I loved her; I didn’t know how to say it without breaking down the autobot façade she saw before her and revealing the ugly and scarred wreck that lived within my skin. So I played with the radio instead.

With the windows in his top of the range Audi firmly in place we slowly baked ourselves and chatted over why my hatred of golf was wrong, what made a good antihero and why Paul McCartney should just fuck off.

It hadn’t always been this way, that’s a cliché, but it is a cliché for a reason. It’s not like anyone starts a relationship with nothing to say to the other person. No-one wants to feel like a complete stranger and live together because it’s easier than trying to remember who owns the copy of Almost Famous – which was mine by the way.

Wriggling around, two fingers deep in my back end like some teenage boy unsure what he should be tugging at inside his girlfriend’s nether region I wrestled a fifty free.

Propping up a seat at the bar we devour chicken wings like life does dreams

Kid,’ he laughed ‘you’re crazier than a shithouse rat in an Indian restaurant but you’ve got yourself a deal. Vinny! Lace up, you and the KFC are going three rounds.

Tossing a smile my way I nodded back to her. Veronica had come home. Somewhere in a thirty-six dollar a night shack a Nazi dwarf was making it with two call girls. Los Angeles was one hell of a city.

Prose before hoes, muthafucka! I’ll be right over.

Self-awareness is the most overrated trick in the book. More than ambition, more than free will, more than getting on to the property ladder early. Right now I should be at the Little Hills, you probably just call them the Hills, right?

The boulevard was awash with the curious and the shocked as wave after wave of tourist crashed into the unmoving masses of families who had just witnessed a brawl between The Incredible Hulk and SpongeBob Squarepants over territory, boundaries and the age old issue of ownership.