One change of scenery in the extreme later, this is now coming to you from Berlin, Germany.
Change the language, change the culture, change the bars and still the men are the same. Still the annoyances persist. Still life continues.
Monday 29 October 2007
Friday 17 August 2007
Smouldering
Waxing is the socially-acceptable form of self-harm, I came to realise yesterday as I was bending myself into odd positions attempting to wax my bikini line.
Unlike most women, I love waxing. I love the quick, sharp pain and the satisfaction of baby-smooth skin afterwards. Hence the reason I do it myself rather than let some bored teenager in a salon do it.
As disgusting as it is to admit it, I enjoy causing myself the pain.
On an un-related note, I went to another comedy club last night and met a man. Two men, really.
The first was the comedian himself who quickly picked up on my singledom and proceeded to proposition me throughout the show. I always did like a man who can make me laugh. In fact, when a boss of mine asked me last Summer what I look for in a man, I quite (infamously) said that if he can make me laugh, he can pretty much have me. Simple, but true. I'm now trying to decide whether it would be considered stalkerish for me to turn up to his show on Saturday night. I need a male opinion, but sadly I am lacking in male heterosexual friends who could answer honestly.
The second man broke my heart. He was quite simply smouldering. Hands down sexiest man I've ever been in a room with. We made quite a lot of eye contact as we were mooching around outside the club, waiting for the doors to open. He then followed me up to the hotel bar, where I was sitting on a stool doing my best impression of alluring, 1940s hotel bar female. Naturally the bargirl went to serve him first, even though I'd been there longer, but he corrected her. A quick flash of the lashes and a breathy thank you was all I was able to manage before a woman appeared behind him - clearly his girlfriend. She glared me back into submission before pulling him away.
Cut to the interval. In the first half of the show, thanks to my comedian friend it had emerged that I was single, vaguely attractive (beautiful was the word used, repeatedly), wearing a beautiful dress etc. I went back up to the bar to get myself a drink (as instructed by the comedian who said I'd be more likely to sleep with him if drunk - if only he knew) only to be followed by Smouldering American (as I shall now call him). He started talking to me.. flirting unashamedly. Telling me he couldn't believe I was single and that not one person in that room was up in the bar buying me a drink. As we failed to get the attention of the barstaff, we pooled drinks orders with him telling me to look sultry to attract attention. Sadly I am nowhere near skilled enough with words to describe the sheer chemistry we had. I have never, ever felt that with a man I've just met.
Then his girlfriend came and retrieved him and we parted ways. If I'm honest, I don't even care that he has a girlfriend (horrid, I know). I just know that were we to meet again, our clothes, beautiful or not, wouldn't stay on for very long.
All in all, a pleasing pain-filled (in more than one way) day.
Unlike most women, I love waxing. I love the quick, sharp pain and the satisfaction of baby-smooth skin afterwards. Hence the reason I do it myself rather than let some bored teenager in a salon do it.
As disgusting as it is to admit it, I enjoy causing myself the pain.
On an un-related note, I went to another comedy club last night and met a man. Two men, really.
The first was the comedian himself who quickly picked up on my singledom and proceeded to proposition me throughout the show. I always did like a man who can make me laugh. In fact, when a boss of mine asked me last Summer what I look for in a man, I quite (infamously) said that if he can make me laugh, he can pretty much have me. Simple, but true. I'm now trying to decide whether it would be considered stalkerish for me to turn up to his show on Saturday night. I need a male opinion, but sadly I am lacking in male heterosexual friends who could answer honestly.
The second man broke my heart. He was quite simply smouldering. Hands down sexiest man I've ever been in a room with. We made quite a lot of eye contact as we were mooching around outside the club, waiting for the doors to open. He then followed me up to the hotel bar, where I was sitting on a stool doing my best impression of alluring, 1940s hotel bar female. Naturally the bargirl went to serve him first, even though I'd been there longer, but he corrected her. A quick flash of the lashes and a breathy thank you was all I was able to manage before a woman appeared behind him - clearly his girlfriend. She glared me back into submission before pulling him away.
Cut to the interval. In the first half of the show, thanks to my comedian friend it had emerged that I was single, vaguely attractive (beautiful was the word used, repeatedly), wearing a beautiful dress etc. I went back up to the bar to get myself a drink (as instructed by the comedian who said I'd be more likely to sleep with him if drunk - if only he knew) only to be followed by Smouldering American (as I shall now call him). He started talking to me.. flirting unashamedly. Telling me he couldn't believe I was single and that not one person in that room was up in the bar buying me a drink. As we failed to get the attention of the barstaff, we pooled drinks orders with him telling me to look sultry to attract attention. Sadly I am nowhere near skilled enough with words to describe the sheer chemistry we had. I have never, ever felt that with a man I've just met.
Then his girlfriend came and retrieved him and we parted ways. If I'm honest, I don't even care that he has a girlfriend (horrid, I know). I just know that were we to meet again, our clothes, beautiful or not, wouldn't stay on for very long.
All in all, a pleasing pain-filled (in more than one way) day.
Tuesday 14 August 2007
Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a very funny thing. I find it quite wretched most of the time as it clouds my rational, every-day thinking with thoughts of what once was, and what could have been. Occasionally it rips open old, healing wounds which torment me in my insentient, present-day life.
A few old friends from an even older message board I used to frequent in my early Internet days have got in touch. One is now happily married to somebody else on the board (someone with whom I have a history, but that's for a post detailing my regrets), one has twins, a few have moved and are working in their dream jobs etc. It's nice to hear from them but weird to be faced with the incontrovertible evidence of their real life. I knew them only as personalities on a long-dead message board, not as people with problems, worries and responsibilities.
Therein lies the other problem with one's past encroaching upon one's present: realising that people around you have changed forces you to acknowledge the fact that you aren't who you once were - you too have problems, worries and responsibilities.
But I digress, the actual reason for this post is that one of the people with whom I am newly reunited was the best friend of J, the man whom I would describe as my own best friend of several years. Admittedly we had quite an odd friendship; we had briefly been more at one point in a drunken night of debauchery and mistakes, but had moved past that, used it even, to forge an iron-clad friendship.
We'd speak on the phone every single day. About nothing, most of the time, but it was the fact we could talk to one another without a specific purpose other than that we quite simply wanted to, that made our relationship special. In hindsight, he was quite depressed and quite stubborn about it, so a lot of the time was devoted to me talking him through the latest dilemma. Although it's horrible cliched to say so, we did tell each other everything; from a girl with trust and privacy issues, this was a first for me and something which has never been repeated since. We talked each other through dealings with the opposite sex, we talked one another through major life decisions, through family problems. We just talked and talked and talked.
And then we stopped. Quite suddenly.
Months of counselling J through problems caused by his self-destructive love interest, K, came to fruition as they finally got together. As this happened, J stopped calling or answering the phone. He stopped being there.
It's not that I begrudge helping him through his many, many problems with her, I begrudge the fact that he wasn't able to tell me that she clearly had a problem with me, and instead he chose to simply disappear. I don't feel used, I simply feel hurt. Hurt and lost. Scared also, because I know that this incident has done nothing to help my irrational fear of people becoming too close. Hurt, isolated and vulnerable.
And all this because an old friend of a friend came knocking. Thank you, nostalgia.
A few old friends from an even older message board I used to frequent in my early Internet days have got in touch. One is now happily married to somebody else on the board (someone with whom I have a history, but that's for a post detailing my regrets), one has twins, a few have moved and are working in their dream jobs etc. It's nice to hear from them but weird to be faced with the incontrovertible evidence of their real life. I knew them only as personalities on a long-dead message board, not as people with problems, worries and responsibilities.
Therein lies the other problem with one's past encroaching upon one's present: realising that people around you have changed forces you to acknowledge the fact that you aren't who you once were - you too have problems, worries and responsibilities.
But I digress, the actual reason for this post is that one of the people with whom I am newly reunited was the best friend of J, the man whom I would describe as my own best friend of several years. Admittedly we had quite an odd friendship; we had briefly been more at one point in a drunken night of debauchery and mistakes, but had moved past that, used it even, to forge an iron-clad friendship.
We'd speak on the phone every single day. About nothing, most of the time, but it was the fact we could talk to one another without a specific purpose other than that we quite simply wanted to, that made our relationship special. In hindsight, he was quite depressed and quite stubborn about it, so a lot of the time was devoted to me talking him through the latest dilemma. Although it's horrible cliched to say so, we did tell each other everything; from a girl with trust and privacy issues, this was a first for me and something which has never been repeated since. We talked each other through dealings with the opposite sex, we talked one another through major life decisions, through family problems. We just talked and talked and talked.
And then we stopped. Quite suddenly.
Months of counselling J through problems caused by his self-destructive love interest, K, came to fruition as they finally got together. As this happened, J stopped calling or answering the phone. He stopped being there.
It's not that I begrudge helping him through his many, many problems with her, I begrudge the fact that he wasn't able to tell me that she clearly had a problem with me, and instead he chose to simply disappear. I don't feel used, I simply feel hurt. Hurt and lost. Scared also, because I know that this incident has done nothing to help my irrational fear of people becoming too close. Hurt, isolated and vulnerable.
And all this because an old friend of a friend came knocking. Thank you, nostalgia.
Sunday 12 August 2007
A few things
1. Home insurance companies of Britain, I salute your brazen cheek. Advertising campaigns offering home insurance to protect against Mother Nature's worst? Some might call that mightily insensitive. Others would call it bloody good business sense.
3. Dear couple in the queue for ticket collection at Prince last Friday,
You look freakishly alike. Brother and sister freakishly alike. Those with a background in psychology would doubtless have something intelligent to say. I shall stick with a vague nod to family issues and repressed childhood desires.
3. Dear couple in the queue for ticket collection at Prince last Friday,
You look freakishly alike. Brother and sister freakishly alike. Those with a background in psychology would doubtless have something intelligent to say. I shall stick with a vague nod to family issues and repressed childhood desires.
He also looks uncannily like somebody I used to know, but that's another story for another day.
I've finished being vacuous now.
Friday 10 August 2007
Expectations
At a comedy club last night I finally realised what it is that bothers me about talking to members of the opposite sex in an alcohol-fuelled atmosphere: expectation.
It's been said that I am quite a friendly person, will chat to anybody, and that I have a decent enough, vaguely witty personality. As a result I often find myself talking to the same man all night, in much the same way I talk to women I meet out and about.
To me, talking is all it comes down to. A verbal spar, an exchange of anecdotes and witticisms. To the men, five minutes of exchanging pleasantries whilst waiting for the barman to finally get around to serving me my gin & tonic seems to be a signal that I will be spending the night around their seedy, dirty flat, exchanging bodily fluids in an acrobatic feat of wonder.
It happened to me again last night. One simple question about whether the doors were open upstairs led to a quite sweet, but incredibly hopeless older man spending the entire night glued to my side and assaulting my ears. I say sweet, but he did have the audacity to turn to me and ask whether I was planning on inviting him back to mine for coffee. To fall back on an old cliche, I was speechless. I must have managed to mumble something about getting up for work early before promptly leaving. He didn't seem too upset I'd refused (I can only assume he uses that line often, and that it works for him sometimes?), promising instead to call me today. Thank god for caller ID.
It's a situation I quite often find myself in. I slowly realise that what I am taking as a decent, one-off conversation, is actually forming the basis for a possible relationship (of sorts) for my partner in conversation. Then the panic sets in and I realise I have to extricate myself without hurting or offending (I am actually a nice person - a potential character flaw in such instances).
The idea of differing expectations came up in theladiesloos the other day, with somebody questioning whether allowing a man to buy you dinner is tantamount to declaring you'd like to jump him there and then. I'm of the opinion that yes, yes it is. Nobody gives anything without the expectation that they'll receive something in return. I hate, hate, hate the idea that in some warped way, a £30 dinner has potentially committed me to a night in this man's bed.
In fact, I'm so incredibly anal about such things that more often than not, even if I do want to jump the gentleman's bones, I'll still pay for my own dinner. I've only ever let one man pay for dinner for me - J, my very good, very complicated, married friend. Even then that sense of dread overcame me as he batted my credit card away with his when the bill was presented.
And so it begins to make sense why I prefer my own, sordid company.
It's been said that I am quite a friendly person, will chat to anybody, and that I have a decent enough, vaguely witty personality. As a result I often find myself talking to the same man all night, in much the same way I talk to women I meet out and about.
To me, talking is all it comes down to. A verbal spar, an exchange of anecdotes and witticisms. To the men, five minutes of exchanging pleasantries whilst waiting for the barman to finally get around to serving me my gin & tonic seems to be a signal that I will be spending the night around their seedy, dirty flat, exchanging bodily fluids in an acrobatic feat of wonder.
It happened to me again last night. One simple question about whether the doors were open upstairs led to a quite sweet, but incredibly hopeless older man spending the entire night glued to my side and assaulting my ears. I say sweet, but he did have the audacity to turn to me and ask whether I was planning on inviting him back to mine for coffee. To fall back on an old cliche, I was speechless. I must have managed to mumble something about getting up for work early before promptly leaving. He didn't seem too upset I'd refused (I can only assume he uses that line often, and that it works for him sometimes?), promising instead to call me today. Thank god for caller ID.
It's a situation I quite often find myself in. I slowly realise that what I am taking as a decent, one-off conversation, is actually forming the basis for a possible relationship (of sorts) for my partner in conversation. Then the panic sets in and I realise I have to extricate myself without hurting or offending (I am actually a nice person - a potential character flaw in such instances).
The idea of differing expectations came up in theladiesloos the other day, with somebody questioning whether allowing a man to buy you dinner is tantamount to declaring you'd like to jump him there and then. I'm of the opinion that yes, yes it is. Nobody gives anything without the expectation that they'll receive something in return. I hate, hate, hate the idea that in some warped way, a £30 dinner has potentially committed me to a night in this man's bed.
In fact, I'm so incredibly anal about such things that more often than not, even if I do want to jump the gentleman's bones, I'll still pay for my own dinner. I've only ever let one man pay for dinner for me - J, my very good, very complicated, married friend. Even then that sense of dread overcame me as he batted my credit card away with his when the bill was presented.
And so it begins to make sense why I prefer my own, sordid company.
Friday 3 August 2007
So-called journalism
Flicking through yesterday's London Lite, that bastion of investigative journalism and thought-provoking writing from dear Mr Murdoch, I found an article about Lilly Allen.
Nearly half of a full A4 page had been dedicated to this article, which had absolutely nothing of substance to impart other than that Ms Allen is now happy after her recent tour woes.
How did the highly-trained, highly-paid journalist know? He read it on her Myspace page. Rather he cleverly deemed it to be so, as denoted by the smiley face in her 'current mood' section.
That, ladies & gentleman, is the state of journalism today. You don't even have to move from your plush office, in your plush Kensington headquarters to get a scoop. A few quick clicks and Myspace will solve all your problems.
I despair.
Nearly half of a full A4 page had been dedicated to this article, which had absolutely nothing of substance to impart other than that Ms Allen is now happy after her recent tour woes.
How did the highly-trained, highly-paid journalist know? He read it on her Myspace page. Rather he cleverly deemed it to be so, as denoted by the smiley face in her 'current mood' section.
That, ladies & gentleman, is the state of journalism today. You don't even have to move from your plush office, in your plush Kensington headquarters to get a scoop. A few quick clicks and Myspace will solve all your problems.
I despair.
Thursday 2 August 2007
Removed
A little back-story:
I am perpetually single. I can also state that without feeling a nineteenth-century sort of shame about it; it’s of my own doing. Yes, I meet perfectly nice men and go on perfectly nice dates, the sort of dates that other women would kill for. Attentive, polite, humorous dinner partners who understand the unwritten, unspoken rule that nice women likely won’t sleep with them on the first date (out-dated and ridiculous, but I digress). Charming, respectful, intelligent men who call after the first date to request second, third and fourth ones etc. etc. It’s just me who never calls back.
To me singledom isn’t necessarily a problem. To my friends it is (my coupled-up, verging on holier-than-thou friends). They just don’t think it’s normal or appropriate for a woman of my age to spend most of her time alone.
If I’m perfectly honest, neither do I at times.
Yes, I enjoy my own company far more than is decent, but no matter how confident, how content I am, I can never quite shake the feeling that I’m wrong and they’re right; it’s the ultimate in societal peer pressure. Am I normal to find the company of others (in particular potential suitors) tedious and not worth my time? Is it okay that I circumvent the problems all relationships have by always keeping my distance?
As I’ve already mentioned, every once in a while my veneer of independence is shattered as I go on a date or two. I don’t know whether I do so in an attempt to prove myself right or wrong, but go I do. I dress up, I wear my best heels, I laugh, I smile, I have wonderful conversations, but after we’ve said our goodbyes I’m left with a sense of disappointment. Is that it? Is that what a host of women’s glossy magazines is based wholly upon each and every single month? Is that what we’re supposed to be toiling towards in life?
Give me my bed, Bulgakov’s Master & Margarita and a gin and tonic any day.
I am perpetually single. I can also state that without feeling a nineteenth-century sort of shame about it; it’s of my own doing. Yes, I meet perfectly nice men and go on perfectly nice dates, the sort of dates that other women would kill for. Attentive, polite, humorous dinner partners who understand the unwritten, unspoken rule that nice women likely won’t sleep with them on the first date (out-dated and ridiculous, but I digress). Charming, respectful, intelligent men who call after the first date to request second, third and fourth ones etc. etc. It’s just me who never calls back.
To me singledom isn’t necessarily a problem. To my friends it is (my coupled-up, verging on holier-than-thou friends). They just don’t think it’s normal or appropriate for a woman of my age to spend most of her time alone.
If I’m perfectly honest, neither do I at times.
Yes, I enjoy my own company far more than is decent, but no matter how confident, how content I am, I can never quite shake the feeling that I’m wrong and they’re right; it’s the ultimate in societal peer pressure. Am I normal to find the company of others (in particular potential suitors) tedious and not worth my time? Is it okay that I circumvent the problems all relationships have by always keeping my distance?
As I’ve already mentioned, every once in a while my veneer of independence is shattered as I go on a date or two. I don’t know whether I do so in an attempt to prove myself right or wrong, but go I do. I dress up, I wear my best heels, I laugh, I smile, I have wonderful conversations, but after we’ve said our goodbyes I’m left with a sense of disappointment. Is that it? Is that what a host of women’s glossy magazines is based wholly upon each and every single month? Is that what we’re supposed to be toiling towards in life?
Give me my bed, Bulgakov’s Master & Margarita and a gin and tonic any day.
Wednesday 1 August 2007
Beginnings
So, yet another twenty-something living in London with a blog.
I do apologise, Andrew Keen, but I too feel the burning desire to release my inconsequential musings into the vast expanses of the Internet. Rest assured, though, that just because I own the technology to do so, I do not have any pretensions of journalism. Just pretensions of having something vaguely interesting to say on one or two topics, interesting if only to me (ah, self deprecation - my favourite British trait). Nor shall I dwell too much on being "anonymous and self-obsessed".
Well the latter anyway.
R.
I do apologise, Andrew Keen, but I too feel the burning desire to release my inconsequential musings into the vast expanses of the Internet. Rest assured, though, that just because I own the technology to do so, I do not have any pretensions of journalism. Just pretensions of having something vaguely interesting to say on one or two topics, interesting if only to me (ah, self deprecation - my favourite British trait). Nor shall I dwell too much on being "anonymous and self-obsessed".
Well the latter anyway.
R.
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