click and spend and sigh

So it’s Tosc’s birthday soon and I’ve just bought him a Macbook. I don’t know whether it’s madness or love.

Years ago I was accused of ‘narcissistic generosity’ (by Dee obviously – only he knew how to knock me down with such cruel eloquence) after I bought him a huge wooden sculpture of a gazelle that I knew he really wanted. He bloody loved that gazelle. He wouldn’t admit that he loved it, but he did tie a bow around its neck every single christmas, which I thought spoke volumes.

So every time I buy something nice for someone, I ask myself ‘am I doing this because I’m narcissistically generous?’ and I ponder, and I worry, and then I say ‘no. I’m doing this because my boyfriend wants a Macbook.’

(I was also thinking about buying Lucifer a bejewelled collar but that’s definitely madness and not love.)

As many people know, manic depressives do have a bit of a spending fetish. I’ve already talked about my obsession with pure junk and books, but a lot of my spending has been focused on buying for other people. I remember one Christmas buying my sister an outrageously expensive handbag covered in feathers. It was so tasteless in its Sex and The Cityness, and so far away from my sister’s taste…but it was loud and beautiful and I just had to buy it. (She hated it, by the way.) Then there was the ‘build your own doll’s house’ escapade. My mother has a doll’s house obsession and I figured I’d buy the materials and build one for her. I did build it, but it fell apart shortly after completion (killing everyone inside). Then there was the time I spent hundreds of pounds on fabric, convincing myself I could make a suit. I laid material out on the floor, drew around my legs, cut out the shape and thought ‘There you go. That’s basically a pair of trousers. That was a piece of piss ‘,  not even slightly concerned that I couldn’t sew the two pieces together.

(Handbags, doll’s houses, fashion design…Christ I really am gay.)

Manic spending is weird. I’ll get stuck on one particular sort of thing, like models of old ships, for example. And I’ll think ‘no, I don’t just want one model of an old ship. I want many of them.’ And I’ll buy and buy and buy and buy until my entire environment is just made of ships. This week it’s been candles. I have no need for all these candles. They’re fucking useless. I could say ‘oh, I use them for heat and light and so forth’ but I have a boiler and actual literal lights. The candles do smell of cinnamon though. But then again, so does a bottle of cinnamon. So really, I should just put the heating on, turn on a light, and sit next to some cinnamon.

I don’t know how I’ve got to this topic from the topic of Toscar’s Macbook.

Shit, I’m out of cigarettes.