Save me from my TV
Posted by: lucie
I've convinced someone to buy my TV. Or rather, my ex-boyfriend's TV, which was conferred on me as a sort of 'sorry you supported me for so long and I never got my act together and even went so far as to charge this 500 pound TV on my credit card' apology when we broke up.
It's a 28-inch widescreen Sony TV, and I watch it far, far too much. I scrutinize Big Brother nightly. I ogle at Ladette to Lady; I'm blown away by Sugar Rush and will dutifully sit tranfixed before most anything at any hour, until my eyelids are so heavy I'm forced to stumble to bed. The other day I realized I've been wasting no less then 5 hours per week (conservative estimate) on Big Brother, which is trash. Fascinating trash, but unarguably trash.
The hours waste away and I have nothing, nothing to show for it in the morning.
At the core of this conundrum, of course, is the undeniable fact that all the shows I've just mentioned are pure brilliance. Big Brother has gone old school, hurling a bunch of truly oddball personalities (including, for example, a bug-eyed 'white witch' who claims to have been abducted by aliens 7 times and a former Margaret Thatcher speechwriter) into a flat, assigning them bizarre tasks and letting sparks fly. Ladette to Lady is a reality show that locks a bunch of common alcoholic girls in a finishing school, outfits them in twin sets, pearls and pumps and makes them compete at sewing, flower arranging, cooking and general manners whilst simultaneously tempting them with nights out at the pub and hottie Lords spending the night just down the hall.
And Sugar Rush, my dear God, Sugar Rush, is based on an outrageous novel written by Julie Burchill, truly one of the golden children of British journalism, and revolves around a 15 year old girl's sexual obsession with her best (female) mate 'Sugar.' It features such genius lines as 'I just got a glimpse of Sugar's amazing tits. If I don't fuck her brains out soon I think my head will explode.' In the last two episodes, our heroine has masturbated with an electric toothbrush and contemplated getting Sugar hopped up on her parents' prescription pills and date raping her. Go on, track down an episode - I couldn't make this up.
British TV is heroin-like; it reels you in and you can't fight it with willpower alone. So I've taken the first step. I admit I have lost control. I'm facing the cold, hard facts: if I don't chuck this box out of my house posthaste I will probably never accomplish anything ever, ever again.
I’ve been trying to pawn it off to friends, offering a hot deal of 200 pounds to anyone who will just come and take it away as soon as possible. When Anna finally expressed an interest I was overjoyed and immediately proclaimed that she didn't even have to pay for it yet (No Money Down!) - she could pay me in October - if she would just promise to remove it from my world as soon as possible.
Being a kind and polite English rose, she insisted instead on paying me for it now and not taking it until October.
"What will you do without Big Brother?" she said.
"Exactly," I said.
Mensa
Posted by: lucie
Meeting people gets harder as you get older, I think. Friends start to settle down a bit, go out less, couple up, get into a routine. Did you read the Belle du Jour where she said 'Someone once told me that you don't meet anyone you like after you turn 30' or something to that effect? I've been pondering that lately. If it's true I've got 15 months to make friends I like, and the rest of my life to live with them.
I don't love living where I live; if you read this blog you've probably picked that up. I'm alright with it now, making the best of things after a recent bitter and broken-hearted 'I can't believe I moved to England with this guy and we broke up and now I find myself in the middle of grim, blue-collar nowheresville' phase. I've made a couple of really good friends and am generally fairly content with the idea that I'm going to be here for four more months - it doesn't sound like torture anymore.
If you'd asked me a couple of months ago, I would have said that life here was not stimulating at all, and that I feared for my mental health. I would have told you that people here were narrow-minded and seemed only to work, watch tv, go to the pub, talk about the real estate market and do a lot of DIY and gardening.
I would have asked: how do you meet people who make you feel alive and switched on and excited and creative? How do you find people you can have good hours-long conversations with? I'm not the type to just walk into pubs and try to make friends; and even if I were, around here that probably wouldn't have won me anything more than a one night stand, which wasn't on my to-do list.
A few months ago I decided to sign up to take a Mensa entry test. I can't remember how I hit on the idea in the first place, but I somehow fixated on the notion that there was a club for smart people out there, and if I could gain access to it I'd be rewarded with loads of clever and interesting friends.
The first step was to send away for the home test, which you take by yourself and send back in to be scored. If your score puts you in the top 5% of the population, you get invited to take the real test under proper conditions, observed and timed. So I did that and got the nod for round two.
The observed test was a couple months later in Newcastle. By the time the day crept up I had gone off the idea of Mensa being the solution to all my loneliness problems. I mean, intelligence alone does not good company make. And I'd started to find intellectual and creative stimulation in overextending myself at work, blogging, going out with my new friends and keeping in closer touch with friends back home, so I wasn't desperate for solutions anymore. But I was still curious.
So last weekend I drove up to this hotel in Newcastle, parked my car and walked into a big, quiet room full of desks and nervous-looking twenty-somethings. I'd half expected people in their fifties, mostly because the NE England Mensa homepage is filled with pictures of pensioners.
Me and the two guys to my left tried to spark some casual conversation, but most of our fellow test-takers were, I can only guess, too freaked out about the fact they were attempting to get into a 'high IQ society' to chill out and have a chat.
In a last attempt to break the ice I piped up with, 'I'm just surprised to see that everyone is so young! Does that surprise anybody else?' This was met with blank stares and one slightly aggressive-sounding, 'Well I'm 37,' from a women two rows behind me. 'Oh. You look a lot younger than that,' I said, and meant it - she looked about 25. I dunno, Botox? And she practically barked 'Thank you.'
At this I resigned myself to playing with my hotel pencil for the next ten minutes while silently grumbling to myself that Mensa is basically supposed to be a social club, and here were all these people who wanted to get in but didn't seem very sociable.
Well, Mensa is theoretically a social club. I suppose a lot of people join for the card that proves they are smart. These, I suppose, are the people who order Mensa cufflinks and Mensa mugs and Mensa t-shirts so everyone will know that they are in the top 2% of smartypantses in the world.
Anyway, long story short, I took the test and it was really hard and I didn't think I'd get in, but Friday a letter appeared offering me membership, and I am going to join and see what it's like.
The irony, of course, is that there are no Mensa meetings within a 50 mile radius of where I live. But in July they are having the annual gathering for British Mensa, which is a 5 day summer camp-like experience full of pub crawls, African drumming workshops, lectures, tours of the city, meals, nightclubbing, going to the Harry Potter book launch and other random activities. It's in Newcastle, conveniently, so I think I'm going to go.
I hope people will be friendly, because I won't know a soul and have no idea what to expect. I will report back.
I've decided it's probably not a good idea to tell too many of my friends and family about this whole Mensa thing (only one of my friends even knows about the blog so no worries there). So far I have told my old roommate, who knew I was taking the test anyway, and one other friend.
The latter's response, when I said on AIM 'Hey, a while ago when I was lonely and having a hard time meeting people I decided to try to get into Mensa, and I took the test last week and today I got a letter offering me membership,' was: 'Bullshit.' And I said, 'No, really.' And he typed back 'hahaha.' So I just left it at that.
ps. (July 19 05) From now on I'm just going to refer to it as 'M' in the old blog... google.
Wanderlust
Posted by: lucie
I've been trying to decide what I should do in the Himalayas after I've left the monastery at the end of the year. You can't just buy a one-way ticket into any foreign country; without proof of onward travel it can be nigh on impossible to win a visa. So I need to decide where I want to go and book travel to the monastery, from the monastery to *blank* and from *blank* back home.
My first idea was to go to Tibet. But I don't like the look of the visa hassle. Tibet being officially a part of the 'people's republic' of China and not its own country (thanks to China's 'liberation' of Tibet in the 70s, I think, perhaps 60s), the visa game can be a bit tricky. You have to enter China without mentioning your intention to visit Tibet (easy enough). Then you can apply for a Tibetan tourist visa, but this sometimes involves buying into a package with a tour operator (ridiculously expensive). In addition to this, sometimes you have to do the same to get a Chinese visa... especially - you guessed it - when coming from particularly sensitive border countries such as Nepal, which isn't a Maoist republic despite some insurgents' best attempts.
So then I thought of India. It's relatively safe (there's no State Department warning as there is with Nepal, anyway) and it's right next door. For some reason I've never felt particularly attracted to India, but this works two ways: 1) it's a good reason not to go, and 2) it's a good reason to go now while I'm in the 'hood, because I probably won't take the time to seek it out later, as I know I will with China, Thailand, Vietnam and other places on my long long destinations list.
But given that I'm only tentatively planning on spending two weeks in the area - because getting to Seattle for new year's eve seemed like a nice tidy plan - I'm now thinking about staying in Nepal and volunteering as an English teacher at a local school. Teaching English is difficult but I started to pick up some skills when I was in Eastern Europe (had to make ends meet during the quitting Djing -> supporting myself through journalism transition period), so I know I could manage it and be of some benefit to someone. There are volunteer agencies in Nepal that hook you up with host families and place you in schools for short periods, and that sounds like a safe way to experience the culture without putting myself in much danger.
This would undoubtedly turn into at least a month and I would not get back to the Northwest by New Year's Eve. It would possibly lead to another month doing the same in India... who knows?
Will I ever get home? What was meant to be a month or two taking advantage of being 'between lives' could snowball into 4 months of destinationless wandering. It sounds very romantic except for the fact it's what I've been doing for years already, and there's part of me that just wants to begin settling down and growing roots somewhere.
The other day I found someone's account of his time at the 30-day retreat at Lotus and there was a passage about forgetting his life in 'the real world.' He wrote something to the effect of (I paraphrase): The more time I spent at Lotus the harder it became for me to believe that I had a life outside of this place. Did I really have a wife, two kids, a mortgage and two cars at home? This faded away and I hardly thought about it, except during the few meditation sessions when I was encouraged to briefly reflect on it.'
It occurs that the experience could end up being all the more powerful for me, who will have no 'real life' and no home... No car, no house, no job, no family, no attachments. A perfectly clean slate. What an ideal way to enter a 40-day monastery experience: floating utterly unbound through the universe.
I've been telling people at work recently about my decision to go to Nepal and live in a Buddhist monastery for a while, and the reactions range from jealousy to pitying or worried looks and and mutterings of words like 'crackers' under the breath. I get a kick out of them thinking I'm nuts. I also get a kick out of my friends back home thinking I'm terribly worldly.
The truth is, I'm not that worldly. I've been around, sure, I pick up languages more easily than others, I am damn good with fake sign language and I can blend in better than most Americans abroad, but I've yet to venture as far off the beaten path as I'd like. Eastern Europe may sound exotic to some, but truly capitalism is capitalism and the world is being Westernized nearly everywhere you go. I'd like to go a bit deeper. And not just to a monastery in Nepal, to a program full of other white Americans and British people seeking enlightenment in 30 days - I'd like to get a bit more raw.
More research is required.
ps. Suggestions welcome.
Lovely sweaty women
Posted by: lucie
So the President of UEFA, the governing body of European football, is really smart and has figured out how to promote the women's league.
"If you see a girl playing on the ground, sweaty, with the rainy weather and coming out of the dressing-room, lovely looking, that would sell," he says.
This on the heels of the Fifa President's equally clever remark: "Let them play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. They could, for example, have tighter shorts."
Maybe they could also make out every time they score a goal.
Musings, ramblings and sleep deprivation
Posted by: lucie
I haven't been updating much of late because I haven't been sleeping much of late.
I haven't been sleeping much of late because I've been:
a) lying awake in bed listening to the kick drum from the club two doors down that just applied for its license to be extended to play music until 2am, but took the liberty of pretending said license had already been granted, and
b) drinking a grande latte every day from the coffee shop that just opened around the corner from my work.
This is a bad combination.
The new cafe is in one respect nothing short of a miracle. I had, before its opening, located only one coffee shop within a ten mile radius of my house where they actually knew how to produce a latte that didn't come off as watery brown milk. At an alternate cafe my latte came out with a soup-like skin on top - no word of a lie, my friends. And if I counted the venues that could provide even a latte of the watery brown milk variety, I'd say I still knew of only about three.
The new place is an English chain touting itself as an Italian coffee shop, and the three neophyte baristas behind the counter (trainee baristas, their t-shirts proclaim, not that they particularly need to) trip over each other, seem always to lose track of what they were doing 30 seconds ago and produce about one drink per five minutes between the lot. Bless them, I love them for it.
So the cafe and the club are keeping me awake, and I say imagine that; two things that used to come so naturally to me - coffee, house music - two things that used to be my reasons for waking up in the morning have turned on me and become the things that keep me awake at night. Truly I have travelled far and wide. And speaking of journeys...
A friend emailed me recently and attempted to summarize the last two years of his life in one email message. I wish I could copy and paste large sections of his email because it is beautiful, really brilliant in its innocence, but can't for fear he would discover it and feel desperately betrayed.
The gist of it is that he's been searching for his soul and decided maybe he was meant to be Jewish, but when he went to the rabbi he was told to come back after he'd read a bit more. He then proceeded to learn so much about Judaism that his Jewish friends were coming to him for explanations. But when he eventually tried to convert for real he got denied, because when he went to the synagogue and the rabbi asked him what brought him there, he talked about community and forgot to mention God.
Being sleep-deprived, that's all I can manage today. I haven't the mental capacity for beginnings, middles and ends. Goodnight.
Realizing you are Over It
Posted by: lucie
There is nothing quite so astonishing and exhilarating as realizing you are Over It.
After breaking up with someone
after the denial
after the 'Ooohhh my heeeeaaart, how will I go on'
and the anger
and the 'I will never love again'
and the 'No one will ever love me again'
and then the eventual 'Maybe we just weren't right for each other'
and the 'I must find someone to distract me from this pain'
and the 'Hey, maybe being single is alright, think of all the aspects of myself I have been neglecting...'
One day, one random day, you realize you're just Over It. It comes on gradually but the realization is sudden: You are magically, finally, blessedly simply done. This is a gorgeous thing.
I don't know if that's normal, but it's how it went for me. And now everything is awesome. I'm so excited about life I want to jump out of my own skin. I'm so excited about all the things I'm going to do in the next six months, all by my bad self, that I lie awake in bed at night, grinning. Life is exhilarating, solitude is satisfying, and I'm very, very awake.
Chillin on a metaphysical couch
Posted by: lucie
Last night I reconnected with a friend I've drifted from a bit. We reconnected suddenly, intensely, when he appeared with a bang in my mind and heart and swirled around and around for two hours, between midnight and 2am, when I really needed to be sleeping. This was slightly inconvenient timing but I was pleased to have him there.
My understanding of the history I share with this man - to whom I have a spiritual connection the likes of which I have never experienced with anyone else - suddenly clicked. Not clicked; peaked. Peaked as in the moment when you're that close to understanding the whole universe and the relationships between all things and concepts in your world, when realizations are exploding inside realizations, thought bubbles bursting out of thought bubbles, and you know by tomorrow it will all have begun its backward slide.
So he was swirling around in my psyche, moments replaying, understandings rising and falling, and then we just chilled on a couch. Somewhere. I don't know how to explain this - there was a metaphysical couch and our souls sat next to each other on it, radiating energy from all of our pores, not talking, vibrating, buzzing. My soul rested its head on his soul's shoulder. I'm not speaking in metaphor here; it was real - there we were, wherever it was.
Several years ago I had a dream that I was walking to an unknown destination and stopped at a gas station to buy a drink; he pulled up in a car with a friend (she was driving) and kept saying I should get in but I didn't like the look of her, all bouncing off the seats, so I turned down the ride. Two days later he emailed and said he'd been in a nasty accident that night but scraped by. She went off the road and rolled the car.
This memory got me out of bed at 2am, when I desperately needed to be sleeping, to write him an email - Where are you and what are you doing? I've just been thinking about you like MAD. No... I've just been tripping on you very intensely. We sat and chilled on a couch somewhere, silent, oozing energy from all our pores. It was real. Write back soonest and let me know everything is cool, not that I get any vibe otherwise, but confirmation would be good.
Liv's lump
Posted by: lucie
You haven't been around for a few weeks so you haven't seen Olivia. You've been out to lunch once but mostly discussed work. You go out for drinks.
An hour into the night, as if it's nothing, Olivia says she has found a lump, then cackles and proclaims that actually her boyfriend found it. The train of conversation leading you here has gone like this: <- breast cancer took her mother from her when she was a teenager, slowly and painfully <- a coworker's mother recently lost her battle with breast cancer.
Olivia is sitting in front of you, flippant about her lump, saying she delayed a couple months before going to the doctor and is now in the 'two week wait period' before being booked in for a biopsy. She'll claim her boyfriend's postcode so she won't have to go to the same hospital her mother went to - an institution she calls 'the death factory.'
She tells you that she cried to your boss (you have the same boss) in a meeting when she told him she would need time off to go to the hospital, and then made him squirm with a crack about having 36FFs when she came back to work. You remember when you cried in front of your mutual boss a couple months after starting your job here, explaining your need for a day off to find a flat double-fast; how he asked you if you had a 'support network' and people to talk to. You were brand new in town and didn't, really, not locally.
He has done the same with Olivia, who has also been in town and in this job for about two months. You befriended her only a month ago, and she told him she would talk to you about it when you got back. She has family here but doesn't want to tell them this secret and unearth the trauma they went through with her mother; not before it is strictly necessary.
You've been back four days, you've been out to lunch, you've been at this bar for an hour talking about boys and work and family, and she's just let this slip as though it's nothing. Really nothing.
She tells you they request permission, if they determine during the biopsy that the lump is cancerous, to take it out on the spot. She says they may as well sew her back up and let her get on with dying, that her mother died of breast cancer, that her mother died in her arms, that her aunt has breast cancer, her grandmother had breast cancer and she is a time bomb.
You ask her to go back to the part about getting on with dying. She looks you dead in the eye, absolutely steel-faced. She does not blink; she leans forward. 'My mother had a lump removed, then a complete masectomy, then two years of chemo and radiation,' she says angrily. 'She still died. If it's cancerous I'd rather just get on with it.'
She looks like she means it. She looks utterly fearless. You want to say it's probably nothing but you don't believe it. You want to offer that at least she's catching it early, but she delayed going to the doctor for two months and ultimately had to be forced by her boyfriend. Everything you can think of to say in this situation would sound hollow. Her mother died in her arms. You run through a list of possible responses to this situation and settle on: 'You must be scared shitless.'
She says she's been trying not to think about it.
Lotus Monastery
Posted by: lucie
There were all these teacups on the High Street today - teacups full of children spinning themselves green. A bouncy castle, trampolines, and a little band of local folk troubadors pulling together for shrill renditions of 'Under the Boardwalk' and similar favourites piped through ancient speakers. Tables and tables of car boot sale-esque junk, hand-crocheted potholders and preserves.
It was the annual Town Charities Fair, according to a battered banner hanging on the 12x12 foot Town Hall. The poor weatherbeaten thing looked like it had been around for decades, and the fair didn't look much better. Apparently it's spawned a bit of controversy in recent years because it doesn't manage to break even. The town council keeps having to pay to make up the difference. But they keep trying.
Me, I'm not going to be around for next year's Town Charities Fair, sponsored by the Lions. I'm setting off pretty soon... Like the fair, my time here is coming to an end.
If I had a thing, it might be travelling, or just moving and exploring new places. I seem to wander along every two years or so. West Coast to NYC, NYC to another city on the East Coast, East Coast to Eastern Europe, then the UK.
For much of that time my thing was DJing, so I travelled under musical auspices to Spain, Slovakia, Peru, Portugal, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Mexico and Canada. Then I quit DJing and started travelling with my boyfriend: sailing in Croatia, exploring Germany, all over the Czech Republic, France, Hungary.
When we broke up, some friends took me to Amsterdam for a recovery trip. I went back to Eastern Europe for a week with one of my girlfriends. I visited Rome with another girlfriend, and Barcelona with another. It was this boy who brought me to England, this strange rural area of Northeast England and this little town that is so not me, and I've been determined to make the best of it; to take advantage of the rest of my time here and visit as much of Europe as possible. When you're a 1 to 2 hour flight and $200 round trip ticket from any number of contrasting European cities, you have to go. It's been amazing.
All this travelling, all this moving, and so many more places I want to go, and then it hits me HARD this year: I just miss the Northwest. I'm getting nostalgiac. I go back to visit and I have this amazing feeling of belonging. It is perhaps because I've ended up in such a random place and have never felt so like an outsider. I'm getting tired of all this moving around. It's been 8 years since I left my hometown; 4 years since I left my home country. I'm finally homesick.
The Northwest is calling, and I'll answer that call at the end of this year. But it seemed there should be something to punctuate the end of these years. Something dramatic, perhaps mixed up with more adventures. I want to go to Asia. I want to go deep. I've figured it out:
I'm going to a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas at the end of the year. Learn to caaaaalm down on command. Take some time, before heading home, before transplanting my life to a new city yet again, to reflect on what it means to lead a meaningful life. Get introspective. Get intense.
Then, since I'll be in the neighborhood, I might hit India, Tibet, and one or two other Asian destinations. It makes me sad that James and Lyova won't be around - like many others at this point, I feel I know them. I feel a real affection for Lyova especially, not knowing what he's doing in Taiwan. I'm right there with him. I want to go sit on that couch with James and Lyova. I suppose by November/ December that couch will be in someone else's flat, and that's a shame.
These will be my first experiences truly travelling solo. I technically travelled alone when I was a DJ but there was always a promoter to pick me up at the airport and chauffer me to the hotel, to the club, back to the hotel, back to the airport. I went to Eastern Europe alone but quickly found friends (and a boyfriend) and settled down.
This time it's going to be me and a backpack, and we're going to keep moving.
ps. I'm settling into the idea of writing about my own damn self here. I hope people don't find it too annoying; it's my only specialism at the moment.
Piano Man updates
Posted by: lucie
Monday, May 16, 2005 - Previous Overarching Piano Man entry:
Is this YOUR melancholy pianist?
The Guardian - Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Piano man trail runs cold in Sweden
One Guardian reader flagged up a close physical similarity between the "piano man" and a young musician called Martin Sturefält who has bases in Stockholm and London. The lead seemed particularly promising as the stranger had pointed to a picture of a Swedish flag when shown an atlas.
However, Mr Sturefält was found to be in good spirits though a little bemused when tracked down to his Stockholm flat.
"It's very sad," he said. "I've tried to think who it could be but really can't imagine."
The Guardian - Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Hollywood considers film on lost identity 'piano man'
He is still refusing, or unable, to say a word and his identity remains a mystery, but the lost "piano man" yesterday began to attract the attention of Hollywood.
Producers have been making inquiries about the man who, since being found near a beach in Kent more than a month ago, has communicated only via the keyboard of a piano. A film about his story could be on the horizon - though for the moment it lacks an ending.
Thursday, May 19, 2005 - The Guardian
What is wrong with the Piano Man?
"Different bits of the brain are involved in memories for everyday events and incidents and for well-rehearsed skills such as playing music," says Michael Kopelman, a professor of neuropsychiatry at King's College London.
"It is well known that in both neurological disease and in psychological forms of amnesia, the ability to play music is preserved. If I knew someone could do it before and now they claim to have lost that skill, I would be thinking they might be faking."
Sunday, May 22, 2005 - The Observer
Piano Man makes us feel distinctly superficial, consumerist, conformist
Piano Man: The Movie will prove a blockbuster. We all want to be him. In our suspicious, paranoid world, where everyone is numbered, fingerprinted, catalogued, accounted for at every stage of their life, the man who slips through the net becomes an object of marvel, and envy. Bureaucracy hasn't bound and gagged him, 'homeland security' hasn't cowed him. In the days of ID cards and stop-and-search, CCTV cameras and, until recently, detention of anyone who matched that one-size-fits-all label 'terrorist suspect', the outsider whom no one can place is a walking, breathing phenomenon.
Sunday, May 22, 2005 - The Observer
Imposter, or living in his nowhere land?
In November 1999 a man walked into Toronto General Hospital and gave his name as Philip Staufen. The man, who spoke with a Yorkshire accent, said he had been attacked and had lost his memory. The labels had been cut from his clothes and he had no passport and no clue to his identity.
All that was known about him was that he could speak Latin, French and Italian. Like the Piano Man, Staufen's plight touched a nation.
... Many now believe Staufen is a con man. Even his former lawyer, Eric Slone, believes Staufen is not telling the full story about his past. 'He is an extremely intelligent and complex man,' Slone told The Observer .
...'It may be that the Piano Man learnt from Staufen. You take the labels out of your clothes and don't say anything,' he said. 'We took Staufen to a linguistics professor [who identified his Yorkshire accent]. This guy, if he opens his mouth, you might be able to work out where he's from. I suspect he is not English and is trying something of the same. It's beyond coincidence that he is wearing clothing that doesn't have labels.'
Saturday, May 28, 2005 - The Guardian
Mud Slinging
[My partner] says my animated response to Piano Man's story is pathetically, stereotypically female. I am displaying little more than a classic kneejerk reaction to the tale of the young, troubled genius.
The tantalising detail that he was found in wet clothes - last modelled to thrilling effect by Colin Firth in Pride And Prejudice - would appear nicely to round off what is allegedly the most hackneyed and well-rehearsed of female fantasies. It has to do with the timeless allure of a brooding, damaged individual crying out to be nurtured and revived. And if there are attendant laundry issues to sort out, all the better.
Piano Man more than fits the bill. He is a 6ft foundling, a long-term project who presents possibilities both romantic and deliciously domestic; here are memories to dislodge, wounds to heal, broken spirits to piece back together. And, the biggest plus of all, in his current voiceless state, he's guaranteed to not answer back: always a bonus when picking out new clothes for him from the Boden catalogue and deciding which side to part his hair.
Thursday, June 2, 2005 - The Guardian
I'm not piano man, says Czech musician
Friends of Tomas Strnad, a rock musician who played with the band Ropotamo more than 20 years ago, told newspapers they were "convinced" that he was the enigma whose picture has been seen around the world.
But the real Mr Strnad has now appeared on a Czech television news programme, saying:"I just want to set the record straight so that the people are not lied to. It is not me, it is somebody else."
Little lesbian sister conclusion
Posted by: lucie
Right, all has been revealed.
Re: Dating Women, Relationship Women
"I'm open to dating men and women, but figure if I was a lesbian it would be more in line with my values and life-goals." (!)
She thinks guys are hot but they drive her nuts. She thinks women are hot but isn't sure if she thinks they're hot "in a platonic way." (?)
She hasn't told the family yet, but says she will have no problem telling them if she gets a girlfriend (despite acknowledging that mom would be uncomfortable and "I'm sure dad would be so proud of his pierced, lesbian daughter!")
And happily, in response to my matthew hoppock-inspired follow-up message (ps. I hope this goes without saying, but it doesn't make a bit of difference to me who you date as long as you're happy, and if you don't want to go public with this yet I'll totally respect your privacy), she says of course it goes without saying and she would never think anything other than that from me... she just hasn't figured out what she wants yet. Phew.
Aaaaand, scene. The little lesbian sister trilogy ends here.
Thank you for your patience.
Little lesbian sister pt 2
Posted by: lucie
Yesterday I thought this 'wow, I may have discovered on friendster that my little sister is a lesbian' thing was kind of intriguing and exciting and juicy.
Today I'm pondering r06ot's comment from yesterday ('if nothing else, it is powerful weak to come out to one's family via friendster') and thinking daaayum, in actual fact it's even worse than that: she came out to friendster (because it's finally sinking in that she probably didn't make a mistake when she checked the 'dating women' and 'relationship women' boxes) and not me! That's kind of insulting.
I do recognize:
a) It's none of my business and she doesn't have to tell me what gender she prefers to sleep with, especially given that we're not particularly close, and
b) It's kind of self-absorbed to be making this about me,
BUT STILL -
She can tell everyone on the Internet before she tells me?
I have lesbian friends (fair enough, she doesn't know this). I've made out with girls, dammit (she also doesn't know this). I've been on a tourbus with the freaking lesbian road show with nary a straight girl in sight for a month (this she does know, and you'd think it would be enough). My reaction to her coming out to me would have been: totally surprised, then totally unsurprised, then neutral. Who cares?
Brat. I await her reply to my Friendster message confirming or denying her closet lesbianhood. I won't actually believe it until I hear it from her.
ps. This is so not the kind of blogging I ever intended to do, but it's not every day that your little sister outs herself on Friendster, so bear with me through this break from our usual programming.
Little lesbian sister??
Posted by: lucie
I just saw my little sister's updated Friendster profile, and it says:
Interested in Meeting People for: Relationship Women, Dating Women, Friends, Activity Partners
This means one of two things:
1) She got confused by the Friendster profile editing screen, or
2) She's a closet lesbian.
Actually, maybe three things:
3) She's made a conscious decision to date women for a while (although that does seem kind of weird, because if you weren't sure you'd probably put men AND women down, wouldn't you?)
I've just returned from the US where I spent several days with her, and I guess she didn't say anything about boys (although she has had boyfriends in the past) and I guess she said she liked hanging out at gay bars (but she says this is because she works with lots of gay men and gay bars are fun, and I figured she was just a good old-fashioned fag hag), and I guess she has put on lots of weight and got all empowered about it and started wearing t-shirts with Buddha on them saying 'For good luck, rub my belly,' and I guess she just cut her hair short and enrolled in a women's studies MA program, but...
Those are all just stereotypes, right? She never told ME she was a lesbian! What, like I'm going to freak out?
Anyway, I feel slightly out of order asking, because obviously she didn't choose to tell me when we hung out, but... I was the one who invited her to Friendster, and she's put it out there in public, so here goes:
Friendster message:
Subj: Relationship Women, Dating Women
Your profile says:
Interested in Meeting People for: Relationship Women, Dating Women, Friends, Activity Partners
Did you get confused filling in the form or do you date women these days?
Just curious!
love,
your sister
