Venial Sin

There are few things in life more traumatic than walking into your 70-year-old mother’s bedroom at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning, groggy with sleep, only to see her singing along to Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Start (Giving You Up)” into a hairbrush-microphone. And they say you’re not born gay.

A few nights later, I walked into Opiate’s house to find her hosting a “dance practice” for a friend’s wedding. And by “hosting”, I mean she stood on the side with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette, critically evaluating everyone in silence while Hindi film song remixes blared. After an hour of trying to keep up with some absurdly complex choreography, I gave up the ghost and threw myself down on a nearby pillow. That was my error. Seeing [...]

Now I really have seen it all. I was flicking through TV channels today, waiting for the accountant to leave so that I could get back to wasting my remaining time in Karachi on the PlayStation, when I came across something called “The Late Show, with Begum Nawazish Ali”. Slightly curious, I stayed with the channel through the commercials until the show started up again. And then my jaw dropped as I saw, on national TV, a drag queen hosting [...]

So, Day Four rolls around, and the car is fixed and functional, I’ve finally got all the wires in place, the PC is reconnected, and I’m ready to try dial-up. Only apparently, when I wasn’t looking? My PC lost a modem. I mean, it’s just not there. At all. It’s completely fucking absent. I count things off: USB ports? Check, have eight of those. Firewire ports? Check, got four of those. Ethernet ports? Check, there’re two, for whatever reason. Sound [...]

Well, this is frustrating. I thought that if nothing else, I’d be able to get online from Karachi using a dial-up connection, but obviously that isn’t happening. Why? I’m not really sure. My absence for the last few months has led to some sort of massive wave of entropy hitting the household, fucking up effectively everything I’d need to be functional, and needless to say, I don’t like it.

The night before I left London, I received a message from a young man on Gaydar, telling me that he “liked the attitude in my profile”. If you like the profile, wait until you meet me in person I responded, figuring that the chances of my meeting up with anyone a night before I was leaving were fairly minimal.

We boarded the plane and took our seats, with a group of annoying Pakistani women causing immense amounts of turmoil as they attempted to load everything they could possibly have ever owned into the overhead compartments, and drafting anyone walking by to help them in this process. When I finally got to my seat, I settled in comfortably to watch chaos unfold from a safe distance, and started nodding off to sleep. Until an asshole with his wife and two [...]

So the only redeeming feature of Qatar Airways is its incredibly hot cabin crew. I mean, wow. I got to the airport well in advance of my flight, hoping that my punctuality would give me plenty of time to browse through the Heathrow duty-free, only to discover that my free upgrade to First Class had been revoked because “the flight is so full that we’re pushing all travellers without fully-paid tickets to Economy, sorry”. In and of itself, this wouldn’t [...]

Well, I’m off to the airport. Posting will probably be quite sporadic since I cancelled my cable modem connection in Karachi back in August, and getting it reconnected for two weeks is probably not the best idea in the world (given that the paperwork alone will take about two weeks to process). I’ll do my best to post somewhat regularly, but in case I can’t until I return to London, I hope you all have a very merry holiday season [...]

If anyone out there can tell me what the fuck “Panty Liners” are, I will be forever grateful. I’m supposed to pick up some for a friend in Karachi, and I’m only just realising that not knowing what they are or where to look could be troublesome. And the bitch won’t pick up her phone. Seriously. Anyone. Even a clue would be good.