I think I missed that part of my adolescent years where I had the chance to be frivolous and carefree about taking my place as a ‘woman.’ Could’ve been that 32-y-o I was dating at 16, or perhaps the 21-y-o with the child, that I looked after as his replacement mother, at 18, for a year or so.
Who knows.
Something went awry that left me without a few key life skills, I’ve come to realise, the least of which being that all too feminine drive to come across as a sex object for the attraction of men. Despite what some men and women might have you believe, I’m actually not that interested in the sexual attention of anyone, at all. I understand the advantages of having a nice smile, but the rest is up to the good graces of the sex-charged societal backflip that we seem to be living within, that makes any woman, honest or otherwise, into a walking, breathing potential cock hole, most of the time.
To be honest, there hasn’t ever really been a time when I’ve had much attention from men, until recently. Up until now, I’ve had these pseudo-masculine figureheads that I’ve loved so dearly that have all turned out to be extremely protective boyfriends who refuse to let another man glance at my goods, ever, without severe consequences. All these years I haven’t had to worry about my looks, what I come across as, how other men and women perceive me, because I’ve been spoken for.
But the single world is cut throat, I’m coming to realise. Since I’ve been single now for a whole year and a half, I’ve come to realise some interesting tid-bits about the nature of many women. I live in this single world of ours, but I’m definitely not used to the smell yet.
I never had any sisters, and my best friends have always been guys. I grew up with four brothers, a backyard full of cars and the smell of oil and sweat loitering about my bathroom every moment of every day. Mechanics shops, to me, feel a lot like home. These days I can race a car up the Spit, and win, with the right wheels, but I can’t walk in cork shoes for the life of me. I can rig a safe electrical connection between a back shed out a kitchen window, through a back room, over the clothes line and down past the garage … but I can’t hold another girl’s hand during a scary movie, when I know she’d love nothing more than a little comfort.
Let’s pretend for a moment that I’m at a party, sinking a beer at a table on a back veranda, under the stars … looking down at the clothes line past the railing, that holds in a decent amount of room to swing a few chairs around on the deck. In this instance, I am sitting at the table with the guys, sinking this beer of mine, and shouting stories about the good old days.
I will not, and I do not mention this lightly, I will not, and never will this be revoked, I will not ever sit on another girl’s lap and pose for the boys with my finger in my mouth, with come-get-me eyes and a sly smile to suggest that there’s something I got, that he wants.
Never in my life, is that girl me.
On the contrary, the mental process behind such a display actually confuses the hell out of me. My place, in this instance, is sitting at that table with the boys in their jeans, elbows on the bench top, lips pursed and eye brows raised, smirking slightly at the girls being silly for us, us guys, … wondering, not so strangely, what went wrong in my life, that left me sitting here, on this side. Sitting on the other side, staring at the girls while they touch each other and pretend to kiss, and then giggle about how they almost kissed and then oh my god, who wants us to do it!? I would sit there, staring at them, feeling nothing for these women but contempt. Jealousy that they have a skill that I don’t understand, that I will never possess. A skill that these girls have, to stop my conversation about movies and shoes with the blokes, and take their attention away for a seemingly ludicrous ritual of ‘play’ and flirtation.
If only I was a lesbian, they all say. And I’ll admit, I’ve said a few times. If only I was a lesbian, things would be so much easier.
But
you know what
I’m just, not.
I’m just a woman that was taught to value her hands instead of her cunt.
Which is a shame, really, because the world isn’t really set up for women like me.
Prom Queen
March 13, 2009
Life is belief, routine, and change.
Every moment in life is struggle, everything brings a different level of the personal challenge we each face, of continuation, of movement, and the challenge of keeping going.
The hardest part is motivation. Keeping the motivation you need to upkeep the continuation.
Self-reeducating norms, redefining your own norms. Deciding that at any given moment the next moment will be either different, or the same.
My norm is to sit, placid in front of science-fiction shows. Anything else in my life I consider to be ‘different.’ My norm used to be music and art, learning and beauty, and cultural mind expansion. All of the rest of things, now, are either extremely challenging, or overwhelmingly powerful, and in most cases of the later, unsettlelingly beautiful.
My existence is so neutral, so passive, in this way, that any piece of life I end up only ever mentally and physically gauging as extreme. Any stimuli what-so-ever has only registering as extreme, due to extreme passivity being my norm.
– A night on the town is nothing. To most.
A night on the town is different to that, to me. It’s new, it’s meaningful, it serves a purpose, it has new levels of comprehension and learning, and requires extra and inautomatic motivation from within my being somewhere. I do not organically set myself in motion.
To me, a night on the town is difficult. To me, a night on the town, can be everything.
It didn’t used to be this way. Once I was the prom queen. Murwillumbah High School, 2003 Queen of the prom. I still don’t know how I won that title.
This is it.
March 9, 2009
xkcd. This, right here, is it.
Shot Gun
March 5, 2009
Shot gun blast through the heart, bulk pulp punch through the back. Splat.
Adrenaline gland kicks a brave surge, see you later.
Clarification moment of a fear you’d rather forget.
Feet wet from the puddle of your own piss that snuck out
while you were thinking about
what would happen
if that mother fucker
did
what you thought he was going to do.
Got a bit drunk last night, walked home.
February 20, 2009
Walking though wet streets I want nothing but the rain with nothing
other than the rain to replace the faces that left me tonight. Another
face from the company that dispersed, I feel hurt I feel free with my
feet in the wet yet there’s something missing. And that’s you. All the
people that you brought to my life, Pandemic, all the trouble and the
wonder that you’ve brought to my life like a supernova fades into the
wet streets tonight as the last of you leaves. Leaves the bar, leaves
the country, leaves me restless lonely and alone. I See you, Pandemic,
now, as all that was. Company collapse glistens in my 2am haze.
Dirtbags
February 16, 2009
Are my choices really between just, dirtbags and whores?
No. In my experience whores tend to own their business practices, feel centered in their anarchical trade.
Whores don’t pretend to be doing something acceptable, lie to themselves about their worth based on a predetermined and a socially acceptable value system, and perpetuate lies and mistrust to make a name for themselves. They come out, breasts and balls blaring, smiling through the sweet smell of victory over indecent rules and judicial practices.
No, my choices are between dirtbags and bureaucrats. Few dirtier words exist. Rule makers and promise breakers, I can chose from. That’s where my choice lies if I stay here. My day to day choices move seamlessly between the liars, fuckwits, users and their fan clubs.
Too many of the women I know and the men I know are all dirtbags and bureaucrats in the big smoke. So much tension, so many regulations and rules. I miss the grass roots I came from, where people weren’t afraid to laugh and swear with a policeman about the kids that crashed their bike into the soccer shed. The men who took pride in the little things, the finer things, took pride in a day’s labour for their families, didn’t get caught up in their self righteous, self obsessed, self wank towards a name in lights. Take down as many people as you have to along the way, burn every bridge and hurt every human and animal you need to put a dollar sign in front of your three birth titles. It’s so fucking god damn important that you do exactly what you want to do when you want to do it, and everyone else can get FUCKED.
Right?
Right.
Prison System
February 7, 2009
Norman Mailer writes in his moving introduction to the novel In the Belly of the Beast, “Prison was an infernal machine of destruction, designed for the Dispose-All anus of a prodigiously diseased society.”
I’m reading a book by a man in an American jail, Jack Henry Abbott. His letters to Mailer were published in what has ended up being Abbotts memoirs: an amazing blow-by-blow recount of a life inside.
A LIFE.
From his 17th birthday to his 43rd, and counting. This man has been continually institutionalised and reinstitutionalised for reasons sometimes no more dangerous than spitting in a guard’s face, and at other times as violent as killing a man while defending himself against a knife.
I’m up to chapter: THE HOLE: Solitary Confinement. Abbott was sentenced to twenty-nine days in the hole for breaking an officers arm, which quickly became fifty-eight days when he poured a glass of water onto another guards uniform.
It’s disgusting. It’s inspiring. It’s making me want to learn more about it, and change the world. I want to punish the guards that have their violent way with the men Inside. I want to stop the Starvation Diet, and Drug Therapy.
I want to finish this book, first of all, and find out if they’ve let Jack Henry Abbott out yet.
I feel like I might be back, actually. I feel like I might be ready to pour script from finger tips again. I’m seeing coloured descriptions of my reality as I’m walking around, I’m seeing words, passionate descriptions about things I’m looking at, all the time. I’m actually reading a book for fucks sake. I actually have time, and subconscious peace, to read a book.
I’m enjoying my day at home today. It’s one of only two days that I’ve had at home alone in nearly six months. I’m going to enjoy sleeping alone, and waking up alone tomorrow morning.
Going from living by myself in a one bedroom flat for half a year, to immediately moving into this house, sharing every part of my life with three other (lovely) people and a best friend who stays with me in my bed two nights a week … has made it very, very hard to find time for myself.
It’s been very nice today though. I woke up at a friend’s house, came home, unlocked the door, got changed, cleaned the house, watched a movie, and soon, I’ll go to bed.
That’s my life. That’s what I like my life to be. It’s becoming apparent that the city is very hectic.
Future Considerations
February 1, 2009
I’m beginning to wonder about the order of things.
To Canada in ‘10, or to university again. Two dreams, two options.
Both options are of equal importance to my future, and my happiness. I suppose a voice of reason would try to convince me to take on a uni degree, finish my education before I take on the world. But time’s running out. I won’t be young enough to gain a UK working visa forever. It’s just for the under 25s, right?
Then again, if I’m an accomplished film producer I wouldn’t need the security of a working visa to make my stay in the UK seem feasible. I could just hire a hotel for a while and see the sites. Small time retail and bar work was never my forte, anyway.
I was just reading about the Australian film industry in the Courier Mail and found myself reconsidering again my move to the great Canadia. I was so sure, I’m always so sure, that the move is the best option.
But I think I’m settling in here.
Hard to believe, I know. I’ve been light-footed and mobile for so long, tripping over my own wake to get to the next short term goal.
But I like this house, and I like the people I live with. And the people around me. And the people I work with. And my job, and the place I’m from, and the dreams I have, long term.
I might have finally accepted my long term future as reasonable. More importantly, I’m beginning to see them as achievable, without the need for spontaneous everything-uprooting, every three months. Maybe I can own a car, and buy furniture. Maybe I don’t have to sing songs from my suitcase, and own only what I need, and what’s crucial to my day to day survival.
I even saw purpose, the other day, in buying a toothbrush holder.
Not really a heavy investment, I know. But it means something to me.
I want my toothbrush on that same bench for a time long enough to justify my buying a suitable holder.
That there means a damn lot, to me, actually, if we’re being honest.
Sex and Love, as usual
January 12, 2009
Everything keeps coming back to a few key points about relationships.
Sex without love is fruitless. It is a tree without purpose, for beauty only.
Is my sex, an ornament?
A garden filler?
What is sex, without love?
Not for me. That’s what.
It’s a good thing love comes naturally to me.
I fell in love with a man today, crossing the road.
I hoped that my eyes would penetrate the back of his head and into his soul, that he would turn around to let me see his face, let me touch his face and put his hands around my body.
It was his shirt.
I fell in love again with a woman last night, that I’ve never spoken to, one I’ve only seen in pictures. A woman so beautiful that my heart skips beats when I look at her hair, her face, her skin tone.
I fall in love so easily, all the time, in and out. And I worry.
Have I built too many walls around my lasting love that my standards are unreachable?
Am I still yet to experience true love?
No, I’ve definitely felt true love.
He was a challenge like none I’ve known before or since. A real man with love in his heart, and an alcoholic sleeve to rest his worries on. I fixed him for a long time, I looked after him, and he kept me busy. Kept me wanting, and kept me in arms reach of perfection.
I loved him so much, that I moved heaven and earth to make a life for us, as he did.
But addiction is a terrible affliction, and he had too many. Too many addictions ahead of me in the line, I couldn’t bare it.
So I made a list.
Things a man would need to do in order to be my forever-lover.
- Love me.
- Sing to me.
- Read stories to me at night time.
- Enjoy the music I enjoy, whether he dances or not, his appreciation is of the utmost importance.
- Willingness to change his mind, and compromise.
- The ability to see great things in his future, and dream, like I do, without depending on whether or not he’ll get there.
- Hair that suits my mood. If his hair-do becomes unsuitable, he must be willing to change his hair back to the way that I like it. Any man of any colour of any size of any stench could win my heart with a hair-do. And that’s no word of a lie. It has to suit them, too. It can’t just be any, just one, that I like on everyone. It has to be the one that suits them, best.
I can’t decide if I’m happy in my life or not.
I think I am.
ATA Double-page-spread
January 7, 2009
Dave tapped me on the shoulder.
I turned around, “Yes?”
“ATA double-page-spread,” he said.
I blinked.
Dave leaned forward.
“ATA double-page-spread…?” He said again.
“I’ll ask Vicki,” I shrugged, attempting to appear in the know.
I picked up the phone.
…*ring ring*
Vicki picked up the phone, “Yes?”
“um … ATA double-page-spread, apparently.”
“Oh, Steven,” Vicki said.
“Thanks.”
I hung up the phone and walked over to Steven.
“ATA double-page-spread?”
Steven looks up.
“Jason,” he said.
I walked over to Jason, stood in front of him for a moment, staring at him.
Jason looked up slowly, and removed his headphones.
“…Kate..?” Jason asked.
“ATA double-page-spread?”
“Oh!” He said, “I’ll make the call.”
I looked at Dave. Shrugged.
“Thanks,” Dave said.
I sighed.
“I do what I can.”
And wandered back to my desk.
