Happy Birthday To Me!

By vanessa | Published: November 22, 2011

It is traditional to make New Years Resolutions around January, what with it being a ‘new year’ and what not, I’ve decided that today, my birthday, is my personal New Year’s Day. The last year has been such a hurly burly rush of ups and downs, new friends, and work work work, that it feels redundant to wait all the way till January to make a list of ways I want to improve in the next twelve months. That said, I have standards. I will never ever ever vow to lose weight as I am learning to love my body as it is. I will never give myself a deadline to be in a relationship, because that is just ludicrous and setting myself up for failure. And lastly, I will never as long as I live, vow to change something fundamental about my personality to get a partner, not even my grating laugh. These things, I promise you, dear reader.

5. I vow to take at least one photo of myself every day for the next year.
While this might sound incredibly vain and utterly pointless, there is a method behind this madness. As a child I adored having my photo taken, my Dad has boxes of prints of me mugging for the camera, until I reach my teenage years. Suddenly the photos drop off, and it’s only got worse the older I get. In the last year I have been tagged in precisely 3 photos of Facebook. It’s partly because I can’t stand the kind of person who starts taking photos at any old event, and partly because the second a camera comes out, I find myself stood shoulder to shoulder with the photographer giving them ‘tips’ in order to stay out of frame. On the rare occasion someone does manage to snap a photo of me I am horrified; that is not my face, my jaw is not that square, am I really that misshapen? I don’t seem to know what face to pull or how to stand, and look alternately like a fat angry baby or someone with a cardboard box jaw. Hopefully taking a picture of myself (or allowing someone else to) every day for the next year will force me to get over it. Should you be a stalker/interested in that kind of thing, I’ll be blogging it here, as I find it’s a good motivator.

4. I vow to do some ‘work’ every day, whether it be writing my novel, blogging, working on the radio show, or writing in any other form. 
Much like Wale I need to be on my ‘no days off shit’ and crack on with the hard work. I must not waste entire days watching Seinfeld and funnelling nuts into my mouth while lying in bed. Not that I did that before now, ahem.

3. I vow to remind myself that each person someone is a complete ass to me that this reflects on their personality, and that I am in control of the way I deal with this situation. The right thing to do is always to be the bigger person. 
That goes for when douchebags dump me and my first instinct is to go mental and tell them they’re going to die alone in a hole, people who are infuriatingly difficult to have adult discussions yet who I still have to interact with on a daily basis, and my family.

2. I vow to try and focus, at least once a week, on all the awesome excellent stuff that has happened to me, and all the wonderful people who are in my life.
It is so easy to think everything is doom and gloom, and that my life is a sad sitcom about a girl who doesn’t get dressed till 3pm most days and eats a lot of cereal. However when I compare my life now, to what it was life last year, I have come so far. My friends are amazing, some of the most supportive, brilliant people I’ve ever met, and I’m doing so many fun, exciting things, that I wouldn’t go back for all the money in the world.

1. Finally, I vow, at least once a day, to do something that makes me truly, deeply, happy.
Whether that’s eating courgette fries, dancing manically to Kanye West, or watching Blade Runner for the 900000th time, whatever it is, it’s ok to have a good time, in fact it’s mandatory.

 

Now don’t mind me, I’m off to waft some joss sticks around and meditate with some crystals.

Posted in Off Topic | 2 Comments

I’m Shopping For Blood

By vanessa | Published: November 18, 2011

Some of you may have noticed I am prone to hyperbole. When I said that someone fingerbanged me for seven hours, it may have been only three. Equally I do not really think E. Jean Carroll is a lush. So when I said that I saw someone ‘wearing a checked 3 piece vintage suit, and covered in old school tattoos… listening to Kanye West’ I didn’t actually think we’d be suitable life partners. Sure, he was hot, ludicrously, jaw droppingly, hot, and it seemed there was an overlap in our interests (fine tailoring, good music), but I’d never spoken to him and probably never would.

Those of you who were not well-acquainted with my penchant for ridiculous exaggeration, and falling in love at the drop of a hat, became rather obsessed with the idea that I had a list. That’s right: a list. Because life really does echo Sex and The City, I mean art, and women do indeed carry around lists inside their minds which obsessively detail what their prospective partner should be like. This is why we’re always hounding you guys to get jobs, settle down, cut your hair and nagnagnagnagnagnag. Lol. Lol. Omg. Wtf. Lol. I love the colour pink! Men suck! Women are bitches! Let me file my nails while you talk to me. OMG. BBQ.

Ahem.

As you can guess I did not find it amusing that people assumed I was going out with a strict checklist of things I want in a man. That kind of thinking a) only exists in the one-dimensional characters that chick-lit writers create, b) is utterly pointless. Of course I have preferences but they’re hardly unreasonable. I would like to be attracted to a person I want to be in a committed relationship with. I tend to find that my crushes are either tall thin men with acres of shaggy dark hair or long limbed women with bee stung lips. Preferably I would like my partner and I to share a few common interests: at the moment I am obsessed with ASAP Rocky, Emile Zola, Humphrey Bogart movies, and okonomiyaki. I’d like to think there’s something there for everyone.

Dating someone ignorant, misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, or homophobic,would, obviously, be a nightmare. No young Tories for me, thank-you. It would be nice if my partner was good with money, as I am abso-fucking-lutely awful with it, just as it’d be lovely if they liked cats and dogs, but one or the other is a bare minimum. Despising children is almost certainly a deal breaker, even though I am not sure I want any of my own. Lastly: funny. I just cannot go on another date with someone devoid of a sense of humour or, and I think this is worse, who genuinely enjoys watching Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Last of all I would really prefer to date someone who loves food as much as I do, because there are few things I like doing more than eating and making sex noises at the same time.

While these are enviable traits in anyone, I would like to point out that they do not always translate into qualities my squeezes have. My last serious relationship was with someone who liked bee-bop, was almost as bad with money as I am, felt ambivalent around animals, and uncomfortable around children. The one before that was the same height as me and liked cats and Huggy Bear more than he liked me. The thing is this is an ideal: a fantasy world where I look like Elizabeth Taylor, all my jokes are puke inducingly funny, and I rarely if ever have to fart. Even the shonkiest life coach will tell you to dream big because when you do you end up getting either what you want or something that is as good if not better. I’m not delusional, I know that some things are out of reach. And yeah I might not win the Nobel Prize for Literature or own the house from Ferris Bueller, but I can dream can’t I?

 

Painting by Amos Sewell for The Saturday Evening Post, January 1960 and photo of Paz de la Huerta by Mark Seliger.
Blog post title from this Franz Ferdinand song.  

Posted in Fantasy, Meeting People, Relationships | 9 Comments

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

By vanessa | Published: November 16, 2011

When I was 12 I discovered masturbation. Even at such a young, innocent, age, my fantasies were both slightly perverted and totally hackneyed. I was a naughty, naughty, girl, and my teacher wanted to punish me for not handing in my schoolwork on time. Irony is, I was a very naughty girl at school who’s teachers frequently did want to punish me for not handing in my schoolwork on time, but sadly only with pages and pages of lines and incredibly boring cleaning details.

For 6 years I relied on the cruel, terrifying, sexy, dreamland teacher in my head, and then I met the person I would lose my virginity to: Tony. The first few times we had sex it was exciting and a little uncomfortable, but I just couldn’t get there. I thought about how much I loved him, and how totally, ridiculously, super hot this was, and still, nothing. And so I started to imagine Dream Teacher again and it hit the spot perfectly. It took a while to sync up the drama to the right moments, as I wasn’t alone giving it a rub, but eventually I managed to work out what got me there quickest and how to incorporate it with Cosmo’s position of the month.

That tightly scripted play in my head worked perfectly with only minor changes (the teacher became a boss the minute I left school) for over 10 years. It worked through dozens of beds, back rows of cinemas, pub toilets, armchairs, and rugs. It saw me through 2 vibrators and a whole herd of one night stands. It was totally, utterly perfect…. until it wasn’t. I can’t remember exactly when masturbating became a rote tired affair, but after 10 years of endless re-runs I can’t say I was surprised. I just couldn’t get there.

No matter how fun or freaky things got I was still floating in a place just before an orgasm. That place feels a lot like the day you spend waiting for the broadband guy to come over and hook up your internet: the pacing, the waiting, the constant feeling of “Is this it? I think this is it! Oh my God! This is so it! Oh, it’s not it.” It’s unbearable torture, but not in a fun BDSM way.

So I started to mix shit up, I figured out a new scenario that worked, I figured out a couple. I auditioned moments in my mind, thought of porn that had turned me on, watched a lot of strange videos on XTube, and bought a new vibrator or two. Then I shut my eyes and went in for it. Over time I worked out another perfect scenario with a dozen or so interchangeable parts, adaptable for any occasion. I knew that no matter who I was with or where I was, once I imagined XXXX sticking it in XXXXX as he XXXXX my XXXXXXXX I could set the whole chain reaction off and get exactly where I wanted to, exactly how I wanted to.

As time went on the fantasy became more Caligula like, there were more of us, we were all very stretchy, lube was needed, frequently. I began to worry that some of these peccadilloes meant I might be unhinged or that there was something terribly wrong with me. I wondered if I should like to act them out in real life: what they would feel like, smell like, taste like. The thing was that every time an opportunity to enact this sexual olympics came along I backed out. Part of me wanted to keep it a fantasy, because there’s nothing so delicious as wanting something you can’t have.

Then, the other day, I was with someone, I was so focused on the moment, and not falling over (don’t even ask), that I couldn’t spare any brain cells to the pursuit of my fantasy. The fun was so wonderful, so overwhelming, so totally different and bizarre, that I came so unexpectedly, wholly, and brilliantly that I lay back afterwards, in total spread-eagled silence, and just let the adrenaline, sweat, and joy wash over me in silence. It felt so magical I wanted to light some incense, and start a drum circle. A tiny bit of me missed the cast who’d accompanied me to every orgasm before then, and a tiny bit of me felt proud I’d finally made it alone.

 

Illustration from Hollyhocks and Tulips/Satan Magazine, and photo from Retrodoll.

Posted in Marital Aids, Sexy Times | Leave a comment

What Do I Want? I Don’t Fucking Know

By vanessa | Published: November 12, 2011

Every time I think about ‘what I want’ from a relationship I get confused. I think about how I’m hungry. Or how I’d quite like a puppy. Or about maybe we might have bedbugs again even though I don’t think we do but what if we do? Because that’s what I’m good at: avoiding situations until they become a big ball of fuck and then blow up in my face.

What I want is to have, as a skeazy guy once told me in a bar, ‘a good time’. But not the sly, winking way that he meant it in. No. What I love about a relationship is the unbridled sense of fun. That feeling of being in a gang or team. That me and you against the world feeling. Dashing across Hampstead Heath and laughing on a swing. While this is starting to sound like a Colgate advert, I think there is something to be said for those fizzy feelings of love and sleep deprivation that a relationship causes, especially in it’s early days. I used to think I wanted someone to hold hands and look deep into the eyes of. Now I think that I want someone to scream at while on the top of a rollercoaster.

And then I think that I already have that person in the shape of one or another of my friends. Maybe I should want someone who’s stable, who can help me live a better life by encouraging me to reach my goals. Someone who’ll run a bath for me, hold my hand at the dentist, that sort of person. Or do I want someone who’ll rock up in a drop top Cadillac, blasting music and spirit me off on a road trip for days on end. Who smokes Gauloises and wears pomade. Tattoos or none? An old soul or a silly joker?

The problems is that I want all of that. I want a tattooed dude with a scooter who likes A$AP and Ann-Margret, who wants to swing on a star, then jump off a cliff into a warm blue sea. Basically, I want the moon on a stick. Is this unreasonable? Should I be tailoring my taste to create someone in my head who might actually exist? Until recently I thought so, and then I saw him. A man on the tube platform wearing a checked 3 piece vintage suit, and covered in old school tattoos. I shuffled near him and realised he was listening to Kanye West. For a brief second I looked straight into his eyes, and then he got on the tube and disappeared. That moment made me realise that it’s ok to want someone to be the moon a stick for you. And that it’s better to want that than to settle for second best.

 

Illustrations by Anti-Skewl Propaganda and Lauren Gregg

Posted in Not So Sexy Times | 5 Comments

Three Is The Magic Number

By vanessa | Published: November 9, 2011

Although, early on in this blog’s life I declared ‘three is not the magic number’ now I want to take that back. Three is an excellent number, but not if there’s three of you getting it on, that still seems like more work than it’s worth, but in the sense of dating. Three is most definitely the best number of people to have on the go. Two gets odd, like you’re playing one off the other, and one means all your eggs are in the same basket. Which is great if you’re crazy about them, but less so if they turn out to be a dick. Lest you think this is just me pontificating, I’ve been testing this theory out, and it works, honest. Over the last few months I’ve cycled through a variety of people (all for you readers! all for you!) and have decided that 5 is way way too many to be seeing at once, 4 kind of confusing, 3 stellar, and less than is well, it’s better than none when you’re not serious about anyone, but not as good as 3 can be.

When you’re out there, dating around, your main aim should be maximum fun. Fuck finding the one, because let me break it to you: there is no ‘one’. There are billions of people in this world and about 100k are going to be suitable for you, so chill the fuck out. Dating is about fun, getting drunk, doing neat stuff it’s boring to do alone, and meeting people who aren’t awful. Obviously along the way you’ll spend an evening or two so dull you’ll want to gnaw your own face off, and you will probably meet some jerks too. (FYI If you don’t: you’re the jerk.) And for this you ideally need three people. Each of the three has their role. Let me break it down for you…

One of them has to be the flakey one, there’s always one. They text you incessantly for a day or so, then disappear for a week. Return with gifts and promises of swanky bars, you go out, it’s fun, life’s a blast, then they have to go to Dubai for three weeks. If this was your number one pick you’d be going mental, or I’d be going mental (this blog operates on the phallacy that you’re as unhinged as me, deal with it), but since you’re not relying on them for all your emotional needs you can Kanye shrug it out and let it slide. This kind of person is highly unlikely to ever make it to official boyfriend status, but yeah and, so what? It’s fun, don’t overthink it!

The other two are kind of interchangeable: one is probably going to be sexier, the other one maybe more into spooning. Maybe one’s always dragging you out and the other’s got Sky. You need a balance here: you can’t be dating two party mad mentals who are pulling one arm each because you’ll just burn out. Equally you can’t date two dudes who spend all their time in their slippers because you’ll die of boredom. In an ideal world you want one to be James Franco (suave, urbane, witty, hot) and the other to be Keanu Reeves (beautiful, stupid, likes parties).

Obviously this is not an ideal world. And therefore sticking to this kind of formula would be setting yourself up for a massive disappointment. However if you shoot for Ryan Reynolds, you might at least end up with Shia LeBoeuf.*

 
*FUCK YOU. SHIA THEBEEF IS HOT, OK?
P.S: Use condoms and don’t lie about seeing more than one person to the other people unless you want to see no people at all.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Shave The Best Till Last

By vanessa | Published: November 3, 2011

The day I first shaved my legs is etched on my mind forever: it was summer, the first genuinely hot day of the year, and I was sat in the front seat of my Mum’s car looking down at my pasty legs when I realised that strips of stubbly black hair were everywhere. In my haste to shave my legs I had not realised I might need to go over some spots more than once, or at least check that my razor strokes overlapped. The rest of my day’s movements were carefully choreographed to show as little skin as possible. Dashes from desk to desk, sitting on the field, with my legs tucked under me and my jacket over my knees. Swinging my jumper and rucksack jauntily around my legs, and then running all the way from the busstop back to my house. Did anyone notice? No. Of course they didn’t. The fear of being seen as a lesbian in my school was so great that had my nipple been somehow hanging out my buttonhole no-one would have told me.

In the intervening 15 years I’ve gotten a lot better at shaving but I have also realised that there are three kinds of shaves:
- someone’s going to nuzzle their face against my legs
- it’s summer and I’m wearing a skirt
- it’s winter and the hair on my legs has got so long that my tights are really itchy, so I should probably do something about that

There is something quite joyfully lovely about being single and growing all your body hair out till you look like an Allen Ginsberg groupie, and yet equally there is something just as wonderful about shaving it all off and feeling like a newborn baby seal. Over the years I’ve wondered though, who am I doing this for? It certainly isn’t the people I’m seeing: I’ve found the ones who have a vested interest in my bikini line are generally total fucking idiots. I would go as far to say that any overt interest in another person’s pubic hair probably marks you out as a douchebag. A trim is good, in fact, often (I’m looking at you here, men) it is highly necessary. It’s not about length, or cleanliness, it’s about me not wanting your fucking pubes stuck in my teeth like popcorn shells. Get it? Good.

No matter how much I love trimming and shaving, seriously there is nothing better than growing your hair. That complete lack of effort and yet such results! Crests, waves, spirals, tufts you did not know you had. Patterns appearing on previously creamy skin. There’s something almost creative about it. Which is why I just can’t get riled up about Movember. If I could grow a ‘tache and get sponsored to give money to charity I would! Hell: I’m growing my armpit hair right now, just to see what it looks like.

My lackadaisical attitude to shaving has in the past seen me caught in some odd situations, and I have found myself stood on one leg in the bathroom, shaving my legs at 4am. Each time has been a disaster, cuts, cold wet legs, a man flicking through his phone in my bed, tired and confused. And for what? To make someone who is well aware that I have body hair think I naturally have none. When the rest of me looks this good, why does it matter that I have 2mm of leg hair? And the truth is: it doesn’t. As I have said a thousand times in a thousand ways on this blog: if someone is going to judge you on something so minor and arbitrary as having body hair then they are not worth your time. You’ll forgive them wearing hair putty in their manga character hairdo, and having a beard that gives you a terrible face rash, or wearing aftershave so strong it makes your eyes water, then they can forgive you wanting to keep your legs warm this winter.

 

 Illustration by Justin Coffee

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Do You Come Here Often?

By vanessa | Published: October 29, 2011

Let me set the scene: I am in a supermarket in Guadalajara, it is only my 6th day in Mexico, and I am staring at the cereal aisle in awe. What are all of these things? I reached out and touched one like a child in a dream.
“Hello.” A man is standing at my elbow. He looks like Pee Wee Herman but more tan.
“Hey.” I grab a box of own brand Lucky Charms. There are colours I’ve never seen before. Neon pinks and greens. I am near salivating.
“What star sign are you?”
“Scorpio.” Damnit. Why did I answer? I begin walking sideways down the aisle with him following in hot pursuit.
He is mumbling something about moons, stars being in alignment, that it’s very interesting someone as pale as me is a Scorpio. As we near the till he grabs the hem of my t-shirt. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Agh!” He lets go as if shocked with an electric current. “Oh no. This won’t do at all.” And he walks away.

There is rarely if ever a good time to throw out a good chat-up line. It’s creepy in a bar, and terrifying on a bus. Not only is there a layer of thoughtlessness in them, but there’s the implication that you’ve been throwing out the same line to hundreds of girls and waiting until one bites the bait. What anyone wants in a relationship, especially the start, is to feel special, and starting off with a line you read in a book is not special in any fucking way.

That said I do find there are little tips and tricks you end up relying on. Those little phrases that seem to work even though there is nothing at all sexy about them. For a long time I lived about fifteen minute’s walk from my favourite bar and would find myself outside, drunk, with some poor man blathering about phone numbers and cabs, when I would blurt out “Would you walk me home? So I feel safe of course.” This homage to my new found paramour’s chivalry worked every time. No-one wants to leave a lady walking home alone in the dark, and everyone knows that at the end of that walk is my house. What’s not to like? Whenever I said it I was genuinely concerned about walking home alone: my ex had been mugged on the way to my house once, and I am lazy and prone to taking shortcuts across fields in the dark. No matter how effete the man I figured there was safety in numbers.

And so this became my idea of a chat-up line, a coy phrase to throw out there, that had worked so well, that always seemed so spur of the moment, so heartfelt, so vulnerable. Until I was out on my birthday a couple of years ago, hitting on a friend who knew all my tricks. It got to the end of the night and I was stood outside the pub smoking a cigarette. I was cold and drunk, I didn’t want to have to stumble home alone. “Will you walk me home? I’d feel so much safer if you came too.” He smirked and took my arm. “Of course!” We began the trudge home. Five minutes in I dropped his arm, shrieking. “No! No! Not like that! You know all my tricks!” I was mortified I’d misjudged the situation and offended him horribly. He took my arm again. “Why do you think I’m walking you home?”

Reader, we fell in love.*

Still from an artwork by Jeremy Blake

P.S
Thank-you to everyone who nominated me, then voted for me in the Cosmo Blog Awards! Without you I wouldn’t have won! Thank-you a million times over, you are all amazing. I had a lovely time at the awards ceremony and my award is now in our bathroom so I will think of you all each time I pee!

 

 

 

*We also fell out of love, but that’s not such a good ending.

Posted in Not So Sexy Times | 3 Comments

What I Haven’t Learned In Two Years of Sex Blogging

By vanessa | Published: October 26, 2011

Two years ago I was at Latitude Festival with Andrew Kendall. We were both working and therefore not drinking, I was also unknowingly coming down with Swine Flu, and so we spent a long time wandering round in the middle of the night talking. I wanted to start a blog, I wasn’t sure what to write about. My last blogs had just been rambling about my life in general and that wasn’t cutting it anymore. Did I want to talk about music? Put my fiction up? Maybe I should get into photography again. As we clambered a hill looking for some Red Bull, Andrew said something which was to change my life: “Why don’t you write about all the idiots you date?” and so I did.

It would be so wonderful to be able to say to you all that I’ve learned so much and that I’ve grown as a person. That you readers have helped me find true ever lasting love mixed with total filth. But I haven’t. And you didn’t. Instead let’s see what I haven’t learned in the last two years.

1. If an evening starts to go wrong, it will probably continue to go wrong, and get worse and worse, and then someone will pull out pina colada flavoured lube and then you’ll have that stuck in your gums for the next 12 hours.

2. People do not ever change. They don’t change if I ask them nicely. They don’t change if I squeeze my eyes shut and cross my fingers. They don’t change if I date them and try to get them to stop put their dicks in every clunge in a 2 mile radius. They only change when we break up and they date someone else. Do you reckon they might change if I pretended to like prog-rock again? Scrap that, I’m not willing to pretend I like prog for anyone. Sorry.

3. Having a crush on someone is ok. Checking their Facebook and Twitter multiple times a day, then reading deep stuff into everything they post is not acceptable. Neither is meeting someone once, falling in crush with them, ODing on their social media prescences, and then falling out of crush with them because they like Strictly Come Dancing, and consequently being really rude to them the next time you see them.

4. Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream may not be a song which is suited to all occasions despite what you think at 4am when you are drunk. Or 2pm when you are sober.

5. Despite it being an unalienable fact that people who toast their bagels are the wrong sorts of people, I may want to try and be a little more tolerant of alternative lifestyles and admit that these people may occasionally have valid points to make about life. However they will never be my one true love.

 

This evening I’m off to the Cosmo Blog Awards, something I wouldn’t be able to do without all of you amazing readers voting for me, so thank-you! And here’s to another two years!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Do I Love You? Really Love You?

By vanessa | Published: October 19, 2011

There are so many different people to date. There are the kind you smuggle to your house at 4am in a cab and sneak out again under the cover of darkness. The ones that you bump into your friends with and suddenly realise that you do not, under any circumstances want to be seen with this person ever again. There are others who you want to follow around with a kleig light screaming “Look at them! Just look at them! They are so fucking amazing!” I haven’t dated anyone like that for a long time. There has been more than one dinner in a restaurant where I have been sitting on my hands praying that no-one I know walks in so that I don’t have to have an awkward conversation or introduce my date as my ‘uh…. friend’. And so I have devised this simple test: Is this person someone I would like to sit in the window of a cafe near my house with during the day time?

Let’s break it down.

Is this person someone I would like to sit in the window of a cafe near my house with during the day time?
Although the likelihood of me sitting in the widow of anywhere as I shovel food into my mouth is pretty slim, the concept is still valid. If we are sat in the back this could be a morning after breakfast, during which we will have an awkward conversation about jobs (“I don’t really have one”) or families (“They’re all dead”) or even the night before (“You were really drunk and screeching”). It’d be nice to be able to be sober and perky enough to sit in the front of the cafe and see the sun shine on someone’s face and not want to cringe.

Is this person someone I would like to sit in the window of a cafe near my house with during the day time?
In the last three months I have strayed further than 6 miles from my house precisely twice. This is partly because I live in East London and am fucking lazy and partly because: why bother? I work from home, Westfield just opened in Stratford, everyone I know lives near enough to walk over, and if it’s any further than a 30 minute tube ride why are we friends? What I’m saying in a roundabout manner is that the streets around my house are my whole life. If I have to take you to Crouch End to eat (and it’s not for some great secret restaurant that no-one’s ever heard about) then why are we doing this again? The sex had better be amazing.

Is this person someone I would like to sit in the window of a cafe near my house with during the day time?
Nighttime eating is a whole nother thing. It’s both knife and fork. Napkins. Ordering. Booze. Dimmed lights. A daytime meal is talking, properly, no sex after (well, probably no sex after), eggs that are about to burst when you cut them, sandwiches stuffed with filling until there’s no way to eat them sexily. It’s, as the song goes, getting to know you, getting to know all about you, getting to like you, getting to hope you like me. I’ll stop now because that clip, despite the cringe-inducing cultural insensitivity, is making me feel weepy. The point is lunch is like anal sex: you should only do it with someone you really truly trust.

Basically what we’re saying here is: “It’d be nice to want to be seen in public with someone I’m dating.” Jesus, that’s depressing.

 

Photo from Fuck Yeah Foods That Make You Fat. Yes. That is two Krispy Kremes with a fried egg, cheese and bacon in between them. There is little I want more in life, than this.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Last Night A Speed Date Saved My Life

By vanessa | Published: October 17, 2011

There is a rite of passage all people who write about dating must go through. A harrowing spectacle which only the strongest will survive. A show of strength, skill, and wit beyond measure. That’s right reader: I went speed dating.

The plan initially was to go with a friend and my housemate, and spend the whole thing howling with laughter at this ludicrous situation we had found ourselves in, all in the name of an amusing blog post. I spent all week wondering what on earth was suitable attire for a Monday night bout of speed dating: my stretch velvet minidress? A woollen pencil skirt? Heels? Shearling lined boots? In the end my outfit choice was dictated by the fact that I hadn’t done my laundry or repaired the dozen or so dresses I’d ripped in the preceding weeks, so I threw on an everyday dress, put a bit more lipstick on than usual, and set off alone, my two comrades having dropped out.

Unsurprisingly I was nervous. Standing in the basement of The Book Club I looked around me. Everyone was so shiny and glamorous and stood in groups with their friends who had glossy hair and coloured jeans on. I bought a drink and tried not to stare too much. Thankfully another woman, who we’ll call Glenda, was alone, and we soon became friends. The girls with glossy hair did not talk to us, or anyone else, they stared a lot. Glenda and I were shunted towards an awkward looking group of men by the organiser. For a moment or two we all stood looking at each other, blinking. It felt exactly like the first day of school. Glenda and I looked at the men, they looked at us. We all smiled. Someone said something about the weather and we all laughed. The relief was palpable.

Glenda and I took seats at an incredibly long table, facing a bunch of empty chairs. I made a bad joke about it being like The Apprentice, which I proceeded to repeat a dozen or so more times across the evening despite getting not one single laugh from it. As my first candidate sat down I gripped my drink tightly. What the hell were we going to talk about for three whole minutes?

Suddenly a chime was going, people were getting up and moving seats. I played noughts and crosses with a posh boy in a check shirt who lived in Wapping, discussed comics with a man in a sweater vest, and found out that people send poo in envelopes to bailiff’s offices with alarming regularity. There was a man who was working on one of the major scientific discoveries of the 21st century (no, seriously),and another who had been to Dollywood and enjoyed it as much as I had. Across the room a girl was arm-wrestling every man who sat down. I couldn’t decide if it was kooky or creepy, but was leaning towards the latter. Two chairs up from Glenda a girl had a set of 5 questions she asked everyone. The first was “Have you ever stolen anything?” She seemed to be incredibly unpopular.

When the last person got up from the chair opposite me I took a deep breath, then shuffled closer to Glenda. We went through our lists and compared notes. One man was deemed to be ‘too French’, another had ‘very creepy eyes’ and seemed ‘a little too sweaty’. Eventually after much deliberation we made a list of four people each, agreeing that really we only properly liked two of them, but thought the other two might be contenders. Nervously we handed our papers in to the organiser trying to squint at everyone else’s lists. A drink or two, a short walk to the busstop and it was over. On the way home I began to wish I could have just sat at that table talking to people about utter nonsense forever. I missed the tinkling noise of the change-over bell. I missed making my life sound exciting and scintillating. The rickety chair missed me I was sure. I even missed the drunk girl in the bathroom cleaning the red wine stain off her top with whom I’d had a lovely gossip.

Needless to say, should the opportunity arise again, I will definitely be going back. And that is not how I thought this would turn out at all! Oh and I may have got a date out of it. Ahem.

 

Should you too wish to go and have a fucking awesome time meeting a selection of good looking and funny people then the next Last Night A Speed Date Saved My Life is on Monday the 24th of October, at The Book Club in Shoreditch. Details here.

Photos from UhHuh Hair and  Ryan McGinley.

 

Posted in Dates | Leave a comment