Sara Dancer says her mother’s boyfriend’s into porn, which Sara says is pretty understandable, since her mother isn’t exactly Madonna (she looks like a dinner lady). Sara even found magazines with names like Sex Slaves and She’s Gotta Have It under the rug in the bathroom. She won’t have baths any more. Sara’s mother doesn’t know it, but Sara’s little brother watches porn all the time on cable. And also on the Net. Sara watched it on the Net once, out of intellectual curiosity, and it was pretty gross. She says she’s searched her dad’s flat for signs of Solitary Sexual Activity but all she turned up was a packet of condoms, which she took as a good sign even though she doesn’t think he has a steady girlfriend. Sara says there’s no way she’d put up with a room without a lock in her mother’s house – not even when she’s just there for a visit. She says it’s like living with wild lions. You never know when their primitive nature is going to take over and they attack. I said you don’t think your mum’s boyfriend would DO SOMETHING, do you, and she said no, of course not, but you can’t be too careful, can you? Look at all the articles in the papers about people molesting minors. Maybe newspapers aren’t as BORING as I’ve always thought. (And also reading papers might be good for stimulating the Depression and Sense of Suffering of the DP. At least they’re faster to read than most of Ms Staples’s books!)
I don’t see how I can go another day without a phone. It’s like having a limb amputated. I can still feel it pressed against my cheek. I can still see the special purple case I bought for it. I can still hear its distinctive call (some Beatles song). I reach out for it and it isn’t there. My fingers touch the air and I wonder why. Why? Why has this happened to me? (I reckon I must be learning an important life lesson in loss – you know, that NOTHING lasts for ever – but I still wish I could’ve lost something else. Like Justin, for instance.) D says maybe I should’ve checked lost property, but everybody knows that anything good that gets lost gets nicked, so why bother? Now I have nothing to do when I’m waiting for buses or walking down the street on my own. It’s SO BORING! And also it’s torture.
Since I can’t just lie on my bed and talk to Disha, I was going to watch some telly to relax before I started my homework, but Nan turned up. I was just about to open the living-room door when I heard her say, “Ask yourself what Jesus would do in this situation, Jocelyn.” God knows what they’re on about now, but I should think it would be hard even for Jesus to be in the place of a menopausal madwoman. I beat a hasty retreat.