Jones, a well known arranger for the likes of Donovan and the Rolling Stones, to name but a few, called up Page and asked to join even though that would mean he had to leave his lucrative cheques as an established and accomplished sessionist.

Bonham was then already known as the loudest drummer in Great Britain with a propensity to break drum heads. He was so loud so much so that he was often asked to leave studios and clubs. He was once asked to leave a studio in Birmingham for being too loud for the owner's liking and 10 years later, he sent a card to the owner which said "thanks for the career advice" accompanied by a Led Zep gold record! Throughout his early career, he once joined a band called Crawling King Snakes whose singer was non other than Robert Plant. The band broke up without an album. Later Plant formed Band of Joy and Bonham joined in as the drummer.

It was Plant who told Page to try out Bonham for the new Yardbirds. History was in the making. Page; Plant; Jones and Bonham came together for the first time in a room below a record store in London. They played "Train Kept-a Rollin", a song popularised by Johnny Burnette and given a new lease of life by the Yardbirds. "As soon as I heard John Bonham play," Jones told the drummer's biographer, Chris Welch, "I knew this was going to be great—somebody who knows what he's doing and swings like a bastard. We locked together as a team immediately." Plant has said that was the moment that he found the potential of what he could do with his voice, and also that it was the moment that defined the band: "Even though we were all steeped in blues and R&B, we found in that first hour and a half that we had our own identity."

With that the New Yardbirds was formed. Legend has it that Page later changed the name to Led Zeppelin in reference to the remark made by Moon earlier. Peter Grant, the band's manager, apparently took out the letter "a" from the word "lead" because he was worried that the Americans might pronounce it as "leed". And Led Zeppelin was born.

Rock 'n' roll was never going to be the same again. Ever!

*** *** ***

The Detours was changing its name to the Who at that time. The eighteen year old Moon brought a whole new dimension to the Who with a completely different drive from the rhythm section. Moon complimented Entwistle's bass drives and that gave a new sense of musicality to the Who's music. Pete Townshend later said, "From the time we found Keith it was a complete turning point. He was so assertive and confident. Before then we had just been foolin' about."

That was the start to a roller coaster world they called rock 'n' roll. Moon bashed up the skins so hard that the whole rock experience was going to take a rolling like never before. Initially, the Who was playing a lot of rock and blues, drawing inspiration from the likes of BB King, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Moon said they would take up songs cover and they would "Who'd" them. "Summertime Blues" was one of the song which was being "Who'd".

He has an interesting story about Daltrey's stuttering "effect" in "My Generation" though. According to him, Townshend - he was the primary composer for the band - came to the studio with the song and gave it to Daltrey one day. Daltrey, who was not familiar with the lyrics stuttered and Kit Lambert, who was producing for them then, decided to leave the stuttering to see what happen. "When we realised what'd happened, it knocked us all sideways. And it happened simply because Roger couldn't read the words," said Moon.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Moon actually revolutionised the drums. He was the first to treat the drums as an equal to the guitars in a rock band. In fact, during the early days in the Who, Daltrey recalled that Moon had wanted to be placed in front during shows. Before Moon, drums were just a part of the rhythm section of any rock band but Moon changed that image and brought the drums to the front of the rock culture. In doing so, he inspired other drummers, among whom, was Bonham.

Daltrey says the energy in "I Can See For Miles" - in which Moon's accelerating drum rolls and cymbal smashes seemed to compete with, but perfectly complemented, guitarist Pete Townshend's power chords - " is just unbelievable... He sounds like a steam locomotive at full pelt. His speed is incredible." Moon combined a variety of styles and made very much his own thing out of the drums."

"Keith was the first to treat the drums as though they were a lead instrument..." Tony Fletcher, author of Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend, says. "He really made the drums an instrument that spoke very much in the same way that a lead guitar does."

Off stage though, Moon was just as explosive.

*** *** ***

After a brief visit to Copenhagen and Stockholm, the band was ensconced in the Olympics Studio for their first album. In November 1968, Grant visited New York and procured a contract with Atlantic Record. Atlantic made a modest announcement about the company having signed "the hot, new English group Led Zeppelin" and that it was "one of the most substantial deals Atlantic had ever made". It was indeed a substantial deal as Grant had procured a USD200000 advance for a band which was then unknown and whose album nobody had ever even heard of. A tour of the US was then in the offing.

Led Zep opened in Denver, Colorado on 26th December 1968 as the third act after Vanilla Fudge and Spirit and was promptly welcome in the usual US manner, namely, as a doormat! The promoter even deducted the cost of the backstage grub from the band's pay. Page had to operate the PA system himself and Bonham even had no mike for his set (which did not really matter as he was loud enough even without them). In Detroit, a newspaper ad announced the band's appearance as "Led Zeptlin"! It looked like Grant's worry over the word "lead" being mispronounced by the Americans was justified after all.

But that was not to last. Page recalled, "you could feel something was happening - first this row, then that row. It was like a tornado, and it went rolling across the country." By the end of 1969, Led Zep had toured through the country 4 times, each time to a bigger, sold out audiences. In Britain, they quickly followed Cream into the Royal Albert Hall, filling it in June 1969 and again, in January 1970. In that year too,the eponymous album, Led Zeppelin and followed by Led Zeppelin II, were released. Rock 'n' roll was changing its face and sound. The basic premise of hard rock was being redefined and the fundamentals of heavy metal were being laid.

*** *** ***

It was with Daltrey that Moon had his first clash, among many clashes, in the Who. Daltrey described the relationship among the band members in the early days of the band as a clash of egos. To him, Moon especially, did everything in excess. "He was the most generous, the most mean, he was the funniest... he could be the most unfunny, everything — the most loving, the most hateful... Everything about him was extreme," Daltrey says.

When asked by a reporter in 1965 about the flare-ups in the band, Moon innocently blurted out, "Yes, It's Roger, he hates me!" The reporter asked why and Keith replied, "Because I told him he can't sing. . . I don't like half our records and Roger is the reason."

Daltrey even knocked Moon out one day in the dressing room after a terrible performance. Apparently, Daltrey flushed out all of Moon's pills - Moon was taking pills for his alcoholism problems then - and Moon had wanted to beat him up for that. Moon was actually kicked out of the band for a while. He was brought back when Daltrey promised to be more peaceful with him.

By this time, Moon had a new love. He loved bashing up and breaking his drum sets. Finally Townshend would join him in destroying their respective instruments on stage. In America, during the Smothers Brothers show, he bribed a back stage hand to allow him to load explosives into his bass drum. At the conclusion of "My Generation" he blew up his kit and pieces flew everywhere. Moon got a piece of a cymbal embedded into his leg and Townshend temporarily lost his hearing. The guest on the show, Betty Davis, fainted into Mickey Rooney's arms.

Moon's and the band's appetite for destruction became stuffs of legends. Together they would wreak total havocs in every hotel they checked in which resulted in the band incurring loads of claims from the hotels. "It was fucking expensive. We were smashing up probably ten times if not more than we were earning. We've been going successfully for ten years, but we've only made money the last three. It took us five years to pay off three years, our most destructive period," Moon told Rolling Stones in 1972.

Trying to explain the band's knack for destroying hotel rooms, Moon said, "I get bored, you see. There was a time in Saskatoon, in Canada. It was another 'Oliday Inn, and I was bored. Now, when I get bored, I rebel. I said, "FUCK IT, FUCK THE LOT OF YA!" And I took out me 'atchet and chopped the 'otel room to bits. The television. The chairs. The dresser. The cupboard doors. The bed. The lot of it. Ah-ha-ha-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHA! It happens all the time."

The most famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) of Moon's antic was of course the car-in-the-pool legend. Tony Fletcher said in the book that Moon had never driven a Rolls Royce into a swimming pool in his biography. Daltrey disagreed and said had it not happened, he must have been living in someone else's life. Both of them were only half correct.

It wasn't a Rolls Royce. And no, Moon wasn't driving.

They were in Holiday Inns, in Flint, Michigan when the record company booked a nice big hall to celebrate Moon's birthday. Moon was presented with a 5 tier cake. Soon the party generated into one big booze fest and everybody was dead stoned. They were all dancing with their pants off! Moon of course had to excel at this stage. He threw the whole cake onto the carpet and a slanging match ensued. When the hotel manager walked in, he noticed everybody was dancing without their pants and the carpet had all been stained with the cake and its icing. He called the sheriff. Moon was in his underpants when he saw the sheriff and he made a dash. He got into a brand new Lincoln Continental parked somewhere near and released the handbrake. As the car was on a slope, it just rolled down, smashed the swimming pool fencing and went down straight into the pool with Moon in it. He managed to escape.

He than ran into the hall again, streaming in water and still in his underpants! Moon recalled, "The first person I see is the sheriff, and he's got 'is 'and on 'is gun. Sod this! And I ran, I started to leg it out the door, and I slipped on a piece of marzipan and fell flat on me face and knocked out me tooth. Ah-ha-ha HA-HA-HAHAHA!" He later spent time at the dentist with the sheriff and also in jail the next day. The whole band was packed off in an airplane the next day and while boarding the plane, the sheriff apparently said, "Son, don't ever dock in Flint, Michigan, again," to which Moon said, "Dear boy, I wouldn't dream of it."

Moon's sense of humour - which was at times rather warped - was also well known. After forgetting an interview which was due to take place at 3pm one day, Moon phoned in to say sorry that the hospital had delayed him (when in fact he was at a pub!). He told the managers that a bus had actually run him over on Oxford Street. "I was just crossing Oxford Street and a Number Eight from Shepherd's Bush 'it me right up the arse and sent me spinning across Oxford Circus,", he told the managers.

He then asked his driver to bring plaster and bandages which he wrapped around his legs. An arm strap and a walking stick then completed the whole charade. He then made the managers and some assistants carry him down four flights of stairs down to the road. While being carried across the road, a truck almost hit all of them leading Moon to curse the driver, "you 'eartless bastard, can't you see this man's injured! 'Ave you no 'eart, 'ave you no soul, you bastard! Trying to run over a cripple!"

Telling the finale to the story with his usual humorous manners, Moon said, "We went on to the interview and in the middle, after about four brandies, I just ripped off all the plaster and jumped up on the seat and started dancing. Ah-HAHAHAHAH-ha-haHAHA! HAHA!"

In the mid-60s, Moon met Kim Kerigan (when she was only 16) and married her. They were blessed with a daughter, named Mandy. On this Moon recalled that Kim was a 16 year old girl who used to hang out at the club where he and the band used to play at, in Bournemouth. According to him, "Sometime later when I went down to see her, I was on a train and Rod Stewart was on the train. This was about ten years ago. We got chatting, and we went to the bar car. It was Rod "The Mod" Stewart in those glorious days, and he'd just been working with Long John Baldry. He was playing a lot of small discotheques and pubs, doing the sort of work we were doing. I said to Rod, "Where are you going?" He said, "Bournemouth." "So'm I," I said, "I'm going down there to see my chick." he said, "So'm I." So I showed Rod a picture of Kim and he said, "Yeah . . . that's 'er." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

*** *** ***

"It was a series of dynamic crescendos, one right after the other ," Plant describing Led Zep's first American tour in 1968 and '69. "There was no room for letdown," added Plant. That just about encapsulated Led Zep's approach towards their music and was reflective of their aspirations to be the biggest rock band of the time. Led Zeppelin, the 1st album, was recorded in 30 hours - claimed Page - and Led Zeppelin 11 was recorded during off days in between shows in nearly a dozen different studios in the summer of '69. Considering the gems which could be found in both of the albums - the thunderous "Good Times Bad Times'; the ultimate journeyman-who-can't-be-at-one-place-and-with-one-gal-for-too-long- ballad "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"; the psychedelic "Dazed and Confused" in the 1st album alone - this must have been a band with superhuman powers and some talents!

Meanwhile, Bonham came into the forefront of rock drumming with his mastery of the grooves, sense of timing, rhythm and of course the sheer loudness of it all. The signature grooves in "Whole Lotta Love" and the sheer speed in the hard hitting "Immigrant Song" from the second album marked Bonham's entry into super stardom. He was not afraid to experiment either as he was the first known drummer to have included in his kit the congas, timpani, and drum synthesizers. He was also fast gaining a reputation for ecstatic drum solos with so much power, speed and variation.

Meanwhile, Plant was learning fast to exploit Page's masterful guitar riffs and chord movements with his voice. "I am not a guitarist as far as a technician goes - I just pick up and play it. Technique doesn't come into it. I deal in emotions'" explained Page. Such raw emotions shine in his crazed slashing outbursts in "Whole Lotta Love"; "Heartbreaker" and in one of the most emotive and heart wrenching rock and blues riffs ever to be recorded, in "Since I've Been Loving You" on Led Zeppelin 111. Plant was also adapting to Page's wailing and weeping on his guitars by exploring and adopting various vocal landscapes. "I had a long way to go with my voice then. But at the same time, the enthusiasm and spark of working with Jimmy's (Page's) guitar shows quite well," said Plant while explaining the obvious chemistry between the two. Amidst all these super virtuosos and abundance of masterful display of talents was the towering skills of the "Quiet One", John Paul Jones. Not unlike Richard Wright - the keyboardist of Pink Floyd - in character, disposition and musicianship, Jones was the backbone of the band, providing the solidity of craftsmanship, his quiet and almost intellectual demeanor providing the band a sense of stability. He was the element which had glued the band together. He provided sanity in a band which, in terms of hard rock 'n" roll life, was far from sane.

The album which would elevate Led Zep to rawkenroll God-like status soon came.

...to be continued...

in one short sentence...

Akademi Fantasia
The musical version of UMNO election.

Dr Mahathir (when he was the PM)
Nasty.

Dr Mahathir (present)
Nasty bastard.

Blackberry
What exactly the fuck are you doing to yourself?

UMNO election
The political version of Akademi Fantasia.

Toll roads/PLUS highways/MRR2
Fraud!

ASTRO
Fucking fraud!

Maybank's acquisition of the Indon bank.
Somebody is laughing to the bank.

The Apprentice
Najib Razak.

Malaysian Football Team
A sporting version of UMNO election.

Windfall tax's abolishment.
Somebody is laughing to the bank.

Abdullah Ahmad
A mistake.

Anwar Ibrahim
Long foreplay inducing ejaculation in the pants.

Saiful
Asshole.

Malaysian Judiciary Appointment/Elevation/Promotion
A judicial version of UMNO election.

4th Floor Boys
Penis ring.

Fasha Sanda
Viagra in motion.

Hari Raya dramas on TV
The Malaysian economy.

Proposed 700 billion bailout
Danaharta without Azman Yahya.

Proton and Volkswagen
A corporate version of UMNO election.

Buka puasa buffets
Pigs!

Buka puasa buffet at Shang-ri La
Fucking pigs!

Chua Soi Lek
A porn version of UMNO election.

Viagra
Fasha Sanda

Pink Floyd
Fucking Fasha Sanda.

September 16th
Fasha Sanda dating me.

Jeko doughnuts
Get the insulin ready.

Men/women/boys/girls using laptops at Starbucks/Coffee Beans etc.
What exactly the fuck are you doing with your life?

Navel Gazing
Fasha Sanda.

Coming On Strongly

There are occasions when some people come on strongly.

To explain, take the following example. Let's say you meet X at a social function either through introductions or just happen to do so somewhere. You have a pleasant conversation because you find that both of you share common interests at some level - movies, music or whatever. And then you exchange numbers and say, yeah, let's meet up sometime. Although really in truth, you in all probability would not bother calling or meeting up unless X is a hot, sexy and horny babe\stud\[whatever] who flirted with you and grabbed your crotch\stuck a finger up your ass\[whatever gets your goat, sicko].

But this time. X calls up next week and asks to meet up. And you're like, uh, really? Wow. Were you that fookin' interesting? But you're busy, really. So you tell him, hey maybe some other time. At this point, the conversation should prepare for ending with the goodbyes and false promises to stay in touch.

But X doesn't get it. He perseveres and says, okay, how about the week after that? I'm good for the week days, blah, blah, blah.

So you check your diary but god damn, for real okay, it's full. Sorry man, you say. I'm full up. Hey, I gotta run, I'll check my diary and get back to you okay?

But X doesn't get it. Okay, how about the week after that one? he asks calm, as a fookin' cucumber, as if he completely missed the bit where you said, Hey I gotta run.

So you reply, Dude/tte/[whatver tf] I said I gotta run, I'll get back to you. Have a nice day.

But X replies and very coolly and calmly almost as if you were the annoying one, Okay, why don't we just fix the date since your diary is open there.

And you're like, what the fook is wrong with this psycho bastard and the shrill violins in Psycho now start kicking up in your head. You now imagine he wants to meet you beause you will be his latest victim. You imagine him spiking your drink and then bundling you back to his place where he saws you off piece by piece. Death claims you soon after he saws off your arm from excessive bleeding. Some of your body parts are incinerated and some are kept in the fridge.

But perhaps you were overdoing it, but his perseverance was becoming annoying if not scary. What the hell you wonder was so interesting about you that X wanted to meet you so badly? It's not like you sucked/fooked/[pon pon] X at any time during the conversation.

So you tell him, I told you X, I gotta run. Bye.

Okay, X replies. You hit the end call button.

You feel relieved. After that stunt, there was no way you were going to meet with him. His coolness was creepy.

Until he calls you again next week. And when you start avoiding X's phonecalls, X diligently leaves voice messages every time to remind you about meeting up with a request to return his\her\[whatever] call over the course of several weeks, with three to four voice messages each week.

Okay, so the point up for discussion is, do you have an obligation to meet up with X after saying in casual conversation that you would? Or to put in another way, could X rely on what you said in casual conversation concerning your interest in meeting up with him? If X could not rely on that statement of interest then what else in that conversation could he or should he not rely on? X may fairly form the opinion that you are a person not to be taken at your word and unreliable.

The dilemma is this: You don't want to take it any further with X but as a parting gift you want to do X a favour. But how do you tell X about this, in the gentlest possible manner, without you sounding like some shitfaced arsehole? I mean to see the X's side would be: how can you without even knowing me, come to the conclusion that I am not worth your time just because I am a little more persistent than others? How dare you be so presumptuous you shitfaced arsehole?

But then why should you give a shit seeing as how you don't want to meet X and X probably (and usually) has no other friends which is why he wants so badly to meet with you after the first conversation? You can't be nice and spend time with everyone, especially those you don't want to or like. Time is your most important asset. You don't want to waste it on people you don't like or don't want to meet.

Right?

However that still leaves the question of why you feel X's persistence to be a turn off to be answered. Perhaps it is because X is making immediate demands on your time over the expected measure of time you expected to spend with him. To give an example. You were only psychologically prepared to spend about 5 minutes with X but because of his persistence, it has upset your mental state because the conversation has gone on for 10 minutes. And because of this upset mental state, it has provoked a negative consciousness which X has come to be cloaked with.

But when you come right down to it - even on this issue of why you feel that way - I think you just shouldn't give a shit.