Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto’s Weblog

(before)

I’ll tell you this for free: you just haven’t lived till you’ve visited the Ikea in Thurrock, Essex during school half-term. For those of you not in the know, this is the Ikea located at the (in)famous Lakeside Shopping Centre, a large American-style shopping mall full of the usual retail chains with the requisite disgusting food court and the requisite annoying crowds of shoppers dragging their screaming and bawling children behind them. Lakeside even has a West Ham shop (no surprise, that). Believe it or not, I actually saw a pink tea kettle at a department store in Lakeside. I kid you not. Would you want to drink a cup of tea that came out of a pink kettle? I know I wouldn’t. But plenty of people in Essex do. And no, they aren’t gay men! It’s a Essex girl thing, apparently. (Insert “grimace” emoticon here.)

I had the displeasure of “shopping” at Lakeside once with an ex-boyfriend. Well, I didn’t exactly shop. He only took me there so he could use my wrist to try on watches; he wanted to buy one for his sister’s birthday, and my wrist was daintier than his. I didn’t even get a Starbucks latte out of the gig. Having said that, he did give me his West Ham shirt. I won’t go into that torrid tale; let’s just say that he enjoyed that shirt far more than I did! And if you know anything at all about Essex boys and their single-minded passion for West Ham United… Mind you, I should’ve known the writing was on the wall when he took me to The Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker on an Easter Sunday afternoon. There’s nothing more romantic than graphic images of nuclear annihilation when you’re out with your bloke. Let’s just say that THIS wasn’t the fantasy I wrote about in The New Black Lace Book of Women’s Sexual Fantasies.

As for Ikea (umm… that WAS what we were talking about, right?), I’d finally managed to intimidate one of my loftmen into driving me there. (The begging didn’t work.) Well, you’d have thought you were in Disneyland. Talk about cheap entertainment! Seems like everyone had taken the kiddies out for a day of fun and frolic at the local Ikea. The place was bursting with sprogs (rugrats to you Yanks). If I had been maneuvering the shopping trolley instead of my loftman, I’d have run over a few – and no doubt let out a great big guffaw while doing so. Instead I clung valiantly to my sanity and tried to keep from going beserk. After all, when you’re running short of loftmen (I think I’m going to have to fire one, and the other whom I’ve recently recruited is still having visa issues), you can’t let an opportunity to go bye-bye car ride to Ikea pass you by. I needed to buy a lamp for my bedroom and another for my living room (they died within days of each other – no doubt one of those bonding things you find in long-term relationships where one can’t live without the other). I also broke my very last drinking glass the other day, so I needed a set of new ones. Plus I needed a new kitchen rug, having spilled bleach onto its hapless predecessor. Oh yeah, and I needed some coasters too.

My loftman thought I was a bit overboard in my attitude toward the brats – oops, I mean children. Mind you, I didn’t criticise him for nearly running over an elderly couple in the car park, especially when he thought he’d recognised the man as his old boss. The pair were heading back to their vehicle sans any shopping, clearly fleeing the retail mayhem and thanking their chosen deity that they were done with all that child-rearing nonsense and were now well and happily on their way to their graves. Frankly, I couldn’t blame them. Had I known what lay in wait for me inside the Ikea, I would have taken a rain cheque on the entire shopping expedition and stayed home to do my ironing.

I can hear you saying “Oh, Mitzi, how terribly mean-spirited of you! Children are such a delight!” To that I say, keep them at least 100 feet away from me, if not 1,000! Believe me, I had the patience of a saint trying to get to the department I needed, which inevitably was at the tail end of the store – meaning we had to traverse the entire managerie of this Scandinavian retail warehouse as well as make our way past a hoard of happy breeding families all having a grand day out in gloomy wintry Essex. Were any of these families actually buying anything? Not from what I could see. No. They existed merely to spite me and interfere with my requirement to get what I needed and get the hell out of there. The only thing that offered any respite were a handful of gay male couples out selecting things to feather their nests with. It was obvious they were gay: they were physically fit, good looking, and groomed. No hairs sticking out of their noses or ears or, I’m certain, other locations in which you SO don’t want to see hairs sticking out from. I’ll say this much – in my next life I plan to come back as a gay man. And don’t try to talk me out of it!

After all this murder and mayhem, I nearly wept with relief to experience the peace and quiet of my flat again. Well… except for the fact that I had to spend the next hour fending off yet another proposal of marriage from my loftman, who proclaimed in a rather sinister tone that one day he will marry me. Christ, I didn’t realise I made that good a cuppa – and it was only from a PG Tips teabag, too! Alas, I had to let him down once again, as I simply cannot play favourites with my loftmen. Besides which, I suspect he doesn’t quite believe that a woman can exist who does not desire marriage, let alone harbour the desire to play incubator for the future inhabitants of this doomed planet. I have to admire the lad for his tenacity though, especially since I forced him to go up into my loft again to store some empty suitcases and boxes. But hey, such is life. He left my flat dejected, but nevertheless, warmed by a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.

As for me, I’ve got my two new lamps, six new drinking glasses, and six new coasters. And let’s not forget my new kitchen rug!

(After)

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Let me just say that rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

It was like a scene from out of an Agatha Christie whodunnit: an old manor house, a howling wind blowing in from the raging sea, mysterious and menacing creaks in the night. Whispers of “Let’s kill the erotic writing tutor” could be heard emanating from dark corners – corners where hands might jump out at any moment to wrap around your neck.

Or rather MY neck.

Six women and one man, all locked up for Literotica, an erotic writing weekend on the Isle of Wight. Sure, they looked so innocent and friendly on arrival. So who would suspect that beneath these civilised veneers lurked a bloodthirsty desire TO KILL? I myself suspected nothing. (Mind you, I rarely do.) I conducted my workshop just as I’ve always done, imparting a bit of professional and personal wisdom, and inspiring participants to write freely, to strive high, and to leave behind their erroneous assumptions that erotica is nothing but poshed-up porn. I could see I was winning the battle. These people were actually creating work that would have been equally at home in a respectable literary novel as it would in a respectable sexy novel. “Get rid of the top shelf!” I cried. “No more one-handed reads!” I cheered. And the crowd roared back, hanging on my every word.

So why should one of these nice people wish to kill me – and to kill me in one of the most slow and agonising ways possible – by poison? Was I too hard on them? Did I give too much homework? Did they take offence at my bear’s critiques of their work? Or indeed, was it even one of the workshop participants at all? Perhaps the mild-mannered Greek proprietor of our windswept country house was behind it. Now I’ve heard of not wanting to pay someone for services rendered, but come on – isn’t this taking things a bit too far? (Actually, I did kind of wonder why that plumber’s van hadn’t moved out of the car park for the entire weekend.)

I admit they were clever. They waited until after I’d signed their copies of Getting Even: Revenge Stories-(Christ, I knew I shouldn’t have brought that one along) – and The New Black Lace Book of Women’s Sexual Fantasies. Just think how much these copies would have fetched on eBay had their sinister murder plot actually come to fruition!

It’s hard to believe that the people with whom I’d enjoyed a friendly Saturday night pint at the local pub could, within only a matter of minutes, turn on me like that. I was fine up until then. Had they put poison into my untended pint while I nipped to the loo? Had they coated the rim of the glass with some deadly nectar so that when I raised it to my unknowing lips, I’d ingest the substance? Had someone truly NOT enjoyed reading their copy of Getting Even? I mean, everyone kept saying how they couldn’t wait to get stuck into it, especially the story I wrote. So what gives?

I suspect the physicist. As the only male in a group of women, he was already anticipating the worst from before he’d arrived on the island. Yet I did my best to make him feel welcome and comfortable. I even spent extra time with him chatting about such things as parallel universes and cloud computing as we sat drinking cups of milky tea. What more could I have done? Hey, was it MY fault that someone said (no it wasn’t me!) that all men are crap in bed? Okay, so I nodded to be polite. I mean, wouldn’t you have done the same if you’d been in my shoes?

As you can see, I survived the weekend, albeit quite the worse for wear. And yes, I’m booked again for yet another erotic writing workshop weekend next November. I wonder though if someone might be trying to tell me something. For on the final leg of my journey home, the man seated behind me on the train kept singing about Nosferatu.

Hmmm… I have been looking rather wan of late.

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Mitzi Szereto with Aaron Lewis of Staind

Mitzi Szereto with Johnny April from Staind

Mitzi Szereto with Mike Mushok from Staind

Mitzi Szereto with Jon Wysocki from Staind

Yup, I figured I’d rope you in with that headline! I bet you’re imagining all sorts now – wild nights filled with endless amounts of Jack Daniels, weed, blow and, of course, sex. I mean, we are talking about the big bad boys of rock and roll (and the little erotic writer), aren’t we?

Well, the joke’s on you, baby!

I am speaking of the American alternative rock band Staind who, as many of you probably know, happens to be a major musical passion of mine. Several months back I secured a ticket to their gig at the O2 Arena (opening for Nickelback… arrgghhh…), then out of the blue on Tuesday night I received an alert on Facebook that they were playing a special gig at the Hard Rock Cafe in London on Wednesday night to benefit breast cancer. I couldn’t believe my luck when I was still able to get a ticket.

So off I went on the frequently unreliable London public transport system, reckoning on an interminable evening of standing for hours needing to pee and having nothing to drink and no one to talk to. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Okay, so we had to queue outside in the ever-increasing cold till 7pm, and I was already panicking that I would lose a good spot inside because I’d need to nip to the loo the moment I entered the venue. I made the pierced lads in front of me swear they would save me a piece of floor, only to lose them once I got inside. It turns out I didn’t need them anyway. With complimentary pink fruity “virgin” cocktail in hand, I ran to the loo, did what needed to be done, and made my way to the head of the gathering crowd, using the excuse that I’m short to secure a place of honour right in front of the stage. I then proceeded to get comfortable and strip down to my Staind vest top (yes, the very same one that was waylaid in Denver the other day), using the lad on my left to hold my jacket and the one on my right to hold my drink.

As the Hard Rock crew came past with munchies (usually neglecting us poor sods at stage-front), a little party started up, consisting of me, the tattooed Glaswegian headbanger next to me, his lady friend from Essex (who was so kind as to buy me a bottle of Corona), and a slew of foreign students from India behind us. We had a gay old time chattering away, singing Staind songs, and exchanging names and emails. This went on for nearly two hours, since the band seemed to be occupied somewhere doing something (eating at McD’s?). Then finally at 9pm – the moment we were all waiting for! Alas, I forgot what it’s like to be directly in front of the speakers. Eh? Huh? What did you say?

I got caught up in the excitement of being up close and personal with my Massachusetts lads and ended up jumping about and screaming and singing along to “It’s Been Awhile” and “Outside” (two songs I die for) and occasionally hugging the headbanging Glaswegian, his friend, and the Indians in my joy at being there. (I’m sure there are photos of my disgrace in several cameras, including those belonging to band’s roadies). When the 50-minute set ended, requisite souvenirs were handed out to the audience, with the Glaswegian securing three Vic Firth drumsticks, one of which he gave to me, saying I “deserved it”. And it was definitely one the drummer had used – it’s generously stippled with the evidence.

After the gig, I went outside with my headbanging mate, who said he was going to try to meet the band. Having nothing to eat at home, I decided to hang about for the hell of it. Well, never did I expect to end up meeting the entire band, not to mention getting my photo taken with each of them. (I hadn’t even brought a camera – my new friends, who’d suddenly increased to include a musician, were kind enough to be my Alfred Eisenstaedt.) Lead singer Aaron Lewis even signed my drumstick. In all honestly, I can’t remember ever meeting a bunch of more down-to-earth guys who, at least from my observation, are refreshingly removed from bullshit celebritydom and really only seem to care about making art and taking it to the people. (Isn’t that what music is supposed to be about?) I only wish I’d asked Aaron to say hi to my bf on the phone, since a couple of people were handing him their mobiles.

Fortunately on the way home something prompted me to take the Jubilee Line to Stratford, for as I found out after I arrived, the Central Line had been shut down for the rest of the night due to some glitch or other. That’s the thing about London – you’ll be in a great mood, then turn into Jack Nicholson in The Shining when you can’t get to your destination. I often feel like I’m plotting war strategy when I go into the city, checking online that the trains and tube lines I need are running and that no one is striking or working on the lines… yet it’s usually in vain, since anything can happen despite one’s best-laid plans. Armed with drumstick in hand, I wasn’t the least bit concerned about my safety walking home from the train station after midnight. I held it clutched in my little hand, ready to use it as a prostate stimulator should any local yob take an unwanted fancy to me. Needless to say, I arrived at my door unharmed, save for the ringing in my ears.

Had I known how the evening would turn out, I’d have taken along a signed copy of one of my books to give to the band. (Wonder if they’d prefer Getting Even: Revenge Stories or The New Black Lace Book of Women’s Sexual Fantasies? I’m now beginning to think I should’ve had the rest of the guys sign my drumstick rather than playing favourites with Aaron. I’m also thinking I should’ve hit them up for a commission or, at the very least, be placed on the Staind payroll. Because thanks to me, a lot more people have heard of them. Hmm… Maybe I’m in the wrong business. I might need to have a friendly word in their shell-like when I’m at the O2 tomorrow night.

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