Page 11 of Way Down Deep

Since we’re on the topic of cheesiness, can I just say thank you for this? I’ve got so much shit going on, but for the twenty minutes it took me to pick those songs, I was a teenager again. Not to say that I want to forget about the boy, necessarily, but it was kinda miraculous that I managed to, just now, with you. So thanks for that.

Now, for the next top five… How about top five villains of all time, in any sort of media?

One of mine is definitely Murdoch from MacGyver. He made me want to grow up to be an assassin.

Gus from Breaking Bad was amazing.

Miss Hannigan from the 1982 movie version of Annie, because I have a sort of quasi-Oedipal crush on Carol Burnett, who reminds me of my mom a little. Don’t read too much into that. Plus Burnett made alcoholism look like way more fun than it actually is in that movie.

Hans Gruber from Die Hard. Clearly I love my villains cool and calculating and smarter than the hero.

And finally … damn, let’s think…

Oh, I know! Dark Helmet, from Space Balls. I don’t think that one needs any justification.

Now you, stranger.

3.23pm

Sorry for taking so long to reply. Though I suppose it hasn’t been that long, really. It just feels like a long time, when I’m busy making myself do necessary morning things instead of immediately pouncing on your 4am messages. If my mind had its way, I think I’d forgo eating breakfast and taking a shower, just to get back to this more quickly.

But I made myself be good. I got up at eleven and ate some cereal and washed up and got dressed and answered emails, before finally giving in.

And you can say thank you. As long as I can thank you.

I had no idea that sharing lists of things you love could be so soothing—both to compile, and to read from someone else. It makes me think about things I haven’t thought of for years. Like it’s blowing away cobwebs I didn’t realise had gathered in my mind. And it gives me a picture of you I doubt a thousand emotional back and forths could have revealed.

Not that I think I know you, though, because you told me you like Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now. Just that I feel I know you a little better—and in a different way to the way I might have known you if you told me you were happy or sad.

Does that make sense?

I hope so.

Because now I’m going to move right on into my villains.

Hans Gruber obviously. I don’t even care if you think I’m copying you!

It has to be. The universe demands it.

Hannibal Lecter.

Partly because he is amazing, but also because of that line he says to Clarice. You know the one about the mirror? I think about that a lot. About someone being so evil and yet revering goodness so completely.

Only in the movies, I guess.

But then, isn’t that why we love them?

So we can love the villains we would hate in real life?

My other three are Severen from Near Dark, Jareth from Labyrinth, and Agent Smith from The Matrix.

But only because their evil is on the other side of the safety glass that is my TV.

And my next question is: top five places you would go, if you could.

10.17pm

The five places I’d go if I could… I’ve been mulling it over all evening, while I got the boy fed and down for the night and poured myself a drink and then a second, and I have to say, I’m dying to know your answers to this one. It almost feels pornographic, the thought of hearing where an agoraphobe fantasizes about traveling to.