Something’s Come Up

Interrupting the normally scheduled programme of whining about minor details in a generally blissed out and happy state of crushing, today we shall discuss weather honesty is really the best policy. Stay tune children, for there will be a moral at then end!

Case in point: my weekend. I agreed to spend it with a group of people out on a island, and I agreed to this a long time ago. But now, as the day of departure rolls round, I realise that they have snuck all sorts of small print in there, and that I am trapped in a situation much worse than your wildest nightmares.

What I though would be nothing more strenous than a quick visit to an island outside Stockholm, is now, in pouring rain and with the discovery that it takes 6 hours to get there and 6 hours to get back, looking distinctly bleak. And when the going gets tough like that, the tough go running in the opposite direction. Which leaves me about four hours to find a graceful way of ducking out of my obligations.

I could just tell the it straight. Because ideally, the truth as in “I do not want to travel for hours out into the middle of nowhere to sleep on the ground in the cold in a tent that I am not certain holds water” really does rather justify itself.

But since I am guessing that none of the other participants want to be there either, and their level of appreciation at me just coldly swanning of will be unelevated, my more natural tendency is to lean on a small white lie. I mean, if the occasion calls for the sturm unt drang of the sprained aunt, the dead kitten or the…I don’t know – sudden leak – who am I to wet-blanket the drama, right?

Much rather than admitting cold feet, I prepare a small smorgasbord of excuses. Or fibbs, if you want to be litteral about it. For while honesty is naturally the best policy in some situations: such as taxreturns or other things which may get you incarcerated, I say: as long as there is no cell on the other end of your white lie – go with the tact.

And so, in the past ten minutes, since the rain started beating on the window, I have come up with about ten different ways of saying “I’m buggering off to the bar, but I won’t be honest about it”.

But then, just as I was about to get on the phone to communicate the horror of my knitting incident to the concerned parties, I had a second thought. A pause for consideration.  Or actually, more accurately, a flashback to this morning, when that current beau of mine commented on my coat with a horrified “aaarrhghgh”.

Now, I can see you wonder: how does picturing a lovers vomiting-is-imminent expression lead to the reevaluating of the merits of truth and justice? How does one man’s stupefied mask of terror lend itself to an adjusted view on the importance of being earnest? Well, I shall tell you. I contrasted his frankness with a trait common in many past BF: The Wriggle. And I found that I infinitely prefer The Blunt.

The Blunt will freely speak his mind. The Wriggle will try to gauge yours. The Blunt will never fake an interest. The Wriggle will let you get long-winded. The Blunt will wince at your shirt – while The Wriggle will gladly let you go painted the fool, as long as it makes you happy. The Blunt will let you know more than you need about the respective attractivness of every passing woman, but the Wriggle will keep you on an even stricter than a need-to-know basis.

The Blunt, in short, may piss you off no end in the present, but The Wriggle will drive you mad for sure.

When faced clearly with the merits of the way of truth and light – namely, that you are less likely to annoy people – the choice was quite easy. I too should aim for this lesser travelled road. I too should always speak my mind. I too should mind less about upsetting than deceiving. I too, in short, should be Blunt.

And so I picked up the phone again, all fired up with a righteous spark and ready to stand up down it… Only to be cowed, minutes later, into arriving early and help setting up the tents.

Which goes to show, I guess, that sometimes a fake sprained faucet is all that stands between you and nature.

I would write more, but my dog just ate my computer.

Status Symbol

Todays note is but brief, because I am supposed to be anywhere but in front of the computer. Should be packing for the weekend, or picking up theatre tickets, or moving house, or doing laundry. Should be working out or sorting through a heap of mail or brushing up on some stuff for work next week. But instead, I woke, I moseyed on over to Big Sis for a cinnamon swirl and Port Salut breakfast, lazed about for a while, and then took myself back to bed. In which I have been, and would like to spend the foreseeable future, tired to the bone.

All of which I blame, of course, on society. For my absolute weariness comes from much worrying and gnawing on a topic for which I think the moral laxness of today is completely responsible. I have been staying up of nights and turmoiling of day, working harder at my phrasings than I have since last Latin exam – which I failed, incidentally. Let me explain.

There was a time, oh, not so long ago, when the relationship of man and woman was easily defined in stages. Like “strangers/married” or the slightly more complex “strangers/courting/engaged/married/stuck in hateful but unbreakable rut/dead”.

And while I for one do not believe that there was nothing more unchaste than the tying of a ribbon round a lance going on at the time  (surely, if biology has taught us one thing, it is that it doesn’t wait for definition to be true?) at least, you didn’t have to announce it to the world or discuss it amongst yourself. I mean: just imagine the conversation:

-Honey, what are we to each other?

-Ungodly fornicators who’ll make each other burn in hell, Dearest. Or would you rather I introduce you as my doom?

Today, though, sighs the exhibitionist blogette, today what with the pitiful decline in ostracism and shocking lack of straight-jackets for redheaded females, there is no real limit to how publicly or in detail you describe your private arrangements.

It is as if from the moment of shagging, you have to define that shagging to the world, which of course means that those of us who would rather remain in the private sphere with that sort of thing come of a skulky-seeming, less than honest, on the sly. A simple unwillingness to post sexual preferences on Facebook can open a whole can of worms - misunderstanding, hurt feelings, insecurity and loss of face – and all those worms linguistic.

For the feelings, surely, are the same, weather the definitions vary? I mean, wasn’t there something somewhere about a rose smelling as sweet…?

In a way, I long for a time when “I want to shout it from the rooftops” was more of a general inclination than a fait accompli, where mystery and secrecy shrouded the cavortings of the young, and where, in short, a girl could present a snowy clean slate to the world, without the world having the backlog of her latest ten failed attemtempts at their fingers for the clicking. A world where stolen glances and the turning upside down of a stamp meant as much to the one (mark the singular) in the know as the verbalised shagbuddy or friend with benefits of today. 

Now, pass me that trident, it’s complicated.

Love and Putanesca

I find myself yet again in a novel position. Raised as I am in a solid tradition of not trusting men even as far as you can throw them; I was taught from an early age that a girl should always keep her own hands on the pursestrings. Stuffing cabfare in bra by way of keeping my options open, never taking in glasses what you aren’t willing to pay for in kisses: and in general, being the very spirit of the privately owned Ltd.

But though I am used to winning in the slam dunk end of meal plastic throw down, I am currently dating a man who won’t let me pick up a check. And though, mind, I’m not complaining – my entire upbringing is.

Lugging round both the Lutheran on my left and the Calvinist on my righ shoulder, not to mention the disapproving jamboree of foremothers that have pitched their tents somewhere at the back of my temples is proving hard work. So, in an effort to rid myself of this scrangly bunch of killjoys and repuidate my former Dutch beliefs, I went to the one person I knew would be able to launder the currency of tenderness. Sarah. Blonde and lithe and bisquit coloured, exceptionally well kempt, clever, and as if by a natural continuance of these traits: well, kept.

We went for a drink, and straight of the bat, I had to contrast her diaphonous pink apperance with my own rather more slapdash gettup of mini and Stan Smiths. I also had to note, for the record, her tendrily laugh and her low purr of a voice; none of which betrayed her LSE education, her management job or her more than passing knowledge of the powers of the Kreml.

But as I stuttered my little question: my little “how do you do it” my little “or is it rather how do you do him, to be worth that million bucks”, she let out the biggest and most rumbling, rowdy, rustling laugh I’ve ever heard and, collecting herself, answered “Of course I’m not, you silly girl. I pay the drycleaning.”

S learnt early that showing her legs are much better value than showing her superior mind. That laughing demurely is a safer bet than debating heatedly, that batting your eyes will get you further than swinging a bat and most importantly: that there are more interesting sides of your personality than your ability to cough up a buck.

We all know you buy your own milk and jolt your own plumbing – where is the newsworth in that, she added with a withering look at my sneakers. In short: why keep pounding home the point that you don’t need him, as longs as you want him? If there is nothing more interesting about you than your emancipation, you’re shortly gonna be very short of conversation…

Now, S having reduced my moral dilemma to a simple question of entertainment, the whole question seemed a lot less worrying. As we finished our drinks, I settled the tab, and meandered homewards, pondering, in my comfy shoes. And had to admit that she’s right.

If I were to rate the info which I’d most like to convey to a potential audience, my fondness for the Moomins, my bust-waist ratio and the story of the time I met the Minotaur would far, far outrank the current balance of my account. If I were to do a point-by-point of my personality, there are about a million different (and conflicting, yes) aspects which I’d think more worthy of airtime than my solvency.

And maybe, just maybe, if I work on it, I can find something more interesting to say than “I’ll do it myself”.

How To Put It

This is for the ladies in the house.

I advice you to sit yourself comfortable, perhaps with a snifter of sorts within reach. I suggest you put on your coldest spikiest smile and your deadest eye, twirl your fingers evilly and tap your ten-inch on the floor. Because you are in for a treat: a grovelling, snivelling, debasing apology. A no holds barred, all up front, all or nothing mea culpa. Enjoy it, for they come but rarely.

I have been laughing at you, and when not laughing, condemning. I have tought you silly, weak, undependable. And while I am not taking any of that back per say, I am now ready to admit I am one of you: to wholeheartedly join your ridiculous, hormonal, over-analyzing ranks.

It started in pre-school, when my best friend fell for a snotty five years old Adonis named Philip, and completely lost her marbles. Literally: she gave all that she had that was best of her marble collection to the man, in an attempt to win his heart. I could only stand by and deplore her loss of composure, and comfort when she cried as he gave them to his friend, safe in the knowledge that this would never happen to me.

Then there was the girl in third grade who traded, in love with a one-hit-wonder named Martin, an entire semesters worth of scented erasers for the pleasure of owning his picture. Naturally it did not last, naturally she cried, and naturally I stood by, again, wondering with abhorrence at this very unflattering loss of economic leverage and trying to mend her heart with an icecream – all the while knowing that my erasers, along with my Kitty collection, was safe at home.

Then there were the high-school years, which might best not be mentioned, and the years of uni who seem to me now but one long stretch of listening to the breaking heartstrings of the near and the dear. Had I learnt as much about the workings of the inner ear or the tracts of Donne as I did about the fly by night habits of the Youngish Swedish Male, I would be learned today (and not still in debt for them telephone bills).

In short, I have spent the best part of 27 years wondering wide eyed and exasperated WHY my sisteren spend all their disposable time and energy, not to mention playground capital, on winning some Tom, Dick or Harry.

I have listened, observed, and then blessed my lucky stars that I, unlike them, could spend my time productively, filing budget reports and chuckling over Bartleby the Scrivener  – spraying it with the crumbs from lonely tuna sandwiches. Well, you know pride goes before fall.

One night, a little while ago, I went for a drink. And I do not think I have been back yet. For the drink led to the meeting of an eye, and the meeting of an eye led to the brushing of the knee, and the brushing of a knee led to a whole goddamn rigmarole of poring over The Rules, advanced linguistic analysis of text messages containing fewer words than your average haiku, and fretting about the right color stockings. 

And while I know nothing about how the whole nightmare will pan out I do know this – it’d better pan soon, for not for much longer will I be able to afford having goofy daydreaming and the picking of eyebrows as main occupations.

Now; having gotten my come-uppance, I do deeply apologise for any shall we say less than passionate interest I have previously shown when it comes to your matters of the heart. I understand now, that in certain cases, such as with that spotty guy with the Keds in Vienna -99, H or the burly looking bartender of June -03, P – one really can’t help one self…

So I guess what I was getting to was this: Patricia and Sarah, Karen, and Joanna and Marie, Hannah and Jenny and Rita, Madeleine and Francesca, Susanne and Susy and Louise, all the Annas, Caroline and Emma; Helena and Helen and Lisa and Katy (oh well, and Thomas) – you’d better leave your phones of the hook, or you’ll meet neither sleep nor deadline.  

Sorry.

Love and Miss Potter

I work on the presumption that civilization is good: its great hulking buildings, its small shady squares, and the way it makes us all weigh our words and bend the truth slightly, out of mercy.

I like the way tea, and a good read, and the polite turning away for a sneeze turns the dog-eat-dogishness of mankind into more of a dog-bite-dog-but-weaker-dog-has-security-net-with-medical-insurance-which-ensures-that-his-wounds-are-cared-for-even-if-he-is-a-usesless-dogishness of mankind in social liberal society.

I value the way the provision of escalators, and trams, meals-on-wheels and daycare, special ed classes and braces, therapy and small personal loans, birthcontroll, libraries and left hand scissors, eyeglasses and mushroom-guides whittle away at the strictures of natural selection, facilitating life for many who would otherwise probably be left in the lurch.

I believe in the goodness of all these things from completely disinterested motives. For I belong to a group which has been given a very short stick indeed, by the unfurling of the modern times. I am talking about opinionated young women, and our chances of reproducing. Let’s backtrack:

You take a lump of clay, mould it into man, and blow life through its nose. Then you take part of man, and, like in the multiplication of sourdough or petunias, make it into a similar figure. Only with tits and ass.

This second lump of clay is kept nice and moist, sitting through childhood wrapped in the damp cloth of parental control and few intellectual stimulants, preparing to be chosen and remoulded by whatever kindly hand will pick her up.

The first lump, happily setting his shapes in the furnace of making and doing, saunters by after a few productive years, takes a nice pliant little woman, and proceed to use his toughness as a potters tool – making spouts and handles to his personal specifications. 

Rinse and repeat for a few generations, and we end up with strong assertive men, and women who have learnt that the more reshapable you are, the easier it will be on everyone. But then, along comes women’s lib. And while I embrace it, for it gives me the financial independence to buy my own shoes, also I damn it, because it lands me in a bit of a pickle.

I am no intellectual giant, no genius. But I have been brought up to use my own mind, wrapped in candyfloss though it may be. I have spent a reasonable amount of time fending for myself, navigating the choppy waters of broken boilers, rent, and Proust. I have been making and doing with the best of them, drying most of the moisture out of my personality by way of negotiating paychecks, buying airfares and kicking at the DVD.

Cme 2008, I find myself set in a certain shape, complete with a ducks-egg-blue glaze and signature on the bottom, and fearing that any restructuring of the vessel will more likely involve chips out of the rim than anything reminicent of that slippery scene from Ghost.

And while this is very good for single life – I can hold my own and do not flip and flop about the potters wheel – it is not ideal for dating. For men, I understand, do not choose willingly to pluck from the kiln what might have been picked from the cooler (or wherever non-hardened pieces of china are kept).

Of course there are exceptions. There are men who pick up a delicately turned double-glaze with a pattern of fleur-de-lys and appreciate it for the craftsmanship and though that has gone into its production. There are men who enjoy the individual arts-and-crafts, and who might find it more enjoyable to eat from something which does not bear his own thumbprints all over. But I fear that these are connoisseurs, and as most connoisseurs, collectors. That is: never happy to stare at the same gilt edge day in and day out.

Which begs the question: do I douse myself liberally with water and hope to regain a youthful bendiness? Do I hope for someone who will happily smash his Wedgwood against mine? And in the latter case – how do I fill in the ensuing cracks?

Or do I turn the heat up to a burn and harden myself to glass, a little brittle perhaps, but unfeeling.

Hysh, A-Male

Todays story has no moral, no catch of fetching poignancy. It is just a little piece of life, at random. At random, and at it’s most annoying.

It’s the last day of our conference, and I am in the breakfast room, sipping my tea and trying to prepare for last bit of work. A scene that should be serenly calm, given that it is no later than 07.27 in the morning and that I am trying to digest. And it was – nothing but the peaceful rustling of zeroz and ones as I turned the lonesome pages of my online newspaper. Until a certain man entered the room.

I knew the moment I set eyes on him that he’d be trouble. There was the slightly overtanned forehead. There was the slightly shiny wedding band. There was the slightly loud shirt, and the spiritual, if not actual, prescense of a cellphone holster on his belt. All of which told me that this is a man who is the worst of peacock and fool rolled into one: midlevel management.

First, predictably, he circled the room, chosing a vantage spot, directly opposite of yours truly, making it impossible for me to stare vacantly out into space without seeming to stare deeply and suggestively at aforementioned forehead.

Then, having spread his belongings over the better part of the table, he went to circle the buffet. Lots of grunting and puffing, clanging of cuttlery and clearing of throat later, he got back to his seat with a plate heaped high with (smelly) foodstuffs, and proceeded to eat loudly, and with gestures, while fidgeting.

All his exuberant energy finally found vent though, at the arrival of some of his younger co-workers, who were all met with an individual bantering/derogatory comment, guaff or har-har-har.  These younger men, waxy of face and wet combed of hair, evidently felt the need to show that they, too, could be like the great grey male, and so: volume growing like a geyser,  the munching of cornflakes was drowned in this all-testosterone flood of rowdily voiced sports-and-gals commentary.

What saved me, you wonder? Well, the arrival of a short and stout, bald and grey besuited little man. Of spotted tie, he sat quitely down at their table, neatly chopping the head of his hard boiled egg. There was a lull in conversation, a slight adjustment, as he salted into the shell. Only the A-male droned on, on the subject of the tinyness of the Chinese now. As he finnished this umpteenth of poinless anecdotes, and faced his audience, waiting for the roar of laughter, he too noticed the arrival of the tiny man. And shut up.

The man spread the pages of his morning daily, and, litterally, used his breath to cool his porridge.

Love and Mz. Otis

Don’t you just love fall, season of rebirth and tweed?  Don’t you love all of its possiblities: the way, when viewed from summer, it seems like a very long and possibly spiffy New Years Eve – promises of self-improvement galore. Don’t you love the fraisheure of the starts and unwritten leaves?

And don’t you love how every year you load your plate to the point of not possibly – not possibly, I tell you – enjoying the turning woodlands and the bitter apples; leaving yourself, instead, face to face with a true Herculean menue of things to fail miserably at.

This year, I have signed up for a night classes at uni, also looked into some nude drawing workshops, also found a horse to ride, also joined a group of winter bathers-cum-saunaists who will gather every tuesday to frolick in the increasingly cold waters of the Baltic, also co-founded a sausage study group, and, am, also planning to rekindle my subscription to New York Review of Books – the proper reading of which needs its own timeslot.

Oh, yes, and I’ve also promised to chair the board of communications for the Swedish Scout and Guide Association, also have to stick to my part time job reviewing French fiction, also have sworn to work some for a fledgeling consultant business in the bizniz of LUUUVE, also, have been sort of offered to do a guest slot at a food blog.

And: I am also: changing flats, jobs, and trying to be a rock to frightened best friend first time mother, planning x-mas trip to Siberia with Moscowite buddy, and trying to break in a certain pair of DKNY one-sting sandals.

The true impact of my diary did not strike me till today though. A friend, let’s call him H, called, and, not sobbing but through clenched teeth, told me about the failure of a true love and the need for tea and “sympathy”. Naturally, my first instict was to oblige – after all, as covered in previous posts, am female. But then, we started to compare schedules: finding that the first weekend of mutually undisturbed bliss would be sometime late October, and only if he agreed to change Sunday in bed for dinner with a certain someone to whom I have given the promise of dining.

In a way, this complete muddle of maybe-Thursday-next’s and possibly-if-I-cut-brunch-short’s is laughable, deliciously ridiculous. But in another, it is deeply (and this might be the first time in this forum that I formulate a seriously concidered and heartfelt opinion) problematic. Because where, with all the learning and turning of coal into outline, will I find the space, nor yet the energy, to meet Mr Right?

By blocking out the lonely times with ten times ten obligations, I have left no time for the one thing that should consume my spare hours, namely, hitching it with someone in a timely fashion – or before, to call it a potatoe – my time is up.

Looking on the bright side, maybe a hectic almanac means I am fulfilled on my own, and that a man would only be the proverbial icing on the cake. But Miss Otis does truly regret she’s unable to lunch today.

Angel of the Morning

The sun, a novel invention, is being picturesque over the water and the green. There is not a boat on the bay, nor a foot on the field, and the small forrested island in the midi-distance is wrapped up in the morning mist.

I have been watching the dawn from where I lie, propped up against pillows, I have been watching it like I have been watching the passing of the night: both, in their ways, intensly beautiful – both at the same time deeply insulting to a tormented insomniac. Let me explain:

Being periodically unable to sleep is a drag. For one thing, it affects my liberty – forcing me to some slightly ritualistic and heavily regulated behaviour; like for example, I have strict bedtimes, strict times for rising, strict rules for how full/hungry to be before bed, strict rules about the amount of reading am allowed, strict rules about coffee. If I mind these and get some fresh air and physical fatigue, I am pretty much fine.

But every now and then, there are periods in which all of my normal talismans seem to loose their potency and I am left rolling, reeling, clipping my eyes, dry, hot, bothered, with fevered fits of dreams, mind pacing, heart racing – holding lenghty midnight discussions with an empty room. These periods usually last from a couple of night to about a week. 

And here is why you find me cursing at the scenery: the main drawback of sleep disturbance (save from being a liability in traffic and slightly stupider than normal) is that it is so intensely boring and monotone. Once you’ve seen one rolling night, you’ve pretty much seen them all. And though the sun rises in glory, it is a quite predictable feat, unable, after plentiful sightings, to capture all of your interest: despite all the show and celestial cymbals. No amount of frothy pink cloud, haunted Ursua Minor, or splendidly trembling nighttime breeze can make up for the fact that the hours are long, and most of all, lonely.

Though I try not to allow myself any distractions (if I do something to amuse myself, my body will likely not get the message and shut off) it is hard, once awake, to stay away from books, or getting up and doing some work, or writing. And ironically, this is how I discovered the cure for my ills.

Roll round four thirty, I turned on my laptop to do a post (on a completely different topic), and, through the slightly clumsy fingering of the keyboard, was transported into a veritable smorgasboard of virtual sleeping-pills!

Out there is a world of complete nullity, absolute pointlessness. There is site after site of tedious, introverted, badly spelled and thought through “information”. There is all the drivel and dravel and stupidity a girl who’s trying to knock herself out could wish for: an onslaught, if you open the floodgates, of the mindnumbing and the trite.

It acutally only took about thirty minutes on some (undisclosed) sites, and then I could feel my eyes getting heavier, my thoughts slowing. Had I stayed on any longer, I probably would have gone too far and felt my very will to live flagging, but instead, I turned off the machine, lay on my back, and drifted into sweet, dreamless sleep.

(only to be woken an hour later by some damn bird, but that is a separate story).

Berenice Bobs Her Hair

There’s an old Fitzgerald story, the moral of which is this, if I’m remembereing correctly: that no matter how many highballs a girl swills she must keep her hair up. Or down. But definitely on. It goes a little something like this:

They were the twenties, they were roaring, and a girl kept New York in thrall by talking about doing the audacious: bobbing her hair. While keeping her long silky tendrils fastned up in whatever crocidile or filigree or ribbon that took her fancy, she discussed, in a low, purring voice, cutting it all off. It was her icebreaker, her claim to fame: the suggestion that she might, someday, step out of the confines of femininity. Only not just yet.

Finally, a fellow contestant, another woman, gets so fed up with her winding the men round her fingers with this skein of unfullfilled promise (because at the time I guess the shortening of hair heralded all sorts of shortened morals) that she dares her to actually DO it, to put her shredders where her mouth is. The glove is thrown in such a public way that it makes it practiacally impossible for poor Berenice (my namesake, and I feel for her) to keep her fleece on.

And so she goes the way of most sad sheep, shorn of her glory and shown for quite a pitiful creature. Because the deed, once done, is no longer daring, merely out of character, the woman talking about breaking free aeons more attractive than the one who does walk on the wild. 

The story ends, as I remeber it, with her showing up at the bar or party, looking terrible in her new short style and loosing the interest of all that would be, later in the day, Mr Big and his cronies.

It is completely possible that I remember it incorrectly – but anyone better informed, please let me keep my delusion. Because that piece of writing has taught me more than…well, at least more than any other of old F. Scotts brainchildren (exepting, always, the proper wearing of swimsuits, where Tender Is the Night is the definitive work).

For one, it has given me a healthy fear of hair stylists. Not that I have much hair to start with – it is Scandinavian in thickness, babylike in texture, and Apodemus in colour. For another, it has given me the key of succesful social interaction, which is never staying too long on one topic (sic). Most importantly, it has taught me a valuable lesson on what it is to be feminine: you may talk the talk, but never walk the walk, or no one will carry your bags.

Sure, being independent and full of devilish daring do is good in theory. But no man seems completely alaise once you start following through with little bits of real life emanciptation. And here is what will probably get me strangled by my sisters before my brothers have time to marry me: it is a boat I don’t particularily feel the need to rock.

I don’t mind being a girl. In all its pathetic glory. I don’t mind owning up to my fear of the dark and my fits of giggles and my inability to care about the kicking around of round objects. I don’t mind being nurturing, gazing benevolently at egos, petting the wounded bringer home of bacon at the end of the day. I don’t mind fluttering my eyelids and I don’t mind jumping to conclusions and I don’t mind crying in the movies and I don’t mind scalding in the bath. I don’t mind being the one who cooks and I don’t mind tending the garden and I don’t mind minding my manners, shutting up, and toning down the laugh.

Now, I can see you scratching your beards and wondering what has brought the little woman into such a fit of genderness. And I will tell you: it is merely this. For my quid (the batting and the wetting of lips) I demand a certain quo. Namely that men – or even just one of you – would be manly. I’m not talking financial compensation, necessarily, but a certain developement of a little something I like to call a spine. I mean, if I am to wear pointy sharp heels, I don’t want to be digging them into a human carpet. If I am to be chirping sweetly in the bosom of the family hearth, I don’t want to have your wailing wining. And if I am to be a tender clinging vine, I don’t want the solid oak against which I cleave to be pussy-whipped.  

So simply, find me a man who’ll love me like a man, and I will be a woman. On this note, having probably offended most of my readers, I shall end and go and book myself an appointment with my hairdresser.

Editors note: Thanks Karin Rebas for this link to the proper ending…my memory must have been cut also.

Even Though I Oughtn’t

I know, I know, posting while drunk is terrible – awful spellin’ and lots of spillin’ truths. But what can you do when you come back to your hotel room, the bed is big, the view is stunning and you’re wide awake and full of words, as well as Merlot? There is nothing for it but to get them down and out, as swiftly as possible, and hope the reprecussions won’t be as bad as the hangover.

I am, currently, in that fourteenth ring of hell called “conference”. Which means I spend my days hopped up on coffee, chatting pointlessly to strangers, taking notes in the shape of hearts and doodles, staring out the window and swatting the swarming bees. And for late night activities you have a tantilizing choice: filling in evaluation forms, shagging co-workers, or – and this is what I opt for – re-evaluating your very existence and core being.

So, I lay, staring at the ceiling, pretending to read Young Lions and in actual fact, mulling over some already threadbare questions. Like: am I really supposed to be in this country, or should I break free while the breaking is still good? Should I persue deadend relations with men smitten by other women, or should I settle for the lanky one that will have me? Should I by a dishwasher? And most importantly: should I try to make something of my itching pen, or should I go on posting numbskull nothings about no-one and nothing much? The questions remain unanswered (some for financial reasons, others for unwillingness to brush up French just yet) save the last one.

I am seriously concidering starting some sort of writing project that could perhaps, possibly, be something beyond a slop-pail of complaint and heels. I am thinking along groundbreaking, never done before lines: like telling the truth about something I’d actually care about. Which leaves precious little scope: mostly, I care about me.

Writing truth as opposed to in concurrence with what I think should typically be cooking in a single girls kitchen puts me on the spot though: balls-wise. I mean, this forum is not so anonymous anymore. And while I have some of the traits of a drama-queen, am not sure would be totally comfortable sharing my baked beans with all and sundry, sundry being mainly mum.

SSumming up, since the booze is wearing off, I have decided to start a parallell blog. Not saying I won’t be greeting ya’ll with a fresh breth of venom every morning: but the good bits I will save for a different URL.

Find me if you can, dearies!