My shoes and coat.

Much like everyone else, I too have people in my family that I no longer speak with. These  are two of my cousins.  Mind you, this might also be compounded by the fact that we don’t live in the same country. I live here and they live in England – making it rather hard to have a sit down conversation with them, run into them at Christmas, birthdays, weddings, christenings etc since we never go to anything.

While separated by distance, it has also always surprised me that cousins can be so vastly different from each other. Our fathers are brothers, and yet these brothers are two totally different people and thus, their offspring live at opposite sides of the spectrum.

One of the cousins I don’t speak with is a porn star. I can’t believe I waited so long into the writing of this blog to mention that. It’s my party piece. Just when you think I’m a regular person, with a regular job, moving through a regular life then bam, I’m related to a woman who performed in porn. I specifically avoided using the word “acted” in that sentence – as that would be a complete lie.

I’ve never seen one of these amateur porn videos – and they must have been amateur (as opposed to the high production values in those other more well known professional porn videos - ahem), but she has shown me plenty of photos of her naked.

When my grandmother was dying, my parents flew back to the UK to say their final goodbyes and help with the funeral. My cousin though it appropriate to show all these aunts and uncles from around the country and world, her portfolio of her naked self (in front of her dad, no less).

My other cousin, her brother, who I also don’t speak too is a massive douche bag, seems to be under the misguided notion that he is a genius. We have since been Facebook friends but shortly after I un-friended when one of his posts referred to “laughing at all the little people”. No joke, he said that. Pretty funny coming from a guy who lives in a council house.

I recalled, for some unknown reason this morning, one time that I had popped back to the house they shared to pick up a pair of shoes and a coat, some months after I had left the behind after a day together during my stint in the UK.  I recall being met at the door by my cousin’s then fiancé (goodness knows if they got married or not). The classic element to this story is that the girl he intended to marry was up the duff already with someone else’s baby. Now that’s romance, Austen style.

Anyway, Up-the-Duff girlfriend met me at the front door of the council house, which was filled, almost floor to ceiling with clothes, furniture, boxes of stuff and piles of crap. My cousins weren’t home she explained, and so I was to deal with her.

“Righto,” I remember thinking, “If I get out of here with my shoes and coat and without a disease, I will be delighted.” And then thinking, “And these people are having children.” Fantastic.

I remembered Up-the-Duff hovering over me, with a stern look on her face, much like that of a maths teacher looking at a child who cannot grasp the concept of multiplication, with her arms folded over her six month pregnant belly.  I climbed over the stuff to where I remember leaving my shoes and my coat and found them, under a pile of other people’s clothes that smelled like someone who had run a marathon, had marinated in them.

I hadn’t thought about it for the longest time, but then wondered this morning, if she thought I was going to take their stuff. So, eight or so years on, I sat in my car on my way to work and became indignant. I came up with some relatively un-witty comments like: “I wouldn’t take your crap if it were the last items of clothing in the world”. I thought about how funny it was that she would have acted that way towards me, when I had hardly anything to do with her and would never steal for starters, but least of all, if I were too steal, how unlikely I would be to steal the stuff strewn around this flat. I mean, if I were to be a thief, I’d at least be a high-end thief. Sheesh.

I left with my jacket and my shoes, only to throw both items in the bin when I returned back to my little room in London. Neither pieces were as cool or suited my new London look as much as I had remembered.
And I never saw my cousins, or Up-the-Duff again.