A visit to the zoo, or A slice of possible internalised homophobia

So, what kind of lesbians do you want to go and look at anyway? ask my two friends and escorts. For a split second, Sarah’s lured me into believing that there actually is a choice and that it’s mine to make. I should know better. So as we make our way through foggy Soho, we carefully avoid the much despised Candy bar and head into its clone on Old Compton Street.
After I’ve regretfully kept my hands in my pockets as we make our way through a roomful of gayboy muscles in tight tshirts, we find the back cupboard devoted to womyn the broads what we’re there for.
We scan the crowd. It’s not just policemen that look young, you know, I mutter between two sips of bubblegum-flavoured alcopop. Everyone in here looks about 16 with similar hair, clothes, mannerisms. I bet they’ve all applied to go to fashion school after they’ve done their A-levels. I inwardly kick myself; I’m getting seriously, cynically annoying, and I don’t want to try the patience of my willing friends. Make an effort, Y. ‘Anyone you like?’ chirps Maria. No. Wait, what about her over there, she’s nice.. No. I mean, yes, she is, but she looks, somehow, like a younger A. Let’s not even go there. I toy with my bendable straw and practice my wise, mysterious but still approachable look. Oh no, a girl is attempting eye contact; I can’t look away, but mainly because she looks uncannily like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. Can’t she see I have wrinkles ahem lines, for the sake of Pete? We retreat and spend the rest of the night in an old man’s pub, eating old man’s pub grub. Contentedly.

P

I’m playing a new game with myself. It’s called Shift the Perspective, and no it doesn’t involve any state-altering substances.

perspective : n 1: a way of regarding situations or topics etc.; "consider what follows from the positivist view" [syn: position, view] 2: the appearance of things relative to one another as determined by their distance from the viewer [syn: linear perspective]

Example #1: from bad to good
a) Primary state/perspective:
Sofa. Pyjamas. Chocolate. Some guy’s best-selling novel. Sugar. Sleeping cat. Sleepy body.
Slouch. Creaking back. Old socks. Sore neck. Grey skies. Low horizon.

b) Strategy:
Kick up the arse, then 90 minutes of yoga.

c) Altered state/perspective:
Awake, eager, optimistic, stretched. Hello, muscles, hello! body, hello, horizon(s). Good-bye, sugar.

Other possible Perspective-shifting strategies:
Dress like a man for a day.
Dress like a Chav for a day.
Dye my hair blonde. Just for a day.
Go shopping in Argos on a Saturday afternoon on New Oxford Street for ten minutes.
Win the lottery.

Off to ponder the possible repercussions of al those things.

As a last thought: If yoga is all about stretching, can it actually achieve anything that the good old-fashioned rack wouldn’t?
Feel free to ignore this purely rhetorical question, of course.

It’s a heavy legacy, you know

4 lessons I’ve (unfortunately) learnt from my mother
If you want to be happy in life, don’t be like me.
If you expect too much from your friends, you’ll end up not having any.
Original/quirky people end up alone.
Nothing you ever do is to be taken seriously.

4 lessons I’ve learnt from my stepfather (and tried to forget)
when in doubt, shout; works every time.
when wrong, say you’re right. Works every time.
When they still won’t listen, break furniture.
To make your family comply, push them into your car, drive in a straight line way beyond the speed limit and tell them you’re going to kill them. Works every time.

2 lessons I’ve learnt from my grandmother (and laughed off)
If you get up later than 9am you’ll have breakfast too late, and then you won’t be hungry for lunch.
Italians and Poles have lice, Eastern Europeans are thieves, Americans are megalomaniac, and English people will pretend they can’t understand you.

How could anyone expect me to be balanced after all that?

Finally:

5 lessons I’ve learnt from J
When it comes to dessert, it’s not quality, it’s quantity that counts.
Newly purchased underwear needs to spend at least two months on top of the piano before it can be worn, and then it has to be inside out.
Never underestimate the Power of the Cuddle.
Stupid jokes get funnier every time.
Easter eggs consumption needs plenty of practice: one before, one during, and plenty afterwards, when they’re on sale in Woolworth’s.
Never take an idiot with you on your travels, you can always pick one up when you get there.

1 lesson I’ve learnt from my cat:
if in doubt, nap.

Busy

People of blogland, I’ve been:
- cooking (I can)
- sewing (yes, really.)
- sleeping
- chatting up strangers on the innernet.

I’ll let you know how I get on.
In the meantime, I’ll be trying to convince those complete strangers that what I’m looking for is the right company because in the right company, I have the potential to be fucking brilliant. So the responsibility is on them, you know?

The aim is to get a date before mid-April, do you think I can do it?
Back to tap-tap-tapping.

Afterthought : when I feel that I miss A, I remind myself that love is merely an addiction.

What?

Today’s highlight: I made brownies. Moist on the inside, crunchy on the outside. Just like armadillos.

I also had a conversation with my mother, except it took place inside my head. I was blaming her for my inability to throw myself 100% into anything, (making art, dancing at gigs, being in love) for fear that she’d laugh. I can’t report it in any more detail, cos I’m still a little sore from her jibes. Inside my head.

I know. Not getting any better.

Hey big spender, spend a little time with me

1. On a sunny spring afternoon after school, I race around my neighbourhood on my brand new blue bike, trying the muscles in my 10-year-old body. It’s become one of my favourite pastimes, relatively safe; there aren’t too many cars in that part of my little town. Up the street, and down, at the highest speed I can muster; then leisurely, for there is a girl my age sitting on the pavement. Up and down the street, I eye her up. I could make a new friend! Up and down again, I have such a cool new bike. She’s noticed me! Casually I sit next to her on the hot tarmac and start chatting. Her name’s Gaelle, she’s new to the area, she doesn’t have a bike; what can we do? I don’t know her enough to invite her back to my house. We sneak into a garden and pick cherries til we’re sick of them. We try to break into an empty house nearby but soon give up; she fears there might be ghosts. We mosey on down to the shop around the corner; the old lady owner sells toys and sweets. I know what we can do, we can buy stuff! I’m back on my brand new blue bike, race home, break my piggy bank and return, triumphant. We walk out with bags of flavoured gums and water pistols. Score! I’ve made a new friend.

2. These days it’s harder to find girls sitting on pavements waiting for me to turn up and chat to them. What am I to do?

3. Perhaps the key to successful scoring lies in one or a combination of the following things:

bike
forbidden fruit
transgression
money

4. It got me a girl all those years ago, didn’t it?
Sort of.


Perhaps I should learn to ride a bike. One of those big 900 ones that come with a cool leather outfit.

Envy

1.Apparently, the writer Théophile Gaultier used to get all his ideas for his novels from his dreams. He used to keep a notebook by his bed and, as soon as he’d open his eyes, quickly scribble his dreams. Well, it worked for him.

2. I wonder what I could do with mine.
Dreams from the past few nights:
- I am doing the splits;
- I have really really long hair down to my waist and I’m feeling very satisfied.
- I am in a house full of people, it’s some party, I know and fear that A is going to turn up. She never turns up.

All those dreams recur at regular intervals.
But I really can’t see how I can weave them, let alone turn them into a novel.

3. Théophile clearly had much better quality dreams than I do. Probably something to do with absinthe, opium and prostitutes.
I’m being slightly envious.

Let's run through today together, shall we?

yay!
next Sunday BB1 will be showing part 1 of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith.

Boo!
I've been a chocolate-eating slob all day. Then I had chips for dinner. Then cake. I'm in a fucking miserable mood, so miserable in fact that I can't be arsed to snap out of it by doing something constructive. Or fun.

yay!
Holidays coming up.

boo!
I'm going to see my mother.

Yay!
Val McDermid. All of her books. Especially the Tony Hill series.

boo!
Spring is over, it's gone stupidly cold again, I guess the cork-lined tights will have to come out for an encore.

That's it, people of blogland. Thank you for stopping by.

Fossilisation

8am
Hey Y, lookin’ good today! I chirp at the person in the mirror.
What are you going to be wearing on that arse, let’s seee.. yep, good choice.
The person in the mirror poses and prances and twirls.
I decide that if I met myself I might ask myself out.
I would wolf-whistle if I knew how to. Nothing like a bit of shameless self-congratulation to start the day.

10am
What’s that at the back of the drawer.. an old film? How long has it been there? What can possibly be on it? I can’t remember last time I used my old camera. Months.
Why is it that old rolls of films can stay forgotten for ages, then must, must! be processed at high speed, right now, right this minute, I’m marching to Boots, and yes I do want the one-hour service, please, for I cannot bear to wait.
I kill time in the sun, trying to remember. What’s on that damn film? Who’s on that damn film? Why didn’t I get it processed at the time? It has to be a remnant of A and me, a fossil; I ponder with some kind of masochistic delectation, will it hurt, how much will it hurt, will my heart sink at the sight of her, the familiar but now blurry features? What will I do with the pictures, throw them away, slip them into an envelope that I will send her, or forget? Will I care? Will there be shots of me as I was then, will I be able to read the self-doubt/unease/wish to please on my face? What if it’s a terrible mistake to have that film processed?
£4.99 later – it was only a forgotten barbeque.
Disappointment and relief.

8pm
I can feel a very grown-up frown forming on my face. I’m sorting out finances, papers, records. Then a wad of sheets; the print outs of old emails. I shouldn’t read them. I shouldn’t read them. I read them. What energy, what momentum, what hope and warmth we bounced each other.
Another fossil.
Nothing like a bit of self-admonishment to end the day.

Fresh air
In one symbolic gesture, I put away the pair of boots, the woolly scarf and the cork-lined tights, for it is Spring in Londontown.

Yeah
And Spring means one thing: it is time to go out, position myself in a propitious area, and stare at the lesbians. A bit like hunting season, only different.
My calendar says it’s time to go out and stare, gawk, gape and possibly leer. I’m not expecting that much leering, though.

But no
I have been putting off the inevitable time when I’d let myself be dragged out. I have been wary, people of blogland. For one thing, the dyke scene bears little excitement for me. Too many identical haircuts, similar low-slung brand name jeans held at half-mast by similar belts, compulsory trainers. I’m not a fashion fascist, I just don’t like clones. And it’s not only policemen who are starting to look young, you know… everyone in there must be about 18.

But yeah
It’s taken me over six months to slowly stop feeling like I’m unwanted/able, damaged goods, thrown overboard by an ex-lover. Wary and scarred, but not too bitter; I have things to offer.

But no
I don’t want a girlfriend. I’m not even sure I want a lover. Yet.

But yeah
Spring = hormones, you know. And a little flirting’s never hurt anybody, has it? Now what can I wear..

Paragraph titles courtesy of Vicky Pollard, of course.