Teenage kicks

"She started it."

I've always been fairly conservative when it comes to doing the deed. Not boring-conservative (I hope), but conservative in an intercourse-should-be-between-genitalia kind of way.

Of course, I knew Friday night that the weekend was going to be a bummer. Picked a fight with the kid hogging the jukebox, picked up a well-deserved black eye and his mate's girlfriend.

You're told by those in the know that women are never going to suggest these things, that they don't particularly like it either. And I'm nursing a black eye, a bruised ego and all kinds of inadequacies. I'm not going to say no.

She's got something uninteresting to do at uni tomorrow. She's a fresher, and actively communal in the way young people tend to be. Call her a cab, get cleaned up. I think I cried a little in the shower. She chooses to laugh it off by SMS. It's bad mating karma, but I can't bring myself to reply to "relax, shit happens!"

                        Teenage kicks - The Undertones

   

How the West was won and where it got us

"Honey, I SWEAR Fannie May is not another woman!"

Dear Leaders of the First World,

I spent the majority of the week just past reading blogs. Strangers' blogs, random blogs, blogs of pretty women. All in a  Sisyphusian effort to find a few like-minded individuals, people who write about stuff I'm interested in, who share the same disdain for lite beer and gainful employment.

Here's what I found: most bloggers are newly-mommied-up women who think no end of their toddlers. They put up myriad pictures of their infants in space suits and document their bowel movements online for no discernible reason other than abject apathy to the problem of overpopulation, and possibly, severely ignored  childhoods. 

The other sizable demographic comprises Jesus-freaks and conservatives. From my limited understanding, they limit all real life socializing to handing out Christian pamphlets at tea parties, and presumably, phoning in to Rush Limbaugh's talk show. All of which is perfectly reasonable behavior for two equally hormonally-oppressed groups of people. 

What gets my goat are the 'artists'. The writers, the poets, the painters, the designers, the photographers, the dancers. Not all of them, obviously. Just the younger ones who are following the dream, doing what they've always wanted to do with perfect calm and clarity of thought. 

A lot of them are university-educated, reasonable, articulate, entertaining, employable white people in their mid-20s, working in retail or in the hospitality industry while astutely typing away at their Macbooks, waiting for their big break. This pisses me off. Because they've only just gone and gentrified the third world. 

I'm Indian. My country is all of  64 years old. I should be the one toiling away at a thankless, demeaning Mcjob in a floundering economy. Instead, I'm stuck in an air-conditioned office all day here in Singapore, organizing international conferences for business leaders and management gurus from all over the world, picking and choosing speakers and subject experts for events I conceive, deliver and make a 400% return on. And all I want is to be a struggling, unpublished writer. 

Do you know how hard it is to struggle with a view of the magnificent Singapore Flyer from my bedroom window? Do you realize how difficult it is to feel hard-done-by and unappreciated when bank managers queue up to offer you platinum credit cards like bananas to some ridiculous monkey deity? Do you comprehend the tragedy of having to leave one's motherland just to be able to under-achieve? 

Thirty years ago, it would have been perfectly reasonable for young middle-class Indian men to live off the rent collected on their parents' multiple real estate investments. Of course, they didn't call it an 'investment' then; they were simply plots of inherited, ancestral  land. And rent at the time was nowhere near the mind-numbing 5-digit figure it is now - I could have leeched off my parents but only enough to survive. I may even have had to do some subsistence agriculture on the side.  

But in 1991, in the summer of my childhood, the whole world decided to throw us their lifelines, to anchor their economies on our shores. Result: by the time I grow up, there are jobs aplenty, salaries on offer that can feed small countries in Africa. And these alien jobs, these extra-terrestrial salaries, are all housed in the motherships of multinational corporations that are more than willing to spread a little monetary joy in the lives of the owners of the properties they operate from. So like any nouveau riche couple, it will simply not do for my parents for their offspring to be anything less than uber-successful.      

I had to flee to Britain in shame to pursue my higher education in development economics. How else would my parents explain such a terribly romantic field of study to their contemporaries? Whereas in Glasgow, I could soak my soul in whiskey and embrace writerly existential angst and temp my life away without the scrutiny of my self-appointed mentors back home. Alas, those still-colonial Brits only extend your visa if you're a doctor or an engineer, the 'technical' jobs the natives refuse to accept because they're too busy finding themselves on a beach in India! Here in Singapore, I do my best to not impress but they simply refuse to fire a man with a British degree. Unless a suitably qualified Brit comes along to take the job, of course. 

My request, Messrs Obama and Cameron, and Frau Merkel, is simple. Give me back my economic uncertainty, my lack of career prospects, my birthright to toil and suffer. I man the 7/11s, I drive your big yellow taxicabs, while you lot run banks, manufacture weapons and generally rule the world. That was our understanding, remember, before all this outsourcing nonsense? In the slightly modified words of some of your own salt-of-the-earth countrymen, stop coming to my country and giving us your jobs.  

Sincerely,

Renaissance Hippie           

P.S. Image courtesy here  

                              Losing my religion - REM

     

    

The importance of being earnest (not)

The 'sell-out' is a peculiar modern construct. I use the term 'modern' loosely, but it's hard to sometimes remember that a sell-out is really just a formerly unsuccessful person who has recently done quite well for himself. And it's a term that's usually applied to individuals in the field of what's referred to as 'the arts'. A successful doctor is just a successful doctor. An indie rock band that works its way up to playing U2-sized arenas on the other hand has somehow sold out.

And it's always a particular type of person that cares for these classifications. I look around, and none of my schoolmates who used to discuss music with me for hours on end actually give a shit anymore. They're sensible enough to acknowledge that if something's visually/ aurally appealing, it's probably a good investment to make sure the artist makes a few bob out of it so he can make more cool shit again. Stuff they can pick up at one of Tesco's 8000 convenient locations, along with their groceries. Stuff the Mrs. won't mind on the stereo on the drive back home, stuff that won't wake up Junior, dozing contentedly in the back of their brand new SUV, paid for by that timely -and no doubt, well-deserved- promotion.

People like me on the other hand, we tend to get stuck. We tend to travel and temp and drift and meander when everybody else was working their assess off to be able to afford travel and meandering later. Till one day, we realize the meandering has become kind of a routine, just another 9-5 gig without the dental plan. Because nothing really is that temporary. Ultimately, everything you do becomes you. Do nothing, and well...you do the math. It's all quicksand.  It swallows you whole. Once you've had that realization, you start taking stock. Let's see: nothing there, nothing here, nothing anywhere else, and suddenly, we find that all we have left is an inflated sense of integrity, of keeping it real, of keeping real an 'it' that was entirely imagined and not at all real to begin with. The hallucinatory fug of a teenage mind and too many chemicals.

Still. There's always formerly-indie bands to thumb our noses at. It's our way of blaming school friends for moving on, for growing up. It's how we chastise our parents for letting us make our own decisions. When a 27 year old, beer-bellied, nicotine-stained, single man talks passionately and loudly about the sad demise of guitar music, you should know it's not the music he's mad  about. That's not chart music he's angry at, or Adam Sandler movies. He's just a poor general who's only just looked back and realized his men have all fallen by the wayside. The enemy is now a civilian, and all those battles he thought he'd won were as Pyrrhic as they come. The war, my friend, the war is lost. So do him a favour and just let him loathe himself in peace. Buy him a Big Mac, tuck some loose change in his pocket. Because someone's gotta pay for those sleeping pills.  

*Image (Jack Black as Barry in High Fidelity) courtesy: Andy Whitman 

               I fought the law - The Clash 

This year's love

It's been a hard year, I know. We haven’t spent much time together. The telephone waves we burnt up and the internet camaraderie we shared mean zilch in the real world. In the real world, love doesn’t have the shelter of distances. Love is always tested by proximity, by lack of space.

Neverthless, you amaze me. You’ve managed to hold on to so much of me in your absence. I shudder at the thought of what your presence might do to me. Turn me into a mad man, perhaps, sick with longing and disillusionment, like other couples we know. Or a boring man maybe, brimming with tales of the latest antics of his irrationally doted-upon toddlers; imagine, Yamini and Thoma would flee for their dear lives at the sound of my footsteps.

Except for the odd moment of desperation, I haven’t wronged you in thought, even. Tomorrow this time, your complete annexure-in-absence of one year of my time, affections and attention will be complete. For all practical purposes, you have been my master and commander, subtle and wise, your suggestions so strong they seemed to me my own. Yet, in some unlit alcove of my mind, I know. I have always known.

Darling, this is not working for me. Darling, this is working so well, it’s threatening to take me over, and I can’t have that. I can’t be boring or mad, you know that. I need always to be attractive for us to work. And us- this- working will render me unattractive. It’s like one of those algebraic conundrums you find so exhilarating to work out. Or from your perspective, it’s classical irony, the kind I can only aspire to create in my work.

My coffee has gone cold. It’s been a year since I had a good cup of coffee in the morning. Technically, I should have grown used to the taste of too much or too little coffee powder, or sugar or water or milk. Incredibly, I haven’t. On every one of those three hundred and more days, I've taken that first sip and sighed. More than anything, it's the sigh that gives me away. That sigh is my desire for all things you; the unspoken faith that tomorrow, things will be better; tomorrow, you'll wake me up with a towel around your long damp hair, the sight of newly exfoliated skin and the smell of freshly-brewed coffee jerking my senses into over-drive. Every morning, I wake up and sigh for you.

I miss sighing for me. I miss sauntering through the…

She idled her mouse over DELETE for a second, and clicked. She watched the window collapse on itself as her inbox skipped merrily along to the next email. David’s words made their presence felt immediately- like a rush of blood to the head, or the magic of a long-awaited first kiss, the excitement of everything new. 

 'Ello babes! We’re meeting at eight right? Not 7. Right? See ya.

- Davey. 

She picked up her mug of coffee, tucked the laptop under her other arm, and shuffled across to the mirror. There, she looked deep into her eyes, and watched silently as her heart brimmed over. She couldn't help smiling. For here was this year’s love.

*Originally posted here on 25 September, 2006 

*Image courtesy Oliver J. Ash 

        This year's love - David Gray (Also on The Girl Next Door OST)

Launderette Confessional

Kurt liked his dresses blue

I've never really fancied myself as a cross-dresser. Certainly not the kind that stuffs a wonder-cup, shaves his legs and struts around in a tight little mini and heels, smoking long cigarettes, and oozing that peculiar sort of masculine femininity. Most men have brandished the odd eye-liner in their youth, dabbed the littlest of rouge on their pre-pubescent cheeks, wrestled with the urge to gently kiss a stick of blush-red lipstick, but a flagrant flaunting of multiple gender identities requires the kind of courage only the bravest of men can muster. 

Today, I wore panties to work. 


Not that I would be so naive as to even compare my little escapade to the grounds those esteemed warriors of alternative lifestyles have tread. It was -at best- a sociological experiment with fringe benefits; a private pleasure, if I may. What I wish to elaborate on are not the details- not the guilty savouring of wanton erections restrained by the soft fabric, or the bitter-sweet sensation of the material riding up my perineum- but the sense of secrecy it evoked. All day, I was traumatized by the fear of being discovered. I sweated and panted from the sheer self-awareness involved in ensuring my jeans didn't once fall below the coveted line or my shirt rise too high and expose my lilac-hued under-things. At the same time: that delicious feeling of hiding something from the world, a secret so dark it could cause bodily harm and life-long humiliation in these alpha-male times; for I, like the proverbial child, wanted only to explore, I nurtured an interest that can sustain itself only in the comforting knowledge of the proximity of home, like a swimmer in the ocean who tests himself only so far as his muscles tell him he can swim back from. What a beautiful feeling, that sense of camaraderie with the shadowy! That brotherhood with the netherworld, the almost sinful indulgence in privacy so rare! Much like the purveyor of a nuclear attack, or the Virgin Mary awaiting delivery. Or is it deliverance? 


I would be lying if I professed any particular erotic pleasure in the act itself. Unlike the intimacy of the belongings of an object of your affection, or the consumerist delight in proprietorship of a brand new purchase, the undergarments of a stranger stolen from her (his?) laundry basket promote little space for self-indulgence. I didn't wonder how they looked wrapped around the precious modesty of their previous owner, nor did I look around and contemplate if any of my colleagues prefer the same material, or softener or design. This was for me. They were mine, mine, mine; my dirty little secret, the fruit of my inquisitve, if lecherous mind. 


And all day, I reveled.


*Originally posted here on 16 August, 2007 
** Image courtesy of the unfortunately-named Ulteriorgrrrl

               Venus in furs - The Velvet Underground

When a dude looks like a lady

This here is Andrej Pejic. If I were a builder, I'd be whistling. If I were a lesbian, I'd be carpet-munching. Unfortunately, I'm a University-educated, haplessly middle class 27 year old man-child and I'm therefore painfully short on crude metaphors that indicate sexual attraction and riddled with bullet hole-like Catholic guilt at that indomitable stirring in my groins. Because this here, ladies and gents, Andrej here, is one of the world's most successful androgynous supermodels. In the words of my confounded flatmate, "chick's got a dick?!"

Well not exactly, because Andrej -as I understand it- is a man. His gender identity is androgynous, meaning he catwalks down international runways modeling fashion clothing for both men and women. I don't mean to restrict his androgyny to one of commercial interest alone; I'll get to the lifestyle element in a bit. But I'd like to first take stock of what we have here: a beautiful specimen of the human race, his male genitalia, and my own corresponding set, responding to his virtual pheromones, picking them up, drawing them out like a satellite dish does ESPN.

My question is not one of faux-Catholic rectitude; it is one of consumer rights/ protection: do I, as a member of the perpetually sexually-inclined straight male community, have the right to be informed straight away that the image I'm ogling over is of a man in a dress? The answer, I'm afraid, is blowin' in the wind, much like Andrej's own testicles would do in the position above if they weren't impeccably tucked in to prevent the worst kind of wardrobe malfunction that could befall a female supermodel. (In a meta-tastic brainwave generally  not associated with the fashion industry, he has recently been signed up to be the face of a company selling push-up bras.)

Now I don't know what Andrej's preference is, when it comes to sexual partners. I do know however that he is something of a survivor - born in 1991 in Bosnia, his mother fled with him to Serbia to escape the war. They immigrated to Australia when he was eight, and he is now a citizen. (The same welcoming land would later nick-name him 'gender-bender'.) He now spends his time shuttling between photoshoots in Europe and America. As a serial-immigrant and writer, I'm tempted to draw parallels between the problems faced by the diaspora in finding a cultural identity, and his own decision to not choose between genders and bravely embrace them both. This would of course be sinfully pseudo-intellectual and ignorant. I choose instead to point to the great scripture of our times: pop culture.

I'm currently reading Middlesex (2002) by Jeffrey Eugenides, the story of a man with a recessive gene in his fifth chromosome that led him to be born with a perfectly normal-looking vagina and was raised as a girl till the age of fourteen. A couple of days ago, fellow-blogger Robim Moran brought to my attention the story of Sasha who is being raised by his parents to be gender-neutral and is referred to simply as 'the infant'. In 2008, the world witnessed the phenomenon of Lady Gaga, a throwback (in terms of fashion, if not music) to the glory days of  David Bowie and Annie Lennox. We were as smitten as the Bard himself with the cross-dressing Viole de Lesseps of Shakespeare in Love, and raised nary an eyebrow as  Borat flaunted his mankini in all its fluorescent gender-transcendence. In little Britain, audiences invited cross-dressing comedians David Walliams and Eddie Izzard warmly into the mainstream, and the generally homophobic football terraces in Manchester took no issue to David Beckham's sarong as long as he kept bending those long balls in.  Even conservative Singapore has an impressive array of gender-bending entertainers on tv and the live comedy/theatre circuit. And suddenly, its hep to be hairless, rudderless, gender-less.

In a way, this is natural modern day progression. Pampered by central heating and microwave ovens and 24/7 connectivity, we're all less and less capable of dealing with adulthood, with reality. That little window in the timelines of our lives -that innocent time before the onslaught of pubic hair and menstrual cramps, when it was enough to just be human- is beginning to appeal more and more. I don't wish to imply that androgyny is infantile, or intellectually inferior, or -God forbid- immoral. Social scientists in fact claim that it may be the logical approach to daily life - some parts of it are better dealt with from a woman's perspective, and some from a man's. I only insist that if I've just bought you a drink, I did so under the sincere impression that you are the somewhat salacious owner of definitive lady-parts. And I humbly request that if in my drunken stupor I have made a mistake on that count, I'd like to be informed about it before I put on my poker face.    

            Dude (Looks like a lady) - Aerosmith          

     

Sleeping with the frenemy

When it finally happened, it was a bit of an anti-climax. It wasn't brought on by one of us walking in on the other in the shower with a stranger, or the sudden discovery of a criminal alter-ego. No love-child hidden away under the basement, no re-kindling of flames past. What brought the cards tumbling down was the gentle (or not-so-gentle, if you want her opinion) sound of my contented sleep. And all I wanted was a passionate, fiery, dramatic break-up.

I looked it up: the love-doctors can’t even converge on a collective, all-encompassing medical term for it. It doesn’t even have a name! You'd think after three years of spending every waking moment together (if not physically, then at least emotionally- on skype, facebook, g-talk!)  I could come up with something more poignant than snoring to cause a loved one sleepless nights. That's a treacherous blow to your self-worth. You stood strong; you were her rock, her pillar, while everybody around you seemingly plumbed new depths of moral depravity. You stayed up nights to help her prepare for bar exams in a language you don't speak, you feigned weekly relish after meals of badly boiled cabbage and poorly pastry. After all that, surely the least she could have done was cop off with your best friend?

I wonder if we all go through relationships in the hope of a spectacular severance. Do you nourish and nurture your relationship like an unreasonable plant that blooms only once? Do you fantasize daily of the grand finale - do you wonder every day what will set it off? Do you plan furtively to ensure it's everything you hope for? Do you sow seeds of jealousy, sprinkle opportunities for self-doubt in your partner to ensure it’s must-see TV? Do you rush through the main-meal in a tearing hurry to get to the dessert, the piece de resistance?

I invested three years in that woman - she had it all, everything your philosophy and your literature will tell you guarantees just that. I had a novel riding on that woman - my 'Love In The Time Of Cholera', my homage to the great romances. And what does she do? She throws it away on something as mundane and un-spectacular as sleep pattern. See, the average German woman sleeps 7.1 hours a day. Leni approximates that my snoring wakes her up once every fifty-five minutes. It takes her between twelve and sixteen minutes -to roll me over, wake me up and roll me over, or scream into my ear and leave the room - each time. Considering we spend roughly seven to eight hours between “good night “ and “good morning”, that doth not a very productive day make for a working woman. So what does she do? She dumps me. But let’s start at the beginning.

*Prologue to Exes and Sevens. More excerpts here.

Enter: the Dragon

"But Chuck, you promised you'd call!"

Tomorrow marks the start of the new Chinese year. Seeing as how I've been living in Singapore for about five months now, I figure this is as good a time as any to write about something cultural. I haven't quite come to grips with the Chinese calendar yet, but I'm led to believe that the Chinese Zodiac assigns one of twelve animals to each year. This new year, for example, is the Year of the Dragon, a phrase which can only bring to mind this mild-mannered gentleman on the right, Bruce Lee. If -like me- you were under the impression that the recession and war and the passing away of Amy Winehouse all represented the worst that can happen -that things can only get better- think again. We're only just entering the year of the Dragon. 

Amy Chua's eldest: Sid. Jr.

I jest. The Dragon is in fact a revered figure in Chinese mythology, an amalgam of nine different species of animals, none of whom -I'm happy to report- is George W. Bush. Or Zooey Deschanel. The Dragon is believed to have many healing abilities, at least some of which are also acknowledged in the West. Popular culture stalwarts like William S. Burroughs, Sid Vicious (left), Chris Farley and Kurt Cobain have all endorsed the life-affirming qualities of chasing the Dragon. Some, like Lou Reed and David Bowie, were known to break into song and dance in their appreciation of Dr. Dragon. The Dragon also has its share of detractors in the West, spurred on no doubt by the subversion of the Dragon as an Oriental badass in European folklore, and the unfortunate association-by-default with matriarchal anarchist, Amy Chua.

"No, Sting is the whiny one."

The economic crisis in Europe -according to the Chinese Zodiac- shows no sign of abatement, thanks in so small part to the Dragon's historical rivalry with Saint George. Fashion, on the other  hand, is expected to be positively influenced by the Dragon, with trends in recent years -like the hugely popular yellow tracksuit donned by Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill series (right)- already pointing to a resurgence of dragon iconography and retrochic. The accompanying sword however is not expected to catch on, not least in the human rights-friendly West. An unlikely accessory has surfaced instead, with celebrities and less important people increasingly spotted with the very Dragonesque Chihuahua peeping out of their Jimmy Choo handbags. The Chihuahua has of course been a constant bone of contention for evolutionary scientists, with recent discoveries pointing to possible genetic inheritance from snakes and Satan. Unfortunately, they are still -in certain ethnic/economic communities- referred to as crack babies, thereby sullying the good name of Dr. Dragon by association.               

Lastly, I must admit I was not particularly amused by my well-meaning colleague's observation that I was born in 1984, the Chinese Year of the Rat. This is patently much less sexy than the Leo I was brought up to believe I am. I will however persevere to document my continuing cultural education in this lovely little land. The Singaporean government though, is notoriously impervious to humour -and presumably less so to wisecracks from rodents- and I may well be in danger of stepping over some imagined line of political correctness. Forget not that even Jack Bauer, that manliest of all manly men, cracked in Chinese prison. I only hope they take kindly to my drunken drawing of Mickey Mouse in the DOB column in my passport. Happy Chinese New Year, everybody!    
       

You too

We fell asleep on the phone like old times. Or I did like I used to. I imagine her disconnecting the call, rolling over to turn off the bedside lamp (though its still daytime where she lives), checking the phone again to make sure. I remagine the feel of her checked pyjamas on my skin (though she told me she's in her lawyer attire).

I sit up and pray I didn't spend more than I can afford. There's a gaping hole in my recollection of last night. I don't remember leaving my local. There's a barstamp on my wrist that seems to think I spent some time -and money- at the Butter Factory. I don't remember calling her, but I remember talking. There's a fully-clothed stranger in my bed I don't remember bringing home.

She's waking up, slowly. I watch her take in the strange ceiling, the unfamiliar quilt, me. "The couch was too small", she says, "I hope you don't mind." I think about this and decide I don't. I wonder about the possibility of sex. "No," she says. "You must have found me attractive at some point," I argue.

"That was before you left me watching tv to talk to your ex," she smiles, "I should probably be mad."
"I should probably be sorry-" I begin.
"-But you don't remember," she finishes for me.  

She doesn't want coffee or toast, but she'd like to use my computer to check her mail. Her Blackberry is out, she explains. I wonder again about the possibility of sex. "No," she says, typing away. I feel cheated, and hung over. And cheated. "I'm sorry about last night," I say. I insist I only get like that when I'm really drunk, that I almost never get that drunk, that I dumped her, not she me. I will lie in a church if it houses the possibility of sex. "Let me buy you a drink sometime," I say.

She explains why that may not be a good idea. She will however still help out with finding a job in publishing. I don't remember this thread of conversation. I take her card. She is In Recruitment. I wonder if she isn't kind of giving me her number. "No," she smiles. My brain refuses to process this information. There's blood and hope aplenty in my nethers.

I decide I should save her number on my phone before the card is stripped for roaches. I have a text from the aborter of our maybe-babies. "I want you to know," she wants me to know, "that you don't need me anymore." Yeah well, I want you to know that you're not going to convince me of that by quoting our fucking breakup song.

                Kite - U2  (All that you can't leave behind)





     

Money for nothing, chicks for free

Two years now since my contemporaries started regaling me with tales of the indescribable joy of being a home-owner. That moment you sign on the dotted line, they said. That first "honey, I'm home". Love on living room furniture.

Yesterday, I took my own tentative first step up the property ladder. Not an actual piece of land of course, not even a studio. That would be too permanent, too real. I refer to a little oyster named the world wide web, virtual estate, if you will. I bought my first computer.

Yes, my first computer. In this day and age, you mutter. Fucking hippie, you shake your head. I'm familiar with them things of course, I didn't just crawl out from under the metaphorical rock. I just happen to have lived all my adult life in 24/7 cities with 24/7 internet cafes. Chennai, then Glasgow, then London (where this blog was concieved), back to Glasgow, now Singapore. Or my flatmate had one.

I can't honestly say it was a concious decision not to own one, but I know I felt a certain pride at the disbelief in people's voices when they found out about it. The few times I've had a computer lying around at home -a girlfriend's say, or a mate's- it just meant I was more in touch with people I didn't particularly want to hear from. I mean listening to voicemails freaks me out.

Why now then? Because I've hit rock bottom, mostly. I counted, and counted again, and came to the conclusion that I have a total of about 2 real friends. One of them is my ex, so that's only going to last so long. I figure I'm too old to spend birthdays and new year's eves by my lonesome, or worse, with other equally lonely souls.

Oh, I realize emails and facebook are not going to save me from myself. No, the plan is to do stuff. And since I cannot be arsed to scale peaks or save lives -as these good folks do so well, by the way- I decided to do the only thing I really enjoy. I'm going to sit down and finish that novel. And I'm going to send umpteen unsolicited emails to publishers and print out all the rejection letters and build a life-size papier-mache cast of my cock - bit like this lovely lady here. I'll just have to recycle most of them, really.

Anyway, I didn't want to buy a PC though they're much nicer to type on. I just can't get over the 'Personal Computer' oxymoron. They're machines, for God's sakes. Someday they're all going to come alive and eat our babies. They're not personal. That's as bad as dressing up your microwave for dinner. 'Laptops' on the other hand are too literal. Yes, you mostly use them while they're perched atop your lap. Where's the imagination in that? I can't write on something that boringly-named.

So, sentimentalist that I am, I bought this thing named -endearingly- 'Notebook'. Which is nothing like a notebook of course. And the keyboard was clearly designed with the next evolutionary cycle in mind. They certainly don't accomodate human fingers. But 'Notebook', neverthless. My mate says they're a few things short of being a superior thing which means it's much slower and much less efficient than other superior thing-fitted computers. A bit like my social skills.

I leave you with this (slightly modified) quote from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides:

"From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able catch the rainbow of conciousness in a jar. The only trust fund I have is this story, and unlike a prudent immigrant, I'm dipping into principal, spending it all..."

                                     Money for nothing - Dire Straits

            

Exes and Sevens

*Excerpt from my novel-in-progress (ahem!) "Exes and Sevens"* 

Phil knew I hated being left alone at the bar. Especially after last-call, when the place was practically empty.  He couldn’t help it; he would never make it all the way to his bedsit in Clapham if he didn’t empty his bladder before we left. I went looking for him on our first time out, concerned after waiting twenty minutes at the bar. I found him hunched over the urinal, one hand propped weakly against the wall, the other shaking, cajoling, stroking. He was perpetually worried he hadn’t got rid of it all, that some of it was still only trickling its way down from his epiglottis in an O. Henry-twist.

My thoughts turned to the reason for my discomfort in sitting there: our curmudgeonly bartender, Marty.  It was just her and me again; the two of us and her sullen, implied misanthropy. Just like every other night. I shifted in my seat and watched her work. She emptied the beer trays, polished the counter, dried a fresh batch of glasses from the dishwasher - anything but acknowledge my existence. And I was a regular; we went there everyday. Not for the first time, I wondered why we didn’t just find a different pub. 

“Do you need some help?” I asked. She didn’t seem to have heard.

“You know I’ve always wanted to work in a bar?” I tried again.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been to university.” 

It was a question and a statement. I knew what was coming. I tried to suppress the swell of pride, to adapt a tone that signaled ‘I know I could do better, but it’s one of those things..’

“Yeah, why?”  I said. Nonchalance is key.

“Did you study bartending at Uni?”

“Umm, no but a few of my mates used to work part-time at the union bar and…oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that anybody can just swoop in and do your job. You probably need a specific set of skills that…You’ve probably been to Uni too for all I know – not that it would be a surprise or anything. Maybe you just chose to work here. Right? I mean why should someone with a degree not work in a bar? I think they should make it mandatory that all bartenders have some kind of formal education. I mean, what can you really do with a degree these days? Do you like Margaret Atwood?”

“Never read any. You think I’ll like her?”

I looked at her. Then I turned and fixed my gaze on the television. Marty was like the Sun. I couldn’t look her in the eye for more than a few seconds at a time. 

“Oh yeah, she’s great.” This is a trap. I’m walking into a trap.

“No, why do you think I would like her?”

 “Coz what’s not to like, I mean..”

“Coz I’m gay? Coz I have tattoos on my arms and a ring on my clit? Does that make me a feminist?”

Chip, you’ve met Shoulder, haven’t you? Oh that’s right, you live there. 

Marty crouched down to get something from under the counter. A cleaning cloth maybe, or her glasses. Whatever it was, she seemed to have misplaced it. I watched the top of her head move from one corner of the counter to the other and back again, searching, cursing, impatient. It was a comical sequence of bobs and dips and expectant ups and downs, reminding me of a hen pecking grains off the ground. Or a blowjob. A cartoon-hen performing fellatio.The image made me smile.

“Well, I don’t know that Atwood would approve of the term ‘feminist’,” I said grandly, “besides, feminists probably think tattoos are too conformist. These days, anyway. I mean, Cheryl Cole has a tattoo. Victoria Beckham has a few. Everybody’s got one.”

She stood up. I duly trained my eyes on my glass, and rattled the last of my drink.

“Oh so now I’m sheep. Part of the unthinking, unblinking, brainwashed collective.”

There was that question/statement thing again. I wondered if she wanted me to disagree. She would probably disagree if I disagreed.

“I was just trying to make conversation,” I said.

“It’s not in your skill set. Will your mate have another drink?”

“No, I think we’re done.”

“Ok, goodnight. I’ll let him know you’re outside.”

I lit up a cigarette and waited on the pavement. The night was wet and miserable. It made me feel better. Phil eventually walked out holding two cans of Stella. “For the road,” he said, holding them up. “She has a ring on her clit,” I informed him dutifully. 

*Want more Exes and Sevens? Excerpts here and here.

Honey, who shrunk the kids?

A friend of mine, well-intentioned as he always is, emailed me this song by a band called The Honey Trees. Even before I hear the first needy purr of the synthesizer, before the slickly produced video begins to roll, before the  bridge mellows out into the chorus, I know exactly what's coming. It's the same whineysweet tune you've heard a hundred times before, the harmless type that fades nicely into the background, that Volvo will probably feature in an ad sometime in the near-now. The girls all look and dress and laugh like Zooey  Deschanel, and the boys...well, the boys look like Zooey Deschanel too. How did this happen?

Have you bought a pair of jeans lately? Did you know they've completely done away with the old system of measurement? Its not enough to just look for a 32 waist any more. There's a skinny 32, an urban skinny 32, a slim 32, a slimmer-than-slim 32, a so-skinny-you're-probably-just-bones 32. And if you ask really nicely, the so-skinny-she's-an-alien shop assistant will fish out a comfortable 32 from the back of the establishment. If it's a busy day, they're yours for free. If it's not crowded, she'll direct you to a little room at the back where the fat people pay for their clothes. Rip off the label with a jackhammer, throw the garment in an anonymous, plain white bag and whisper: "just don't tell anyone you shop here, yeah?"

They're everywhere, these Slim Jims. At work, at the pub, at the cinema. I've even seen a couple at the local take-away or I'd be convinced they're all starving, morally-ambiguous vampires. Some of them are even known to sparkle. They are believed to breathe only through their eyelashes because their noses are in a constant state of being turned up in disgust at the Mainstream. But who or what is this Mainstream? I look around and all I see are clones and clones of clones and clones of skinny people. I see brogues and fedoras and waistcoats and teeshirts with pictures of bands that look and sound and laugh like other bands. I see The Great Depression, or a Truman Show-like screen at the end of the horizon that's actually a cleverly disguised vagina with an extended clitoris that's cleverly disguised to look like a conveyor belt, delivering row after row of Topshop-babies, one after the other, in an unending line.

I'm no more alone in my despair than they are in their indie-kinship of course. I've heard the odd grumble about these beautiful men looking like they're photoshopped, the odd celeb outcry against Size Zero. But these upholders of dignity of the horizontally challenged are all ridiculously fit themselves. Sure they can talk! As a 90s child, this whole thing scores heavily on my injustice-meter. Cable TV and sitcoms have let me down again. What happened to the lovable, overweight losers who get the cute girl? They're hung by their excess skin on a clothesline in Zooey Deschanel's garage, that's what. She's probably waiting for them to loosen up a little to make a holder for her folder full of quirky brain n' bean salad recipes.                

     

Let there be Love

Many many years ago, before FWB's and vacuum cleaners and sexting, two young horny cavemen sit around trying to figure out a way to get laid. Something simple and all-consuming, something that will stand the test of time, even old age. After much idle contemplation, Levi -the more streetsmart of the two, the one who hangs out with the older boys- picks up his rock and draws a little heart on their conversation-wall. And grins.

                         Let there be love - Oasis 

The indefatigible wisdom of teenage texters

*Overheard at me old local*

“Now you listen, baby-girl. There are ONLY two types of texters : those who send inane texts followed by “oops, wrong text!” just to register their existence, and those who receive them “wrong texts”. Now which one you wanna be?”  

 

The People Vs. David Brent

When I'm not out there fighting the good fight, crusading against collective 21st century mediocrity and slaying boybands, I work. That's right: the cape comes off at dawn and like everybody else, I play a depressing, soul-sucking 9-5 gig Monday through Friday. While I've turned a few macabre tricks in my time, this most recent of occupations is without doubt the most heinous, mainly because its one of those professions that only came about because all the other jobs were taken and some unemployed fucker finally decided it was about time he had a proper meal.

I'm a 'conference producer'. For the uninitiated, that means I sit around googling all day looking for topics that equally underemployed people will spend a lot of money to talk about and listen to in a five star hotel somewhere in Johannesburg or Dubai or Singapore. In other words, I latch on to things that other people have declared 'hot' and 'contemporary' and 'radical' and find a few other people to talk about them and charge everybody else to attend these events because a silver-tongued salesman has cold-called and convinced them that the petroleum industry will save millions by adopting paper napkin alternatives to actually cleaning up an oil spill. Or some such.

I have no moral qualms about this. To be fair, we never really organize an event that is completely redundant. There's even a slight possibility that some people find this kind of thing useful. Besides, I'm highly suspicious of people who claim their jobs are fulfilling and meaningful. Jobs are meant to pay your bills. If you want to find  yourself, if you want to change the big bad world, go tell it on the mountain. But that's not what this is about. A large part of my working day comprises looking up people on professional networking sites like Linkedin to find a handful of people qualified to speak on whatever topic I've decided deserves an international audience in a 5-star hotel in some remote part of the world. (This is beginning to sound much more glamorous than it really is.)

See, I'd never used Linkedin before I started on this job. Its basically Facebook for CV's and bio data and resume's. So Linkedin profiles tend to be every bit as dishonest and bloated as your average CV. People lie about academic qualifications, work experience, salary, achievements, the lot. Bit like a bar conversation with a girl completely out of your league. I don't want to go on about how ridiculous some people's descriptions of themselves are but today I came across one that made my completely lose my faith in humanity. Here you go:

MURAD SALMAN MIRZA: "Committed Organizational Architect, Positive Change Driver, Unrepentant Success Addict, Rapacious Knowledge Dispenser"

Let's take this one at a time:

Committed Organizational Architect - If somebody's paying you to do something, you may as well be committed doing it right? Even if you're not, 'committed' is not an attribute you'd crow about on a CV, surely? You'd think that'd be a minimum qualification.

Positive Change Driver - I can't imagine any scenario where an employer might want you to drive negative change. Can you?

Unrepentant Success Addict - This guy is hardcore. This guy is street. He doesn't just like success, he's addicted to it. He smokes it, snorts it, dabs it on his tongue, injects it right into his veins. And he's unrepentant about it. He'll sell his babies, murder his gran-gran for that sweet stuff. And damn right he won't shed a tear. You know, coz he's unrepentant.

Rapacious Knowledge Dispenser - This one's my favourite. He's a 'knowledge dispenser'. A phrase that can only bring to mind those soap-ejaculating things in restrooms. You push the little button on his head and out plops knowledge. Big gooey chunks of knowledge. And he's rapacious about it. He'll insist on jizzing you with his knowledge. Oh yeah, you say no and he'll just ram that big bad rod of his into your ear and spurt knowledge all over the side of your cheap, slutty face. 

So basically he's a pedantic leaky tool. And he's not sorry about it. He's David Brent in disguise.

Did I mention he's a 'human relations advisor'?

Sometimes I weep for humanity. I really do.