The Bullet Biter

A friend of mine messaged me the other day about an opportunity to pitch a piece for a new magazine looking for articles about happiness and well-being. She swiftly withdrew her suggestion upon realising I had literally nothing to contribute to the subject. I can’t seem to shake off the ever so slight suspicion that my particularly abrasive brand of defeatist sarcasm is unlikely to go down well with an audience that’s after feel-good stories for a much-needed start-of-week pick-me-up (that’s enough hyphens for today). Life in the time of Miss Rona is predictably slow. Aside from the customary episodes of wretchedness which stud my life that I have already discussed at length on this platform, I have very little to write about. I am of course binge-watching the Crown (hence me casually using words like “wretchedness”). I have also decided to finally do something about my life-long shampoo addiction and reduce the frequency of my hair washing from once every 24 hours to once every 30 hou

The end of the summer holidays is famously a time of reckoning and personal revolutions. I managed to complete a cross-country European trip while narrowly avoiding mandatory quarantine. I drank red wine and spoke bad French with hot étrangérs while roaming the streets of Paris. I had short walks and long drinks on beautiful Italian beaches. I ran errands in small independent Neapolitan shops. I walked to and fro in the big travel corridor that is life and now I’m back in my East London double room that’s really a single room with a double bed and a bedside table that’s really an Ikea chair with a table lamp and a box of expired Kalms tablets. I’m standing in front of my overflowing wardrobe. That’s usually the place where big life-altering changes take place. It’s a war zone, the sublimation of months of chaos and disorder. Three piles of trousers and shorts and sweatpants. A chest of mismatched socks. A shelf packed with woollen jumpers and baggy sweatshirts. In my tradition of havin

“I don’t like Paris,” the man on the riverboat muttered under his breath, “It’s beautiful - but it’s not for me.”  I turned the other way, as the boat slid along the Seine. The sun set and my rage rose. It took this man two days to pronounce his final judgement on something that had to survive countless wars and revolutions to become what it is. I wanted to stand up and shake him and ask him: “all this talk of beauty, but what do  you  know?” I was overreacting. Sure, the beauty of Paris demands your attention and cannot be ignored. But the man on the boat had a right to an opinion. This was not about Paris anymore. I flew to France on a whim, intending to stay for a couple of days. Life in London had gotten too heavy. Some days, it felt as if Jean-Pierre Jeunet was assigned to direct the movie of my recent past. Most things stopped making sense.  It must have something to do with everything that’s happened in the past year: I have accumulated so many failures that it has become imposs

Love is a losing game, Amy sang . I don’t know if loss is the inevitable outcome, even though that’s where all the signs seem to point. But she was right about something: it is a game. And a bloody difficult one at that. I am not a player. I don’t even like video games. I haven’t played one in years. But I still remember what it felt like when, sitting on the floor of my small green bedroom, I turned on my PlayStation 1 and listened to the climax of the console engine as it warmed up. I would then glance at a picture of the Virgin Mary on the wall and gave her a complicit nod: “Come on, Mary, we’re on the same team here. Help a brother out". I was ready. Me on my way to find the tomb of Thiocan with Lara Croft The games started: Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Silent Hill. I squinted my eyes at the screen so hard I thought I would break it, Matilda style. My hands were tense and sweaty, clutching a controller that burned like lava in my hands. Each session felt like

In the short and complicated history of digital dating, it has often been the case that people who seem brilliant on WhatsApp turn out to be lacklustre in real life. But I would like to divert your attention to the other, more fascinating silent minority: potential suitors who are fun and intriguing in person but disappointingly “meh” over text. The colonisation of our lives by social media and instant messaging apps means that, when you start dating someone, you’re effectively getting to know two people at the same time. Smartphones have determined a  fission of our egos along two different dimensions, online and offline, with predictably nuclear consequences.  The problem starts when the two personalities within an individual not only don’t overlap, but are also in direct conflict with each other. People’s romantic conduct is articulated through different layers. Their performance is the result of countless variables that have to be factored in before you finalise your decision on wh

At some point at the beginning of this month, after another dramatic press conference by the government, we were told to pick someone to form a ‘“social bubble” with, a person we would be allowed to visit at home and even spend the night with. After a careful and detailed period of deliberation that lasted a total of 120 seconds, I decided that social bubble was just Borisese for “you can shag again” - but only with one special person.  First of all, I am not taking advice on sex and monogamy from Boris Johnson. No m’am. Secondly, I spent the whole of lockdown having nervous breakdowns, repotting aromatic herbs and traumatising every living soul who showed any interest in me. It was no surprise that,  when the time came, I had no one to bubble up with.   After getting over the initial disappointment, I also realised that… that’s not such a bad thing after all. You know, after 14 weeks of resisting and persisting, winning and conquering, I am finally beginning to reap the fruits of fou

Being Italian has been the single most beneficial asset in my dating life. Growing up in Naples, I was just a guy. In London, I became a “charming” Italian guy. In Milan, my Neapolitan accent is a liability. In the UK, apparently, it’s the sexiest sound known to man (and woman), the immigrant version of the siren song.   After taking residence in the Big Smoke, I quickly realised that Brits have a very precise idea of the Italian man, made up of mainly preconceived notions. They’re harmless for the most part, certainly romanticised, often flattering, but prejudiced nevertheless.   You know what they say: if you can’t beat them, join them. And join them I did. I first came to terms with the extent of my super-power that one time in 2015 when I held the door for a middle-aged woman at a Pret in North London. I said something like “after you” or “good morning” and as soon as she heard the effortless way with which the Rs rolled off my tongue she almost dropped her butternut squash salad o

I have spent a great deal of time attempting to manage my feelings and not enough trying to understand them. I have, at different points in my life, experienced all the various emotions resulting from common life events: love, failure, relationship breakdown, bereavement. Then the world was hit by a global pandemic. An unprecedented event for myself - and for a whole generation. My immediate reaction was the same as most people’s. Surprise, incredulity, fear – for myself, my parents, my friends. Panic, conspiracies, self-medicating. Exactly what I would expect from it.  It’s a frightful state of affairs. The main focus is to try to survive. But there’s more. There’s got to be more. It would be silly, almost irresponsible, not to take the opportunity to reflect on the emotions resulting from this extraordinary set of circumstances, to learn from it things that otherwise we may never have questioned. I have caught myself swimming against inexplicable waves of excitement a