Hilda saves the day

So I went on one tinder date.

The guy, who I shall name Alex, because that is his real name and he doesn't deserve anonymity or a pseudonym, had pretty nice pics on Tinder.  Curly blond hair. Frameless specs that made him look smart. A young son. You couldn't tell he was short in his pics.

And let me just say, I was here to make Tinder work for me. I was here to single handedly champion a change of tune in Tinder, to turn Tinder around and make an honest woman out of her, an honest, love-of-my-love, boyfriend-material finding woman. And i told him in no uncertain terms that I was old fashioned, liked to get to know people before becoming 'romantically engaged' and steered him off every line of dirty talk.  I should have known better. Tinder is a scantily dressed hussy that yells COCK tourettes like at passing cars and she will not be tamed ... but I digress.

So firstly, he says can we meet in Ponsonby because it's half way between his house and where I live. So okay, I'm not Cinderella, you're not coming to my balcony to sing me fucking songs, it's Tinder, alright I'll accept this.

We meet at Malt, which is henceforth going to referred to as the dates-of-doom zone, because all things bad happen there.

When we arrive he is really hung up about not having to wait for me on his own, okay, so he times it so we arrive at exactly the same time. He's short. He has the ruddy complexion of a pack a day smoker. But he's not all together awful looking, the kind of looks that would grow on you if he had a SENSATIONAL personality and whopping big... heart.

He buys us each a drink (tick) and we go out to the patio.
We sip our drinks while he talks.  That is pretty much the whole date right there.
He talks, about himself.  I listen, try to be pretty, interested and i'll be honest, come-hitherly.  It takes me 24 hours to look back with horror and hate myself for how I handled my own boredom and discomfort, it's like nothing happened for women's lib since the 20's.  But the truth is, I want him to like me. There I said it, is that such a crime? I haven't been on a date since my last breakup, and I just wanted to go out, and feel like I'm attractive, and a guy could like me.

He is kinda funny, at first, and I tell him that he should do stand up, I've worked in comedy, I'd know. This is like giving a shot of rocketfuel to a twelve year old, he is giddy with urgency to use more of his 'material' on me.

He asks questions only to rapidly interrupt my replies with stories of his own. Like that I play music, well he plays music, yeah he writes songs, yeah they're really good.  He challenges me to a 'lyric off' and I pull some old lyric out of my memory banks. Without comment he launches into a soliloquy of his own. I have to admit they're not bad. But he follows this up with a raving review of his own talent. Raving.

He asks me if I like to look down on people. He says he does. And he tells me likes to have issues with people. He tells me a story about a girl at work, who has a big rack, who he has an issue with, for nothing, just to have issues with people.  Less of this is a joke than you'd hope.

I ask him about his son, and he says: he was an accident, I didn't want him, I'd only known the girl three months then I was forced into fatherhood and I resent it.

Wow.

Not a whisker of 'he's the most important thing in my life/I love him more than anything/he's amazing'.  The standard response you expect from all parents.  I'm starting to wonder if he's a sociopath. Wouldn't be the first.

He tells me how he's watching a detective series, and it's made him really good at reading people and how he feels like he is becoming a detective now, he's gotten so good at it.
I nearly cough cider out my nose.

At some point within the first thirty minutes, he kisses me.  Without asking, or any lead up to let me know to prepare myself for incoming saliva. He pashes me the way you eat a way too big apple. Mouth gaping, lips chomping.  I let him kiss me, stunned. In a bar, crowded with people. Cinderella is dying.

From there he moves to hand on thigh.  Not a little bit of hand on thigh, a full palm and fingers that rub up and down, up and down the length of my thigh.
He says, you're really lean and fit.
I let him rub my thigh.

He says he has no money, and is bad with money, on roughly six occasions. Despite working in IT... which honestly, if you can work in IT and be broke, nigga you got 99 problems and finding a girlfriend is only one.
Oh yeah, he lives at home. Sure, he moved home after the break up, but it's been two years. He's 36.

And then when I ask if he wants to have another drink, as in DO we have a second drink or call it a night, he shoots back 'yes, but only if you're paying for them'.

I might not be Cinderella, I might not be fucking Sleeping Beauty, I might not behoove the tender adoration of prince like suitors, but JESUS CHRIST dude, have a little class.

I sip my way through my second cider and then say something about having to go.
He wants to walk me to my car. I relent. We stand by my car readying for the awkward first date goodbye which is like a police line up for the other person to fire their assessment of you at you (will it be 'talk soon' or 'call me'?)
And then he kisses me a-fucking-gain.

This time it's not even as good as apple-eating, he opens his mouth and stands there, half a foot shorter than me, with his open mouth clamped on mine like a circus clown giving really shitty CPR to a pole.

And I, I try to kiss him back, properly.
Like THAT will make all the difference, if we can just get one kiss right, it will have been a success, in your face singledom, I had a date and the kiss rocked.
But no. Trying to make the kiss work is like trying to scoop a live fish out of custard with your tongue.

And he won't stop! I pull away and he pulls me right back. He's got his me jammed tightly against his sweaty little body with his tight clamp arm, and he's holding me in so tightly my neck hurts as he persists in doing clown CPR on my fucking face!

Then, after the fourth attempt at pulling away, as he is whispering in a lecherous way that 'we should go somewhere' (!!!) something rises up from the depths of my self-preserving stomach, and in my newly found Swedish accent and cut him off with:

Oh yah, oh no yah, yah yah NOOOO, I really have to go now, yah...

When I say Swedish accent, bear in mind I've never been to Sweden or met a Swedish person.  The entirety of my Swedish accent has a direct lineage to the Swedish chef on the muppets.
But it works. I think out of shock more than anything else, he releases me from his wrestlers hold and looks at me with a collision of resentment and confusion, (which I'm sure isn't an unfamiliar feeling for him) and says curtly: what was that?

And still in my Swedish muppet accent, I reply: Zat was Hilda yah, I've got material too. yah.

And as he's muttering that he doesn't THINK THAT WAS APPROPRIATE, Hilda or I, hard to say who, burst into laughter that bends me over at my waist, climb into my car, start it up, and drive away laughing so hard my stomach hurts and my eyes water.

He texted me when I got home, great right?
Yeah nah. he texted me to tell me he was 'tumescent'.
I'll save you from having to google it, it means 'swollen and throbbing'.
And you KNOW that little weasel has used that word many, many times before.

But hey, I made a new friend that evening, a new life-preserving, say what you mean, check in with your gut, don't stand for bullshit, friend by the name of Hilda.  Hilda the Saviour. Has a nice ring doesn't it.

Every Guy on Tinder

I'm on Tinder.
You are judging me but I'm not.
I figure, if you want to meet a Great Guy... scratch that, if you want to meet a guy who's unique breed of crazy and annoying you can tolerate, who finds your unique breed of crazy and annoying tolerable, then you gotta meet guys, full stop.
Kiss a few frogs isn't that what they say?

And I'll tell you the truth, it's fun, the pre-dating, swiping phase. It's fun like Candy Crush is fun. It fills in time when you're too lazy to do anything else and don't want to think.  It requires next to no physical exertion or brain activation, it satisfies your voyeuristic urges, and your sense of desire to connect with others (whilst connecting with nothing but the WIFI), and your tribal urge to feel desirable and like you belong to a group, whilst judging and discriminating against others from your lofty perch -  which if we're honest, is a sport that everyone loves.

It kind of feels like a game, a bit like 'dating bingo' like if you just swipe left and right enough times in the right combination your Great Guy is going to manifest.  I like to think I'm actually 'improving' at Tinder, honing my skill at making snap judgements based on ten words, an age bracket and three pics.  I'm hoping to level up soon.

But here's the thing: every guy on Tinder is a variation of exactly the same guy.  Really.
To the point where I'm having to question if every guy in the WORLD is a slight variation of every other guy.  Which is a wholely depressing thought, if they are, and they're like the guys on Tinder.

But then I think it's more likely that a certain type of guy a) isn't in a long term relationship by the age of 30-45 (begs many questions) and b)Tinders.

Which naturally begs the question, what does being single at 35 and tindering say about me? But that is for another post, this post is about Tinder profiles say about 'them', because you know, why not mine that for hilarity.

Here is an Entirely Truthful, Uncensored Summary of Every Guy on Tinder:

"I'm an all round good guy/genuine guy/loyal guy"
"I like the outdoors"
Me on a boat/with a fish/kissing the dead fish/untangling line/fishing
"I'm into sports and barbecues"
Me jumping off something
Me with a chick/chicks, we're drunk/laughing - I know chicks
Me and a performance car/classic car/motor cross bike
Me in a flat peak cap
Me with a bunch of my mates, posing, drunk, I'm the ugly/fat one
"I like barbecues, sports"
Me throwing up gang signs like a white guy/giving knuckles to the camera/flipping the bird
Me with my eyes closed - I'm crazy/fun (drunk)
Me with my tongue out - I'm crazy/fun (awkward)
Me at a wedding
Me at a beach
Me taking this selfie
Me hunting
I'm can't spel or now grammar
I like fitness/running/karate/keeping fit/eating healthy (it's stunning the high percentage of guys who like 'eating healthy'!)
Me with a living/dead lion/tiger/kangaroo
Me in Thailand
Me, I'm Indian
My tattoos of skulls/my tribal sleeve
Me hiding my receding hairline with cropping
Me with a beer/magnum/rum and coke in a glass bottle
I'm 6'3 - FYI
I'm 5'11 - I don't care
"Live is for living" "Your only get on life, so live it!" "Loving life" "Live your Life!"
Me in my sharkies/aviators/wanker at a house club glasses
Me - I'm bald
Me in a suit "I own a business'' "I'm successful" "Rich" "I work odd hours" "In Singapore"
Me in my league team t-shirt/generic hallensteins t-shirt
Me surfing/wind surfing/SUP'ing
"I'm fun, easy going, down to earth"
"Don't want no drama, had enough of that" "Don't want negativity" "no baggage"
No pictures of my face
Me at a gym looking painfully muscular
Me in dress up, as a woman
Me and my dog or sometimes cat (this one is totally acceptable)
Me holding a beer, with a gut, giving a thumbs up
"I'm a DJ"
"Looking for a down to earth/easy going girl, who lives a laugh, likes to go out but also stay in and Looks After Herself"
I'm a geek and afraid to meet women in the real world/have a lazy eye
Me with a C grade sports celebrity
Me looking great (then) and looking my age and overweight (now)
Me with my kids "my kids are my life"
Me pretending to hump a dude
Me and my mates, really drunk
Me drinking/drunk

And that's it ladies and gentlemen.

And now in the interests of gender equality I will admit that my Tinder profile is in fact, a collection of trotted out cliche's as well!  Fitness, nature, food, I mean, I've tried to jazz it up with a bit of cleverness, a three syllable word, a little wit.  But I just have to hope that my genuine smile and reasonably attractive physique will radiate through the generic-ness and catch the eye of the one of the rare outliers on Tinder, you know, the Great Guy who just simply hasn't met his match yet, and I'm it, before the bomb explodes, or the chocolate gets me.

Wish me luck and stay tuned!
I do in fact have one real-world, funny in a bad way date to report on, but will save that for the next time I'm stuck at home with nothing to do, which will probably be tomorrow because I'm on lock down with my beloved cat for seven days after her major surgery.
Ho ho ho!

The Can Opener

Here is a poem.

It doesn't have anything to do with dating or men. 

Or does it?

Is it all one gigantic, ironic metaphor...??

No, I don't think so.

I am cursed in two ways:

1 - dolphins avoid me - I'll tell you about that later. 

and 2 - I am seemingly forbidden by the gods to possess a working can opener - one that cleanly, evenly and completely opens a can at first try. 

Forget all that, I can't even find a can opener that even opens half a can. 

It is in no small part a bane to my existence. 

I even went all out and purchased an expensive, top-shelf can opener from Steven's.  Might have been Millies.
The packaging claimed 'opens every can, every time'

It never opened one can, not one time.

I still have it. 

I still try. 

It never opens.

I dig chopped tomatoes, refried beans and tuna out of jagged slits with a butterknife.

This is not how life should be.  

I contact Steven's, or was it Millies to explain my plight. 

They CC'd me in on the company's reply, which clearly was not meant for mine eyes.

It said 'get her to show you how she's trying to open the can, i'd like to see this! haha'

As if I

I

I was the one with the problem. 

From this experience (on going to this day) comes this poem:

*Ahem. 

I just want to open a can
Be it tuna, tomatoes or spam
Without making a mess
Splashing my dress
And just about cutting my hand

Believing our fate could be changed
We searched like two people deranged
For an opener we could trust
That would work, and not rust
From our money we did not expect change 

In Steven’s we came across yours,
Its catchphrase, we thought, worth applause
‘Opens every can, every time’
To our ears, was sublime
A fast purchase, then straight out the doors

Excited we stood round the can
The opener held firmly in hand
The handle was turned
And a lesson was learned
The can-opening did not go as planned

The wheels turn quite well at the start
As she gracefully makes the tin part
But then at the turn
The opening is spurned
And two points hold our food in the dark

Opening tuna for lunch causes stress
A partially opened can, must be drained with duress
So I pushed on the lid
And with a great bid
The oil swiftly ruins my dress

We are at the end of our ropes
You’ve more than just dashed our high hopes
For little we knew
What mental harm it would do
To see our cans remain partially closed

We’ve tried the ones that are cheap
And we’ve tried the expensive ones too
But it seems we are cursed
There can be nothing worse
Than a can that won’t open for you 

I just want to open a can
Be it tuna, tomatoes or spam
Without making a mess
Splashing my dress
And just about cutting my hand

A World Built for Two and a Half

I've been thinking some things for awhile and had nowhere to put them.
And then I remembered my blog!

Oh firstly, do you want to know where I've been?
In my very last post I said that I had a crush on a guy in my wider circle of friends, a real crush.
Well he had a crush on me too, and we fell madly in love.  That is not just an over-used adjective. We fell MADLY in love.  When he kissed me my vision went blurry and the world swooned around me so that I was liable to lose my balance, that's not just poetry, that really happened.

My body wanted out of my skin around him, and him me. My temperature rose, my heart raced and raced.  I wrote songs about him. He gave me big beautiful expensive presents, and pulled me into his embrace without notice, many times a day.
Me him and him me, the whole lot. Two people head over heels in love. It was the single most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, while it was.
And then it started to scratch a little bit like wool does sometimes.
And then the neck started to feel too tight, and you'd pull it away from your throat and think, aha, that is what's buggin me today.
And then someone, hard to say who, washed it on hot and it shrunk, so the sleeves wouldn't reach the wrists, and the hem didn't cover your back, so that the cold came in.
That damn cold, so hard to ignore.
It didn't happen all at once, The Ruining of Your Perfect, Favourite Jumper.
It happened in tiny little wafer thin slithers, so that you'd think, oh well, and keep going.
Until finally there I was standing in the doorway with no jumper at all.
And there is so much empty space.

There is much more of a beautiful, sad story that could be told about that, but that's not what I've been thinking, per se.

I've been thinking and had nowhere to say it, that I hate that all my friends have had babies.
I hate it in so many ways, and I think it is abhorrent and terrible.

When you are growing up, as girls, into women, having the times of your lives together, bonding, drinking, dancing freely to loud music, being in love with each other, sharing clothes, helping each other decide on hairstyles, getting your periods, having crushes, no one ever mentions to you, not even once, that one day it will all STOP.
You're dearest, beautiful, talented, incredible, free, sexy, wild, dancing, crying with you, understanding you, laughing friend is going to die. All of them.  One by one. Die to you.
No one talks about it.

When your women friends have children, they no longer listen to you.
You have spent years, often decades, trusting that those women will listen to your stories, listen to you recount everything from your love affairs to your ingrown hairs, and then suddenly, they don't.

They look like the same person, very much.
But mid way through every sentence you will ever say from now on they will interrupt you by acknowledging something about their new child. The child is usually present, and the thing being acknowledged ranges from how amazing/beautiful/funny/cute/creative/talented their child is, to just some plain story about their childs doings, or to just 'look at him/her'.  And you are expected to also shift every ounce of your attention to the child and be... awed? Interested? Appreciative.

What's more, they don't know that they're interrupting you.  In any normal circumstance to continually cut someone off and talk only about yourself is considered rude.  But women who have new children, they don't see how much it hurts you.  How much you desperately need them to be present with you.  And how painful it is that it never comes.  There is an unsaid agreement, that you never agreed to, that you would Take The Back Seat, now and forever, to their lives, with their new child.

They don't come to you.
You go to them.
Their time tables are so busy.  No. No. Not busy like how the childless 'think' they're busy, (this is exactly how it was described to me) they're really REALLY busy.  And you wouldn't understand. And with a sweep of the dish cloth, whatever is going on in your life is marginalised to a mere inconvenience in the face of the mountain of Real Stress and Responsibility that they have.

You are expected to find their children incredible.
Even, even the women who when they were your childless girlfriends agreed that other people's kids were hell on earth and to be avoided at all costs, even those women get amnesia, and fully expect you to find their children's every snot bubble and tiny digit, incredible.

Let me tell you a story on this matter.  Several years ago I ran a stop sign and hit a moving car going 100km an hour.  Both cars flipped and spun out of control, the other car coming to a stop by hitting a bus stop. Both cars were written off and all of us were jarred and emotionally scarred. Remarkably, no one was harmed.  But as you can imagine, it took quite a large psychological toll on my life and was a significant life event that changed the shape of my being.
Because I was embarrassed, for making such a terrible mistake, I took my time telling people.
I was on the phone to one of my best, and my oldest women friends, and I said, I have something to tell you, something big has happened.  And as the words "I crashed my car" trailed out my mouth, she interrupted me with a squeal of delight to tell me her two year old daughter had just blown a spit bubble.
I didn't tell her about the crash. I gave up. I asked her about the spit bubble. Her babies spit bubble, had become more important than my life.

Women with children tell you flippantly not to have children if you don't really like or want them, which I don't.
But we all know that a person with children can smugly discuss the abstract concept of not having children with all the arm waving philosophy they like, in the comfortable knowing that they have already reproduced, done the deed, sealed their fate, continued their line.

Women on my end of the stick however, who have neither a good relationship, nor any prospect of one, nor any real affection for children, have to take that decision like a very bitter little pill, ever day of their lives, never knowing if it is going to be the medicine that allows them to fly, like they hope to god it is, or, unfortunately a poison that damns them to a life of searing, alcoholic regret.

I am not a person who believes that children are miracles.
The process of creating one, cell by cell, is rather miraculous yes.
But the children themselves, they are not miracles.  A miracle implies something wondrous, awesome, other-wordly.  Children are destructive, irrational, sometimes violent, selfish, unpredictable, conniving, manipulative little devils on speed that suck the energy out of their carers, drain their money, erode their brains and consume consume consume.

And I believe that most people have children to assuage their existential emptiness, to have 'purpose', to have someone who will forever (or until their thirties) need them, someone who will love them and be unable to leave them.
People have children just because it's 'the done thing'.
People have children to have something to shape, walking, talking play dough with their eyes.
People have children to feel important, to get attention, to feel special, to be loved.
I don't think these are good reasons to bring an entire person into being.

And it really annoys me that society reveres this choice, makes of it something so sacred and untouchable that nowhere are we allowed to say 'bad idea homie'.

And lastly, I do not like what the children take away from my friends: all their possibilities.
I have an exceedingly smart, talented bunch of women friends who now spend all their mental and physical energy being the cleaner, the pumpkin masher, the table wiper, the driver and singing inane, repetitive nursery rhymes over and over and over.

No one tells you it will be like this.

In the sad true words of that soppy misogynist loving songstress Lana del Ray: the world was built for two, only worth loving if somebody is loving you.  So sign up.  Join The Club. Put spermatozoa to ovum and create your very own, genetically personalised greatest show of all... come one, come all, to witness and be awed... just don't expect a part in the show, you're hear to bear witness, not to be heard. Can the childless all please take their seats... the show is about to begin.

Round three, ding ding ding

I signed back up to findsomeone.
What happened was, I was lying in bed doing all sorts of nothing on the computer feeling bored.
Then one of those online dating ads came up on the side of my screen, you know how the rockerfellers are monitoring my every move and all that... yeah so I slide on over to findsomeone to check out some boys.
A bit like how you might go onto countdowns website and check out the price of ham.  You don't even necessarily want to eat ham, just checking the price.
And all the faces that pop up, honeys!
So I sign back up, fuck it.
And search again... and where are all those honeys..?
Nowhere to be seen.
Total decoy profiles, I just know it.

Anyway so I'm signed up now. And I think with better self esteem than last time. So this time when some average guy doesn't reply to my message of interest, i won't crumple.

But it's very de ja vu. 
I mean, it is actually the same hundred profiles I have seen before.  Either we chatted and I decided they were too stupid/weren't the same enough (too into rugby and barbecues)/said some dodgy innuendo.... Or they are just ug boots.
Or five foot eight.
Or Christian.  Lotta christians!

One guy, who is unreasonably tall (we're talking just shy of two metres here, but not going to let that bother me), said hey you were here before and you disappeared, why'd you come back.
And i said i don't know really, don't have much hope for finding anyone.
And he said me neither.
And i said, well that's good then. Hopeless. Things can only go up from here.

One guy is a pirate.
Or at least, his profile name is something pirate. And we've shared a few 'aaargh me hearty' messages.
Here I am thinking, sense of humour, tick.
And then he says something about massage and think of me.
And i'm like, GODDAMN innuendo.
I'm no prude, but three messages down you're already insinuating that you're going to rub me all over?!??!
Don't know why I have a problem with this, but I do.

And god forgive me, but some dudes can't spell.  And it's so off putting.
I mean, I'm not talking about words like restaurant, or mississippi here. I'm talking four letter words.  Like 'busy'.  Is it wrong for me to judge?

Never the less.  A couple seem decent and things are a stirring.
And so now I'm in that same old predicament of actually having to do something. As in, go out.
Leave the house.
Forgot about this bit.

So tentatively have a 'drink' date for tomorrow, he left a message on my phone and already gets points for having an nice voice. Who doesn't like a nice voice. And he does waka ama, so you know brothers got a body.
And a maybe sunday date, or should i say, if i go up north for a surf, catching up with him up there.
So many difficulties inherent in this situation.
Bikini. That's one.   Arrgh that reminds me to wax!
And, I go purple when i'm cold.
I'm not pretty purple.  I struggle to hold it together on the best of days... but purple...

And besides all this there's a guy in my wider circle that I have a real crush on. As opposed to a fake, it's all a mirage, internet crush on.
Although it could all be a mirage, because it usually is.

So stay tuned. There's bound to be some funny out there somewhere....

“ Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are. ”

—Eckhart Tolle

Don't have a cow man!

I thought I would tell you one of my favourite jokes.

Two cows are standing in a field and cow 1 turns to cow 2 and says:
'Hey man, have you heard about that Mad Cow Disease? I'm really worried'
Cow 2 turns to cow 1 and replies:
'Yeah man, I've heard of it, but I'm not worried'
'Why not?' Asks cow 1.
'Because' says cow 2 'I'm a helicopter'.

Disclaimer:

The cows in this joke are fictitional characters.

No cows were harmed in the telling of this joke.
By telling this joke I am not implying that mad cow disease is a trivial issue.
I am actually not making a political statement about mad cow disease at all, it is simply a joke.
I do not mean to imply that I understand the challenges of a cows life. 
I do not consider myself an authority on cows, diseases, diseases of cows, or cows with diseases.
Try not to take this joke too seriously.
Try not to take yourself so seriously.  Just try. 
Cows around the world, do not need to feel minimised or marginalised just because I have mentioned them in my blog.  in fact, cows don't need to have any feelings because I mention them in my blog. I am not The Leader of Everyone and Everything in The Whole World.
If you don't like my jokes, just ignore me.

Cows who read my blog should not read into this joke any hateful, negative, or judgemental sentiments that are in fact, not there.
If cows should do this, then it is said cows who are responsible for their own silly misery, and I would hereby like to officially state that I Don't Create Your Feelings.  You do.  With your mind. So be careful what you beleive.

And if anyone like to know my REAL opinion, instead of thrusting one upon me... the truth is...
I like cows.

Happy, crazy, silly old cows. 

mad men is infiltrating my brain

Sometimes, when i feel sad that I am not married with children, i go out for dinner, which i don't need to arrange for with anyone, drink alot of wine and come home late, sleep in, maybe til 12, and do what i want all the next day. in the quiet. catering for only my own wants. then i feel better.

A client of mine (personal training) called me today in tears, telling me that she couldn't see me today because she was falling apart. she just found out her lying, cheating, abusive husband, who she recently left, is having an affair with a woman in sydney, amongst many.
why does he get to have all the fun. while i'm stuck here in the family home.

Marriage. It's a doozy.

I'm obsessed with mad men, it's set in the 1960s. when men were hard working hard drinking womanisers. and women were either mothers and housewives, of sexually inviting servants of some sort.  or help. the black people were help.  it's hard to belive this was only my mothers generation ago.
the impeccable hair, hats and tight wasted dresses, the dinner etiquette and the accepting way people put up with the chain smoking of lucky strikes. the cadillacs.  it's also amazing how this particular type of trapped existence can seem so appealing.
but then if you are going to be in a trap, why not a well presented one, that smells like lemon washing up liquid and chanel no. 5, cigarettes and brill cream.

I 'belong' to several feminist organisations on facebook.  girls rule the world. that sort of thing. whilst it strikes one chord with me, it twangs another.  why does it seem that women are still just reacting to thier circumstances. it's all still so reactionary. i know i am. 'they can't tell me this' 'they can't do that'... it's just like a child reacting to bad parenting. women, reacting to a 'bad world'.

sure things aint so bad for me. what can i say. i'm not going to get stoned to death for being raped.

i think i'll go out for a walk, i won't have to check with anyone, nor will the neighbours ask hushed questions.  I think i'll drink wine at three. wear pants. work overtime.
these are the liberties of a modern girl, in a modern world. that i am.

I have a growing feeling that there should be a new movement, not patriarchy, but not feminism.
A movement that acknowledges that women need men. and men need women.
Because we do. We need them to take care of us.  And they need us to be tender towards them.
If only we could stop making it a game of battleship.  Stop trying to infiltrate each other. Stop identifying ourselves as separated by enemy lines. I think that would be really shocking.  Who's with me?

boy or girl?

I recently came accross the story of Jenna Talackova, a 23 year old woman who was born a boy, who forced a rule change to let transgender women contend in Miss Universe Canada. 
(FYI Donald Trump owns the franchise and it was he who acquiesed. You just know behind that comb over and rubbery face that guy is a real good c*nt ahy?)
So yeah she was born a boy and says that by the age of 4 she felt like a girl living in a boys body.
Age of four! 
This is when I started to think... do I feel like a girl inside?
What does a girl feel like anyway?
*closes eyes and tries to feel internal feelings of femaleness*
I can't feel if I feel like a girl or not.  I'm not even sure what i'm looking for here.
I try the same thing with 'feeling like a male'
*closes eyes, forages around in the dark for feelings of maleness*
Nup.  I don't have any of those either.
The truth is, I have no feelings of gender inside me at all.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say, I feel quite genderless inside. Inside I feel like a person, kinda, although even that's a bit of a leap.
Mostly I just feel my emotions whizzing around like electrons in an atom, combusting and colliding and disappearing from existence only to reappear again without warning and seemingly without meaning....
But even those, I can stand back from, they're not really me.

What the HELL are these people feeling, that make them feel like, or not like, one gender or the other?!?
This has really got me puzzled.
And it surprises me that this question has only just arisen for me because I lived with a transgender person, originally male turned female, for a year, and I never thought about it then.

And actually, that adds another puzzling level to the whole question, I'll tell you why.
Even though she said she whole heartedly felt female, and wanted to live in a females body, you know, enough to have her wanger surgically transformed into a gash for $10,000 in thailand, enough to put up with weekly laser sessions on her face to remove facial hair (and you know that shit hurts ladies), enough to take synthetic hormones that made her all sorts of fucked up and depressed (oestrogen - who'd have it!) and EVEN To deal with all the bullshit and prejudice and hatred she must have encountered regularly... Even though all of that, she just really acted like a boy.

She had such a boy nature, just like, not that emotional i guess, and seriously, girls are moody! And she was really good with tools and cars and she loved motorbikes, I mean she could really fix shit, like anything, and had heaps of tools... she was just, boysy.  She couldn't see dirt, that was another boy thing, she had that 'broad stroke of the brush' approach to cleaning, and the other three girls who lived there were, you know, a bit more anal. That's a girl thing.  There were lots of little ways she seemed like a boy.  She even liked girls. Even though she was a girl. So she was gay too. Nuts ahy. I think that's why I never really thought about it, because I was too busy trying to be accepting for her sake, because man, what a hard road to hoe....

And once we had this really funny, telling moment. I think it was me who said that women have 72 bathroom items, and men have about 5, and everyone, boy and girl, in the group nodded that it was true, except her and she said, i'm somewhere in the middle.

So that's what I've been wondering about that. What are these people FEELING inside?!?! How does it FEeeeel? Why don't I have a feeling?!?! Should I be feeling something? Should I be worried? What do you feel inside? Does this make me non-gender!?? Aarrgh.

I mean, I definitely like boys, but that is a separate issue.
What if I'm a gay man in a womans body and i don't know yet?!?!?
Wonder if I can get ACC for that...?

That's all really.

Another Audition

So I look down at my phone and it is flashing and his name is on the screen.  I don't know if I'm calling him, or he's calling me, or how this happened. Then I realise if he's calling me he might be listening to me heavy breath into the phone while I try to work out what's going on, and quickly press end call.

I think about it for one minute and realise I don't want him to think I called him. Oh so, he's a guy from findsomeone I messaged with once right before I got on-line-dating-fatigue (OLDF) and closed my account.  It's been ages, months since then. So I don't want him to think all this time I was clinging to the possibility of us, worked up the guts to call him, and then lost my mettle and hung up mid call! Tragic.

So I text him him "hey (guy), my phone just pocket called you, sorry about that, hope you're well".
Sorted.
Don't hear back for a few days, nothing unusual there.
Then I get a text from him saying he's had his phone off because he's been trekking in the himalaya's and how am I?
So we text back and forth, turns out he's travelling in south america, and after a few texts asks me if we should have coffee then?
If you don't know, I am a believer in just about everything.  From vampires to fairies to there being no actual time, to mayan predictions, to witches, to lot's of types of gods (non-exlusively), to telepathy, aliens, ghosts.. yeah you name it I pretty much believe in it, so being this type of all-believing person, I think that it might have been Fate slash Destiny that my phone rang him all by itself. And what a great story this will make to tell our grandkids.... of course I'll go for coffee.

We text during the week, actually, he texts me alot, and I have a good feeling about him from the things he says and does.  He asks questions, seems to have a full and interesting life, and thinks I'm funny. Which of course I am, but you know, it's good that he can tell. 

So I turn up at the Piha cafe, he lives at piha and i'm happy for the opportunity to get out there because it's been months.  And I see him through the window and he has a nice sort of look about him - blonde, blue eyed, tan skinned surfer type look. I pull the heavy glass door open and step inside and he has risen to greet me and I am 100% sure that his first thoughts are 'oh my god she's so tall/big!' while mine simultaneously are: 'oh god, so small/short!'  Here we go again.

In the week I'd had to log back onto my findsomeone account to preview his profile JUST to be sure.  And I read on there that he is 5'10.  You know I call myself 5'11, but i have no idea really, i don't even know what that means, five what's? badgers? eleven what? eggs? five shoes and eleven cigarettes. I dont' even know.  And I could possibly be 5'10.  So from looking at his height on his profile I think, okay, about my height I can deal with that.

Everyone knows I date short guys. Dated one for 2 and a half years. It was pretty miserable but not because of his height. I thought he was very attractive. So for years I've been saying 'i don't really mind short guys' and you know what? I'm not going to say it anymore because CLEARLY the universe has been listening, and is sending every vertically challenged midget into my life like it's a Charlie And The Chocolate Factory wrap party.

Anyway, I put that aside. And we get coffee's and he asks me what i would like and pays and that's nice and we sit outside and there's his dog and it's about the nicest dog i think i've ever met, a collie huntaway cross, and so polite and gentle and nice lookingand doesn't smell and well behaved and that really endears me to him.
And we're talking and he's eating eggs bene and i'm saying to myself just be yourself and he's telling me all these things, how he's invented stuff and had it patented and sells it (pretty impressive) and has had four major careers, and while he is giving me a short history of just about everything i notice that his hands are really small.

Quite aside from the old, I think fairly accurate adage, that mens hand and foot size is directly proportionate to their appendage size, his small hands just look a little bit ridiculous.
I know, I know, i'm going to hell. ALONE. I get it.  But i'm just being honest.  I move on from the small hands thing and then he puts this massive big woollen jumper on, the kind that looks like it just came off the sheep, real thick thing, maybe an inch thick, and it has rolled up cuffs and a kind of turtle neck, i like the jumper, but unfortunately the sleeves end shy of his wrists. and in this too short sleeved, over-sized, massive jumper he looks a little bit like .... a little-person.  You know? with normal head size but short limbs and small hands?  I mean. Come on. I'm really not that shallow.  But a little person?

And also, it's starting to become apparent, that he is for talking, and i am for listening. And that's probably the crux of it.
So we go for a walk down the beach and i ask if he feels like a big 'stonking' walk because i haven't had enough exercise this week and we're at piha and the air is all fresh and misty and the beach so long and ideal for it, and he says we could walk up to the look out bit and I say cool and can we walk FAST?
Reason 1 - my back hurts, all the time, and i shit you not it hurts more when i dawdle.
Reason 2 - i have long legs and my walking pace is fast. walking slowly is like waiting for a toddler. Or watching a toddler try to find it's mouth with a spoon, but all the slimy porridge ending up on it's top, hands and chair.
Reason 3 - i need the exercise.
And i begin to stride off at my normal beach walking pace and he falls behind and says, but you have long legs and i have little stumpy ones.
And now the word stumpy has been said, laid on the table, out there for all to see.

Up we go, me and jack the dog up front and piha-man twelve paces behind.  And all the way up and around and down and through, he continues his telling me all the things he's ever done, or thought, or been to.  And the worst of it is, he punctuates his sentences with the word 'mate'.
He actually refers to me as 'mate'.  Like: and then this thing happened and MATE you wouldn't believe it... and i mean MATE have you ever seen.... It's not a general reference, he's actually referring to me as mate. and sometimes dude. which is vaguely better but not much.
I have a thing about being called mate, no, women have a thing about being called mate.
Mate is what you call ugly chicks.  I am not your mate, I am not on your buliding site in gumboots with a fag hanging out the corner of my mouth, nodding my head in condelence to your big night out shagged a fat chick story.
Mate.
And it just kind of adds to the me bing three stories taller than him thing, with him calling me mate, i'm feeling more and more like a checkered shirt wearing, short haired, tractor driving, lesbian.
This is not how I want to be feeling today.

We reach the look out bit and i'm soaking in the big endless grey atlantic sea, six foot swell and tiny black bodies of surfers'; the wet air on my face and emansive black rocks pushing up into the slate sky, and his phone rings and he talks on it for five minutes. and when i want to keep moving he says 'gee you don't sit still and take it all in do you?!' but i did. while he was talking on the phone.

So i don't know, is it the height, the hands, the always talking and telling me the same story three times (yeah i get it, i already got it), the calling me mate, the stumpy legs? Is it all those things, none of them? I don't know. I just know there's no spark. And when there's no spark, there's never going to be.  Sparks do not grow.  We are not two bits of tindery wood, who if we just rub together long enough will create an inferno.  If i've learnt anything about dating it's that sparks don't grow. In fact the lack of sparking almost always escalates into full blown revulsion if you let it go on, hoping for a fire. In a way, it's like mother nature saying, next! And quite aside from whether it means anything or not, I just want to feel something.  It's a bad feeling, not feeling anything.

And you see this, this is part of the reason I don't want to go on dates. Prior to meeting him i was feeling intreptidation, more than half the reason was because i don't want to meet a nice person, have them put in all this vain and noble effort to impress me, and then have to tell them i don't like them.  Because I don't NOT like them, I just don't want their sweaty body writhing on mine.  But that's not how it sounds. It sounds like 'i think you're shit'.  And then this perfectly nice person you have nothing aginst, immediately feels like shit and hates you. It's rough.

I am good and polite and go back to his house for tea and listen to more stories and then finally the light is changing and it's a decent time to say i have to go.  And we have an awkward hug goodbye where he goes to kiss my cheek but i leer to one side and his lips go flying past my cheek, completely missing it so he is making a big MWA sound into the air over my shoulder. I hadn't planned for that to happen. Oh well. And off I'm driving with him on the driveway waving.  If the date had have been with his dog, I would have damn well adopted that dog.  I've never liked a dog more in my life.  I'm going to miss that dog. Might have been the only dog I'll ever meet that I really liked.  The Fates are laughing at me.  I swear they're laughing.

Oh P.S! I had to add this, when i told my mum about him she said, well i'm 5'10.  And my mum is a tall lady. And you're 5/11. She says. Which makes him no taller than 5/8, and probably 5/7.  So he lied. And when we sat down to coffee, the first or second thing he said to me was, i happen to remember in your proflie picture you were a blonde (i've died my hair reddy brown) in a vaguely accusory manner.  Can you believe it!??!

Why get married

Why.

So that you don't spend sunday afternoons alone. If there are going to be lonely hours, that is when they will find their way in. Even the sun slowly sinks away in a way that says 'goodbye'. On Sundays.

So that you can go to your friends house for dinner, friends plural, who are a couple. Because they will invite you as you will be the right number for wine glass sets, games and four sided tables. Two.

So that you can say 'we' and 'oh yes my husband has one of those' and 'i better get home, hubby will be wondering where i am'. And someone will be at home, kindly wondering.

So you can relinquish a job or two that you hate, forever. Such as the rubbish. or the lawns. Even though he doesn't like them either, he does them for you. Til death do you part.

So that you can be sick. Because being sick, when no one cares, is not really sick, you might just be pretending. You cough a little 'achaa' ...and sniff a little 'sffft'... just to check if you are really sick, because unless there's someone to tell who says 'oh dear' and frowns and really means it, what's the point.

So you can go on walks. To walk as one you need alpipne sticks or an umbrella or to hurry slightly your step. One is going somewhere. One is exercising. One is on an errand. Two is just out for a walk.

So you can share all the burdens of your world with another person.

So you know you will always be loved after the fight.
Loved after the fight has gone out of you.
Loved after the light has gone out.

So you can make tea for someone. And have them say, this tea is perfect.

So you can watch movies you wouldn't otherwise watch. Like 3D action films. Or old westerns. It's good for you, to see these films. Saves you from banality of rom coms and tear jerkers.

So you can say 'lets' followed by anything, to someone, out loud.

So you can say 'have you seen my glasses?  I'm losing my marbles!'  and then say it again the next day, and the next, because they are losing their marbles too.
And when alls said and done. Rocking chair porch and sun setting looks faded weathered faces, calloused crippled hands and rings stuck forever on fingers swollen with age, stirring bright purple stewed plums in a bowl and drop them on the floor SWOOSH red everywhere and shed a tear as you kneel to clean up all the lost sweetness. Kneels next to you and says, I love you.

Cheap Therapy and Hot Tips from Beauty Salons and Dentists

I went to the beauty salon the other day. Don't get the wrong impression, by salon, i don't mean five floored luxury spa with wings that each have their own temperate pool where buff tan men in short white shorts offer you lemonades off trays.. i'm sorry what? oh yeah, the salon, or whatever they're called. And don't get another wrong idea, i almost NEVER go to beauty places (you're like: no shit), this was only my third or fourth time my whole life. And no i wont' disclose why... just trust me it was worth it. So the lady who runs the one woman show that is said salon, is Iranian. She's gorgeous. She's kind of half physically gorgeous, and half just so warm and amusing you can't help but want to hear her thick Iranian accent believing everything she tells you about the new mineral make up... Everything about her makes me think of the word honey. She has honey coloured skin, and honey brown eyes, her perfectly coiffed, short 'bob' is streaks of golden honey blonde, very natural, for a dye job. She is perfectly made up, of course, in a nice way, not over the top. And she is fairly small, but a big presence, with spectacles sitting on the bridge of her nose. She is warm and welcoming and immediately feels like your no-nonsense aunt that you love even though she tells things you how things are and what is what. Well, Roya, her name is, has me on the fake leopard skin 'fur' covered salon bed.. and she says to me amid the 'getting to know you' banter 'You have boyfriend!?' She sort of jabs the words at me, not unkindly, matter of factly: 'you have boyfriend!?' she says. 'No' I reply (wait for it..) WHY YOU NO HAVE BOYFRIEND!? she says 'tall, beautiful...? (it's clearly as puzzling to her as anyone)... let me look at your eyebrowz' she says, and lifts her spectacles and peeeeers deep into my occular region. I'm apologizing and saying yes they probably need plucking (you're always cowering with embarrassment around beautiful beauty salon people as you know they are taking you apart and lamenting your complete lack of decorum).. and I'm wondering what ancient iranian astrology can tell about me from my eyebrows.. perhaps the name of my future lover... 'Ah yes' She says, as if it is plain for all to see. 'yes, we shape you eyebrowzz we tint your eyelashes, you get boyfriend'. If only I'd known it was so simple at an earlier date. All I needed was an eyebrow shape and eyelash tint. Shit, for twenty five bucks it seems more than reasonable... Well I left there and went to the dentist. I know. No i do work. just not on thursdays. I saw a deal on group on, and bought it. HIghly risky and i had been imagining all week all the kind of horrific dental atrocities the dentist was probably going to perform on me to try and make money out of me like some backstreet abortion clinic... I really got my defenses up. Turns out the dentist is a pretty nice (for a sadist) Eastern Block lady, maybe russian, called lily. Lily is perfunct and matter of fact and a charactature of herself, with far too long dyed blonde hair, dark roots showing, half a pot of turqouise eye shadow on each eye lide, quirky rectangular spectacles, and a white apron over intersting, but not fashionable, worn out looking dresses, with puffy sleeves that continually drape in my face and smell sweet and of dust. I lie down on lily's blue leather dentist chairs (god i love these chairs!! the ones that go back and up and down and forward like each of their 8 parts moves in complete independance to get you just so underneath the biiiig white light, with a pleasant little humming motor gently whirring against your skin....) there i am saying 'no i haven't been here before' and lily GASPS as she says 'YOU HAVE VERY GOOD TEETH!'. THis is mostly why i came, i've decided. IT's like a kind of all round feel good day for me this day. She says 'you have very good teeth' and i say 'oh really (in that funny way you talk when you're trying not to show your teeth because as soon as someone mentions teeth yours go all shy) and she's saying 'yes, you do, let me look' and thumbing back your lips so she can get a good look at your pearlies and she says: 'do you drink fizzy drink'.. and i get to say 'no, no i NEVER do' (proud as punch) and to add to my own self inflation i say 'i don't really like sweet food'. This makes me feel holier than thou, and lily gives me a, what i think for her is warm, little nod of approval. IT's not true of course. I like russian fudge, and apple crumble, actually any crumble, and very dark chocolate occasoinally, i like anything that tastes like sour apple, like zombie chews or apple lollies, and sour coke bottles, and frozen coke, but only at the movies. But what i mean is, i haven't spent any part of my life consistently gorging on sugary food, and in doing so, i've saved myself aLOT of pain and dental bills. I think that's why i went to the dentist. THen she sands my teeth with a pointed ended electrical saw, or at least that's what it sounds and feels like, that she'd first frozen, and then sharpened to razor sharp point. and then she polishes (is this the same word as polish, as in, from poland, or can i not spell?) them with that chalky, sweet, slightly orange flavoured tooth paste. And i am good to go. Clean pearlies, and only one shape and tint away from true love. Happy days.

holy matrimony batman

Three conversations have coincided this week to make me have a slightly major epiphany. About marriage.

One conversation occurred on a semi-date, making this a legitimate entry onto my blog. (phewphs, i'm trying here people!)

I met a really interesting guy at a friends house, and in this case, I'm not using the words really interesting lightly. Smart, quick witted, easy to talk to, and an artist, oh and a greeny. Tick tick tick. Through our mutual friend he asked me if I would like to go for coffee the next day perhaps? Sounded swell to me. Then after facebook and web stalking him and viewing his art online and genuinely liking it a whole lot, I asked if as well as coffee, I could see his studio. I know what you dirty little monkeys are all thinking, but you can just forget about it. I genuinely wanted to see his art and workspace. You: *smirk*. Me: *rolls eyes* pfft!

So the next day we set off on a perfect, crisp, sunny long weekend day on foot towards town to see his studio (Ak uni, elam). And all the way we talked. Interesting talk. Actually, so interesting and easy that it made me realise how utterly boring most men are. yes you. you are so boring. We, i, women, bend over backwards making conversation puzzle shapes so you can put your conversation puzzle pieces in them. We bring up topics for you to talk about, and do all the right nodding and question asking. God it is all so tedious. But in this case, it was not at all so. I think it is fair to say I might never have met someone so worldly, in the truest sense of the word: so well travelled and broadly knowledged. This AND a great artist. I'm quite taken. I called it a semi-date because it wasn't one of those god-aweful, awkward, contrived, pressurised drink-at-a-bar scenario's. It was more like a really cool hang out. SO ANWYAY god before i lose the point entirely.

Said man, I'll call him the artist, he's got pretty good general knowledge, knows pretty much enough to talk about politics, history, geography, shit.. you name it. And you know, me, well, i'm smart, but i don't KNOW alot of stuff. i know alot about some stuff, but i really missed alot in school. i smoked weed and drew funny pictures of my teachers and wagged and got drunk right when things were getting, what i in hindsight now realise, were fairly critical. like history. ouch i just got a pain in my body even thinking about history class. but now i see, one should really know a little about the major events that occurred in the last few hundred years for example. because they shaped our culture, and our world, they shaped lanuage and art and philosphy and through that, shape today, and me. And besides, you just look dumb when you don't know things. And no body likes dumb people.

So i came home from this enlightening and educational, as well as truly enjoable day, with a bit of a mental list of things i wanted to read up about, you know, homework so to speak, and one of them was marxism.

So i'm reading away about karl marx, thinking shit, i'm kind of marxist! and i follow the wikipedia link about 'marxist feminism' because that sounds interesting. And here i read that marxist feminism is the theory that: the root of the oppression of women is capitalism, as it deprives women of property, economic equality and independence, and breeds unhealthy relationships between men and women. In this capitalist society, the family structure (i.e. marriage) serves to subordinate women, putting them at the service of men.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Bells go off in my head.
(This is why you should stay at school and learn, kids, so you know when someone is oppressing you).
Bells went off, and the ringing that they made sounded distinctly like the words 'fuck me, it's true'.

Just the night before, i had been talking with one of my best friends who is newly married and about to have her first baby. We talk about this and that and of course we talk about men, my complete absence of, or whomever i currently squeezing if i am squeezing (which i am not!), and her husband. And I can tell she really needs a vent you know, she tells me how he drops the cleanly washed towels on his poisonously toxic shoes and leaves them there, how he can't see the butter on the bench or anything else that needs putting away after he's made a sandwich... and on it goes. It's not particularly inspid, just home truths... and at the end of it she huffs and says crossly:
"I just feel like i'm his slave".
And this is one of the relationships i consider in the 'good' category. Well suited people who are in love. CRIPES.

And it's not just this friend, it's all my married friends. All the women feel this way, not just like slaves, but trapped. Trapped is a word I hear these days. They are totally dependent on men for financial support and their identity is suffocated out of existence by the all encompassing role of mother, the overwhelm, the expectations, the isolation.
Like the guy at the end of the bar, marriage looks less attractive the closer you get, I am finding.

Now now, I hear what you are thinking, what about the men? Exactly, what about those poor bastards, as emeshed in this dysfunctional system, shackled to their jobs, bearing the sum and total responsibility of bread winning. How horrible for them too. And I don't have even the vaguest idea of what an alternative solution to pairing and reproducing might be. But I have to say marriage seems a fundamentally oppressive institution, in light of these points. But MAINLY oppressive to women.

And this is not all. I had another conversation, via email, within days of these conversations, with a friend of mine who has been married several years. This friend said to me how they had wanted to discuss a particular sensitive theme with their spouse and it had created a huge explosion, which supported their growing belief that marriage was not a relationship in which you could be completely honest, or completely yourself. They went on to add, that marriage is so loaded with unconscious projections and expectations and that people subconsciously think that by getting married they have the right to be outraged if their spouse does not comply with their unvoiced assumptions, and that only non-married couples still had, at least, a sense that they didn't actually possess the other person.

And I thought, you know, it's really true. I see it all the time. In relationships, we negotiate, compromise, barter, because we KNOW that person can leave us and is opting to stay, essentially. And then the knot gets tied and people starting treating their 'loved one' like property, like a pet they need to perform well so their lives can remain on course.

It reminded me of another friend of mine who's husband wants sex all the time, and she'd quite happily live without it. She gestured to her wedding and engagement rings with the thumb of the same hand and waving them at me says: but this says i have to do it. I was slightly shocked, but only slightly. Which is shocking.
Hmmm swapping sex for gold and security... doesn't it sound a bit like... slavery?

So here I am, reading for the first time about Marxist feminism, with these conversations rattling round in the recesses of my brain, coagulating and attempting to form cut and paste messages for me, and I think a funny thing: marriage, is not, really.... feminist.

I'm struck that that is funny, mainly because i've never thought of it that way before. How come, in a world that was broken in two by our feminist mothers, (MY feminist mother!) and patched back together with women in the work force, equal pay (ha HA!), women in the army etc. well HOW COME we are still reading 'princess gets married to prince and lives happily every after' to our daughters, and how come our grown up daugthers, aka me and my UNmarried friends, are even still considering marriage an option, much less treating it as a GREAT TRIUMPH?!?!?

Someone's put something in the koolaid, becuase if the world was ever truly burnished by feminisms branding, the scar it left has all but faded to white.
Ahhh, look what the women have done, a little foot stomping, isn't that cute! Now send out the magazines to show them what to buy, how to look and how to act so they can use up all that silly energy covetting prams and cooking lamb roasts.

Shudder.

Now, being the daughter of a feminist mother, with an entirely feminist family, and feminist type expectations of me like, be everything, succeed all the time, have it all, feel fabulous being stretched within an inch of your inner resources... I thought i had been doing a fairly adequate job of feigning feminism. But here's the thing. THere are two ways you make decisions that support feminist ideals. One, is because you ought to, kind of the way you ought to finish dinner because african children are starving; and the other way, is because you're outraged.

And all these conversations and events and unveilings have culminated in me a feeling of, yes, a little outrage! And this outrage, lead me to all in one moment realise that I don't have to, need to, and in fact I think I may not want to, get married.

Ta da! That's the end of the show folks. Final bow, curtains fall. I mean, i never thought of myself as a ring-chasing big fat gypsy wedding type anyway, especially compared to many of my peers. But in a way I held this loose etheral idea of me getting married, the way you see yourself sitting on a porch when you're old. It's just how it looks. I may have watched too many movies.

And I tell you something else, boy does that take the HEAT OFF!
I didn't think I was dating in order to get married (and I feel like i'm going to be sick a little just writing that out loud to you) but the idea that i will never get married, by choice, well that just feels like a big fat gust of wind just blew into my life, peeling the curtains apart and the view it reveals is across a wide sea of freedom and possibilities, as far as the eye can see.

I've also downloaded lectures from oxford university explaining capitalism... next thing you know i'll be up and quitting my oppressive office job....

Yeah so that's all I got and it aint really funny so look at this fucking hilarious cat gif.
Oh, i don't know how to put it in... i'll try something else.

Oh and yes. I will be seeing extraordinarily interesting artist man again. This time armed with some prior reading! There you go. Nice call back at the end there! you see what i did. :)

A bunch of paintings

Just in case any of you are aucklanders, and were thinking of going to 'Degas to Dali' at the new revamped auckland art gallery, AND wanted my appraisal, here it is:

The collection comes from the National Gallery of Scotland. While they claim to have some of the 'best art in the world' i think it would be more accurate say they have some of the works of some of the great masters, but generally, the kind of pieces I imagine the painters would give to their favourite baker, or dying aunt, or bequeath to a, dare i say it, scottish gallery.

There are Dali paintings yes, and there are Degas paintings, there are freud, bacon, bonnard, magrite, nicholson, von jawlensky (a personal favourite), manet and monet... it's a veritable swingers party of great painters.. however, this pick and mix collection seems to encompass mainly works that were achieved prior to the artist really getting on a roll with their personal style, and before they became famous.

Picture Francis Bacon in his painting room slapping a hat and coat still life together, then when looking for canvases to paint over, to save money, this one just BARELY escapes a paint-over job. Bacon to me is a rich array of larger than life colours forming harrowed and haunting faces alongside sinister and morbidly sexual motifs like skulls. Francis Bacon is madness. Francis bacon is not: Hat and Coat Study.

To badger this point, there is one monet. It is of boats in a harbour. When I was seven I saw all of Monet's collection of watercolour lilly ponds and bridges and the lilac hued beauty of it burnt into my brain. Boats are nice too though.

As well, 'Degas to Dali' is somewhat of a liberal interpretation. The collection is not a sequential view of artworks, transitioning from movement to movement. Rather, it is a slap together of some expressionist, some impressionist, some surrealist, and sprinkle of pop art, oh and some landscapes. Because who doesn't love a landscape. Where, ever, have you viewed Picasso, alongside Warhol? Is it just too nouveau? Am I just too antiquated?
There are EVEN some 18th Centurey Japanese prints, welllll before Degas' time. I guess the curator thought: why take them down, when you'll only have to dust behind them. A sentiment I can strongly empathise with. But then, I'm not the curator of The Auckland Art Gallery.

While he/she was at it, he/she thought fit not to change the light bulbs. Probably the two most rewarding paintings, in terms of familiarity, as well as sheer brilliance, are Degas' two paintings from his most famous 'ballerina series'.
They are truly beautiful, emotive, you can smell the wooden dance room floors, hear the young ballerina's whispering girlish secrets as they practise plie's... but one of the two paintings is so poorly lit, that it is hard to see. It is genuinely hard to see. Like reading a book by an eco-lamp, waiting for it to take hold of it's identity and brighten the fuck up, but the brightening... it never comes. Not to go on, but to go on, further in the 'exhibition' is a single Morandi painting - he is known for painting bottles and jars in a monochrome of beige and bluey creams, that while just bottles and jars, manage to speak of silence and humility - and here is this single Morandi, being lit by a blue fluorescent light. I never liked those blue fluorescent lights in 5th form painting, and I certainly don't like them any more in the AAG.

I went to the Dali exhibition in Melbourne, it was mammoth and unhestitatingly astounding. And I don't even like surrealism. Surrealism is at the best of times like somebody telling you about their dreams. If i'm not in it, why would I care? It's abstract and often looks like somebody spilt their coffee on the rug. These particular pieces, ever the more. But this exhibition had me at hello. It took half a day to absorb it all. I came out at least having some appreciation of the great life and contribution of Salvidor Dali. The piec on show at the AAG, looked like a doodle Dali had made whilst talking on the wireless combobulator.

Highlights are: 'Maurice' - Pop King Andy Warhols fluorescent pink and blue screen print of a friends daschund. Eminently charming, farcical and at once noble. Andy Warhol famously said everyone would have their fifteen minutes of fame, what he not so famously also said was 'even pets'.

Of my favourites: The Lustre Bowl by Sir William Nicholson, exhibits a single lustre bowl (copper oxide and glass veneer over wood creating a lusturous sheen) and a dozen green peas on a plain white table cloth in a black room. Has to be seen to be felt, this painting, is probably worth the $20 admission fee. You can feel the temperature of the room. Feel the mood of the owner of the bowl. Someone who does seem to know a little of how to do their job at the gallery points out on the plaque how the bowl looks so hard and shiny you can hear it ping, whilst the peas soft and malleable and each displaying their own character. It's quite a fete. Lest I wank on.

I truly love Picasso, and there is one simple painting of his from the blue period showing the back of a woman holding a baby. The weight of her body, heavier on one foot, the curve of her back and crook of her neck are all perfectly executed. Barring the cubist period, Picasso never put a foot wrong.

To conclude, The Auckland Art Gallery has had a surgical facelift, it looks great. It's gone from Anna Paquin to Cate Blanchet. I think it could hold it's head up alongside, not the Louvre, but let's say the National Portrait Gallery of London. They have left the skeleton with some flesh on it, of the old building to be seen in places, such as alcoves that end abruptly at glass, waist-height walls, which meet spiralling staircases that dwindle symmetrically to smaller and smaller staircases. I had the greatest of expectations for this new gallery and their first international exhibition. I rather enjoyed closing my right eye and looking with my left, and then closing my left eye and looking only with my right, to see what each hemisphere of my brain would notice more.

I think go, it's only twenty bucks right, you get to wander around with the middle and upper middle class feeling cul-cha'd and like a better person, whispering in hushed tones your 'informed' (touche) opinion of great works.

I just think instead of calling it 'Degas to Dali' they should have more honestly entitled it 'a bunch of paintings from Scotland, not the best, not the worst, to be fair, the B team'; bring a torch.

Just a little about me

That isn't really me by the way. In breaksupsville. It HAS been me and that is a true story... but not right now. I was just thinking about it... how tragically the same it always is.

Today, a completely different post. I want to tell you about something awesome I did. Seeing as this blog is drenched in woe.

Today I did a crossfit competition. I am sitting here icing my thumb and shoulder with pea's. Thumb taking breaks from peas to type.

My crossfit gym (quattro) and another one (rapid) met up at their gym in eden park, got put into teams, and competed against each other.
Crossfit, for anyone who doesn't know, is awesome. It is a the new style of fitness training, everyone who does it, gets obsessed with it, because it's that good. It's that good and getting you fitter, stronger, faster, more flexible, more agile, more able, more functionally fitter, and to levels of fitness you never even imagined for yourself.

Part of the ethos of crossfit is that the working out centres around camrardarie. It is the furthest cry from dudes working out in gyms, doing completely non-functional movements that don't translate into life, calling each other a pussy and hurting their bodies by compromising technique to look like a hard man.
It is everyone together, learning, being challenged, overcoming the scariest fucking shit, encouraging each other. Little tiny women come in, scared, we all are. And in three weeks they're over head snatching half their body weight. It changes you. It's the best thing that ever happened to me, crossfit.

Every time you go to crossfit, you do something you have never done before.
What ever you deadlifted last time, you aim to do more. If your technique on snatch was lacking, you practise and practise. Every day, you acheive something. And i'll tell you something about that. Anyone with even an iota of depression in their mind, should do crossfit. Doing something better everyday, while people who love you, yes, love you, stand around and get psyched for you and share your success, ask for your times, pat you on the back, egg you on, cheer, run with you to the finish etc. jolts you out of a bad mood so fast and furiously you can't remember what the fucking problem was.

yada yada. Everyone's obsessed with it because it's THAT good.

We turn up, there's about 40 athletes. We get teamed into fours. Two Rx'd and two scaled. What this means is that Rx'd do the workout as prescribed, and scaled people get a lighter weight or shorter set. EVERYONE works their guts out, it just allows for the different levels of ability. I'm Rx'd. There's alot of pride in that for me. I am naturally athletic, but i have to work FREAKIN hard to get there, and stay there. There aint no shortcuts and no faking. You work til you cannot work even one milimetre harder. You collapse on the floor when you're done.

First workout:
300m row on machine, no probs.
Then what is called a hang clean. You take a loaded up barbell from the floor and 'jerk' it/pull it up to chest height, flick your arms under neath and 'catch' it, elbows pointing forward. sorry if that makes no sense. essentially, you get the weight off the floor, slide and jump it up the body, to a position where you are standing with the barbell 'racked' on your chest. They're hard.
I have to do it at 40kg. 40kg is ALOT. I weigh 68kg. It's more than half my own body weight. All your shopping, the day you do the big epic supermarket shop and spend $200, probably weighs about 15kg. 40kg is alot.

I'm first too, and i start, and i go to jerk it and that mother fucking bar does not go up. I put it back down, reset, lift, jerk. And that goddamn scary fuck shit bar is not going up. I look up like a lost lamb, and i'm saying 'dave (my trainer) it's too heavy' in disbelief. Because what are my fucking options at this point? the workout has started, I"m Rx, nothing can be done, this IS my weight.
And Dave comes rushing over like a protective papa bear, bends down, puts his hands on his knee's and says JUMP AND SHRUG as hard as you can. An order. It's now. Can you do it or not? I lift the bar, I JUMP AND SHRUG as hard as i can and the fucking thing goes up. catch. stand. JESUS CHRIST. I have to do 15, then 12, then 9, 36 in total, with barbell jumping to tire you out in between.

This is the part of the workout where I start feeling emotional. You feel fucking emotional, because it is SO hard, and there's no backing out. You didn't come here to wuss out and not do what you are capable of doing. You came here to see what you were made of. There is no not doing it. Your mind says two things to you, IT's So HARD I DON"T THINK I CAN??!! and it says, NOW WAY OUT, JUST DO IT.
And that's upsetting. I won't lie.

I've done alot of sports, and trained other people, so i know about the mind.
It is all in the mind. Everything. Everything you do, you are what you believe you are, if you believe it, then it is. We get brought up/socialised/nurtured to beleive certain things. I am fat, thin, I am slow, I am fast, i learn quickly, i'm funny, i fail often, if i try i can do anything etc. etc.
Do you know about people with split personalities where one personality has ALLERGIES the others don't have?
The mind people, the mind.

The difference between doing, and not doing, is believing you can do it.
So crazy scared mind feels the heavy weight, feels the lungs on fire, unable to get breath, feels dizzy, feels pain and says HOLY FUCKING SHIT I'M SCARED, I CAN"T DO THIS.
And experienced, well trained mind says: Keep going. You ARE going to do this. That's all there is to it. IT is going to get done, and by you. There is an end to this, and you're going to be there soon in 20, 19, 18, 17...
you just keep telling yourself all the thigns you need to hear. And you keep going.
Crazy scared brain is crazy and scared, and upset goddamit. And smart brain has to drown it out. It helps when your friends are there being smart brain all around you. Yelling KEEP GOING, you can do this.

The workout is insanely hard. After the clean and jerks, you jump laterally across the bar. you're gassed. you're spent. the very last rep i do is a contorted mess and the judge is looking at me egging me up to standing position so he can call REP! and i'm done.
I'm done. I literally, have never done anything that felt SO beyond my ability before.

We complete. We're last. I doesn't matter. Everyone has pushed themselves to within an inch of their lives, everyone is psyched and proud for each other, just for doing it.

after a short rest the second work out looks like this:
30 40cm box jumps (jump up, jump down, etc.)
30 Kettlebell high pulls - 16kg kettle bell from ground to chest.
30 burpee's (pure evil)
30 kettle bell swings - 16kg kettle bell from between legs to over head.
nd then 20 of each, then 10.
And a 400m run to finish. fast as you can.

Suffice to say, very hard. The kind of hard I really love though. It's when you're lifting tricky, heavy weights, unsure if each rep is going to make it, that's scary. Lungs, well i'm used to them screaming at me, you just think, fuck it, keep going, you can't DIE right? You can't DIE doing this...?

Again last. And on the final run on the way home (to end the work out) amanda yells I LOVE OUR TEAM, and i say ME TOO, and we do. Everyone had there strength, their failing, their weakness, everyone worked til they couldn't work anymore, and then worked a litle bit more.
It does something GOOD to the insides of you, it does something good to the people all around you.

That's all I have to write about today. Not funny, or embarrsing, or entertaining, or about any sad dating foible, or singleness, love, break ups, or anything of the sort.

Just wanted to tell you how awesome I was today.

:)

Resuscitation

Things you do when you have just been broken up with:

Not eat. Drink alot of tea. Smoke alot.

Look at their face book page. Imagine everything they say is an encoded message to you. Cheer up. Or to someone else. Back to wanting to die.

Check your phone.

Do sudoku. Alot. At night. When your bed is a hot enemy and sleep is a rumour.

Plot your new, successful, perfect life. How happy you will be. How achieved those goals will get. How good you'll look. How in love you'll be. How better the next relationship will be. How self sufficient you'll feel. Good hair. Great clothes. Tiny waist. How beautiful your blue and white china sitting on the wooden bench with sunlight filtering over it in your perfect kitchen. Feel wind in your sails. Lie on your bed and cry.

Feel a jolt of painful electricity in your chest when your friend tells you she just got engaged.

Run. Run. Run. Believe that the pain in your legs is the pain ebbing out of your heart.

Not clean the bathroom.

Check your phone.

Not change the sheets for too long. Then change the sheets. Sniff your pillow case on it's way to the washing pile. Sob once as the smell of their greasy head and the knowledge of their goneness wrenches at your soul. Toss the sheets into a pile with the sharp angry flick of resolve. See the sheets drying and wish you could hadn't washed them away.

Cut your hair. Love your new hair. Hate your new hair. Cry.

Over dress in too sexy clothes, go out, get too drunk, kiss someone ugly, fall into a bush.

Tear up when you see animals show affection.

Watch sex and the city. Every season, every episode. Laugh and cry. Think you will be alright.

Write a sad, epic song about them on your guitar. Know that if you could just sing them this song they would understand everything, the burnt bridge between you would be resurrected, they would flood into your life again, touched by your depth of feeling and deep insight. Think about sending them an MP3 file of this song. Restrain yourself.

Write a list of reasons you didn't like them and you're glad you're broken up.
Tell yourself you are over them.
Imagine the list they'd write about you.
Wish you'd been nicer, shared more, less jealous.

Write them an angry, furious, vehemnous, raging email of hatred, blaming them for everything. Send it.
Write them an apologetic, jokey email. Begging them between the lines to take you back. Send it. Promise yourself never to email them again.

Have a moment of happiness. Know that things will be alright.

Sing along loudly to love songs that come on in the car and supermarket. Wonder if God put the songs there to fuck with you.

Check your phone.

Get heart palpitations.

Spend four hundred dollars at the mall. Wear your new expensive mohair cardigan for 24 hours straight. See it in the corner a week later. Regret two things.

Go on a health kick. Start with a green smoothie and lemon water. Have a coffee at lunch. Then a bacon sandwich cuz you're so hungry. Then twelve cigarettes. Start health kick tomorrow.

Call a friend you haven't spoken to for ages.
Tell them everythings great. Hang up and wish you hadn't called them.

Call an ex-flame you think never got over you. Find out they're married. Hang up and cry.

Get thinner. Put on pants you haven't been able to fit for awhile. Tell yourself it will be alright.

Check your phone.

Throw out your ugly underwear. Wish you hadn't worn it around them.

Plot your own suicide, the fictitious imagining of which centres around how sad your ex will be that you are gone. Picture him at the funeral, realise he will get sympathy that he doesn't deserve, and that you had to die to get him to shed a single fucking tear. Decide not to kill yourself.

Check your phone.

Have another tea.

Black and Brown is Frown

We need a new flat mate again. Actually we found one. But of course the usual flat mate interviewing preceded this. After meeting a dozen potential flat mates, my existing flatties and I sat around the table together and Mike - if you read my blog you'll remember him, he's the death metaller, six foot tall, shaved head, vegan and serious - said that one of the applicants, cherie, with her heart bracelet and rainbow t-shirt, and her insanely high pitched effervesence, seemed like the opposite of him.

Following this comment, a discussion ensued about what would be our opposites (great theme for a party). I tried to pick mine and said, maybe a really thin, mousy, quiet little librarian type girl with glasses and dyed black hair, but really why and depressed and introverted and emo?
And my flatmate pipes up and says, no, yours would be Malibu Barbie.
And everyone including myself erupts into laughter.
She carries on: with bleached boofy perfect hair, tan-o-rexic, fake boobs, six inch pink heels, heaps of bling and a handbag dog, and just really Done Up.

This reveleation at first brings me pride.. I yam what I yam... and then when it sinks in a little further I realise, I really AM NOT ... a done up girl. All that wearing of grey sweatshirt material, singlets with built in bra's and sneakers, the absence of makeup, the long tangly hair.. and the appearance of not having looked in the mirror (somedays it's true) has obviously not been lost on anyone. Huh. Sometimes you realise how the world see's you, and it's strange.

So I have been thinking that perhaps I would give being a girl more of a nudge. Maybe. Although it does look like a lot of hard work and time.

So the guy from the party... who tracked me down and was very interested in me.
Well he was nice, I saw him a few times, we hung out and it was fun.
But one problem was, he was a bit smaller than me. Okay quite a bit.

This is not hard to achieve... I have an athletic figure that has also been described as 'amazonian': tall, broad shoulders, kinda strong looking. I love it and am happy in my body, but being around a smallER guy... sometimes the words 'big mama jumbo' would go through my head. No girl wants to feel like big mama jumbo. Ever.

I mentioned this hitch to a male friend of mine, he's the kind of guy who likes his women skinny, in make up and with breast implants, so I thought he'd understand.
He said 'no problem, just wear more dresses and some make up and do your hair'.
Like possibly he'd been trying to find a time to say that to me for awhile.

Well, I thought this was potentially good advice, so out I went, and dresses I bought.
The problem then, for someone such as myself who is not exactly The House of Style, is that I don't have all the things that go WITH dresses: belts...handbags and other things I don't even know about, no doubt.

So here I was last night rummaging through my unfailingly stylish cousins wardrobe and admiring her new buys, she is deliciously stylish, always, and has impeccable taste, her outfits are art, I am in constant admiration of her. And there amongst her new things was a brown stretch belt. I said, hey i might borrow this to go over my new dress? It's black and like this and like this with some white flecks.

And she screws up her lips and goes mmm Black and Brown is Frown.
I crack up. did you just say Frown?? I ask. Yeah, she says, black and brown is ... frown.
Oh. She's serious!
In mock horror I ask her 'is there anything ELSE i should know?'
and she immediately says 'blue and green should never be seen... unles it's blue jeans and a green top' she says succintly.
Wow. The things you didn't know you didn't know. I mean, there are SLOGANS?
I suddenly felt a sharp feeling in my chest, that picked last left out feeling, like somewhere along the line every female had been taken into a girls only club and taught how to accessorise, what necklines suited them, dressing for your season, and how to remember fashion rules using rhymes leaving me playing outside in a muddy puddle with a wooden sword and pulling the legs off crabs.

There are so many things about being a woman that I clearly don't understand, but the thing is, it isn't my fault!
Growing up I had exactly two types of clothes (barring nickers), the ones my brothers had grown out of, and the ones my mum made at home.

Skivvy's featured heavily in my wardrobe, faded from years of use, in red, navy blue and forest green. As did track pants. Good, hard wearing, comfortable, practical clothes. I can remember tracking items of clothing as the passed from the folded pile in the hot water cupboard that belonged to my oldest brother, and then to the pile that belonged to my second oldest brother, and then finally! to my pile. Because I of course, wanted nothing more than to be my brothers.

Mum kept my hair short, boy short, once I had a rats tail. So short dad accused her of trying to make me a lesbian (multiple issues revealed by that little interaction). And then, when my parents divorced, I lived mostly with my dad. I was eleven. I lived with my dad, and two older brothers. I can't tell you how little they knew about being a girl, let alone dressing like one.

MY dad, was the man INFAMOUS for his choice of practicality over style.. no, not even style, over APPEARANCE. Dad is the man in the funny fluffy hat. Dad was the man who wore sandals and socks (it is an awesome combination, one must admit they deeply know this) but not just ANY socks, knee high, ribbed, folded down at the top, white or light pink or mint green 'business' socks and not just ANY sandals, brown Roman sandals. Dad is the man who now wears every day seeing glasses that are large round ovals that nearly join in the middle, they are somewhere between an owl, an old lady, the 80's and a made scientist. They are truly laughable. When he got these I actually had to intervene and tell him that they looked ridiculous (but in softer terms) because I didn't want people judging my dad as a crazy old bat!!
After considering this for several days my dad said to me: i listened to what you said, and you may well be right, but i have given you lots of good advice in your life that you haven't taken, and I am going to keep wearing the glasses. And so it was. is. People looked at my dad, for many of the wrong reasons.

Where was I?
Oh so yes. A girl. I think I ought to be more like a girl. Only, it seems like such a lot of hard work and frankly.. time wasted. Is it really worth it? Perhaps I would be married now if i had just put in a bit more effort. That's what aunts would say about me behind their hands if it were the 1900's and I had lifted my skirts to chase after a croquet ball.
Are black and brown really... frown?
Blue and green? never be seen?

I squatted 80kgs today. That's my max squat so far. Wearing leggins with a hole in them and a Y back single. Sweat ran off my nose and through my unwashed hair. The guys at crossfit were stoked and cheered for me.
Maybe I just need to find.. my own kind :) start looking outside of Malibu.

:D

I wish i wrote this...

You know the sound tracks to your life?
This is one of mine right now...
I just smudge my 'hot coral' nail polish posting this...


Swinging in the backyard
Pull up in your fast car
Whistling my name

Open up a beer
And you say get over here
And play a video game

I'm in his favorite sun dress
Watching me get undressed
Take that body downtown

I say you the bestest
Lean in for a big kiss
Put his favorite perfume on

Go play a video game

It's you, it's you, it's all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do

Singing in the old bars
Swinging with the old stars
Living for the fame

Kissing in the blue dark
Playing pool and wild darts
And video games

He holds me in his big arms
Drunk and I am seeing stars
This is all I think of

Watching all our friends fall
In and out of Old Paul's
This is my idea of fun
Playing video games

It's you, it's you, it's all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do

It's you, it's you, it's all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu9V3Phfsf8&ob=av2n

No more dating.

Well, I have decided officially (small panel consisting of three teddy bears, 1 cat and my workmate) to extricate myself from the 'dating game' and have removed my profile from findsomeone.

There i was last night, dredging my way through profiles, looking unenthusiastically into the same set of faces, lined with age, drawn by heart break and dulled by disappointment and the words: Grave yard, popped into my head.

Findsomeone is a grave yard.
A cemetry of dashed hopes and broken dreams, a cache of damaged, unloveable people.
And I heard my inner cynic, that had been muttering away the whole time, suddenly raise his voice to a shout.

I'm speaking from experience, i've met with say.. 6 guys from findsomeone? and they were all slightly... askew. That's not to say that weird, askew people can't be loved too. I just.. am not feeling that charitable these days I guess.

And the idea that any minute now... with just one eager finger click I will simply fall on ... not even the 'love of my life' which is an idea i matured into considering too unrealistic to put stock in years ago ... but even just someone GREAT.. it's just not holding water anymore.
Drip, drip, WOOSH. All the water has fallen out.

There's this aweful, underlying tone to dating and especially on line dating, that is that we are all judging and critquing each other SO HARSHLY. No one is given a fair chance, and we are all so incompatible because the only thing we have in common for sure is that we're single, and desperate enough to do online dating! Not a good start.
I'm sorry i shouldn't say desperate. The word that shouldn't be mentioned. But there it is.

Yeah yeah, i know this means me to. Dead as a doornail. Roll me over and inject me full of embalming fluid. I know, i know.

Maybe it's my menstrual cycle. But i'm just sick of the whole damn thing.
I'm sick of having the 'what single friends have you got' conversation with all of my various groups of friends.
I'm sick of pimping myself. I'm sick of being pimped.
Not that I've had any really terrible dates lately, but even the 'nice' average and good dates feel like a waste of time.
I'd rather be surfing.
I'd rather be sleeping.
I'd rather be reading, I should be playing guitar. I'd rather be with friends.
I'm sick of being defined by not being in a couple, what about: female, musical, naturopath, blonde, generous, good friend, fit, good cook.. what about all the other labels? I'm sick of them all getting usurped for that one. single. one.

I have one invite to jam and one invite to coffee and another invite to ice creams at devonport this weekend, and i don't want any of them. the dates or the guys.
I want to go away camping and surfing with friends, or by myself, with a book and a coffee plunger and a little gas stove, now THAT sounds like bliss.

I'm sick of having desire for something I don't have.
I just want to have what i do have. It's good here. Things are good.

If you know me, you know i'm as tempestuous as the seven sea's, changeable as aucklands weather and as contrary as mary and i'll probably be back on the pimp me out wagon waving the single and keen flag in no time.

But for now, shutting down my account has made me feel very calm.