Tips for Men

Tip for Men #1: Never cancel a date via text within 24 hours of the date. You've already ruined her day and made it clear you're not that into her. At least be a man about it.

Tip for Men #2: Shower. Every day. And wear deodorant.
There is no exception to this rule.

Tip for Men #3: Never washing your jeans was a marketing gimmick invented by Nudie to make more money. They age better if you wash them every couple of months. Wash your jeans.

Tip for Men #4: Own a peacoat. Preferably in navy. Every man looks good in a peacoat.

Tip for Men #5: Get your teeth cleaned by a dentist once a year. I am deadly serious about this. You think I'm exaggerating don't you? I'm not. Noone will tell you that you have bad breath so just do this ok?

Tip for Men #6: Let women into and out of elevators and trains first. Yeah it's old-fashioned but it makes everyone feel special. (Women: if a man does this ALWAYS smile and say thankyou).

Tip for Men #7: Women are less overt in their flirting than you think. If a girl smiles at you, smile back. If she's still smiling she wants you to talk to her, I promise. Don't walk away it'll break her heart.

Tip for Men #8: When a woman uses the word "fine", it never is.

Tip for Men #9: Don't take other people's advice too seriously. Even mine.

Such be life

A recent avalanche of significant events has me feeling discombobulated. I’m fluctuating between sickening bliss, terror, fury, and fervent motivation of a kind usually reserved for evangelical extremists.

Here are the reasons:

1. First of all, there’s the problem of dating one person exclusively, and seeing them every day for two three (holy shit) solid months. Not only has my hard-earned independence disappeared, but so too my ability to be alone without pining for my lover’s company.  I mean, seriously, who am I? The saccharine quality of the time we spend together is so cloying I’m getting diabetes. But I CANNOT. KEEP. AWAY. Heroin would consume less of my time.

2. Then there’s the housemate who refused to leave when asked to do so. And who has become so Dexter-like in personality that I’m finding it difficult to physically and emotionally manage the level of terror, dread and fury she elicits in me.

God help my filthy pride, which would serve me better by shutting its dirty mouth and just letting me give in to all her unreasonable demands.

3. It’s three days until Polish family Christmas. Enough said.

4. And finally (well not quite, but some things don’t bear mentioning, even by one as honest as myself) there is my desire to finally get the theatre work up that I’d started planning 6 months ago but haven’t made any progress on since August, due to a combination of point 1, and fear. As well as my almost fanatical desperation to be involved in a film project with someone I consider an inspiration and (reluctant) mentor. Which, incidentally, I’ve already been told I can help with and which I’ve already put a little time into but which my impatient personality won’t allow me to stop obsessing over.

So.

No, wait. Hold up. I just thought of another thing.

5. That thing where when you start to love care about someone, you involuntarily begin to take on all their stress and pain as if it were your own. That thing’s happening to me too. 

So. That’s where it stands with me right now. Can you see why stuff be crazy in my head, heart and stomach?

Yeah...

So.

Such be life.

Afterword

I’m aware that as my readership slowly grows, and inevitably amongst people who actually know me, some of the life facts that I choose to disclose may seem overly candid. If that’s the case, I apologise. Albeit insincerely. If I can live with it, so can you.

The Unbearable Weight of Staying

I have discovered, recently, an overwhelming and almost uncontrollable urge to escape any situation that makes me feel anything too strongly.

Because I am terrified with my current situation. With the potential for hurt, and disappointment - both my own and his. And the possibility, or inevitability, of the discovery of ugliness. And the future realisation that we are not perfect, neither individually nor for eachother.

And I wonder what the fuck I am doing here.

And I am reminded once again why I chose a solitary life.

On such a full sea are we now afloat

Why am I feeling so lost and discombobulated? Is this how it’s meant to feel when you meet a person you are attracted to and enjoy spending time with? Because if so, I think there may be a terrible flaw in the way our emotions develop and someone needs to say something about it.

I feel excited, scared, distrustful, happy, beautiful, anxious, exhausted, nostalgic, uncertain, protective and confused. In equal parts.

I mean seriously.  How is that a positive combination?

I’ve lost 3 kilos and I haven’t been to the gym in weeks. My room is a mess, I've got almost no clean underwear, I haven’t changed my bed linen and my dogs have forgotten what the park looks like. My parents are permanently annoyed with my lack of communication, my housemate is pretty much living alone, I have done no work on either of the theatre projects I had in planning, and I spend my work days writing about and reading up on things completely unrelated to work. I am, in a word, distracted.

And the most disturbing thing is that it’s gotten increasingly worse until today my head has screamed with the hurtful thought, “What am I doing?” and my instinct is to cut and run before I lose the wonderful relationship I’ve cultivated with myself over the last 3 years. But then what is the purpose of life if not to love and what will my life be if I forever run from that?

Well, peaceful for one. And lonely. Productive. Focused. Centred. And safe. Safe. 

Safe.

That's it isn’t it? Safety.

Predictability and equilibrium. Things I have chased my whole life and will continue to chase because that’s the legacy left by my childhood. But with that emotional security comes self-doubt, and longing, and nights curled up in bed with a Kelpie and an old teddy bear wondering what might have been had I not made the choice to live my life alone. Because I had made that choice. Whole-heartedly. And now the chipping away at my resolve is something terrifying and disorientating. And I long for my boring solo existence when emotions were rational and linear and my own company didn’t feel like there was someone missing from it.

So.

Oh, That Way Madness Lies

A friend recently asked me if I have a “list” of dating non-negotiables.

I can’t remember my exact reaction but it was probably somewhere between a cringe and a guffaw. To me, the idea of making a checklist of desirable qualities seems prescriptive and calculating. It takes the one thing in my life that I approach spontaneously and instinctively, without much thought for my well-being or future, and turns it into something controlled, angst-ridden, and safe… which is how I handle almost every other aspect of my life.

So when it comes to men, I don't have a type. Or a set of requirements that must be met.

But.

There are some things I find very difficult to resist…

Like checked shirts. Blue eyes. Black-framed glasses, and bed hair.
Tattoos.
Hyper-intelligence.
Extensive music knowledge and a Penguin classic beside the bed.
Being good with children. Old-fashioned manners. The ability to fix computers or cars.
The courage to sometimes tell me what to do.
An uncontrollable urge to throwdown(1). 

Any one of these things in someone will immediately get my attention. A handful may start to overtake my thoughts. But all these things in one person aren't perfection, they're madness.

So no, I have no list.
But... if a man in a check shirt and messy hair, with tattoos and glasses, doing the cryptic crossword with a Bulgakov sticking out of his bag on the way to a gig, were to stop and open a door for me?

Well, I may just disappear forever.


1. throwdown
an act of sexual passion in which one of the persons involved is so overwhelmed with the urge to makeout/hookup/have sex with the other person that he or she loses control, taking passionate, almost aggressive charge, and intensely makes out with the other. this act may involve pushing someone against the wall or onto a bed and may also include grabbing of the face and hair.
Source

the reasons why

That night on Russell St when you offered me your jacket, even though you were only wearing a T-shirt underneath
The evening you took my hand and kissed my fingers after I told you something sad about myself, even though we'd only known eachother a couple hours
That time you lay back on your bed with your eyes closed and played your guitar for me
The way you gently, relentlessly and passionately challenged my views on religion and God every time we met
How you would mimic my voice whenever I said anything you thought was cute
The time you used a whole tray of ice on my body to slowly cool me down, in the hot bedroom of your house during that never-ending, Perth Summer
The text message you sent me when I was living in New York that said I was the coolest girl ever to breathe the mix of gases that enables a human to live on this planet
The cupcake you bought me that I never got to eat
That day I forgot my lunch and you made me a toasted cheese sandwich and brought it all the way into the city on the train so that I wouldn't go hungry
The time you dragged me through your front door and into your bedroom, leaving your friends standing in the hallway, because you couldn't wait another minute to have sex with me
The YouTube video you made me
That heartbreaking day we spent together after our awful choice that you somehow made into something wonderful and fun and full of joy
The way you would prepare my dinner every Saturday night, while I was sleeping, to help me get ready for work
That horrible night you got blindingly drunk and called me saying you'd kill yourself if I didn't go out with you
The flower you left on my windscreen after I broke your heart

I don't love you any more.
But I did.
For a moment, a few months, years.
And these are the reasons why.
Thankyou.

M.B.

I would walk barefoot (in pantyhose!) in the rain, if only you'd reply to my email.

I would eat a non-vegetarian burger.
I'd give away my Leonard Cohen tickets.
I'd shave my legs and paint my nails.
If you'd acknowledge that I still exist.

I'd update my blog at night, in a dress which you've never seen, if I thought it might make a difference.

And I'd still think about you.
.............
And think about you.
...................
And think about you.
.........................
And date other men who looked like you.
If it'd maybe make you notice.

But you don't. And you won't. (And it doesn't and you haven't).

And it's taking every piece of my feeble motivation to stop me from contacting you again.

What I Need to Say When I Need to Say Something

I’m sitting here, smoking in my room because I have the house to myself, and thinking:

Fuck it.

I’m sick of being So. Fucking. Good.

I’ve had enough of not having sex on the first date, let alone with strangers. Of no longer taking drugs. Of getting anxious around the smell of pot and being shy with guys. Of my need for approval from those in authority.

There is a duality in me, like in all people to some extent, which confuses and frightens me.
I yearn for the self-destructive consumption of alcohol, yet I’m equally repulsed by the lack of self-control it represents.
I am intense and violent in my sexuality but, until very recently, felt horrified and dirty at the thought of presenting anything other than the illusion of pious virginity to my parents. Not to mention the impression I make on men of being intimidating and difficult.
I have a merciless contempt for anything conventional and popular – musically, sartorially, artistically – but I long for the simple sexuality of blonde hair and fake breasts and have a secret playlist of pop R&B songs that I listen to when noone is around to hear it.
I spent a good part of my life trying to starve myself to death, can tell you the caloric content of almost any food you could name, use Equal, drink soy, eat organic… but nothing warms my heart more than deep-fried slivers of potato covered in chicken flavoured sodium chloride with some form of processed meat product. And as a child I would cry myself to sleep about the state of the world and wake up having wet the bed, but these days I eat McDonald’s and never give money to people in the street, as if the $42 a month I send to Lidia Rodriguez in Honduras somehow frees me from any further responsibility or guilt.

I am a walking contradiction and I no longer know how much of this is natural human caprice and how much has come about as a result of attempting to fit my passionate, intense, violent and self-destructive personality into the outlines of the body I’ve chosen to present to the world. But what I do know is that I’m sick of holding it all together. I want to spill out over the edges of my carefully drawn lines and run screaming at the world while I’m still young enough and beautiful enough to do so.

That’s what I want to do.
But after twenty odd years of building up walls, how the fuck am I meant to break them down now?

Post-coital

Right now
today
after sex.
He feels unnecessary.
He lies against me and I face the other way and I feel like the sun.
Outside it’s raining and I imagine I’m in Paris - the beautiful ingénue in an arthouse film and he is one of my many lovers.
He turns my face toward him and says,
“You’re very pretty”.

And I feel alone.

The Lust of my Life

From my private journal, dated 28th August, 2009

Today I saw ______! He was sitting outside Jungle Juice, next door to my work, when I came back from my break, wearing a fisherman's beanie and his 1940's suit.

Beautiful, beautiful man.

I walked past my work and hurried straight over to order a coffee and he remembered me and smiled.
"Hey" I said, staring transfixed into his bluest of blue eyes.
"Hey" he replied, calmly.
"What you up to?"
"Working, working" he said with a camp flick of the wrist. Is he gay? I hadn't really considered it before but it's very possible.
"You?" he added.
"Yeah, working. Next door." I pointed.
We smiled and I ordered my coffee and walked away... but I could've stayed and stared at those eyes for hours. It makes my stomach buzz just thinking about it.
God, I sound like I've been reading Mills & Boon romances. I haven't. I promise. He just has that affect on me. I would marry him tomorrow. I would sleep with his brother, but I would marry him tomorrow.

LATER that same day...
Saw him again. That's two sightings in one day. But there's a negative spin to this story. He was sitting outside the fish'n'chip shop with a female. Rubbing her knee. This leads me to conclude one of two things. Either, she is his partner and therefore the obvious recipient of familiar knee touching, or, he's gay and she is his fag hag (I hate that term. Why did I use it?) She is his female friend and therefore open to all manner of intimate physical contact.

Unfortunately, neither of these possibilities bodes well for my future with Mr ____.

To Get a Woman...

Taken from The Light of God and Girls

The Big Easy Empty

I’ve had an unusual week and I’m at Dutch angles. I allowed myself to let go of my own values and that’s dangerous territory to venture in to, the result of which has been the materialisation of a Big Empty Nothing in the pit of my stomach.
I’ve found it hard to focus. It’s been tough to eat. I’ve talked too much. I missed by ex-boyfriend. I washed down high-strength codeine with wine at 3 o’clock on my lunch break. I didn’t do the cryptic crossword. I cried all the way home on the train. I called myself mean names and thought bad things about myself.

But, during the same week:
I was chased down the stairs at the theatre by a boy twice in once night. An actor. A lead actor. Of a Big Production from a Well Respected Theatre Company.
Another boy-man, a drummer, in a band, that I’ve secretly liked for a long time, caught my eye and smiled at me, more than once, in the laneway, and started to come into my shop (before I got scared and turned away and looked busy. But next time I may act normal).
And a man-boy has wanted to spend time with me and walked me to my car and offered to spend more time with me in the near future.
And yet another boy drew a picture for me and helped me make a decision and sent me a nice text when I was sad and asked to eat food with me at a place where you pay to do so.
And I have an audition for a TV show tomorrow.

So, why do things work this way? Why do good things bunch themselves together like sixteen-year-old girls and then disappear for months on end? And why do some other things, which start out as really, incredibly good, suddenly decide to become really, really not so good and altogether quite unpleasant? And where is that lovely balance between the two?

But I must say that despite the Big Empty that’s nested down in my stomach, a part of me has actually silently enjoyed the frustration of this past week. A part of me that says, “This may feel bad, but savour it. It means you are alive”.
So me and my Big Empty are, for now, learning to cohabitate. And when it eventually decides to pack its swag and leave town, I will not reminisce about it altogether unkindly.

Of Hands and Teeth

It’s cold and wet and I’m overcome with a familiar feeling of loneliness and solitude. The heater is on. The dog is licking himself in that way that drives me insane. My 26 year-old sweater smells like fabric softener.

The aimlessness is torture.

I’ve never been a person who copes well with inactivity. I fill my days with work, chores, outings, events, to avoid, at all costs, being left alone with my own thoughts. But in the depths of my busyness, nothing excites me more than the idea of an uncluttered day. Because we are wired to strive for happiness in something ‘other’, regardless of whether that ‘other’ has proven itself to be pleasurable or not.

So today, like on all my other days off work, I went out1. I wandered around Sun Bookshop looking for The Trick is to Keep Breathing but ended up being seduced by zombies yet again. Then I went across the street to Cornershop and spent a solid 3 hours reading, eating, drinking coffee, and awkwardly responding to the subtle flirtations of the cute waiter who is slightly too young and too shaggy to interest me enough to want to pursue him. I put off returning home as long as I could. I even walked back across the street to the cinema to see if it would save me from the inevitable. It didn’t and here I am. Sitting in the quiet warmth of my living room, legs tucked under me, on a folded quilt on the ground, feeling… feeling… feeling alone and surrounded by the deafening noise of a million other sorry people rushing about or sitting quietly alone, inflicting some form of pain upon themselves, all in the same state of aloneness as me.

Oh my God. Have you read this thing I’ve just written? Who am I? Please someone take me out and shake the black eyeliner and razor-blades off of me.

And after you’ve done that, stay for dinner and keep me company.


1Because in the three years and four months since I moved to Melbourne, I have spent only one day confined to my house. No. Wait. I did leave the house that day. For breakfast. But I spent the entire rest of the day at home on the couch reading a book. Quite a feat! I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks afterwards.

On Men and Parallel Parking

So.
Men.
I don’t get them.
And lately I’ve found myself more and more attracted to the kinds of men I’ve always reviled. The tattooed and the dirty and the drug addicted. Is this the after effect of a six-year relationship with a ‘nice guy’ (who, as it turns out, wasn’t so nice anyway)? Or is it a rebellion against my Eastern European, Catholic, clothes-freshly-washed-and-ironed upbringing? Whatever the reason, I find myself being inescapably drawn to the suggestion of a no-strings-attached liaison with a man who will expect nothing of me but simultaneously shower me with attention. “Fantasy!” I hear you say. Very possibly so, but a girl can dream can’t she? And by God I have been.
But dirty men aside, what I really don’t understand is the whole courting ritual. Once again I blame my LTR* for my complete lack of dating savvy but really, if a girl is interested, but not overly so, why must men make everything so complicated? Is it that they believe all women want to marry them? That every interested girl automatically thinks of nesting down? Because I can truthfully say that in my case this isn’t so. So why the hot and the cold? The on and the off? The furtive glances across a crowded room and the arrogant attitude? I mean for God’s sake (should I believe in him, which I’m not sure anymore that I do), just tell us what you want and be done with it. But I guess that’s asking too much. After all, I have a 6-month-old secret crush that I express by being openly rude and hostile, so what can I really expect in return? And, deep down, at the very core of my subconscious mind, I don’t actually believe that any man is really capable of loving one woman for the term of his natural life, nor that he really wants anything more than sex, so what am I getting so upset about anyway? If only I could, a) become emotionally self-sufficient and actually stick to my resolve for more than a day; and b) train myself not to view every man through the relationship filter left for me by my parents.
If only.
But if I am to be completely honest - and I always am with you, my reader - what I really want, really truly want, is someone to be nice to me and make me cups of tea and kiss me on the forehead and hug me when I have a bad day and come to me with their sorrows and tell me jokes that aren’t funny and buy me clothes I’ll never wear and speak to me in languages I don’t understand and wave their smelly socks in my face and be impressed by my parallel parking and play with my dog even when I’m not around to see it and watch disgusting zombie films with me and listen to me talk about books they’ll never read and show me work of theirs I don’t care about but will pretend to anyway and, and, and… make me feel like their day is that much better for having had me exist in it.
Is that so much to ask for?
Is it?
Perhaps.


*LTR - Long Term Relationship

How to Tell a Girl You're Interested

Today, hungover and tired I took my first walk through Central Park and stopped at the Ballplayer's House Cafe for a combined breakfast/lunch at 3pm. I hassled my Californian Jack Black-lookalike-only-younger-and-thinner waiter about what I should order in my listless state and then set about ingesting my Vegie Burger goodness along with the accompanying packet of crisps while reading Joseph Campbell and eavesdropping on uninspiring nearby conversations. After wiling away a good part of the day in this lazy, indulgent fashion, I packed up my stuff and put a $20 bill in the bill folder and waited for my change.
I waited.
I waited.
I waited.
I worried that perhaps they assumed I wanted to leave a big tip.
After making subtle googly eyes at random staff members, my waiter finally returned with the folder before quickly disappearing.

Inside the folder, along with my change, was this:



I should be honest with you and admit that I don't intend on calling him. But man, did he sure make my day.

Amazing things Not Yet Invented

This morning, sitting on the edge of my bed putting my shoes on, I heard the voice of my boyfriend, half-asleep from under the covers say,
"Someone should invent butt mints so that when you fart it smells minty and fresh. And it could work as an air deodorizer".
Setting aside for a moment the absurdity of the situation in which this was said, I have to admit that it's not a bad idea.