A modern phenomenon

Fuckbuddies. They seem to be all the rage. On the face of it...yeah, why not? You’re getting your rocks off without the pain of having to be polite to somebody else’s parents or spending your hard-earned pennies on flowers. And anything that helps me avoid paying to see a film I wouldn’t watch even if it were on terrestrial TV and there was literally nothing else available to watch (I’m looking at you, Jean Claude Van Damme) can only be for the good, right?

Maybe not. See, most people understand the ‘fuck’ bit perfectly well. Packed it, fucked it, went home. It’s easy, I’ve done it. And I’ve got frustrated. What about the ‘buddies’ bit? Someone to whinge with about the single life, to kick back with a Chinese and a DVD with when neither of you has anything better to do, to text you back when you’re bored at work?

Maybe I’ve been unlucky. Or maybe I’m expecting too much. Perhaps everyone else is doing it right. It still makes me angry that the ’buddy’ aspect is overlooked. Then I look at what I’d want from a fuckbuddy-type relationship:
• Um, the obvious. Which means a strong mutual physical attraction.
• Conversation and mutual interest. Which means a decent level of attraction to one another’s personality.
• Someone to hang out with, even in an occasionally non-sexual context.
• Someone consistent and communicative.
• Someone to see regularly, not sporadically, and who’s not going to drop you without warning.
Yup. Basically, I’m after a boyfriend. D’oh.

The many moods of my mother

Here is a flavour.

Saturday evening, before I go out: "That top's a bit tight, come here and let me stretch it so you don't look pregnant."
Sunday evening: "Has anyone said anything about you losing weight? No? Well they've probably not noticed because you always wear such baggy clothes."

?

Honestly

I have a profile on what you would call a dating site. Being my profile, the spelling, grammar and coherence are pretty good; better than in 97% of other profiles on the internet.  There is one spelling mistake...well, it isn't even a mistake, because it's deliberate. But it is a misspelling.

 

The site asks you to describe 'The first thing(s) people usually notice about me'. My response to this is as follows:

"My enormous....brane. Only joking, it's my tits."

 

Let me reiterate. The rest of my profile is eloquent, lucid and perfectly spelled. To anyone with half a brain (i.e. the kind of person I wish my profile to attract), this is a funny deliberate mistake. After all, I am clearly sending up my own intelligence with a dash of irony and a Molesworth reference. And if you don't get all of that, then you can still appreciate that I'm just being silly, by virtue of the contrast with the rest of what's written there.

 

Or can you?

 

Not if you're one of the people who in recent months have availed themselves of the 'Propose Edits' facility on the website. I believe 'Propose Edits' was designed for use by people who know/have met the profile in real life, who want add a paragraph or two about what a great catch they are/what a shit date they took the commenter on. However, at least two people of late have taken it upon themselves to propose that I edit my profile so that 'brain' is spelled correctly.

 

Uhhhhh.

 

The first time I just deleted the edit request, thinking, "What a blowhard, that he doesn't get my humour. Poor sap."

 

This time I thought about it, and got mad. See, one thing that rankles with me is being taken as a dummy. I'm not stupid. Far from it. So who are these people that:

(a)   Assume I lack the mental capacity to spell quite an easy word in the correct fashion?

(b)   Fail to compare the error to its context?

(c)   Lack the sense of humour to get a mild self-deprecating gag?

(d)   Are riled enough to log in and CORRECT me, like I hadn't spotted the error and they were doing me a favour by educating me?

 

Well, I can only assume that they are:

(E) Humourless, patronising dicks who spend their time looking for spelling and grammatical errors on sites where it means little, and have the temerity to sneeringly lean over and point them out like weedy little teachers pets. No wonder they don't have girlfriends, if the only way they can approach a girl is to tell her she's got something basic wrong.

 

There are plenty of profiles out there which are so badly spelled it is extremely irritating to a pedant like myself. But you know what I do? I think, "a person who can't spell, or can't be bothered to check their spelling, is simply not interesting to me. I shall waste no further time on them", and proceed to another profile, or a LOLcat or something. I am not their schoolteacher, nor are they my pupils.  If I had the time to do such things, I'd go through Wikipedia with a fine-toothed grammar comb, not wasting my time being an insulting cunt.

 

Why I owe Charlie Brooker a blow job

There may be graphs later.

My main reasoning follows the model that Brooker has given me more pleasure than, let's say, a slightly above average boyfriend would have done a given time period. Let's say over three months.

During the last three months, I have read Brooker's book Dawn of the Dumb, followed his columns in The Guardian and watched the first two series of Screenwipe on Youtube. Conservative estimates show that the book made me laugh out loud or gasp in amusement (often in public) on average every three pages, and made me at the very least grin or even snort every page. So let's say that's one moment of true self abandonment-style pleasure every two pages. 338 pages = 169 moments. And a minimum of one per column in the paper – let's say 20 moments there. And on the telly, I'd say I got giddy with pleasure once every three minutes– so, 10 per episode, nine episodes = 90 moments.

An above average boyfriend...well, it depends on how above average, I suppose. Let us presume moderate bedroom talent, and that I am typically demanding my usual three weeks out of four. So, the enthusiastic little chap gives me what I want five times a week – so, that's 45 pleasure points. And he cracks some entertaining jokes a couple of times a week, and, importantly, indulges my warped attempts at humour (this deserves credit) – so, 5 points a week equals 60 over the three months. Assorted additional marks such as making me a nice cup of tea periodically are accrued – generously, I shall assume a figure of 45.

So, Brooker's exceptional 279 plays fictional average boyfriend's measly 150 (and that's even without deductions made for mitigating stress factors caused by undue emotional attachment). And yet fictional average boyfriend has, over this period, received a bare minimum of 24 instances of fellatio. That's one for every six moments of unadulterated, selflessly-given pleasure. The lucky bastard. And what is Brooker's reward? Nothing (save the money he makes from book sales, TV appearances etc.). I say it's unjust.

And that is why I owe Charlie Brooker a blow job. Technically, 46.5 blow jobs, I suppose.

Next: what I owe Sporticus out of Lazytown.

What I am tired of

What I am tired of

 

What I am tired of is my friends not believing me.

 

Periodically, I will try to explain myself. We may be discussing why I'm dreadful with boys, or why I have struggled to make many friends since moving to London, or even why I am terrified of using the phone.

 

"Actually, I'm painfully shy," I tell them.

 

"I am very anxious about talking to people, meeting new people. I get so worried about what they will think of me, I get incredibly nervous. Truly, I suffer with my social anxiety. It's a struggle. I realise it's 95% paranoia, but my worries make me terribly, terribly, cripplingly shy."

 

After a confession such as this, seven times out of ten the friend will chuckle, as though I have made an awfully clever joke. The other three times, they will laugh and then make a sarcastic remark on the lines of "Oh, I can tell, you're soooooo shy! You're such a shrinking violet!"

 

If I insist I am being serious, they act as if I am being melodramatic and/or seeking an ego rub. "Come off it. Shy? How can someone who has the balls to do stand-up comedy/approach David Tennant/do karaoke every week/appear on live TV/sing on stage/work in the industry you do [delete as applicable] be shy? Nonsense" they say, dismissively. And that's it. Case closed. Shut up, Jen, and don't be so fucking ridiculous.

 

I wish they took me seriously.

Cor limey

It feels weird coming back here after a year, especially re-reading my last post. Ha! I thought I was the one doing the heartbreaking! Fat chance. Basically, last July the cnut in question was over here to shag me while, back home on an unnamed Mediterranean island/EU state, his missus was entering her 8^th month of pregnancy. Suffice to say, I did not know this at the time. I found out by sheer chance (and Facebook) earlier this year. Well, I hope he’s happy. Actually, I don’t. And I bet he isn’t. Karma owes him a massive booting.

Soooo......a year, eh? What have I been up to, you cry?

• · I moved house. Twice. West London, these days.
• · I got back on the boy horse, eventually, with a quite bemusing fuckbuddy scenario which was inexplicably ended before I was quite finished. I’m not sure why such a cosy and mutually beneficial setup was called off; all I know is I’m hacked off that my needs stopped being fulfilled (and they were – my life is fine without a full time bloke. All I need is someone to pop round once a week to hold me and give me a good seeing to before fucking off back home). Stupid boy.
• · I may have scared off a friend who now thinks I like him. I though I did, for a while, but actually it’s a big gay hero-worship/older brother figure thing, confused by the fact that he is rather pretty. If I did really like him in a boy-girl way, then I’d be more heartbroken that he doesn’t like me ‘like that’ than I was by being told the same thing by the fuckbuddy, who I didn’t even really fancy in the first place. Meh, he’ll get over it.
• · I tried to be an Egghead. I sucked.
• · I escaped the BBC, and now live a life on the edge with zero job security and maximum hours sitting on the sofa. Hoorah.

· Um....

That’s it.

In mourning

I have been a brave girl recently, and I’m taking the pain at the moment.

Regular readers/listeners to my whining will know something of the person I have held a torch for for...wow, more than a quarter of my life. The silly, overly romantic section of my brain (is there a romance gland? If not, I am christening it the Austenium) allowed me recently (when once again, as before, contact with him was re-established) to nurse that twinkle of subsumed hope that perhaps, maybe this time, he’d come to his senses and want me, demand to have me properly, realise he loves me. Maybe. Just maybe. So I agreed to see him.

Seeing him wasn’t so bad. I was a little worried that someone would wimp out; that one or other of us would pick a fight and the whole thing would collapse (yes, he makes me act irrationally, so that was a concern). Actually it was lovely. He used the word ‘date’, which threw me. But that’s what it was, I suppose. Perhaps it would have been better if it hadn’t been so nice; it wouldn’t have fanned the flames of the ever-hopeful Austenium. But here’s the grown-up rational bit of the brain exercising its seniority. At about 2am I woke up, rolled over, looked at him and had an epiphany of my own.

I didn’t want him. Well, I didn’t want this. Obviously, I want(ed) him. But I can’t have him, because he will never be willing to give himself to me the way I want or need. He’d sold the thing to me as wanting me to be his ‘mistress’ – I laugh when I read that back, as it sounds so silly when I try to apply that word to myself. But that to me implies something a little deeper than just an occasional fuckbuddy relationship. Anyway, I talked myself into it; I felt (getting déjà vu once more here) I could take what was on offer for the time being, as inevitably he’d realise what a mistake he was making keeping me at arm’s length and want to be with me properly. That’s how I rationalised it to myself; that’s how I’ve been rationalising it to myself the past seven years.

But, even if I did become his mistress or regular fuckbuddy, what would be the point? (quoth my truly rational section of brain). He claims to be very happy with the girl he’s with (ouch, maybe I shouldn’t have pointed out to him that seeking out someone else to have sex with doesn’t indicate true happiness in a relationship...) and isn’t going to leave her, and it would all be on his terms. I would be dissatisfied with the level of intimacy and attention I was getting; he’d be feeling guilty and be on pins all the time, particularly when we were together. I’d want more from him, and there is only a finite amount he could give even if he did decide to open up to me. And what if/when I met someone else? Someone who could give me the time and affection and openness I need? Could we expect that the guy would just hand me over, or be willing to share me?

So the rational brain assesses the options:

1. Accept this status quo, and hook up when he deigns to visit; continue ad infinitum waiting for him to love you (with the niggling but probably correct worry that he only sees you as an occasional fuckbuddy). Possibly die alone, eaten by cats.
2. Say you’d rather not have this relationship right now (I don’t know, make something up about a boyfriend or something) but know that by staying in contact it won’t be long before he propositions you again.
3. Call it all off. Do it now. No matter what the pain. It might save you future agony.

So, blow me down, I went for Option 3. Ouch. Would rather have not had the conversation on MSN, and/or whilst at work, but he pushed me for my thoughts and I was honest. I feel guilty that I might have hurt his feelings; well, mine are pretty much destroyed right now, although I suppose that’s cold comfort to him.

And I suppose that’s it. I’ve killed the thing I nursed for almost seven years. I’m officially grieving. There are actual physical symptoms. And I’m eating far too many Bakewell tarts, and they are only helping in the short-term. I should stop before I turn into a glacé cherry. But at least it was me who did the heart-breaking, so I can’t blame anyone else.

EDIT: Turns out I did the right thing. Several months after this, I found out that while he was over here trying (successfully) to get me into bed, then afterward trying to get me to continue the arrangement his partner was over in their foreign home. Heavily pregnant. I was out of the loop on that particular gem.

Welcome to Bolton Volume 372

Last Saturday evening I was dropped off in Bolton (following my shock horror record-breaking performance at the Leicester GP – I’m “a new force” apparently) on Bank Street. I jumped out and retrieved my wheelie suitcase from the boot and dragged it uphill to the Horwich-bound bus stops, but found no buses were due for a silly amount of time so quickly elected to pop back down Bank Street to the taxi rank. If you know Bolton at all you will appreciate that to get to the taxi rank you must pass a fine establishment called ‘Diamonds’ which advertises itself on the billboard on the side of the building as a great venue for business and parties, but which is best described as a fully nude lap dancing bar. Fact fans – it’s the place where Erica on BBC’s Castaway 2007 works as a dancer.

As I approach, the 3 bouncers stare at me and keenly greet me, but splutter as I merely say “Evening” back and pass by.

“Sorry, love!” one pipes up, nodding at my suitcase, “We thought you were coming in. To dance.”

Momentarily rendered speechless, I manage to ask, “What? Do they dance round suitcases in there?”

“Nah,” says the chap, “but the girls all bring their own cases; bigger than that like, usually.”

As I walk on, he adds in a mournful tone, “Dunno why – it’s only bras in there, in’t it?”

Bitter is the new vodka

London has had several strange effects on me.

On the positive side (well, it depends on your point of view), it gave me the strength of mind to fulfil my Lenten vow. i.e., if I can put up with this town for four months, I can do without THAT for four weeks.

(By the way, I did complete the Lent thing. Mainly through sheer bloody-mindedness, some pain, and one incident of rule-bending...well, there was someone else involved, so it wasn't technically cheating).

On the downside, I have become so fixated with my own nose that I resemble a manic cokehead for a significant portion if every day. For starters, I appear to be allergic to toner and newsprint - which I already knew, not least from my time working in jobs which (a) relied on a fax machine and (b) involved reading local newspapers. I also now appear to be allergic to, for kick off:

• the Underground
• my own perfume
• mascara
• my office
• my co-workers
• life

So, when I'm not sneezing, I'm snuffling and/or becoming paranoid about the potentially horrid visual state of my own nose. Gahhhhh. Cor limey guvnor etc etc.

Also, I have started to drink bitter/ale.

Last time this was attempted was approximately 1998, when I tried Newcastle Brown, and commenced minor ABH and then possibly full-on sexual assault (from what I recall) on a, frankly, terribly lucky young man. I say young...he was a bit older than me....I should probably stop there. In any case, I wasn't at home when I woke up, and there may have been some questionable sci-fi role play involved in the mean time...

ANYWAY. I have had several years of responsible drinking since my late teens, but bitter now appears to be my gangsta-tripping nemesis. It is my lysergic acid. I exaggerate. It is my new half-bottle of Smirnoff Red. In that, on my way home just now, I fell over in the street, injuring my knees and palms, then swore at myself ( I believe the words used were "wanker" and "tosspiece", which shows my maturity here) before almost walking into a lamppost and then a post box.

HOWEVER talking to yourself as you walk down the street does decrease the risk of your being mugged and/or raped. 'Cause "crazy" is contagious. Apparently.

/ramble. Home safe now.

A very odd day

I keep getting flashbacks of various events and actions from yesterday. Like being the entire moshpit during an outstanding (dress run) performance from The Killers which nobody else seemed to be paying attention to. Losing my artist 10 minutes before they were due on live national television. In fact, losing my artist several times over the course of the massive 18 hours I worked. Adopting various other acts on my travels when their escorts were nowhere to be found. Terrifying Julian Barratt with a request to touch him. Gaining the unending adoration of Mel out of Mel’n’Sue by finding her fizzy water. Ordering Tim Vine to pull a “more comedy” face for a photo. Receiving a charity challenge that nobody thought I could manage...suckers, that’s £50 please, and here’s a photo of me in physical union with The Doctor himself, taken by Catherine Tate (you underestimate my cojones).

Then it starts to get slightly hazy, as I was given wine once the serious bit of my artist’s task was over – classily carried within a Coke can, just in case I got in bother. I recall fetching beer, acquiring two famous television presenters to look after, setting up a little party in a dressing room with vodka, going to fetch mixers and coincidentally catching the worshipful comedy duo (meeting whom was my main ambition for the day) and happening to invite them to the vodka thing (hope my artist didn’t mind; actually I don’t care, was way past caring by this point). And resultingly ending up hanging with the worshipful duo at the big wrap party. Wish I could remember what the hell I said. I recall “humble” and “I love you”, but not much more in depth. I remember being shouted at for wanting to look after them (runner mode/maternal instinct wouldn’t shut down). Glad they were lovely; I would’ve been so upset if they’d been gits.