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Some conversations are like London buses: you don’t have them for ages, then suddenly they pop up three times in the same week. The only real difference these days is that with the conversations there’s no app to warn you that they’re about to appear; all you can do is frantically gather your scrambled thoughts and try to respond.

Her: Do you ever want to have kids?

Me: …

In fairness, it’s an easy, throwaway question to ask when you’re 23 (thanks Dawson!), and on that first occasion I was the one who raised the subject. I was telling Ella about my weekend plans, which involved visiting my best friend from university. He’s just become a father, and on Saturday morning I travelled to Birmingham to bear witness to his virility.

I don’t know what inspired me to do so, but on the train up from Euston, I made a mental list of the men my age who I’ve considered close friends over the years, from school right through to my first couple of serious jobs. It’s a small group – people generally have to work pretty hard to get close to me – but of the 10 guys in it, I realised that nine are (or have been) married, and eight have at least one child. The one chap who falls into neither category recently bought a house with his girlfriend, and I’d put good money on him ticking at least one of the two boxes in the next couple of years.

The same pattern broadly applies across my female peers. At 33 – and six weeks to the day from turning 34 – I stand, if not alone, then certainly out at the margins of my various friendship groups, simply by virtue of being unmarried and childless.

For the most part, I’m ok with that – I like being everyone’s surrogate uncle! As I told Ella – and the other two people who asked me about it recently – if fatherhood happens, it happens, but I’m not going to make having kids a priority. I struggle with the notion of a child as an abstract goal, and always have done; I instinctively connect it to a wider set of aspirations, though that’s undoubtedly rooted in my own fairly conventional upbringing.

The funny thing is that 10 years ago I was sure that I would have kids by my early 30s. I was born shortly after my Dad’s 28^th birthday, and for years I viewed that as the ‘right’ point in life at which to start a family. At 23, I envisaged meeting someone, getting married, and having two – or maybe three – children together. I was far clearer about that than pretty much anything else in my life; even as I dithered about what sort of job to get, or whether to go travelling, or where to live, I could have told you with complete confidence that by 34 I definitely wanted to be a happy, settled, married father…because that was the happy, settled model I’d grown up with. My dad was 33 when his third child – my brother – was born, and for years I just sort of assumed that in that area, at least, my life would follow a similar trajectory.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when that changed (or evolved) but my previous certainty on the subject definitely makes my current situation feel just a little bittersweet. Maybe I’d been slightly softened up by the London bus-like questions, and by my Birmingham visit on Saturday, but when I saw this tweet from the lovely Malin James today, my heart sort of clenched and bruised and ached, all at the same time.

Informal poll! I’m writing an article & need opinions. What’s 1 essential piece of sex / sexuality advice you would give your teen daughter?

— Malin James (@MalinMJames) May 27, 2015

My sister is a Daddy’s girl. Or rather, she’s my Dad’s favourite. The one song guaranteed to make him cry just a little bit is ABBA’s ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ – though I suspect he’s not alone in that among fathers of his generation. He loves me and he loves my brother too (for all their horrendous fights), but my sister will always hold an extra-special place in his heart.

I look at their relationship sometimes and wonder what it would be like to have a daughter of my own. How I’d raise her, and what I’d teach her, and the fierce pride I’d feel in watching her grow up to be a strong, confident, independent woman. The (sex) advice I’d give her as a teenager.

The thing is though, it still feels like a fantasy, rather than something tangible or imminent; in some ways it’s even less clearly defined than it was 10 years ago, because at least then I had broad timings in mind. Now I sort of shrug my shoulders and say “yeah, maybe – or maybe not”. More than anything, it feels like my own time that’s slipping through my fingers. I feel guilty saying it, but I don’t want to be an ‘old Dad’ – unable to play football with my kids, or too tired to keep up with them in their active teenage years.

What very few people know is that it could have been different. It nearly was different, in fact, on a couple of occasions. Those are hard to write about, if I’m honest. Abortion isn’t easy on anyone involved, even when it’s clearly the right option for one or both of you. I’ll never forget the day my ex and I sobbed in each other’s arms in her kitchen, after making the decision to terminate our (unintended) pregnancy; nor the sombre silence in which we drove from Oxford to Reading a few days later; the numb, floaty, slightly surreal feeling when we walked out of the cinema that afternoon, after killing the time between appointments in a screening of the latest X-Men movie. I’ll never forget the sex afterwards either; sex we shouldn’t have had, but sex we needed to have, in the same bed where a few weeks earlier we’d set those painful events in motion.

I thought about that day when I saw Malin’s tweet, and about the déjà vu I felt a couple of years later, sitting in a different clinic with a different partner, going through the same horrible process – for the same good, practical reasons.

It’s much easier for men to take a long-term view when it comes to parenthood. We’re less bound by either biology or social convention, and the physical implications of having a child – or not – are obviously much less serious, especially as we get older. Nevertheless, I wonder sometimes whether I’ll reach my 40s – my 50s – and regret not taking a different approach to the whole subject. I look at how happy my 8-out-of-10 friends are with their sons and daughters, or how wonderfully well the people I’ve met through Twitter and my blog combine parenthood with an active sex/kink life, and I worry that I’m missing out somehow. That I’m allowing my upbringing – and my instinctive caution when it comes to big life decisions – to rob me of an experience that I’ll find myself craving in later life, long after it’s passed me by.

I thought about Malin’s tweet later on today as well though, in the pub with my colleagues. One of them was talking about a university friend of hers, who made it almost six months into her pregnancy before realising that she was carrying a child. She had the news confirmed just a few days too late for her to have the abortion she would otherwise have wanted, and is now the mother of an eight-year-old daughter. “Yeah, but she must be so glad now that she went ahead with it,” someone ventured. The colleague telling the story paused for a few seconds, before starting to speak…and pausing again. “It’s been…difficult,” she said. And we moved swiftly on.

It’s easy to miss what you don’t have, especially when you see how happy it makes other people. The reality is that until it happens to you, you can’t know for sure the kind of impact it’ll have on your life. As I advance further into my 30s, the likelihood of fathering a child will slowly – but steadily – decrease. People will stop asking me the question, and I’ll stop equivocating when I answer. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe a part of me will always want kids, and maybe – just maybe – at some point it’ll happen.

Maybe…or maybe not.

Like any self-respecting Englishman, I grew up with a pretty dismissive attitude towards American sports.

Baseball? ADHD cricket, with more hot dogs and less history. Ice hockey? An excuse for angry Canadians to punch each other without being arrested. ‘American’ football? Rugby for pussies. Basketball? Slightly more enjoyable than watching a pendulum swing back and forth.

Fast forward to 2015 – one formative relationship and a shitload of ESPN later – and I’m a committed Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots and Celtics fan, with an annual subscription to MLB Gameday, regularly impure thoughts about Tom Brady, and a Chrome Bookmarks folder called ‘Stats Porn’…

…which brings me to the point of this post. I’ve grown to love baseball, ice hockey and American football…basketball still leaves me cold. I can appreciate the skill, but essentially most games are either blow-outs, or come down to five minutes of excitement as the pay-off for two hours of back-and-forth boredom. And the players are just really tall.

There’s one exception to all that. One insanely lucative, morally dubious, statistically orgasmic exception: NCAA ‘March Madness’. The annual NCAA tournament combines everything that’s best and worst about sports: rampant commercialism and the exploitation of young athletes, offset against almost unlimited gambling opportunities, sociable competition with friends and colleagues, genuine underdog stories, and a wealth of complex data available to help sort the Cinderellas from the pumpkins.

Once a year, Americans – including the President – fill out their brackets, and then sit back to watch the action unfold, live on national TV. As a Brit soaking it all in from afar, I’ve always taken an absurd amount of pride in beating the Yanks at their own game.

This year, I want to put my money where my mouth is.

This year, I have created my own ESPN Tournament Challenge group, and I invite you all to join it here (password: competition). If you do so (and for the benefit of basketball newbies) you’ll have the chance to predict the winner of every match in a 64-team tournament, from the First Round through to the Final: the more correct picks, the higher your score, and the better your chances of beating me (and Obama).

Sound daunting? It shouldn’t.

For all that I’d love to claim it’s a scientific, stats-driven process, succeeding in a March Madness pool is a lot like winning the lottery: you can do all the research you like, but ultimately you’re reliant on forces entirely outside your control, the biggest of which is pure, dumb luck.

So here’s the deal. Enter a bracket into my March Madness group, and if you beat my final score I’ll donate £5* to a charity of your choice – or, if you have a blog and would prefer this ‘prize’, I’ll write a <500 word piece of flash erotica, using the name of one of the competing teams as the title.

The closing date for entries is 2pm GMT / 10am EDT / 7am PDT. To be honest, even if you just flip a coin for each match-up, you have a) every chance of beating me, and b) absolutely nothing to lose! So get picking…

*Up to a maximum of £80.

I’m on record as being, um, ‘not a fan’ of erotic poetry. There are exceptions, of course, and if you hand me a collection of e e cummings‘ finest (or anything by Ashley Lister), I’ll be as happy as the next man, but in general it does absolutely nothing for me. And by ‘absolutely nothing’, I mean ‘makes me want to put my own eyes out with a hot poker just to escape the horror that is your painful, clunky and pretentious verse.’

…which is not to say that I’m not also capable of painful, clunky and pretentious verse. I haven’t written erotic poetry for a long, long time, but a little over nine months ago, as I prepared to leave my life in Warsaw, I attempted to capture my feelings about what had become my city in the poem below. I’m posting it here tonight because I feel a sudden, inexplicable longing for my apartment there, and for the wide, open streets around it; for the flashes of sky that slice down between the buildings, instead of hundreds of feet above them.

London is great. It’s where I lay my head at night – and even if it remains that way till I’m 100 years old, I will never exhaust its myriad wonders. No man could. My soul though? That lies in Oxford and its sleepy surrounding towns, but also right at the heart of the city I briefly called home. Perhaps I’ll do so again one day.

When: Saturday 13th December, 7.30pm

Where: London

RSVP: dulce.et.decorum.estATgmailDOTcom, @EA_unadorned

—

I’ve done a decent job today of staying cheerful and positive, but during a rare melancholy moment this afternoon, I found myself thinking about the office Christmas Party that I’m now not going to attend. I alluded last night to the parallels between being dumped and being fired: both can break your heart in a million different ways, but among the most effective is the knowledge – the certainty – that you’re thinking of them much more than they’re thinking of you.

“I’ll miss you”, she says, as she wipes away a tear.

“The office won’t be the same without you”, they write, and you remember all the times you’ve written that to other people. All the times you told someone you’d miss them. All the times you truly meant it. All the times you were wrong.

Life moves on, and it moves on faster for those who walk away than it does for those who are left behind. In a couple of weeks from now, my former colleagues will eat turkey and drink champagne; they’ll pull crackers and swap Secret Santa gifts; they’ll put on paper hats and go dancing, while I sit at home and listen to the little voice in my head that says “they don’t miss you tonight”.

Well fuck that. There’s a lot in life that can’t be overcome with positive thinking alone, but as far as I’m concerned, this can. The logical part of my brain knows that it’s not personal – it’s just how the world works. We can’t take on everyone else’s pain, and actually I don’t want my old colleagues to think about me that night, or to miss me, or to feel sad about what happened. I want them to have fun and celebrate together, because life goes on.

—

And if I can’t go to the party, maybe I can bring the party to me…

(This may work brilliantly or it may be a total disaster, but either way, I’m going to roll with it for now.)

When I look back on the last 12 months, one of the things that stands out most is the unexpected sense of community and warmth I’ve found through this blog and my Twitter profile. A lot of that stems from Eroticon, and the people I met there, but even back in March I don’t think I could have imagined how important a part of my life it would become.

Things will change in 2015, I’m sure – they always do – and almost certainly in ways I can’t predict or anticipate right now. For now though, I’d like to celebrate 2014 by inviting anyone* who’s read my blog this year over to my place for Xmas drinks.

On Saturday 13th December, my flatmate is away and I have the apartment to myself. If you’d like to join me here, just get in touch by email or DM, and maybe explain who you are if you don’t think I’ll recognise you. Assuming my spidey senses don’t tingle in the wrong way, I’ll give you my address, along with the secret password and handshake.

Just to be clear, this will be a drinks party, not a rave/orgy/fancy dinner/etc. And like most things I do with this site, I’m sort of making it up as I go along, so I reserve the right to move it to a local bar, or scrap the whole idea entirely if too many/not enough people look like they’re going to rock up.

Either way, if you do fancy it, drop me a line and we’ll kind of go from there!

Exhibit A

*Well, obviously not anyone – I’m not stupid – but as long as you’re not underage, related to me, in prison, a member of the press, or intent on mischief, we’re probably cool.

My first two serious relationships ended in almost identical fashion, four years and 1,000 miles apart. In Budapest and in Oxford, two different women looked down at the ground and confessed that while they still loved me, they were no longer in love with me; two different women listened patiently as I argued and reasoned and pleaded with them to reconsider; two different women couldn’t keep the pain of hurting someone they cared about out of their voices as they reluctantly agreed to take a few days to reconsider; and shortly thereafter, two different women held my hand and cried with me as each delivered the same message – “it’s over”.

When traumatic events repeat themselves like that, they invariably leave a mark. I grew wary and cynical, like the dog that’s been kicked by its owner just often enough for blind trust to be replaced with fear. I learned to protect myself more in relationships, and the more I covered up to ward off the anticipated emotional blows, the more the women I dated saw someone who was distant and detached: who would sooner shut them out in the cold than allow them to approach the fire.

Anyway, I’ve written about all of that before, and I don’t want to rehash it in any depth this afternoon. It’s on my mind because as well as turning me into a bit of a basket case when it comes to relationships, those two break-ups numbed me to the agony of waiting. Not at first – initially they acted as a trigger, and I would panic any time I sniffed the prospect of being placed in that kind of holding pattern – but over time, I developed the patience I’d always lacked, and a level of serenity that allowed me to float above the sort of despair into which I’d previously been sucked.

In some ways, the change is fairly simple to explain: I learnt to expect the worst. I grew up in a happy, loving family, in small-town Oxfordshire, where bad things rarely happen to good people. I was the adoring puppy, as yet unkicked, and while I certainly wasn’t blind to life’s injustices, I held onto a fundamental belief that hard work and good faith would generally lead to a positive outcome. If I did all of my homework and paid attention in class, I’d do well in my exams. If I did well in my exams, I’d go to a good university. If I was a conscientious student, I’d get a good job, and earn money, and be happy. That was how life worked.

Needless to say, I see the world a different way at 33 than I did at 18. On Friday, I was told that the company I worked for did not intend to extend my contract beyond its six-month probation period. On Monday, that contract was terminated. Once upon a time, I would have spent the weekend in a state of fevered, twisted agitation, playing out a million scenarios in my mind and forever clinging to the hope – the belief – that because I was a good worker, who’d done a good, honest job, everything would be ok. I would have met with the HR Director on Monday morning and had the bottom ripped out of my world, because I’d have convinced myself by that point that everything was going to be fine.

As it was, I played hockey, and I slept, and I went out for dinner with friends; and then yesterday I sat with a cup of tea in the Royal Exchange and listened patiently for 15 minutes as the HR Director repeated his summary of the partners’ decision, and requested my resignation. I asked a couple of questions, clarified some of the language in my contract, then shook his hand and went out into the cold, grey London air.

And I felt ok. Not great, or happy, or relieved, or anything positive, but not devastated by it either. Quietly gutted, I guess. The pain was a dull thud, not the sharp, stinging slap in the face I’d once have experienced. It was – and is – manageable, because I’d braced myself to expect it. As much as one can be, I was prepared.

There’s danger in numbness though. Even when bad news ceases to knock the wind from us with such immediate ferocity, it can still drag us down, slowly and cruelly, into despair. I felt that drag two years ago, the first time I lost my job. I was ok, I was ok, I was ok…and then suddenly, one day, I wasn’t – I wasn’t ok at all. I drifted for six months, and I cut myself off from the world, because even though the pain was a dull thud at first, I left it untreated and it just spread through my body, draining me of life. I still wore a brave face, but it grew strained and tight, and eventually I stopped seeing people because I knew they’d see through it.

I hope I’ve learned from that. I sat down today to write about losing my job, but my intention was to dive into some of the reasons behind the decision, and to confront the notion that maybe – just maybe – I need to consider a proper change of direction. I might still do that at some point. For now though, it feels more important just to say this.

I’m not ok. But I will be.

In between all the Ice Bucket Challenge videos, my Facebook timeline is currently peppered with teachers moaning about the start of the new school year. The calendar has flipped over from August to September, there are no more holiday weekends till Christmas, and the new season of Strictly Come Dancing is a mere five days away. Yep, summer is officially over.

Good.

I’ve written before about why I’m a cold weather person, and I’m not going to go back over old ground now. What I will say is that the start of autumn always feels exciting, in a way that summer never does. Summer creeps up on you, with its innumerable false alarms, until before you know it you’re sweating in stuffy, sticky 25-degree heat for the fourth day in a row, getting ready to murder someone. Autumn tends to arrive with a bit more of a bang; you know where you stand with autumn. The leaves start to fall, along with the apples in my parents’ back garden and the night-time temperature. The football season is in full swing, your line manager returns from holiday to discover how little work you’ve done in his/her absence, and everyone in the office seems to have a cold.

August was a slow month for me; but then August is always a slow month for me. I think it’s a legacy of childhood. From the age of 5 through to 16, or 18, or even 21, we’re not just permitted to switch off our brains for the summer, we’re encouraged to. As a child, and a teenager, August meant long afternoons in front of the TV watching cricket/tennis/golf/athletics/<insert sport here>; or out in the playing field behind our house, arguing with my brother about whose turn it was to bat, until he cried or threw the ball at me and wandered off home. It meant family holidays on French campsites, or visiting grandparents in Devon and Scotland, where my siblings and I hung around the house, listless and sulky, as well-meaning relatives tried to entice us out into the watery British sunshine.

It lingers into adulthood, I think: that summer torpor. I struggled to write anything in August – certainly anything decent – and I don’t think I was alone in that. It’s the dog days, when we all struggle to pull ourselves out of the pub garden, or away from the patio table, or even just out of the comfy chair by the window, which catches the sun. In the summer, I read Grisham and Nesbo and Hornby, because I can plod through them at my own lazy pace, a glass of bone-dry white wine or ice-cold lager beside me at all times. I while away afternoons in the park, and take long lunch breaks down by the river. My head isn’t foggy, but it’s not really clear either. It’s sluggish and indolent; all its edges get rubbed off and blurred by the sunlight.

The arrival of autumn brings with it a jolt of energy and purpose. I find myself walking faster, thinking faster, writing faster. Suddenly I have ideas again. Some of them will work out, some will end up being a bit shit, but it’s comforting to know that they’re starting to drip through to the creative part of my brain, rather than getting clogged up in the summer filter.

It helps that I’m properly horny again. Or maybe it doesn’t help – maybe that’s just part of the same autumnal package. Either way, the holidays are over, and it’s time to get back down to business. Watch this space…

…are you ready for a terrible fright??

A couple of months ago, I became aware of a slightly unconventional evening event at London Zoo this August. Given that it brings together three of my favourite things – running, being naked, and (large) felines – signing up was always going to be a bit of a no-brainer. When I finally got round to doing it earlier this week, I discovered that not only is there a registration cost, you’re also expected to raise a minimum of £150 in sponsorship. The money will support ZSL’s ongoing work with tigers.

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite writing this, because I’m not generally big on giving to animal charities. The prevention of animal cruelty and the protection of endangered species are both worthwhile causes, but I look at the work done by the likes of Freedom from Torture, WaterAid, and Rape Crisis, and find it very hard to justify prioritising animal issues over human ones when choosing which charities to support.

However, I know that other people feel very differently, and having committed to the fundraising target I certainly ought to make at least some effort to reach it. For that reason, I’ve set up a Just Giving page, which you can find here. If you love tigers, or value the work done by ZSL, or just like the idea of sponsoring me to get naked, please head over there and add your name to the list. If I manage to raise more than £150, I’ll get someone to take a photo of me at the event, in my tiger mask, and post it here afterwards as proof.

And for anyone who wants to watch me get my kit off and race around London Zoo, there are spectator tickets available for 15 quid. I’ll only judge you a little bit…

I’ve been away for the last week or so, and generally too busy/sick to think about blogging, so before I get to anything else, a bit of housekeeping is in order. A few days ago, I collaborated on a post with the wonderful(ly talented & acerbic) Em, otherwise known as Any Girl Friday. You can find it here. We each wrote about porn, and at some point I’d like to develop that into either a more extensive conversation with Em, or a wider piece about my feelings on the subject. In the meantime, please go read it, comment, Tweet, etc, and generally let me/her know what you think.

Like London buses, apparently my guest posts don’t appear for ages, only for two then to roll up pretty much one after the other. At some point, I’d like to make that three, or four, or… I want to write, basically. I want to write for smart, sexy people like Em and the Brit Babes, who give me interesting things to write about. That last bit is key: engage my brain, get me going with a dirty little idea here, or a hot lede there, and I’ll be ready to bash out 1000 words faster than you can say “put your pants back on – this is just getting weird now.”

If I’m honest, I’m not sure what’ll happen to this blog once I move back to the UK next week. I’ve posted here for a few years now, but as most of you will have noticed I only really started writing last Autumn, after I came out to Poland. Living here has been incredibly peaceful, but also very lonely at times. I don’t make friends easily, so a lot of my evenings have been spent here in this amazing apartment, reading, listening to music, and writing filth on/to the internet. After being given notice at the end of January, and especially once I left my job in late March, the opportunity and incentive to write have been even greater. That will change once I’m set up in London – a city where I know a lot of people, and where I’ll be swept straight back into a hectic lifestyle, both in work and outside it.

What I do know is that in some way, shape or form, I will continue to write. Here, for the most part, but other places too. Maybe not every day, or even every week, but now that I’ve started I can’t really imagine stopping for good. The barn door is open and the horse has bolted. Actually, the horse has already fucked off into the distance, giving you the finger as it gallops. For better or for worse, I’m here, a word-slut ready to down tools and assume the position whenever I get the right kind of offer. Hopefully they’ll continue to come.