annie

when annie moved to south america she got lonely and we gchatted a lot after she moved back to london we met up at the launch of a book written by werner herzogs son we met werner herzogs son we left and got drunk during a lull in the conversation i said crispin is typing dot dot dot and felt good sometimes when i was talking she just covered my mouth or punched me in the head a bit and it was nice we left and annie was the same height as me and i didnt know what to do with my arms annie wanted fried chicken and i wanted beer it was late and we didnt have enough money to buy both she told me to take the money to go buy beers and when i came back she was somehow holding a bucket of chicken annie gave me her phone so i could find out when her last train home was while she ate as i was using her phone to ask a man at a helpdesk what time her train would be running until, she kissed me her mouth was cold in spite of the chicken i kissed her for a second and apologised to the man on the phone and asked him again when the last train was and she stopped kissing me and ate more chicken

we started walking and kissed against a building and said we would go to my house at the train station annie said if i dont go home my parents will ask so many questions and she said i dont know. its not worth it i nodded and walked away quickly and got on my train the next week we met up at a bar we drank for a while annie made me open my mouth and touched the roof of my mouth and said it was disgusting i touched the roof of hers and it was smooth and nice and i told her so my friend calvin arrived at the bar with a girl they had a drink and left annie and i drank more and kissed she said we should go back to my flat, but im not going to sleep with you we sat opposite each other on the train and i looked at her and she looked good and i felt proud i think at my flat we got into bed and kissed and took off a few arbitrary items but remained mostly clothed after a while i took off her dress and she looked good she took off my shirt and pulled me down toward her and wrapped her legs around me and held me in place while we kissed i felt confused and constricted and she touched my crotch and i didnt have an erection she went to the toilet and came back and asked if she could borrow a tshirt she lay down and faced the wall and i touched her back and she asked me to stop at some point in the next month i sent annie a long string of extremely romantically desperate texts while on mdma she responded in a calm and amused way a few weeks after that we had to share calvins couch after staying late

and getting drunk at his house we were kissing a lot and i got confused thinking can i have sex with annie for the first time here on this couch without a condom while i can hear calvins huge dog outside the room whimpering trying to get in or is that extremely bad and/or fucked? i tried to finger annie in a very clumsy way we fell asleep two weeks later annie moved to new york

helen
helen messaged me on okcupid at ~8pm one friday night we messaged back and forth until ~8.45pm when we agreed to meet to have a drink we met at ~10.30pm and chatted and it was fun by ~1am i was drunk and had an argument with her and went home she texted the next morning saying she had had a nice time until the argument and we should try meeting up again that day i got a bus to the area she lived and we walked in a nature reserve we sat down and helen picked ugly flowers and told funny stories about periods and anal sex we started walking again and it became clear we were walking back towards the area where i lived we went to a shop and she picked out items so she could cook dinner for us at my house we drank 3 or 4 bottles of red wine and she phoned her friend helen told her friend it had turned out i wasnt a murderer and put her on speakerphone and i told her i wasnt a murderer and her friend seemed convinced my last.fm indicates we listened to >100 jonathan richman songs that evening we kissed and went to bed and she said she didnt want to have sex because she hadnt shaved her legs in a week

we kissed more and eventually she said we should have sex ~10 seconds later she said we shouldnt have sex she slept next to me wearing her jeans the next weekend we ate at a restaurant we went to a bar that had a kind of oregon trail style wagon in it i didnt like the people there and said i was tired and we had an argument and she cried we left the bar and she stopped me and told me no-one had made her feel as bad as i did in years she walked away and i stood where i was and it was raining a lot i started to walk toward where i guessed a bus i could get would be my phone rang and it was helen saying where she was and that i should find her i walked and found her we talked while standing in the street for ~30 minutes i repeatedly said i should go home because i was upsetting her she repeatedly said we should go to her house and drink more and it would be ok i bought us wine and some chocolate chip cookies we drank more at her house there were slugs on the walls inside by the back door she went to the toilet and i tried to put an audio cassette in a tape player and blinked and realised i was very drunk i went and looked more closely at the slugs on the wall and there were more slugs in the catfood bowl and i felt confused i walked into helens room and took off my clothes and got in her bed and closed my eyes some minutes later helen came in and touched me and she was cold and i screamed i said to please not to touch me because she was making me cold and i wanted to sleep she kept repeating why wont you have sex with me while i said that i was cold and wanted to sleep i said i would go home and put on my clothes to leave

helen blocked the door and she had nice matching underwear and a good body she hugged me for a long while while i said sorry and that she looked good and that i didnt like that i kept making her upset she cried more and said i should stay and that she didnt understand and i hugged her and i went home

lily
i saw lily had looked at my okcupid profile and messaged her and invited her to a poetry reading when we met she was small and distracted and we sang phil collins while i pretended not to be lost looking for the venue she said she wanted to have sex with eric from the little mermaid i said i wanted to have sex with mulan and she shook her head i knew calvin would be at the venue so i texted him to say dont come over and sit with us when we arrive when we got there calvin and his girlfriend saw us and came over and sat with us the poetry was good and i felt like a smart kid for having brought her there when calvin was outside having a cigarette lily asked if she was in the way and if she should go home i said no and she kissed me and i put my hand on her leg and when calvin came back he sat somewhere else at the end we left and walked around confused on the streets again lily walked us into a shop and put about 4 wine miniatures in her pockets and walked out of the shop i blinked a lot at the drinks cabinet and then walked out of the shop i knew a gap in the railings to a park and said we could go there to drink the wine she stopped and said she wasnt going to have sex with me on the first

date, and definitely not in a park she looked at me seriously and then walked towards the park in the park we drank the wine and talked for a long time and kissed more and the sky was good at one point she suddenly pushed me backwards and straddled me and said i could fuck her now and started unbuttoning something on her skirt i said shed told me she didnt want that she said she didnt care and kept fiddling with her skirt but more slowly i sat very quiet and confused and looked up at her and she went quiet and said to forget it we finished our wine and i got the train home we met up again two days later at a funfair she'd heard about she brought more wine miniatures the rides were extremely low quality one ride was jungle-themed but had pictures of the terminator, pamela anderson and tommy lee jones character from men in black painted on the walls stuffing was coming out of the seats on all of the rides we went on a ghost train and some water sprayed in my mouth and i felt like there was definitely no source of fresh water nearby and i panicked we went to a pub and talked about why we didnt have sex in the park later i said i didnt understand why people get so worked up and crazy about sex and she started crying and said i didnt find her attractive and was making excuses i told her she was good looking and she asked me if i was a rapist she said she had read about how people try to wear girls down by sending mixed messages and that she said she should go home before i murder her i offered to walk her home and she stopped in the street and said there was no way she was letting me know where she lived she seemed drunk and i didnt want to leave her in the street i suggested she could come back to my flat because i had a sofa that i could sleep on and she could lock the door of my room and sleep there she agreed and we got the bus

she stopped to buy more wine on the way when we got to my flat we sat down and she sat on the floor and drank more wine and texted her friend my address i showed her the room where she could sleep she said you can do what you want to me, but no filming it and no pissing or anal with a neutral/serious facial expression i walked into the other room and sat on the sofa she sat next to me and said lets go to bed we lay on my bed and she said ok lets make out for 90 minutes we kissed and she took off her top and she looked good after a while she said you can just cum on me if you want. back or front, i dont mind. i felt confused and laughed and she rolled over and we went to sleep in the morning i made her a cup of tea and we said goodbye and i tried to hug her and she left

nora
nora was the person in london with whom i had highest match percentage on okcupid she was very late to our first date a ~60yo man sat next to me for ~10 minutes and kept looking at me i gently fluctuated between being totally certain he was nora and being almost totally certain he was nora i looked at a furniture brochure that i found on the chair and got nervous and tried to imagine being interested in furniture nora arrived and she was very attractive and i was nervous and decided i should act grumpy to hide it we went and saw a christopher hitchens event at the royal festival hall it seemed like a remembrance event even tho he was still alive sean penn did a reading via a google+ hangout that cut out every 1 or 2 minutes every time it cut out i thought wow the acoustics are great in this google+ hangout salman rushdie said the words "hysterical sex in the time of cholera" richard dawkins seemed like sort of an idiot actually afterwards i walked us toward a korean place i wanted to eat at nora stopped outside a pizza place and said we could just get pizza we went in i felt a strong desire to be eating korean food while i selected a large slice for myself

i said id buy hers for her and she chose two large slices i blinked a few times and she said one was for breakfast i felt unsure about what was happening and i felt a strong desire to be eating korean food as i paid for the pizza slices we bought beer and sat in trafalgar square and talked about her music career and ate our pizza at one point i tried to catch an olive that fell off my pizza and spilled my beer into noras bag it seemed bad but she nodded and quietly said it was ok i wiped her bag with my cardigan sleeve for a long time while thinking "what would derren brown do?" and being very uncertain a policeman told us we couldnt drink there and i felt incredibly positive towards him and thankful we walked to the station and i said at least i can wink when i tell my friends i bought you breakfast and i sighed we said goodbye quickly and it seemed final and that seemed ok a week later i was drinking with calvin and mark and steve nora texted me saying she was bored and i invited her to where we were she got lost and texted saying im in a car park. i saw a car park so i went into the car park i laughed and ran dramatically out of the pub i found her walking in the wrong direction and walked back with her to the pub she drank whiskey and i drank beer the bar was closing we started to leave and nora said i could stay at hers she lived near my friends so we all got the train together mark invited us to his and steves house to have a drink nora seemed to want to go because steve said he had some weed in the kitchen two girls were drinking and playing guitars there were only 4 free chairs and 5 of us so i sat on the floor the girls played music for a while and then offered nora a guitar calvin, mark and steve started smoking there was a cat on the floor with me the cat wanted to go outside and it kept looking at me and pressing its

face into the glass as if it kept forgetting what glass is the cat looked at me and did cat crying and forgot what glass is again i tweeted have you guys ever hung out with animals? wow nora sang a song and had a good voice and then sang again the songs were very serious and long and people were quiet calvin texted me from the table teasing me about what was happening one of the girls joined in trying to harmonise with noras song the cat was sneezing and i was thinking about cats sneezing and i typed the text jesus and sent it to calvin every 20 secs (~6 times) after nora finished singing, the girl told nora her songs were amazing multiple times nora said well, its my job and the room was quiet apart from the girl telling nora she was amazing again calvin, mark and steve smoked and made faces at each other and it was quiet i looked at the cat and felt like someone using photoshop had made my opacity very low laura came and sat with me and seemed angry and wanted to know what i was doing i said i was being with the cat for a while and she could too if she wanted i told her she had an amazing voice and she kissed me i felt awkward because of the people in the room staring at us nora stopped kissing me and said go on as if she wanted me to keep complimenting her i blinked a lot and put my hand on her leg and looked at my hand we sat there quietly with the cat for 5 minutes while the other girls played songs again nora left the room and went upstairs after 10mins it was obvious she wasnt in the toilet i walked upstairs and nora was sitting on the stairs holding a bannister she looked at me and said what the fuck i laughed and she said no what the actual fuck she said how old are you? and i told her my age and she said well youre acting as if youre 20 she said i kissed like id never kissed anyone

she was quiet a moment and then walked past me and down the stairs and got her bag from the kitchen in the hallway she said it was nice meeting me and hugged me and shook her head and left

carrie
i met carrie at my friend simons party we talked on facebook a lot and arranged to meet up again at a pub i think because she was nervous or confused she invited simon and simons girlfriend i decided to invite my friend vijay vijay and i got there late and it seemed like there wasnt space at their table and we said hello but went and sat somewhere else after fifteen minutes carrie came over and called me a shithead and asked me to at least walk her home when she left i walked carrie home and she invited me in and i met her pet giant snail she poured some beer into the snails tank the snail didnt seem to be moving she showed me round the rest of the flat and it seemed big and everything was neat when we came back some of the beer in the snail tank seemed to have gone i looked at the snail and he still wasnt moving and he didnt seem drunk i sat on the sofa and carrie played some seemingly sexy r n b she sat beside me on the sofa and looked at me intensely and told me she understood everything i was doing better than i did i felt extremely confused and wanted to leave she said i could stay if i wanted i said i had work in the morning and went home

~6 weeks later i was online late at night and had been drinking carrie had posted a new facebook profile picture and i clicked like ~3 minutes later i received a direct message on twitter saying EVERYTHING YOU DO IS INSINCERE we messaged back and forth and she said she was about to leave a club where she was having a bad time i asked if she could bring me milk because i wanted a cup of tea she said she would bring milk and i told her my address she arrived in a cab at around 2.30am she had brought some milk i made us both a cup of tea we drank it and i made us a rum and orange juice we listened to pop music compilations from the early 1990s and tried to see who could guess the name of the song first she was better at it than me i drank more rum i touched her leg and she said i really hurt her feelings when i bought vijay to the pub i apologised and we talked seriously for ~40minutes while early 1990s pop music played and then she phoned a cab we talked for another ~15mins while early 1990s pop music played, sometimes breaking off to guess titles and sometimes not her phone rang which meant the cab was outside i kissed her and said she should stay she looked at me and the phone rang again she kissed me and said you could have had it all and stood up and left

ruth
i met ruth at an event where i was reading and her band was playing some weeks later she followed me on twitter we sent each other youtube videos on twitter for several weeks one evening i had taken a large amount of ritalin and texted her a large amount of romantic things over a period of ~5hrs over the next few months every now and then i would receive semiromantic messages from her and i would reply in a friendly/neutral way another night i took mdma with calvin and steve and mark (her exboyfriend) and texted her a large amount of romantic things over a period of ~4hrs eventually we met up at an art gallery there was a video installation where a woman walked down a street in slow motion and smashed windows of cars using a large flower we sat and watched it for a long time and the gallery closed and we had to leave on the way out there was a video of a naked man dancing in a forest and i think we said things like now thats a nice dick and wow - a truly terrific dick for about 5 minutes until they asked us again to leave we left and got something to drink ruth had to leave to go to a reading

she said i could come but i didnt like the person reading she said i should come anyway or i could meet her after but i said i would just go home she said look and seemed to indicate her tights and then her eye make up i said she looked nice and she screwed up her face i walked away and felt confused and found a dead bumblebee on the floor i picked up the bumblebee and carried it home i got home and put the bumblebee on my bookshelf i searched my phone and found an old text where i had told ruth remember: wear tights and eyeliner and i will definitely have sex with you #lifehacks i felt bad and texted her that it was good to hang out and told her again that she looked really good the bumblebee was on the same shelf for ~4 months until it fell off and just broke in half and i threw it away

nikki
i followed nikki on twitter her tweets were funny and she seemed very young i added her on gchat she was good to talk to and turned out to be older than i thought we videochatted a few times i asked her if she ever came to london she told me she had 8 days off work and would come to london the next weekend she told me how many people she had slept with in the last year and that she thought it was a high number i told her i thought it was a fine number i said she should dye her hair to a colour id seen in some of her facebook pictures she did i said she should show her butt on cam she didnt when nikki came to london she seemed to have vaguely goth eye makeup and i felt confused we walked slowly around london being sassy about things and finally went to eat at a diner nikki ordered a philly cheese steak and i kept pulling her plate away from her while she tried to eat and saying no - stop - dont and laughing because it seemed funny she was eating philly cheese steak the waitress made small talk with us for around five minutes and seemed

really annoyed when we didnt want dessert i laughed and told her please pass on to the chef that my friend here said this was a truly exquisite philly cheese steak and we went home i showed nikki the bedroom and said id sleep on the sofa because i had work the next day she squinted her eyes a bit and then i went to bed the next day we left my flat together and nikki went to a library and i went to work in the evening we were going to see my friends band but on the way there she said some things that made me realise she would hate the music we had one drink at the venue but then got the bus home we bought beers and drank them and watched mac and me i think i enjoyed it more than nikki even tho i had seen the film ~3 times previously nicki said she was tired and i told her it was ok and she should go to bed she asked why i was sleeping on the sofa i said it was because im an idiot she frowned and i repeated that im an idiot and dont worry and started commenting on what was happening in mac and me and she went into the other room in the morning we watched things on the internet for several hours and we were both quiet and unresponsive she said she thought she should leave she got her stuff and i walked her to the door and instead of hugging her i waved from ~2 feet away she frowned and left and ~3 minutes later texted um and then wow and i texted im sorry and she replied wtf

saima
saima was the little sister of an old friend, nadia two new years eves ago i ate some magic mushrooms at a party and talked to saima for ~2hours at one point we were going to leave the party together we went into the room with the coats but i couldnt remember which coat was mine by the time i had remembered everyone else was coming to get their coats too i wanted to hide under the bed and stay but instead i got a lift home and saima sat on my lap ~6 months later saima and nadia were at another party and i talked to saima again and exchanged numbers saima, nadia and nadias boyfriend said i could stay at theirs we drove to their house from the party saima and i lay on the sofa she was on her back and i was facing her i put my hand somewhere near her hair i touched her hip and she stayed lying on her back i looked at her for half a minute, rolled over and went to sleep ~2 months later i saw saima at another party she was drunk when i arrived she followed and talked to me a lot at one point she came into a room where i was and whispered something

and people left the room and closed the door behind them saima lay on the bed and looked at me and i said where did everyone go i asked if she wanted a beer and went and got a beer at the end of the night i was waiting for my friend to go to the toilet so i could leave saima came and stood very close to me she looked at me and said you dont want to leave several times she said listen to me. you do not want to leave. do you understand? i said it was time for me to go and her facial expression changed she stood near me and seemed angry and looked at my face after ~20 seconds she walked away for a short while and came back she asked me several times in a very slow voice if i was listening to her and if i understood what she was saying she walked away and came back several times the person i was waiting for finished in the toilet so we could leave saima came to the door with me and tutted and shook her head like this guy cant see whats right in front of him i touched her on the top of her arm and said good night

melanie
i noticed melanie after reading at a book launch in manchester we didnt talk but at one point she was standing near me and i internally debated whether i could sound sincere while complimenting her glasses after coming to a conclusion i noticed she had left some time ago some time later my friend hercules told me that she had asked various questions about me i added her on facebook on valentines day on facebook chat i described something as 'tasty' and she told me she felt sick every time she heard the word tasty and i didnt feel compelled to say tasty a lot and i was surprised she said she hated having her feet touched and i made a compromise with myself that at least i would make sure i touched her feet a lot if it was ever a possibility the next day she booked a ticket to come to london in several weeks to attend a family bar mitzvah we agreed that we would meet up over the next few weeks we chatted a lot i asked if i would have to convert and get circumcised or if i would be allowed to just paint my foreskin the same colour as my 'helmet' and she seemed to take the question seriously and i was confused i sent her a series of hyperlinks such as http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=what+to+do+in+london+on

+march+9th+with+a+very+cute+girl+if+you%27re+a+dork&meta the day before we were supposed to meet i told her i liked how her nail polish looked in a particular photo she said she was sorry she hadnt brought any nail polish to london with her and her nails werent painted i said it was ok because nail polish always made me think of handjobs i was late to meet her in a pub that was famous because jack the ripper had killed someone there we had some drinks and played connect 4 i noticed she was wearing nail polish and told her it looked nice and she seemed to blush and i felt good i won ~7 games of connect 4 in a row and she got frustrated and i internally debated whether it was funny or mean and what i should do and won ~2 more games we went to buy food at a supermarket i became increasingly fixated on something called indian meal... for two! melanie repeatedly indicated she didnt really like spicy food i laughed a lot and somehow ended up buying and cooking us the indian meal... for two! we ate only very little of the indian meal... for two! and left to meet some mutual friends at one point in the evening as a complete non-sequitur i asked if i could lick melanies eyeball she got extremely animated and said i should and someone filmed it happening our mutual friends seemed amused and a little worried melanie and i decided to go back to my flat we kissed on my bed for a while she told me it was the first time shed ever gone home with someone the first night of spending time with them and i felt good we got undressed i went down on her but seemed unable to get a full blown erection because i was drunk or nervous

she repeatedly asked what was wrong and i felt confused and bad i lay on top of her and reached down and grabbed and massaged her foot and she made an unhappy noise after a moment said it was ok and she was used to it after another moment she smiled and said she liked it now and i felt defeated and happy i still didnt have an erection and i said sorry and she said it was good because she didnt have to feel like a slut and we kissed a little more and slept in the morning the weather was nice and we went to buy food for a picnic i directed us for ~30min towards a park i liked the park was closed because it was being prepared for the olympics we came back to my flat and had our picnic on my floor moving sometimes to stay in a shaft of sun it started getting dark and we lay and hugged on my sofa and kissed for a while my friend camilla phoned me that she was coming over because of something to do with the sky while i was talking to camilla on the phone i gently hit melanies hand into my crotch to show her i had an erection and she smiled and looked sneaky after i got off the phone i kissed melanie and pointed at her fingernails and said she should give me a handjob we kissed and she gave me a handjob and i made a mess i said i feel 14 again. you just halved my age with one sexual act we were trying to clean up when camilla buzzed to say she was downstairs i put more pillows on the sofa and camilla came in and the three of us looked out of the window for 10 minutes at jupiter, mars and venus which were lined up perfectly i played stars of the lid and melanie said she didnt like it so i played korean pop music and melanie said she didnt like it but me and camilla were dancing camilla went home and melanie went back to manchester

melanie fairly regularly invited me to visit her and i didnt go to visit her every night on my way home from work for the next month i looked at jupiter, mars and venus steadily scattering and felt basically alive and hilarious and stupid

crispin best lives in london www.crispinbest.com