I Wanna Be Loved By You

By vanessa | Published: September 12, 2011

For the last year or so I have been attempting to write a novel. Well, I say that: for four months I said I was writing a novel but didn’t actually do anything, and sometimes it’s not so much writing as squeezing tiny fragments of words out of my fingertips in a truly painful way. It’s absolute torture. The novel is (at it’s most basic level) about a girl who is in love with a girl who doesn’t love her back. I don’t want to wank on about it because I’ve written two other novels that were both piles of pap, and if this one ever gets finished it might turn out to be toss too, so to talk about it too much would be to jinx it. I refuse to fall into that trap. Unrequited love, that’s what we’re thinking about, that evil evil thing.

In films, and in books, there is something poignant and beautiful about loving someone who doesn’t love you back. Time and time again authors use that tired trope of the friend, waiting, pining in the background, until one day through luck or by wearing them down the object of their affection caves in. While I refuse to watch One Day, which I believe is based around that premise*, I have fallen for the saccahrine rouse more than once. I don’t know how they do it, but fictional unrequited love makes everything, even Peter Gabriel, seem adorably sweet.

But now we come to real life unrequited love, something I unfortunately know quite a bit about. For about a year I was in absolute 100% love with a man we shall call ‘Fatrick’ as that is what my best friend called him, despite him being neither fat nor called Patrick. In the year of my ‘loving’ him I had spoken to him precisely once. And yet I was smitten, almost disgustingly in love. His face swarmed up in all my dreams. I wrote stories about us, the glittering life we’d lead when we said more than “Oh, I’m sorry, did I spill my drink on you?” “Yes” to each other. Whenever I was bored I would allow my mind to wander off into a Jeremy Blake esque world of colours and sounds and all enveloping love. In my head this was all so cute, so adorable. Soon we’d be laughing about it together in a dim bar somewhere.

Fatrick and I did speak again. I was outside Trash on it’s last night, he bumped into me and said “I’m sorry.” My response was to burst into tears and run away. While it would be easy to blame the 3 bottles of wine I consumed prior to the meeting (very easy in fact) he was just such a disappointment close up that my ‘love’ for him burst like a bubble. The next morning I woke up and realised what an ass I’d been. He had been, for almost a year, a tarnished sun that I’d revolved around, and now I was careering through the galaxy alone. It felt great.

This whole pathetic spectacle made me think that unrequited love is ridiculous. Why would any sane person put themselves through the toe curling pain that is loving someone without being loved back? It makes you feel pathetic: like a dog begging for crumbs at the table. We looked at each other when I got off the bus! This has to mean something!

Then again, maybe unrequited love is the most honest pure kind of love at all. You’re loving someone, totally, fully, crazily, getting nothing back, and yet carrying on. Sure there’s something deranged about it,but isn’t love in general kind of deranged? I mean other people are vile disgusting creatures who only disappoint you, so maybe by knowing that and doing it anyway you’re one of those rare good eggs? Who knows? Now then, I wonder what Fatrick’s doing these days…

*I may be very wrong about this.
Photos from Heart-Shaped Apple and La Dolce Vita

Posted in Fantasy | 6 Comments

Love, You’re A Whore

By vanessa | Published: September 10, 2011

Maddalena: I love you Marcello. I want to be your wife. Be faithful. I want it all: to be your wife, and enjoy myself like a whore.
Marcello: Tonight, I don’t know why, I felt like I loved you, like I needed you.
Maddalena: Really?
Marcello: Really. I’m not sure if you’re being serious tonight, or playing games with me. But it doesn’t matter. I love you. I want to be with you always.
Maddalena: After a month you’d hate me.
Marcello: Why should I hate you?
Maddalena: Because no-one can have everything. You can’t have one thing or the other. You have to choose. And I can’t choose, it’s too late. I have never wanted to choose. I’m a whore, there’s no cure. I’ll always be a whore, and I don’t want to be anything else!

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s complicated, subtitled films in black and white. Give me The House Bunny over Les Bonnes Femmes any day. This is partly because I have bad eyesight and mostly because I’m an uncultured cretin. However I speak Italian fluently, so I can just about stomach watching Cinecittá’s 60s output, and last year I discovered La Dolce Vita. Just so you know, in no way am I qualified to even begin explaining the beauty, sadness, and the frustration that watching La Dolce Vita inspires. There are people with whole dissertations based around the dead fish washing up on shore, or Marcello’s stupidly beautiful face. All I want to talk about is the above conversation, because for the last few months it’s been on my mind.

It’s obvious that men love whores, I mean someone’s got to be fucking them or they wouldn’t be whores, but there is the idea that marriage or a long term relationship involves some kind of subduing: that you have to be a ‘good girl’. That is to say that men adore whores, but only when they stop being whores. Even though I tell myself someone who wants to change me is not worth my time, when I am in a relationship I tend to feel the urge to curb my drinking, stop shouting in clubs, or dancing on tables, and to make more nice dinners, because that’s what you do, right?

And even though nice dinners are well, uh, nice, I’ve decided that the next time I somehow fall into some kind of relationship I will not try and be the good girl that society tells me to be, and that I don’t have to make a choice. After all, why did they fall for me in the first place? Because underneath my chatty Cathy exterior lies the quivering heart of a good homemaker? Unlikely. No, they fell for me because I am a gobby tart, and if I’m honest with myself ‘I’ll always be a whore, and I don’t want to be anything else!’

Posted in Meeting People, Relationships, Sexy Times | Leave a comment

You Won’t Know I’m Driving Till We Get Out On The Road

By vanessa | Published: September 8, 2011

One of the best relationships I ever had was with a guy who’s surname I didn’t know, who’s job I didn’t care about, and who’s phone number I didn’t have. We met on New Year’s Eve and found ourselves shambling around London, drunk and cantankerous, until the early hours of New Year’s Day where we broke into a pub, stole a lot of booze, took it home to his suburban Tudor mansion, and drank it while watching Addams Family Values. At some point during the shambling I sprained my leg, we got chased by an angry bus driver, and 3 days passed in a giggly boozy haze. Even though we’d had a perfectly nice time I didn’t particularly want to see him again. Not because he wasn’t smart, hot, or funny (he was, obviously, all three, give me some credit), just because there didn’t seem to be much point in it. I was busy, he was busy, also I realised that we just weren’t compatible in the long run. But it was fine, no-one cried about it, we went on with our lives.

In the next two years I bumped into him twice, late at night, in some dingy bar or another, and we did it again on both occasions. Each time it was exactly what you want from that sort of thing: sex, a few laughs, a cig in bed, and maybe a nice conversation. When I got up to go to work, and told him he could let himself out when he liked he replied,”You’re not asking me to call you, I’m not asking you to call me. That’s perfect.”

When I think about what I want from a relationship, that’s pretty much it, with just a little more certainty. I’m past the need for someone to listen to my bullshit, or, God forbid, support me emotionally or financially. Neither do I particularly want to do that to someone else. Firstly I’m pretty shit at it and secondly it’s a drag I just don’t need. I wouldn’t mind having someone to come over and watch telly with sometimes, and maybe eat dinner with because the only thing I love more than sex, is food. And that, nebulous as it seems, is a ‘relationship’. It might last a month, it might last 40 years. Who knows and who cares?

It seems though that I have some difficulties in conveying that sense of nebulous ‘let’s just ramble on and see where this goes’ thing to other people, and so everyone I date ends up running away in fear. Because yeah, I’m pretty intense even when the plan is just to watch telly, and I’m loud, and I’m emotional, and I’m probably kind of crazy and demanding. But you know what? I’m a lot of other things too, things that are smart and good, and I’m not only an excellent cook but also a competent baker.

Friends tell me I should ‘be cool’, books tell me I should ‘play hard to get’, but why should I bother playing games or being someone I’m not? Surely pretending to be easy, breezy is as bad if not worse than being the screwball that I am? There’s the axiom that if you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results each time you’re thick, but when it comes to relationships I really don’t think you can apply it. People are twisted little beigels and logic doesn’t come into almost anything they do. I don’t think you, me, the authors of The Rules, He’s Just Not That Into You, Why Men Love Bitches, Women Who Love Too Much, Stop Kissing Frogs, or even that poor woman who you just know has all of these books and twenty thousand more hidden in a basement shelf in her batchelor apartment, know what to do: we’re all just stabbing in the dark until we hit the right spot.

Photos from Vintage Gal’s, and Elizabeth Taylor Loving’s Tumblrs.
Title from, what I think Santigold says in the LehtMoeJoe remix of Major Lazer’s Hold The Line

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Party And Bullshit

By vanessa | Published: September 2, 2011

The other night, while standing in the kitchen of a party, surrounded by beautifully dressed people, all drinking Polish beer and slipping around on a damp lino floor, I had a minor crisis: “What,” I thought to myself, “does one do at a party when you’re not trying to pull?”

That thought sloshed round my head alongside some fag smoke and cider for a while. I looked around at everyone else and tried to figure out exactly what they were doing, which seemed to be talking, or rather, shouting, at each other and drinking. “I’m good at shouting and drinking.” my internal monologue reminded me, “In fact those things, and eating, are probably my top three skills.” But as I looked around it seemed impossible to get into the flow. I felt myself standing against a wall and just staring, goggle eyed at everyone over the top of my bottle and wondering what it was that I normally spent most of my waking hours yammering about. “Bullshit” my internal monologue snapped.

I have been to enough parties in the past to surely have this knowledge stored away somewhere in my brain next to how to unclog a drain and what to do when the cat sicks a hairball on you, but I couldn’t dig it out. I knew that at parties when I had been looking for someone to squeeze on that I hadn’t spent my whole time rubbernecking and swapping conversation partners like I was speed dating, but I felt like I just didn’t know what my purpose at the party was anymore. It would be impossible to talk to the friends I had come with as music was super loud, no-one was dancing so I couldn’t jump up and practice my bestest wine. The other people? Well, uh, yeah. I scanned the room, the room stared back. A man who sounded like he was eating cotton wool walked past saying “Babes yeah, the thing is The Groop were a totally underrated band.” to a girl who looked like she’d lost control of her eyeballs.

For a while I worried that the only three options for party behaviour were i) screaming dancing on tables retching on people’s heads drunkenness, ii) silent eyeballing, or iii) humping the leg of anything human that passed. Looking around most people had gone for i and iii, while I was solidly sticking with ii. I told myself this was all good research, as though I were writing some as yet untitled novel about losers who go to parties and just glare at everyone through their fringes. But suddenly through a fog of Bloody Marys and menthol cigarettes the answer floated towards me: I should just leave. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t not trying to pull, it was just a terrible, horrible, no good party and the only thing that would happen was that I would end up at a busstop in Dalston eating chicken wings, reminding myself that text messages post midnight are 100% less cute than I think they are.

 

Photos from Music Babes’ Tumblr and Playboy magazine.

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Would You Love Me In A Bentley? Could You Love Me On A Bus?

By vanessa | Published: August 29, 2011

“Did you miss me?” That question. That huge, stupid, stinking question. The one you throw out into the air and watch fall, flat on the ground every bloody time. I asked someone it the other day. And not with an Elizabeth Taylor cocked eyebrow but earnestly, really wanting to know the answer. And what can the answer be? It can’t be ‘no’ because then the whole game’s up. That’s it, go home, the end, the person you are asking didn’t miss you, isn’t thinking about you, doesn’t list you in their top twenty favourite things, what’s the fucking point? And yet if they say ‘yes’ there’s always the idea that they’re just saying it because it’s the right answer no matter what the truth is.

There are half a dozen or so stinking questions: “Do I look prettier with or without my glasses?” “Would you love me if I was horribly disfigured?” “Do you think we’ll always be in love like this?” and so on and so forth. They’re all vile, saccharine, disgusting things. The kind of questions you only ask when you’re knee deep in if not love, then hardcore full on so good it makes you feel sick crush. I am, unfortunately, prone to these kind of questions. Part of me wants the brutal honesty that I look better without my glasses on, but then I want to hear the sugar coated “You look beautiful all the time and in every single thing, even that ratty Garfield t-shirt covered in hot rock burn holes that you cut the neck off and ripped a hole in under the stained armpit.” and I want it to be meant even if it is in the most insipidly earnest way ever.

Can it ever be like that? Is love ever really that wholesome and all encompassing and Disney like? Is there anyone in the world who genuinely thinks that even if their lover lost their face, wore a misaligned dirty wig, and starting voting Tory that their love would remain in that sun dappled golden blossom place that is was in the first few months? Are they sane?

Obviously in an ideal world everyone is missed, horribly, terribly so, and they would look ravishing in and out of make-up, and the person they are with would love them with a devotion so unwavering and intense it would be almost frightening, but not quite, and actually rather charming when you thought about it. But then, ugh what a sugary world! If I’m honest with myself I live for that moment between asking the stinking question and that split second you wait, that hover in the air, heart in your throat when you think they might actually admit, that no, they didn’t miss you, and then the relief, the wash of chemicals through your body when the rote answer comes: “Of course I missed you!”

 

Images by Jon Whitcomb, and who the hell knows, but it’s from Grottu’s Tumblr. Title, obviously, from the most needy yet romantic song ever 21 Questions.

Posted in Questions, Relationships | 1 Comment

Everything Is So Unsexy Right Now

By vanessa | Published: August 22, 2011

Me aged (in clockwise order): 6, 18, 9, 12

Growing up I was a huge nerd. I had glasses, gappy as fuck teeth, a unibrow, and horrible frizzy hair. My family were vegetarian, foreign, leftie, and compared to all the normal Jewish/Hindu kids I grew up with, totally fucking weird. We went on crazy holidays (Russia! India! The Isle of Skye…) and I went to galleries and marches with my parents instead of my Auntie’s house. I was a speccy nerd who read Zola’s Nana aged 9, yet was banned from watching Pretty Woman. Without any brothers or sisters around I became one of those strange mini adult children who had a snarky reply for everything, and who knew who Caro was. Basically, if I could meet my child self now I’d think she was an insufferable know-it-all brat with terrible hair.

Self-loathing aside I was a total outcast who could barely understand or connect with other people unless it was about early morning cartoons or Nancy Drew. Consequently I grew into a kind of odd adult who sits around alone a lot, talks to the stray cat on my street menacingly, and puts on bunny ears when miserable. I also hold that frizzy headed teenager inside me despite learning to use grooming tools correctly. And so when someone expresses an interest in me it is almost impossible to believe them. Not only is it hard to believe them, but it is hard not to obsess constantly over how they might be lured away by sexy girls who wear eyeliner and high heels, and never have knots in their hair.

As a kid I was horribly jealous of a girl called Kimberley who I was at school with for 10 years. She was pretty, funny, maybe not the brightest spark, but she could bogle and do the butterfly, and all the boys wanted me to ask her out for them. One year her boyfriend got her Prince’s ‘Most Beautiful Girl In The World’ on CD, and said Prince must have written it about her. Even then I thought that might be slight hyperbole because I didn’t think Prince would fancy a 12 year old, what with him being a fully grown man who wasn’t a paedophile, but it was such a nice thought I let it slide. I wanted to be Kimberley so much it hurt.

Every time I am miserable, like today, I find myself thinking of the Kimberleys of the world. And then the universe, as if powered by my furiously cycling legs, starts to lose it’s lustre. Everything seems like a turn off. Even Baptiste Giabiconi licking ice cream off my fingers naked would make me sigh. Jane Fonda rubbing herself down in vanilla scented moisturiser: ugh. Louis Garrell cycling in very tight trousers: yawn. As I start to feel myself as attractive as a curry in a carrier bag, dripping down the legs of a tramp, the rest of the world becomes a grey bore. The irony of such moods is that Kimberley herself is living a deeply unsexy life. Instead of turning into Jessica Rabbit she is a bedraggled Lois Griffin, with a gaggle of children and glasses that make my teenage ones look smouldering. I wonder how things could have gone so wrong; the only conclusion I can come to is that she stopped doing the butterfly…

 

Photos of me as a child are obviously from my own personal collection. To the person who anonymously asked me on Tumblr where they could see more photos of me, there they are, and you’re welcome. Prince photo is a still from Purple Rain.

Posted in Not So Sexy Times | 3 Comments

WE ARE GOING OFF TOPIC TO TALK ABOUT CARRIE BRADSHAW

By vanessa | Published: August 19, 2011

A long time ago I lived with Alexander Fury and a girl called Amy. Alex had the Sex and The City boxset, and since neither Amy nor I had seen much of it, we quickly found ourselves immersed in this strange slutty shiny world. God love Amy, but she’s not the brightest spark in the box, and watching it with her was a tiresome and difficult exercise. To begin with it was annoying because the last thing I wanted to have to do four times an episode was pause it and say “Well Amy, the reason Carrie’s shocked at seeing that guy is because she fucked him in the last bloody episode.” but her constant moronic questioning got me thinking a little deeper about the whole show. Firstly, how the hell could Carrie afford that flat? She wrote one measly column a week, which last time I checked was not enough to base an entire collection of Manolos and hideous dresses around. (For those of you thinking I am incapable of the suspension of my own disbelief: I watched Lost, ok?)

The second thing I began to wonder was: where are Carrie’s entire family? They didn’t even get invited to her wedding! Carrie you are one stone cold motherfucker. Speaking of the wedding, this brings us to the first film. Alex and I went to see it on the opening weekend, when the cinema was so full we couldn’t sit together. I got placed next to a group of girls who held hands all the way through and who were, needless to say, unamused by Alex and I howling with laughter at Carrie’s rage fest wedding or mopey honeymoon. They sighed and shrieked throughout, but why? Carrie is a bitch! Her best friend in the whole world, Miranda, is getting divorced, her other best friend, Charlotte, is pregnant, Samantha’s breaking up with Smith, and she never once asks how they are. She doesn’t thank them for coming on her honeymoon and trying to cheer her up, and the only time she laughs is when Charlotte gets diarrhoea. Nice, real nice.

As Alex and I left the cinema that Sunday afternoon I was near tears. “Look what happened in that film: all the women were happy, with careers, men who loved them, happy fulfilling lives, and then one by one they had it all taken away from them. Samantha learned she has to be a whore forever. Miranda learned you can’t be a strong woman and keep a man, baby, and career: one has to give, or you have to cave in and accept bullshit. Fuck Carrie. The only one who succeeded was Charlotte who just wanted a nice happy life barefoot with a baby on her hip.” And I then walked home broken.

When the film came out on DVD I had just been dumped, and Alex tried to cheer me up with a film marathon of The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and The City, and Pret a Porter, with pizza. I left, once again, almost suicidal. And then I remembered something that had happened when Alex, Amy, and I watched the last episode of the series.

For those of you that haven’t watched it, ever, or managed to bleach your mind of it’s revolting nature, Carrie wears a nameplate necklace that although cheap and vile, is invested with near mythical qualities. At some point in the last season she loses her necklace and is well gutted. Then she finds it, realises that she’s been a fucking ARSE and just bails out on someone else with “Oh soz, I realised I care about myself and some guy who dicks me around more than I do about you, BAI!” and cuts loose.

This is the crux of my hatred of Sex and The City. Carrie is an entitled, mysteriously rich, cow, who wears nice clothes, doesn’t give a fuck about anyone and then moans about all the time. She moves to Paris on a whim with a guy she barely knows, brushes her friends concerns under the carpet, and then gets all butthurt because oh no! French people don’t converse in English all the time! She misses her friends who’ve always been there for her whining bullshit! She realises that she’s not the centre of the universe for all of 3 seconds. Watching this display of excessive narcissism I almost imploded into a gooey mass of rage and giblets, when Amy, gasped suddenly “Her name is… Carrie?” The room fell silent. Amy’s eyes were wide as saucers, “I always thought she was called Kerry!” And it was then that I got to thinking: how hard is it to dispose of a dead body?

 

Images courtesy of the wonders of Google Image Search

Posted in Off Topic | 10 Comments

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

By vanessa | Published: August 17, 2011

For some reason each time I write the opening sentence of this post I make it all coy, and witter on about how using dating sites is acceptable, and how no-one’s ashamed of it anymore, but I think a teeny tiny part of me is. This shame is patently ridiculous because I write about vaginas and penises and how I over think everything until I hyperventilate, and don’t give a fuck about any of that, but the idea that I’ve put a profile up somewhere saying “Er I might like you to be my boyfriend, or we could have sex and not do that whole relationship thing, whatevs” makes me want to cringe right down to my toes.

To be fair, I haven’t exactly gone for a soul searching write-up, instead starting with the phrase ’Let’s not fuck about here: I’m pretty fucking awesome’ because I was sick of getting earnest pussies messaging me. Because that’s what dating sites seem to be filled with: sob story saddos writing about their pets and how their mum doesn’t love them. And if it’s not that, it’s guys asking you to look at their cock or join them and their girlfriend for a threesome, and occasionally dotted amongst these charmers, is a real star.

At one point my profile mentioned that I have an awesome reversable 60s woollen cape (which I do!). A lot of people seemed to get stuck on the cape thing, and I got a lot of messages about it. Including this one:

Subtle, nuanced, prose it was not. It was however sent at 3am by a what appeared to be (upon closer profile inspection) an attractive normally erudite man. I figured we all say stupid stuff at 3am when we are, presumably drunk, and thought I’d give them a chance, rather then leave them stewing in the juices of their own tipsy shame. Also it was the only message I’d received in a week that didn’t use text speak.

Snappy eh? It only took me a day and a half to come up with. Now the second I sent it, I wondered if it was worth giving him the time of day, or whether he was beyond help. I also wondered if my reply was a bit too terse. But my worries were soon to be assuaged when this came as a reply:

Willy. Up. My jaw quite literally dropped open. Dude, I threw you a bone and what did you do? You used the word willy. Who the fuck calls an erection a willy-up? What grown man uses the word willy? There are three year olds that know the correct nomenclature for their genitals, and while that is a tad precocious, it is better than you using the unsexiest word in the universe. Now not only do I have the word willy-up flashing through my mind, but I also have to think about how some rather innocuous pictures I uploaded gave you an erection and caused you to message me about sex at 3am in what I thought was a possibly sweet moment but what I now realise was a break from your furious fapping.

Needless to say I did not bother replying this time, I felt like this was probably not going to go down well at all. And anyway I didn’t want to converse with someone who used the word willy. And then this happened:

You don’t see why not? Really? Are you fucking with me? Has this worked before? You know what? I just can’t even think about this rationally anymore: you are fucking insane and I would rather attempt to wank myself off with driftwood than go near you. Splinters be damned.

 

 

 

Posted in Not So Sexy Times, Online Dating | 7 Comments

HAPPY YOU DIDN’T GET YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE PREGNANT DAY!

By vanessa | Published: August 15, 2011

The Slightly Pregnant Man L'Événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la Lune Niente di grave, suo marito è incinto

My extended family is huge: I have approximately 20 cousins, a dozen or second cousins (or cousins once removed for all you pedants), and then some other relatives like my mother’s cousin’s daughter’s kid, and that guy who’s not really my uncle but I call him uncle, and the kid of my cousin’s husband from his first wife’s kid. At least half of my cousins have had a baby when, to put it politely it might not have been a great idea. You know what I mean: they got pregnant and the guy flipped out, called her a whore, and then left her, never paying child support again. Or they got knocked up when they were dirt poor and now are working ten jobs and resentful of their child. Or they knocked up someone after two months of dating and were surprised when the relationship didn’t last forever ever.

Now I get it, pregnancies can happen when you least expect them and are extremely unprepared for them. However there is always another option, aka abortion. Because if you really really don’t want a baby you don’t have to have one. The end. However if you decide despite all the not so good elements in your life that you want to have one, then good luck to you. I think you might be a bit mental, but hey, someone’s got to have kids and I guess as they say there’s no right time to have one. But this blog post isn’t about you lot who’ve decided to spawn, it’s about us who haven’t.

Parenting is fucking hard, no two ways about it, but you know what else is hard? Not getting pregnant. At first it seems easy: condoms. But then there’s that whole thing that they suck and are fiddly and they chafe sometimes, and I believe they can be uncomfortable for the person with the penis, and anyway they’re not 100% reliable with a ‘typical failure rate’ of 15%. FIFTEEN PERCENT. Are you freaking out yet? Because I am. So you think I’ll back this shit up, I’ll use hormonal birth control, because drenching my body in synthetic hormones is fun fun fun, and that’s something I feel happy and safe about doing.

So you try the pill, but the first one you take makes your boobs swell till they’re 4 cup sizes bigger and so tender just breathing hurts. The second pill gives you spots so bad they’re inside your freaking nose. The third give you ‘breakthrough bleeding’ for month: aka you bleed, like your period, for an entire fucking month. Yeah that’s right, a whole fucking month. What’s the fucking point of that? I mean it’s not like you’re going to be having any sex when that’s happening so you might as well just not be on the pill at all.

And so you think about the coil (it seems kinda scary and painful, though some people say it’s fine), the injection (your mum grew a ‘tache), and the implant (your mate ended up in hospital after an allergic reaction). Promptly you consider celibacy but what with having urges and a partner, that seems kind of redundant, so you just use a condom, or the pill, or a sponge, or a femidom, wait, have you ever used a female condom because if so: I want to know about it, they seem, well…. odd? Like they would rustle or be strange or noisy or you know: just confusing. But anyway, you find a method and you stick to it and you cross your fingers each month and pray that you’re not up the duff and what do you get? Where are your congratulations cards? Where’s your moment at the family function when someone says “I’m so proud of you”?

Until now, there was none. You were languishing away in smoker’s corner, even if you don’t smoke, and feeling resentful. But no more. I proclaim today and every 15th of August from now, on HAPPY YOU DIDN’T GET YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE PREGNANT DAY! It’s a little cumbersome, but you’ll get used to it. Send a friend a card and tell them how proud you are of them successfully navigating this treacherous maze of contraception and lust. Thank a childless friend for not popping another baby out onto an already overpopulated planet. Or just hug your boyfriend and blow all the cash you would have spent on nappies and teething gel on getting proper wrecked and doing karaoke. Those of you with babies get all the credit, and you’re welcome to most of it, but it’s time to start sharing, because damnit, it’s time we non-breeders got some of the cake and bunting too.

 

Still from A Slightly Pregnant Man and photo by Dash Snow

Posted in Babies, Marital Aids, Sexy Times, STIs | 8 Comments

And I Don’t Want To Live This Life

By vanessa | Published: August 8, 2011

When I am in crush with someone, when I’m in that delicious getting to know you phase where everything’s sunny and happy and even tramping through the rain with a hangover feels magical and fresh and new, there is always a side of me that is pulling away from the exciting feeling. There’s a bit of me that thinks, hey there, chill out, don’t refresh their facebook page more than twice a day, just be cool. The urge to be easy breezy chilled out, take it or leave it, is overwhelming even in the face of ultimate crushdom. The thing is easy breezy does not come naturally to me. I want to be writing our names in pink Sharpie all over a folder somewhere with hearts and daisies for i’s. I want to be dreaming about lying in a cornfield and holding their hand. But I don’t.

There’s nothing worse than dreaming about starring in your own remake of Field of Dreams, and then being let down. Or as I expressed it so articulartly the other day:”I don’t want to think about something being something if it’s going to be nothing” And so I tend to supress how blissed out I feel about someone in the hopes that my brain will follow suit and that if/when I get let down I’ll be less pissed about it. But then there are times when I meet someone and it’s so Trevi Fountain perfect that it’s hard to turn off the dreamy soundtrack running through my head. It’s horrible! Unbearable! Painful! It’s worse than not being in crush! It’s like wanting to jump off a diving board but not knowing how deep the water is. Because it could be good, it could be fun, you could be about to do something super, mega, better than MDMA awesome, or you could be about to let yourself into a world of wailing and watching Dirty Dancing on repeat because it’s just so so meaningful.

While it seems like it’s probably a good idea to act all cool it can come off like I don’t care. And then if for some mental reason someone sticks around all of a sudden I stop acting cool and it’s like a landslide of emotion and clinging. Or is it? Is it just how normal people act? I used to be super needy. A few years ago a boyfriend who I spoke to multiple times every day didn’t contact me for 15 hours. I went batshit crazy and thought he was dead. I was so close to going all the way to town to stand outside his work waiting for him because I was convinced that he was absolutely positively definitely dead. Instead I just left a dozen or so increasingly bizarre and tearful voicemails and paced around my room thinking of elaborate ways he’d died. Nowadays I can’t imagine demanding that someone contact me multiple times a day or face my anxious wrath, because UGH I AM BUSY DAMNIT. Well, not really, but the illusion of being busy is a potent one that I like to keep up. Point is: don’t bug me all the time. I am over that shit.

Can we just go back to the Facebook stalking for a second? It’s not just me, is it? Even if the person who’s Facebook you’re refreshing isn’t particularly informative (who’s is?) it’s like a scab you just have to pick at and it hurts so fucking good. Oh look! They changed their picture! Oh look! Their friend just asked them out for drinks on Wednesday! Mental note: do not ask them out for drinks on Wednesday. Most of the time it’s just inane shit like that BUT I once figured out that someone was kind of doing the dirty on me by girls posting flirty stuff all over his wall all day and night. Well not ‘figured out’ it didn’t take a lot of figuring, let’s be honest, but it confirmed my worst fears.

Where did we start this blog post? Oh yeah: crushing out on is unbearable torture. Why do I do it to myself? Why put myself through umpteen daydream, don’t daydream, daydream, don’t daydream, weeks? Why do I fucking bother when 90% of this blog is full of DAMN WHY ARE YOU SO SHIT? posts? Because at the end of the shitstorm is a rainbow. That’s why kids. That’s why.

 

Photos from Vogue/Mikael Jansson (BEST PHOTOSHOOT EVER) and Marie Zucker
Post title is actually the name of a book Nancy Spungeon’s mother wrote about her, and in turn is a line taken from a poem that Sid Vicious wrote. SO DEEP RIGHT?

Posted in Not So Sexy Times, Relationships | 3 Comments