I’m fighting myself. Trying to outdo myself. I’m wrestling with my own reflection, evaluating my worth based on remits beyond my control. Internal demons shouting down my accomplishments. Washing in the negativity, scrubbing it into my scalp, so regardless of compliments, I’m always digging into a hellscape beyond any help.
I’ve just Googled my name. I strongly recommend you don’t do this for several reasons; firstly, there’s a chance you share your name with someone more attractive and successful than you; secondly, you might have an existential crisis realising we’re all, as a species, more identikit than we’d like to imagine. Your name combination, an identity you thought unique to your existence, spread throughout the world like dimensional clones. What if life’s true meaning isn’t pleasing a God, or leaving a legacy, but a fierce battle royale against same-named brethren? A fight to become the last Adam Starkey standing as the closing circle squeezes the light from your eyes?
Unfortunately for me, Googling my name has opened up all of the above. The biggest kicker, as well as being more attractive, photogenic and better-dressed, is one of my name-sharing compatriots has higher Google authority. He’s top of the charts. The click-sucking survivor hoovering up SEO attention. I’m not even top on fucking Bing.
This other Adam Starkey is a model and actor. I’m homosexual, so I’d happily accept his application for wank-bank rotation. What happens if you shag someone with the same name? Is that incest by extension? Would the secrets of the universe unlock? This man not only has my attention, he’s triggered my taboo-breaking curiosity. Fuck him. And his abs. Fuck it all to hell.
He isn’t the only clone I’m sharing this patch of land with. There’s Adam Starkey, futurist speaker. He looks smart, wise and statesmanlike. The version of myself who actually took advantage of his history degree. I’m often tagged on Twitter by people who believe I’m this person (he doesn’t need to engage in the trivial warfare of social media). I’ve corrected them before but now I’m content suckling at the notification serotonin. This is an AS people want to hear from! The likes! The respect! I can taste it!
My final discovery is arguably the ultimate Adam Starkey. A YouTube search led my gaze to a video from The White Collar Fight Club in 2018, where a muscled Adam Starkey takes on his fellow man in the boxing ring. There’s no other trace of this man on the internet, so this recording is a byproduct of coincidental collision with a camera. How many other Adam Starkey’s are out there? How many rivals do I have in this game of life?
There’s a moral here somewhere about the hopeless and pointless endeavour of comparing yourself to others online without knowledge of their tangible reality. A chase which can drive you into despair through an illusion of success. You can find it yourself though, I’m busy eye-fucking Adam Starkey’s until my verification tick turns blue.
Alright Doomsday cults, you win. After centuries of mockery as negative nincompoops, 2020 was a disconcerting ride through your fantasy. A virus swept Earth, made world leaders look like fools, and the flow of humanity was disrupted with tragic, maddening consequences.
As a study into human behaviour, 2020 has been the greatest series of The Circle yet. The highlight reel? An opening scrap over bog roll, cabin fever delirium peppered with Tiger King, absurd hatred for 5G towers, the ballooning distrust of professional opinion for some bloke on Facebook, before a final act of existential crisis mid-Zoom quiz.
To some degree, it’s a difficult year to make light of — like laughing at spinning blades jutting into the mush behind your eyes. On a personal level though, it’s been a year of recalibration. Somewhere along the way, my self worth became wrapped entirely around my career – which, looking back, now feels like an escape from the emotional baggage clogging the metaphorical hallway. I thought I was fine but the lockdown pressure cooker made stumbling a repeat occurrence, firing my emotions into every corner like a whirring Catherine wheel trapped inside a dustbin.
This bubbled into addressing things about myself I’d always needed to. I told someone I was in love with them (didn’t go to plan but with six months of hindsight, it’s certified hilarious). A few days later, I told my mum I’m a passionate advocate for dick. I’d recommend coming out as gay during a pandemic, where survival shoots up in priority over the swing of your genitals. It resulted in the perfect anticlimax, where my declaration was acknowledged and brushed off with little surprise, before attention swung back to Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
The build-up to this moment however has been turbulent. I’ve cried in pubs, stairwells of clubs, and generally struggled to view myself differently over many years. It sounds dramatic when, on the surface, you just want to shag men – but something I admittedly started to enjoy as a dirty little secret hits different when facing other people’s perceptions. The western world is far kinder to gay people than it’s ever been, but it’s still a weird feeling knowing if I decided to snog someone in Nigeria, for example, I could be thrown in prison for ten years.
The potential for hostility is something I’ve been naive to within London. On dates, I’ve shown small public displays of affection and received hesitant knock backs, not because they find me repulsive (!!!), but through fears of being attacked or heckled. After being in straight relationships where you don’t think twice about it, it’s a disheartening learning curve realising it’s perhaps only a matter of time before I encounter twat blowback for holding hands in the street.
This, of course, won’t be news to many. The fact these changes happen after accepting a small aspect of yourself however blows my mind. The only difference between the person I was and am now is my open preference for penis. Where’s the punishment for openly liking Dancing on Ice? Keeping Chris Brown’s career afloat? Or accepting FaceTime calls on the bus? This society is whack.
Through it all, the greatest Christmas card ever
There’s still some areas I’m getting a handle on. My feelings around LGBT culture generally is one of them, mainly how much I want my sexuality to be intrinsic to my identity. Do I have a greater responsibility to report on stories around gay culture? Should I ‘stan’ things? Can’t I just give great blowjobs, listen to Charli XCX and leave it at that?
A worry for another time. For now, aged 29, I’m more comfortable, confident and happy than I’ve ever been. I’ve acquired a boyfriend mid-pandemic too (who bought the triumphant Alex Turner Christmas card above). I’m starting to think world panic and disarray does wonders for my horny productivity. As far as super villain origin stories go, it’s no Doctor Octopus – but I’m hopeful for sympathy when I rain down meteors for a fuck’s sake.
It’d be dickish to suggest there’s some moral in the happiness I’ve found within such a terrible year. An unfortunate circumstance which accelerated my eventual trajectory sounds more accurate. Yet I’m weirdly grateful towards 2020’s upheaval for pushing my emotions into overdrive – making my time on this planet infinitely more enjoyable moving forward.
Outside of personal cornerstones, it’s been a great year for art consumption. Greater mood swings have, in hindsight, made my obsessions feel like isolated windows into my, then, state of mind. The Last Of Us Part 2 was an endurance test through bleak spectacle when I needed to be punched in the face, Paper Mario: The Origami King a breezy relief from social media, while Hades became an after dark addiction with tight gameplay loops and sexy Greek gods.
It was pop music however which provided the greatest transport. Jessie Ware, Dua Lipa, Roisin Murphy, Rina Sawayama, Charli XCX, Taylor Swift, The Killers, Gorillaz all elevated my existence to a plain beyond bedroom walls. There was also an evening where Steps – Something In Your Eyes was on repeat for three hours — a blast of candy optimism repackaged and released (it’s a cover of a failed 2011 Eurovision contender from Sweden) that’s like a mental vaccination from another planet.
As 2021 already feels like a blurry extension of ongoing fatigue, customary end of year lists seem slightly more useful than the average. So here’s what I’ve consumed, remembered and clung to throughout this past year – simultaneously the gayest and darkest of my existence so far.
Blogging is a personal and indulgent endeavour. I don’t particularly care who reads this and I’m under no obligation to satisfy a paying or devoted audience. Instead, if I want to write about sitting on the toilet at 3am, it’s entirely my prerogative to do so.
I will however bundle my bogging adventures with a movie to make this journey easier to digest. I am disgusting but I’m not a monster.
PICTURE THE SCENE. A man, aged 29, at the midnight hour decides he’s in the mood for a film of unsavoury nature. He remembers watching Mark Kermode’s list of 10 films which scared him that wasn’t the Exorcist, and recalled Audition.
This man had read the book Audition by Ryu Murakami and enjoyed it, having compartmentalised that at some point in his life he’ll get round to watching the movie adaptation. That time was now.
In his boxers and under the duvet he’d spilt pen ink over earlier, the man settled down and subscribed to BFI Player on Amazon Prime for a 30-day trial. He immediately revoked the subscription, realising he could get through the highlights over a steady weekend.
Equipped with a glass of disappointingly watered-down Vimto, he started the film. The first hour is geared like an off-beat comedy, with only occasional whiffs of the uncomfortable on the horizon. He was intrigued, with his interest in the movie visible as he slumped down at an increasingly uncomfortable angle.
Fast forward half hour and things were beginning to escalate. The suspicions were more obvious. The reaches for Vimto became more profuse. He was on edge, barreling towards an unknown he had failed to recollect in the book. He knew it was disturbing, but why?
Audition is messed up
This man was well seasoned in horror movies. He was confident, possibly arrogant, that he could never be shocked by any movie again. He’d played interactive horror games like Alien: Isolation and Resident Evil 2 remake. The Audition while slumped in bed, he thought, would be a piece of piss.
Then *that* scene happened. It was a torturous cacophony of his worst nightmares; being paralysed and at the mercy of someone’s batshit will.
Breathing became difficult, his stomach felt off. He tried to drink Vimto but his clumped frame meant liquids had not sunk properly. He sat up to clear his gullet, yet couldn’t look at the screen. He sat on the edge of his bed contemplating what was happening. He pushed ‘X’ on the PS4 controller to pause, yearning for the safety of a toilet bowl enveloping his head.
Escaping to the bog, he necked a glass of water and everything felt clearer. He couldn’t tell whether it was the act of standing up or removing himself from the film’s events, but he felt better. He sat there a while, trying to remember whether he’d had such a physical reaction to a film before.
He hadn’t. He’d jumped, maybe even been suspicious of silhouettes in the dark, but never felt his stomach turn asunder. This was new.
He returned to the bedroom slightly refreshed. He realised there was only 14 minutes left, but he was battling his tired state. Surely he could make it to the end, but what if the stomach churn came back? What if it only gets worse in this final act of madness?
As the horror unfurled, he chose to look away – letting the gruesome sound effects paint even worse images in his brain. He was, frankly, an idiot. A man willing to gamble vomiting on his bed to complete a movie.
As the credits rolled in quite abrupt yet not unsatisfying fashion, he was able to lie back and assess the situation. This was a movie. A sequence of pictures and sounds which physically repulsed him to the bog. This was too much power for art. It must be contained.
After turning off his TV and curling under his bedsheets, the man felt oddly content with life under lockdown. Flashes of the movie would blip across his mind but at that moment, he realised, quite happily, that he was single. No potential lover could fill his heart and sever his feet. He was okay. Maybe life is better indoors, he thought, as the event washed into dream.
Do you ever think about how much art you’ll consume in your lifetime? We’re creatures with endless lists of recommended TV shows, movies, games and music to suck into, in a time where it’s never been easier to travel back and digest the culture from decades prior.
By this metric, coupled with consistent new releases, you’ll likely be an uncultured disappointment when you croak it. You might think you’re knowledgeable on film but there’s always a subsection untapped, a niche release, or a part of the filmic world beyond all time we have in this world.
I’ve crashed into this grand, depressing statement after playing an anime fighting game. Guilty Gear Xrd – Revelator wasn’t anywhere near my radar until a few months ago, when I became more entrenched into fighting games which weren’t Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat.
The key takeaway is within Guilty Gear Xrd – Revelator, a relatively niche fighting game with a cult following, is a song too spectacular for the mortal ear. Imagine Queen but they’ve won The X Factor circa 2009 – screaming into Christmas number one with a power ballad combining rock opera cheese and intense sincerity too irresistible for hairbrush karaoke.
Guilty Gear Xrd – Revelator
This is buried within Guilty Gear. Over the game’s end credits. A song you earn after watching five hours of anime cutscenes. I’ve taken so much enjoyment from this song I’ve struggled to comprehend the volumes unknown to this creation. More people have listened to Crazy Frog than this. More people probably know the life and times of Jake Quickenden than this. So many people will pass through heaven’s gates not knowing this.
Of course, you might think it’s wank. The point is, the world is stacked with art we’ll never uncover. We’re skating by supermarket aisles grabbing apples and oranges everyone’s talking about but forgetting the dragonfruit staring from the buckets. You may have just realised how much you love fruit analogies. You’re welcome! Open your eyes! Art is all around!
So what is the moral here? On some level, there’s a hint towards trying out new experiences to uncover beautiful creations, but I’m not going to dictate how you should live your life. I just want you to listen to this fucking song.
To whom it may concern, I am launching a crusade into the heart of Peru.
If you recall the 11th century, the term ‘crusade’ is synonymous with a series of religious wars designed to recover areas deemed the Holy Land from Islamic rule. It’s a conflict often used quite rightly as an example of everything wrong about religion; justifying the massacre of thousands through flimsy entitlement jotted down in magical, mystery books.
I’m not saying I now understand their motivations for launching these wars. I’m saying I can go one better. I have tangible evidence to suggest UK confectionery is a tasteless lie we’ve been subjected to for far too long. The crusades were wars based on fabricated entitlement, my crusade is based on the very real foundation of superior Peruvian biscuits.
Please allow me to explain. I have become exceedingly close with a Peruvian man during my London residency. The kind of person who unexpectedly collides with your outlook and spins it into free fall, leaving you questioning whether external forces are pushing kindred spirits together in a world of 7.8 billion people.
Truth be told, there’s more to this story. A part I’m not quite comfortable writing about just yet. Rest assured though gossip hound, the day will come when I’m willing to go beyond this man’s biscuits.
After he returned from a trip to his motherland, I was gifted a traditional Peruvian bag stocked with native sweet treats. There’s a bizarre thrill to seeing cornershop delights pulled from an entirely different culture, with the garish packaging and unfamiliar branding making it feel like you’ve uncovered artefacts from a parallel dimension.
Over the course of the next week, I tried each artefact and relayed back my rating for each. He didn’t ask for this. Frankly, no one does. After years of expressing my views, it’s a reflex I refuse to tame. So I throw around my opinions to whoever will receive them, like flirty twats who wedge fingers in mouths mid-yawn.
I can see wandering reader, you’re also an open goal. While I won’t compile every biscuit in my sessions, these are the crusade targets from my taste awakening. The central crux of my missionary gallivant to Peru’s core.
MorochasCasino BlackPicaras
While I could describe in orgasmic, word-wanking detail the sensations these biscuits bestowed my buds, this would be a cruel exercise. Instead, I simply want to highlight them, make them exist in your universe, so any passing sighting of these brands will trigger intrigue in your memory senses.
Alternatively, this is indoctrination via visual propaganda to my cause. You want me to describe how it tastes. You want comparisons to Oreos or the soft satisfaction of licking chocolate from a digestive. Everybody’s a slut for an adjective and I won’t buckle to it. The instant gratification age is rotting the cocktease. You must discover this joy for yourself.
The only way you’ll find these delights is if you have faith. Not the fanatical faith to spur terrorism, the broad-minded belief we have been underserved by the UK’s confectionary range our entire lives. It’s time we let the foundations shake, spit in the eyes of patriotism, and fly back with Paddington to the promised land of Peru.
Writing a blog post in lockdown is the most heinous act imaginable. If you weren’t already mentally collapsing behind the eyes, someone sharing their own miserable existence from another box on the planet is now preying upon your wandering boredom.
Even worse, they might believe they’re providing an invaluable historical log. Instead of grazing the grand Twitter archives, future historians will swan down your URL for university seminar teaching material; dissecting how 2020 panic buying left you with neglected spaghetti hoop tins and off-brand teabags nobody else likes.
I’m not exempt from this dickery by pointing these things out. Instead, I’ve found myself in a compromised position – drinking tins of San Miguel, listening to nostalgic music from my teenage years, while trying to flirt on Tinder so my sexual frustration doesn’t swerve towards a fling with an empty crisp packet.
It’s not pretty but it’s weirdly comforting thinking we’re all a bit of a state. It’s important to remember the human lives directly affected by all this, of course, but even as someone who can switch into hermit quite comfortably, it’s eye-opening how important human contact is to the fabric of sanity. I’ve started to miss hugs. I’m scared to be drunk because I’ll hug. I’m worried my body will overreact when we return to a hug-accepting society.
Luckily, I’ve not been completely starved of human contact. I live with six housemates in London, which sounds overwhelming but it’s not as chaotic as it sounds. The house is spacious enough we’re largely never in each other’s way, and it’s rare we’re all in the house at one time.
The high number however has led to paranoia over someone bringing the virus into the house and causing a domino effect. Any signs are followed by hasty explanations to ease hesitant faces: “Don’t worry, it’s just my allergies”, “I was just in bed all day watching The Simpsons”, “I just cough after showers because the steam gets on my lungs when I don’t open a window”.
That last one, the sentence too lame for Ralph Wiggum, was me. Our landlord, desperately in need of the rent, also saw it wise to move in a new housemate during this whole pandemic – striking fear into the hearts of the cough patrol. Turns out, the newbie plays the cello. He was quickly accepted to soundtrack our Hitchcockian cough thriller.
There’s plenty of sequel material from family phone calls. Midway through a chat with my mum, the tone immediately soured as she became concerned over my stepdad’s loud, uncontrollable coughing from the bathroom.
Dread sunk to a morbid silence as she asked if he was okay, only to discover he’d eaten some cake with too much gusto. We probably should have been more concerned about the choking, but a rare moment to launch into laughter was impossible to resist.
In this weird subverted reality though, we’ve all become bonded together by gradual mental decline. One housemate has started painting random parts of the kitchen, another cackles into the night on Houseparty, while one is ready and waiting to join anyone who decides to walk to the cornershop.
For myself, obnoxiously loud dance music has crept into my listening habits while I perform menial tasks in video games – blasting away the day-blending haze while maintaining a false sense of progress.
If anything, I’m craving the kind of disconnect from reality you can only get sweating in a nightclub dialled to infinity on alcohol – clinging to that feeling of invulnerability at a time when we’ve never felt more helpless to circumstances beyond control.
Essentially, this is the closest we’ve come to seeing how we’d deal with an apocalyptic scenario. There’s twats hassling supermarket staff over bog roll limits, your gran is learning to video chat, Brits are still flocking to sunshine like moths, and silly writers are trying to piddle out diary of Anne Frank-equivalents from a suburban house-share in Streatham.
Lockdown has shown we’re all fragile meat sacks barely keeping any of it together – let’s just unravel and enjoy oblivion.
Where were you when Britain left the EU? The question doesn’t exactly match 9/11’s historic mood shift, but it’s the first of these cases where I wasn’t entirely at odds with the public mood.
For me, 9/11 is synonymous with a Megabowl birthday party; crashing from sugar highs into a living room illuminated by news coverage and aghast faces not willing to hear about my sick Spare. Michael Jackson’s death wasn’t much better; announced by a DJ when I was inebriated and emotionally impervious to his Man In The Mirror tribute.
For Brexit day, I was traipsing through Nottingham city centre after a coach trip from London. The trip was revolved around my mum’s birthday and, until the week arrived, I had failed to register the inevitable clash with Brexit celebrations.
Like the majority of Nottingham, my family largely voted to leave. We’ve disagreed on many subjects but there’s been a stronger slant to our political conversations since the referendum vote in 2016 – ranging from heated frustrations to comical swipes from both sides.
As I suspect with many families, this division just became part of the fabric. Conversations about Boris Johnson were sandwiched between work updates, Harry Styles and new bathroom fittings. It was never a dealbreaker, just a reminder we were separate generations not entirely in sync.
Out of sync is a polite way to phrase London’s relationship with the UK. Walking through Nottingham’s drunken core at 11pm, I was caught off-guard seeing UK flags flying high outside council buildings, with passers-by quickly trudging past or cheering in unison. It’s irritating how national pride throughout my life has been a weapon of nostalgia. London 2012 Olympics aside, it’s hard to see a union jack without nightmare visions of royal street parties or Nigel Farage.
My own disenchantment however is patriotic catnip for my bloodline. They were in the local pub, united as one, to celebrate the occasion. At 11.20pm, slightly exhausted and in a lucid state from playing Kentucky Route Zero, I arrived to drunken hugs and playful digs.
“You can sit here if you voted Leave.”
I jokingly feigned walking out. They laughed. We moved on.
Over the next 20 minutes, conversation pivoted between Meghan Markle, Greta Thunberg and others I realised we had drastically different viewpoints over. As opinion divisions ballooned, within earshot my grandma mutters to my aunt that I’ve been “corrupted” by London’s fancy-pants liberalism; a lost cause exposed to the big smoke factories which pump out rainbow energy and glitter cannons of tolerance.
Not in those words, but I got the gist.
I pretended not to hear it, of course. If 20 years of listening to Conservative conversations has taught me anything, it’s no comments from a 28-year-old will help the situation. I love my grandma too, who has travelled all over the world and been admirably open to keeping up with modern life – which makes her political views even more jarring sometimes.
The next day in a car journey to a Chinese restaurant, the subject of politics is raised again with joking hesitance and a wink nudge in my direction. “You’ll grow out of it soon and realise,” my gran remarks, equating my political views to a stubborn suck of the thumb. My response is dismissive and slightly rattled which I felt weirdly guilty about, but it’s quickly forgotten. I’m the token London liberal of the family after all.
At the same time, maybe my opinion will change. Party politics is engineered to lock minds into supporting one ‘team’ your entire life which is counterintuitive to changing circumstances and attitudes. I can’t imagine not believing Boris Johnson is a detestable liar of the third degree, but I’m sure all Tory politicians aren’t on this wavelength. We rightly encourage people to vote but I didn’t want to back anyone in the latest election. No politician feels aligned to my interests.
While studying fascist leaders like Hitler or Mussolini (stay with me), I often thought about the youth groups they managed to galvanise for support. I can’t imagine feeling so blindly passionate about politics or an ideology. Many were brainwashed from a young age, of course, but what’s it like having your whole belief system embodied in one individual? What’s that drive even feel like? It’s the same with terrorists and religious beliefs. My only relatable cases are Arctic Monkeys and Zelda games, but I certainly wouldn’t instigate genocide for either. Maybe that’s messed up.
So my grandma may have an unintentional point. Although, what if this is #blessed corruption? My disenchantment with British politics and our national identity could be liberation from tying myself to a random patch of land on this earth. Traditional values around the world could dissipate as older generations kill themselves clutching to the past, all while we cavort with nationalities the world over and breed into a homogenised utopia beneath their noses.
There was a corrupt Englishman, Irish woman and a gay couple from Russia, and we all just fucked.
StarkTreatment 