Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

100

I saw this on Sanshan's blog, and it suddenly struck me as quite an interesting thing to do actually to just write the first one hundred things about yourself that come into your head. So I did:

1. I was born in 1972.
2. I am the youngest of five children.
3. My parents did not know when they gave me my name that I was to share it with the author of The Naked Civil Servant.
4. At school I was teased relentlessly because of my name.
5. In adult life I still have trouble with my name. People often refuse to believe it’s my real name, so I carry my passport with me.
6. I don’t support Blair’s ID card scheme.
7. I am told that my first word was ‘brontosaurus’.
8. When I was younger I wanted to be a palaeontologist.
9. As a child I could not bear cruelty to animals. I grew up in the countryside, and other children used to torment me with accounts of what they had done on fox-hunts when they had been ‘first-blooded’.
10. I was the only vegetarian at my school.
11. I was suspended from school twice, once for giving a boy stitches in the back of the head, and once because I was (falsely) suspected of selling drugs at school.
12. I have always wanted to sing, but I can’t.
13. When I was at school and the teachers were recording us singing songs for the school play, I was told to sit further away from the microphone because my voice was ruining the song.
14. I hated school.
15. I never wanted to be a teacher.
16. For a long time I was ashamed of that fact that I’m not an atheist.
17. I’m not a Christian either, but I’m not ashamed of that.
18. I don’t actually know what I am, philosophically speaking.
19. My middle name is St.John. I was named after the character in Jane Eyre. When I read Jane Eyre, I hated the character St.John.
20. I used to wear shorts to school everyday, even in the snow, and as a result was considered eccentric.
21. People believed absurd things about me when I was at school.
22. I was crap at sports at school, and to this day I loathe all team games and the very concept of ‘a team’.
23. I have always felt myself to be very ugly. When I first saw The Huncback of Notre Dame, with Charles Laughton, as a young child, I identified absolutely with Quasimodo. I repeated to myself the line, “I must be about as shapeless as the Man in the Moon.” I always thought that someday I would meet my Esmerelda, and she would leave me for some handsome hero.
24. There are some things I would never consider revealing in a list like this.
25. I cried when my dog died.
26. I have never, as far as I can recall, cried at the death of a human being.
27. I cried when Tom Baker quit Doctor Who.
28. When I was quite young I had a toad called Goose Pimple. I wrote a story in which he was the hero.
29. As a teenager, I was in love with Kate Bush.
30. I blush to recall it, but she has apparently read a poem I sent her (so I was told).
31. I’m not a good swimmer.
32. I always expect any new person I meet to hate me.
33. I always expect anyone who receives an e-mail or similar communication from me to hate me.
34. When I was at school my teachers always tried to make me wear my glasses, but I didn’t want to.
35. I feel like I’m running out of things to say.
36. I don’t like fruit. The variety of fruit which I can bear to eat seems to decrease with each passing year.
37. I have recently been listening to the music of Elliott Smith.
38. There have been a number of great disappointments in my life. One of these was that the band I was in for five years – The Dead Bell – split without ever getting a record deal.
39. I lived in Amersham for a while and hated it more than any other place on Earth.
40. While I was there I tried to make a living as a Tarot reader. I even had business cards printed up.
41. Life has been a continual disappointment to me.
42. I don’t actually like myself very much at all.
43. I tend to think of Devon as my spiritual home.
44. I don’t know if I could ever actually live there again.
45. The time I have been single outweighs the time I haven’t many times over.
46. I once had a long green scarf of which I was very fond, but I lost it.
47. I tend to treat clothes a bit like security blankets. I like clothes that I have worn for years and that are a bit, um, uncool.
48. I have lived abroad three times, maybe four.
49. I am fluent in Japanese, but you knew that already.
50. Nobody understands me.
51. I am one quarter Italian.
52. I used to be into heavy metal; I have seen Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Celtic Frost live.
53. I have taken various forms of medication for depression and none of them have ever worked.
54. I don’t actually believe that it’s all ‘chemicals in the brain’.
55. For a while I lived with a barber.
56. I have met John Hegley, kind of.
57. When I was at A-level college someone told me that it was generally agreed I was one of the most likely there to be dead by the age of thirty.
58. I am now past thirty and wondering what went wrong.
59. I am a great admirer of Mishima Yukio, and when asked recently to name my favourite book ever, I cheated by naming four books – The Sea of Fertility by Mishima Yukio.
60. I drink a lot of green tea.
61. I didn’t actually enjoy myself in Japan very much at all.
62. I don’t have a favourite food.
63. I’m sorry for all the things I’ve done wrong.
64. As a youth I had a strong sense of destiny. When, at school, I was made to see a careers advisor, I simply told her that I did not need her advice, since I would not have a career; I was going to be famous.
65. I don’t actually believe there is such a thing as reality (don’t tell anyone).
66. I don’t know if I’ll make it to one hundred (items on this list).
67. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a ‘right to have children’.
68. I’ve never had much money. I’ve spent a lot of time unemployed.
69. Thinking about death is often a great comfort to me, since it helps me to feel detached from this world, where all that matters is power in relationships and chasing money.
70. I feel that the most profound and important stuff that Bill Hicks ever said is the stuff that is most generally overlooked. Strangely, his summation of the drug experience as a mystical experience in which we are merely consciousness dreaming ourselves has struck a stronger chord with me than the revelations of many of the oldest mystical traditions. But I don’t talk about it much, because it would obviously be silly to live one’s life by the words of a semi-obscure comedian, wouldn’t it?
71. I have been to Little Rock, where Bill Hicks died.
72. I have also visited the grave of Nagai Kafu, one of my favourite writers.
73. It was very close to the grave of Natsume Soseki.
74. I don’t think of myself as cynical.
75. I’m currently reading The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens. It’s not one of his best.
76. I really only want to be loved.
77. I went to America when I was so young I can hardly even remember it.
78. I’ve been back twice since then, each time passing through O’Hare Airport.
79. My childhood was full of different animals. My father used to keep bees, and I would accompany him to collect the honey. As a result, I have never been afraid of bees.
80. Other animals with which I had contact in childhood include frogs, snakes, chickens, multitudes of rodents, lizards, preying mantises and ferrets.
81. I have the feeling I’m regurgitating the same old biographical fragments that I always do when pressed to, or when I’m in a maudlin mood.
82. It will be a miracle if I manage to surprise myself before the end of this list.
83. I grew up in a haunted house, where I used to play with magic wands.
84. I honestly still feel like a child.
85. I’m thinking now about Combe Martin, the village where I spent the first ten years of my life. I’d often go for walks along the coast path, to the top of the hill called Little Hangman. I always hate it when people cut down trees and vegetation in such places.
86. As a child, I spent a lot of time at the beach.
87. I like to wear fingerless gloves when the weather gets cold.
88. I once knew a girl who gave me a scarf. At the time I was in the habit of playing with a yo-yo. She seemed to want to look after me, and I have no idea why. We never did more than hold hands. I never questioned this at the time. Thinking about it now, it seems like an ideal relationship. As usual I’m sorry.
89. I do think that Morrissey is probably the greatest lyricist that ever lived, although Momus must also be a candidate for this.
90. “So rattle my bones all over the stones/I’m only a beggar man who nobody owns/Oh see how words as old as sin/Fit me like a glove/I’m here and here I’ll stay/Together we lie, together we pray/There never need be longing in your eyes/As long as the hand that rocks the cradle is mine…” It seems to get right inside me.
91. I’m beginning to feel confident of my posterity as a writer, though such feelings can always change in an instant.
92. Strangely, and nonsensically, it seems like I do value posterity.
93. I have two tattoos.
94. I used to be a big fan of Takahashi Rumiko.
95. I once met Yang Lian, the Chinese poet, but ended up feeling like a fool for some reason, like I was trying to monopolise his attention. Probably just one of those things.
96. Sometimes I get very scared that I might be Garth Marenghi, horror author, dreamweaver, visionary.
97. I sometimes think that James Bond has the best job in the whole world.
98. I seem to become more and more squeamish the older I get; I often have to look away when there are violent or gory scenes in films.
99. I very much like Tod Browning’s Freaks. I want to write a novel about freaks one day.
100. Images, by David Bowie, is one of my all-time favourite albums.