Mix Tape Mixups
“A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention, and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and… oh, there are loads of rules.” – Rob Gordon, High Fidelity
I love mixtapes. Not that anyone makes mixtapes anymore, what with the advent of iPods. Stashed away in my room is a box of Triple J compilations and bootleg live concerts on cassette, complete with the first few seconds missing from the beginning of each track and DJ banter over the end – one of my most treasured possessions – and I still think the ability to make a solid 12 track iPod playlist is a skill sorely lacking in this world of 80 gigabyte music collections, if you even can compare an mp3 filled hard drive to a record collection.
My point is that mixtapes are a lost art. I once went to a party where everyone had to bring a 30 minute playlist, and it was one of the best DJ’d parties I’ve ever been to. Since then I’ve always taken great care to make kicking playlists for each house party we have. Even if they get abandoned or commandeered, at least you have a good start and something to fall back on when someone put Pendulum on repeat then falls into a K-hole.
It was with this in mind that I decided to make a party mix for a Swing Dancing buddy of mine’s housewarming. Being one of the more alternative members of the group I thought I’d go for something a little different and stray away from the traditional big band stuff they mostly dance to. The prettiness of certain female members of this group may also have been of matter. 24 hours later and I had pared several harddrives down to the following dozen songs:
- Do your thing – Basement Jaxx
- Dark hair’d rider – Heavy Trash
- Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on – Jerry Lee Lewis
- Down the line – Johnny Cash
- Johnny B. Goode – Chucky Berry
- I’m waiting for the man – The Velvet Underground
- I am a man of constant sorrow – The Soggy Bottom Boys
- We’ll meet again – Johnny Cash
- On a Christmas day – C. W. Stoneking
- I dig you – Boss Hog
- Chocolate Jesus – Tom Waits
- Constellation prize – Jason Webley
- Candyman – Christina Aguilera
- Start wearing purple – Gogol Bordello
- Rock and roll – Led Zeppelin
- The young crazed peeling – The Distiller
- Lordy lordy – The Distillers
- Push-ka-pee-na pie – Louis Jordan and his Tympani 5
It kicked off with some rock n’ roll, got a little country, then got weird, turned back and rocked the fuck out with a mean groove and finally ended with hilarious kitsch.
A few hours into the party, a suitable crowd had amassed and I figured it was the opportune moment to unleash my brilliant playlist. It did not go off as expected. In fact, a lot of people looked confused by Basement Jaxx’ Do Your Thing. Confusion and later disinterest hit, and I realized that this was not the crowd for my playlist. One partygoer informed me “we don’t dance to rock & roll” as Jerry lee Lewis started.
The party soon dissipated to the kitchen. Finally, the draw card of the mix, the ace in the hole kicked over and I thought all would be saved. Swing buddy and I kicked out some serious jams; Turns out the rest of the Swing world doesn’t think as highly of Christina Aguilera’s reimagining of 40s swing as we did. People went outside. And stopped talking to me, although this may have been due to my incredible staggering drunkenness.
Turns out the Swing Dancing scene doesn’t really get drunk. One partygoer refused a Black Russian, explaining, “I don’t drink, it affects my dancing” – at a party. Go figure. At some point everyone left and I passed out on a mattress on the lounge room floor. When I awoke I went to the kitchen to dredge up some remnants of last nights memories. It appeared I polished off a bottle of Vodka, the best part of a bottle of Gin and half a bottle of 70-proof Kahlua. Looking around I also noticed very little other evidence of drunkery. In fact, as I cleaned up I found little more than a half-dozen beer bottles, a mostly-empty wine bottle and 20-30 softdrink cans.
I somehow got shitfaced drunk with a party of teetotaler Swing dancers, and didn’t notice. Looking back, this is almost definitely a contributing factor – although not the sole one – to the failure of my party mix. A few people at the party actually asked for a burned CD of it, as did a few others who came across it over time.
The moral of the story: No matter how good a mixtape may be, be sure that a belligerently drunk will kill any and all buzz. Oh, and don’t party with people who don’t drink Vodka – no good can come of it.
Sneaking Backstage 101
Unlike the wholesale anarchy that was Live at The Zoo, getting backstage at Future Music was a might harder. The On Dit staff scored themselves a bunch of laminated passes marked MEDIA in bold letters, supposedly setting us apart from the million or so losers with (ironcially dubbed) VIP passes, which pretty much just got you to a bar with a slightly smaller line and some plastic outdoor chairs. In reality they didn’t get us anything, bar a slightly shorter line-up. At the main entrance…
There was no MEDIA bar. There was no MEDIA area for interviews or schmoozing. Nothing marked on the free map. We couldn’t even get earplugs were it not for one kindly Security dude with a couple of pairs in his pocket.
I took it upon myself to rectify this situation. I would get backstage, or at least find out exactly how far this MEDIA pass would get me. Sauntering up to a gap in the fence guarded by a single confused looking Security guy. My friend Stevie and I walked right on pased him, nodding and motioning to our lanyards, not breaking stride. Success!
What we saw was uninspiring: A ruddy dirt track led to a village of transportable office like those on building sites. We walked onwards up a metal ramp and stood by the mixer watching CSS play. The soundie didn’t seem to mind and when I asked another Security guy if we could be here he just shrugged. Standing at the mixing desk is actually a bit shit, as you only get to see a third of the band, side-on. We wandered off and came across a rather snidey female Security type, her face so weathered and twisted that she bore a close resemblance to an old dead tree. We flashed our lanyards and she pointed to a sign which showed who could go where. Bands, tick; Security, tick; VIP, X; MEDIA, X.
I began to wonder what the fuck these passes were even in existence for, beyond arbitrary designation, and quickly began to negotiate, bartering to speak to someone ‘higher up’. She grudgingly motioned to a corrigated metal shoebox masquerading as an office. I strode purposefully towards the pseudo-office with an affected air of someone inconvenienced, Stevie briskly following like a bossy PA. We arrived at the office, finding it shut, locked and unlit, the organizers obviously doing something important like getting drunk in the bar behind us.
As I turned, I saw the Ent-like festival nazi facing away from us, the other side one of her deciduous kinfolk. As my mind raced I saw an opening. A roadie was wheeling an enormous road case the size of a bookcase. I grabbed Stevie by the wrist and pulled her, walking in step with our long-haired saviour, the roadcase between us and the tree-woman.
It was so proposterous, I couldn’t believe it worked. We followed the roadcase into the backstage band area, sighting the dressing rooms of Basement Jaxx, CSS and the perosnal room of Pharell Williams. Elated, we walked to the bar and ordered a drink. We turned to see before us, the withering glare of a certain security staff member with very unimpressed and ‘barky’ face.
A few fruitless excuses, and one final futile reasoning of “we’re already here’” and we were ejected upon threat of having our MEDIA passes confiscated, which made me laugh for the good they were doing. Later on during N*E*R*D I tried the same ruse, alas I was hot a 16-year-old in hot pants, and thus did not warrant Pharell’s attentions.
I guess the lesson is look like you belong somewhere, never ask questions and when it doubt run, deeper into backstage rather than out.
He who dares, wins.
Why I don’t date.
The following documentation is a fine example of why ‘hooking up’ works for me, and why ‘dating’ doesn’t.
I met her through a somewhat unusual channel, but she was a nice, pretty, funny girl nonetheless.
I had taken her out on two separate outings of sorts. First to lunch at the markets (prior to which I was infact mugged at a Tram stop, but that story is for another time), then to a dancing lesson, which is a bad idea if they’re not really into dancing in more than a drunkley-giggle-and-flail-with-your-friends kind of way
I wasn’t sure exactly how things were going, but decided to err on the side of her being anxiously shy. A final ‘date’ was needed to see if there was anything sparking between us – at a party or in a club you can figure this out pretty easily. Some physcial contact and some cheekily furtive eye-contact and you can be pretty sure that the night is going places.
The world of polite, public dating is not so clear-cut, with its ever-changing modern etiquette and complex social contracts.
During a discussion about her fussy eating habits on the way home from the aforementioned dancing lesson – a minor disaster; she didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hope, but who does enjoy looking silly and having to constantly readjust their poorly chosen (if stunning) strapless dress – I asked if she’d like to come to my place and I’d cook her dinner, however fussy an eater she was. She accepted, and we chose a Sunday evening, her to organise the drinks and myself the food.
Sunday rolled around and I spent the hungover afternoon frantically cleaning, washing and shopping. My housemate whipped up some chocolate mousse, complete with chocolate shavings, served in out best matching martini glasses as I blended mango daiquiris. My housemate’s friend also came over, a huge relief in the end seeing how the night blundered – any and all deflection was more than welcome.
The girl turned up just as we began cooking, ourselves a little drunk from the daiquiris, which were really just ice, mango, oranges and a shitload of vodka. As we cooked, my housemate and I noticed that we were much messier than our guests, a fact we somehow managed to hide due to them both being enthralled with eachother’s love of Glee.
Dinner went well; I had cooked a rich chicken pasta dish with butter, cream, white wine, onions, mushrooms and capsicum. The dessert mousse was powerfully rich however, and we were barely able to eat half a cup of it. Except of course for the girl, who scarfed down two cups and then raided our freezer for icecream, despite my housemates warnings that it’d been there since at least the late 90s.
What I had originally taken for character ad quirk was slowly being realised as downright weirdness…
With dinner out of the way, we decided to watch a movie, but failed to meet any real form of concensus from Planet Terror to Madagascar 2, where upon she asked what time it was.
Discovering it to be the late hour of 10pm she leapt up, stating that she had to be home.
Normally I execute some poorly-timed kiss or start getting belligerant about my exes before girls start making “oh my, look at the time” bail outs. By the time my confusion had cleared, she rummaged in her bag only to bring out an enormous fluorescent safety vest.
I froze. So did my housemate. The girl turned to us, clad in cumbersome stackat and reflective nylon and asked us: “Is it okay to ride on the footpath? I don’t think I’m supposed to be out on the roads…”. We mumbled something hastily, laughing awkwardly, and the girl left.
My housemate and I sat in silence, confusion and fear written across our faces.
“Do you think she’s…” my housemate began.
“Retarded?” prompted I.
No, of course not, we consoled ourselves. A little odd, a bit strange maybe, different even… Right?
Right. This is why I don’t date.
When did Weird turn into Gay?
I wouldn’t call myself eccentric. I don’t collect Nazi memorabilia, I don’t ride alternative transportation devices and I don’t eat my food in alphabetical order. I will admit to seeming a bit odd to some people. I do have an unconventional sense of style, I like Swing dancing and I scribble in moleskine notebooks with a fountain pen. I’d like to think of myself more as ‘old-timey’ rather than eccentric, so maybe I am. I’ve always been a bit like that, I read Moby Dick in year 8 and in primary school I wanted to be a lawyer when I grew up. In highschool I became a Goth, started a shitty Black Metal band and cut/dyed my hair into a 8 inch long blue fringe.
Naturally, school involved getting teased and/or beaten up quite a lot. This didn’t bother me too much, I just figured they’d all grow up to be drug addicts and public servants, which more-or-less came to providence. What went pear-shaped, socially, was the move from high-school to the ‘real world’. I chilled out and stopped painting my nails black and became a bit more conventional, although still a little odd. Jibes and random abuse didn’t really stop, it just changed from ‘Goth Fag’ to simply ‘Fag’.
Street abuse isn’t just random abuse. It is in fact a finely tuned barometer of how the world actually views you. It’s just the obnoxious belligerents who have the cojones to say it to your face, albeit from the window of a passing car more often than not. Pro tip: do not ask these people to come back and say it to your face. Or threated to ‘kick their ass’, they might just oblige.
The point is this. I had turned from being seen as weird, to being seen as gay. I don’t have anything against gay people, I have gay friends and coworkers. My problem is the infraction this puts in one’s love-life. If I had a penny for every time I go to a party / bar / swop-meet and get asked “are you gay?” I’d have a lot of worthless metal. This is in part due to my left-of-center sense of style. I wear blazers and scarves. I roll-up the cuffs of my jeans more than necessary to show off my cowboy boots and doc martens. I wear my hair in a quiff with Murray’s Pomade. I like to dress like an (in my mind) Indie Art-Rocker, but it turns out Adelaide is a small town somewhat low on the Indie Art-Rock scene. Maybe it’s just Adelaide. I remember being astounded in Melbourne that I wasn’t having abuse (or bottles) thrown at me several times on a saturday night out.
When did being weird become being gay?
At least when I was weird at least I got to hook-up with weird alternative girls. Now they’ve all turned into scenesters who date ‘alternative’ guys who all have with nondescript tattoo sleeves and identical spray-on black jeans. It’s not all that bad though. Once I explain to a girl that I’m not gay, and that I like ladies and their anatomy, they usually go “ah, so you just dress well…”. Not that this is all bad. Appearing gay has it’s advantages, particularly with girls. Their normally ironclad defences against male sexual advances are taken unawares. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to take advantage of girls… I’m just making the best of a bad situation.
I could tone down my image, start wearing more conventional clothes, start drinking beer instead of Gin & Tonics and retire the cowboy boots for cons, even if they do make my feet like like a 12 year olds, but I’d rather not. My day interviewing entrants for reality TV show Beauty & The Geek made me realize how genuinely unique people make me happy and how much I dislike the superficial melange that is the in-crowd. As attractive and popular as they may be, I really don’t want to hang out with people who find reading ‘boring’ or who think being a size 8 with a DD chest is their most attractive feature as a human being.
I’m more than happy being weird, even if it makes girls think I’m gay(ish). I’m the one who get to sit in their bed eating sorbet while they ask you to compare which panties make their butt look cuter. It’s a hard-knock life.
Six Months of Free Wine, Tiny Soup and Meltdowns
Prelude: As I wrote this article, back in the middle of 2009, Steph and I were a single day away from our three-week holiday from On Dit. We felt more like we were three weeks away from getting committed to some sort of mental institution, quite frankly. The weekend just gone was one of a Pete Doherty proportion meltdown, one that actually kicked me hard enough to re-evaluate how I was going about life arse-over, but that’s what unknown chemicals will do to one’s conscience as you lay in a bed, insides cramping and afflicted with fever-sweats, but that’s another story for another time.
The social life of an editor is a strange one. With deadlines constantly overlapping, nights become long and friends and family are soon left behind in lieu of first of all the business at hand of creating a student publication, and then later for the heady world of red carpet events and after-parties. It is these that truly skew one’s life into a sort of strange caricature of how ‘important’ people live.
As an On Dit editor you begin receiving invitations to various events sch as the Adelaide Big Pond Film Festival opening night, Cabaret Launch Party and so on. You stop paying from tickets to concerts and sporting events, your name perpetually inhabiting door lists, admitted with a mention of credentials and a knowing nod.
Having never been to this sort of thing before, we snapped up our RSVPs and dived in feet first. There’s the fun of getting needless haircuts, dressing up in dapper outfits and the polishing of shoes, and then there is the mingling and schmoozing. The most fun thing about this is that you never really feel like you belong here at first, so it’s all a big game, playing grownups so to speak.
The after-parties themselves were a world like I’d never encountered before. Important old people in dresses, suits and jewellery more expensive than my first car flitted to and fro. They threw back their heads and laughing at inane witticisms, sipping on seemingly bottomless glasses of champagne. Waiters wove their way through the crowd of cackling bourgeois yuppies, carrying trays of tiny, tiny food.
We were proffered shot glasses of a thick green liquid, which I assumed to be some sort of organic liqueur, and threw back what tasted like blended lawn clippings, nearly choking on the tiny prawn floating in the miniature swamp I held in my fingers. The snooty waiter promptly advised me it was chilled cucumber and dill soup. “In a shot glass?” I asked rhetorically, before grabbing another 8 or so and downing them in rapid succession. Food this small you can’t eat fast enough, at least not fast enough to counteract the copious amounts of free alcohol sloshing around one’s stomach, a vile mixture of beer, and wine both red and white, with bubbles and without, the cocktail added to as each sort of free alcohol slowly but surely runs out.
Eventually you meet people you probably shouldn’t ever meet, let alone under the influence of too much drink and too little food.
Through bleary eyes you seen Margaret Pomeranz standing proudly out front, a defiantly cracked laugh issuing from her mouth as a sophisticatedly length cigarette hangs from her lips. You say something inane and slightly slurred and you get a smile, the polite sort a world away from the face you saw upon approach. Her hand feels like the bark of a tree and she says how lovely it was to meet you and she turns away and goes back to laughing uproariously with her friends. You’ve just made an arse of yourself and realize you’re out of your depth, socially. No one else is as drunk as you, knowing that the alcohol is free to spare them of the petty act of exchanging moneys rather than so you can drink to the point of social, if not physical impairment.
You’re not meant to drink all the beer, and all the sparkling shiraz, and the champagne, and the regular shiraz and the chardonnay. Next thing you’re appearing half-cut in the social pages of a dozen Adelaide publications, slamming booze like a frat-boy. That’s what office parties are for. Two days later my house was inhabited by 60+ editors, subbies, student pollies, friends and family members. We drank and danced like we’re meant to, with reckless abandon, $500 woth of advertising-funded alcohol sloshing about in our bellies, full of real food, dancing to real music with real friends, exactly as it should be.
Fuck red carpets. Fuck after-parties. This is how we roll.
Promo girls are no longer interested in what you have to say once the expo is over.
Me: Hi there, you’re friends with XXXX, right?
Bikini Model: Yeah…
Me: I live with her!
Bikini Model: Cool.
Me: The crowd didn’t reall dig the tattoo thing did they.
Bikini Model: No.
Me: I guess they went for the skinny preppy thing.
Bikini Model: We don’t really do skinny.
Me: Neither do I.
Bikini Model: …
Me: I’ll tell XXXX you said ‘hi’.
Bikini Model: Cool. Bye.
Me: .
Virtual Sex
My ex-housemate has a not-quite-legitimate copy of an Eastern-European sex game for Playstation, entitled Virtual Sex. The object of this game is to bring four women to orgasm by stimulating different erogenous zones in different ways, keeping up a steady pace while ensuring you don’t rush too far ahead. No one likes having who-knows-what crammed in their hoo-ha right off the bat, not even heavily pixelated pre-Soviet-Union-collapse slappers. While this is a reasonable simulation of sex, albeit a rather lo-fi one, the true game comes in getting this poorly-pirated piece of programming up and running.
As any self-respecting ‘naughties gamer with a ‘chipped’ Playstation will know, getting imported games (usually the most violent, sexed up and offensive ie fun ones, banned in little old Aus) going is a veritable game in itself.
First of all, you need to get ‘her’ in ‘the mood’ to spin the disc. This is easily done by putting in a regular Playstation disc and starting the console up, so it thinks you’re just having another bash at Gran Turismo. Once ‘she’ has slipped into this false sense of security you ‘pop the hood’, just as the PS logo appears and you hear that ‘swooshtinklebling’ sound bite. Virtual Sex in one hand (no pun intended), one deftly grabs the still spinning legit game and pulls the switcheroo. If you’ve timed this just right, the Playstation picks up where it left off and bam, you’re in a veritable harem of digital booty. Chances are, you haven’t timed it right, and suddenly you find yourself in a complex mating ritual of swapping spinning discs back and forth like the geeky Casanova you are, carefully timing your moves with the precise sights and sounds of a whirring piece of confused hardware.
So just like sex then, really.
Sealing the Deal: A Success Story
If you read Social Fumblings in Elle Dit, you will no doubt had a laugh at my somewhat tragic misadventures in trying to figure out the fairer sex. Despite the logical conclusions one might draw from such an article, I’m not a total failure in love and have done all right by myself over the years.
While ‘How to get dumped and remain single for 12 months’ covered the ins-and-outs of meeting a girl, getting a date, making a move etc, there were some other ‘ins-and-outs’ it didn’t cover, if you get my gist. That’s right: Sealing the deal. Going the Full Monty. Um, stealing fourth base. Read between the lines! Don’t worry; this isn’t going to be a pornographically graphic description of my Viking-like honour-roll of conquest (I wish!), but a practical guide to making that final, potentially doomed, move, and yes, it will be accompanied by the comical tales of misfortune you’ve come to expect from Social Fumbling.
Picture the scene. You’ve scored yourself a sweet hook-up on a night out/house party/bar mitzvah, and gotten them back to your/their crib/pad/digs (much like yourself right now, the scene is vague at best), you’re steadily working your way through the bases (see diagram below, courtesy of webcomic xkcd.com) and hit third, wherever that lies on your own sensual radar, and are eyeing off that final glorious home run. What next? This is delicate. Screw this up and it’s going to be a long awkward night ahead.
The Baited Trap
It is said that the meek shall inherit the earth. They never said anything about getting any. In some instances you can probably wait for them to jump you. If you’re a female, chances are you’ve been fending off attacks to your ‘maginot line’ at the club you met him at, the alleyway you passed, the McDonalds line you ordered food in and the twenty minute cab ride home, so you can probably get away with a mere lowering of the defences. If you’re a guy, this is probably less so. Not to generalize, but no girl wants to be thought of as ‘easy’ so it’s probably going to be up to you boys to buck up and do something before the third hour of dry humping gets a little old.
Verbal Confirmation and/or Written Notification
Okay, so maybe not quite that bureaucratic, if things are going the way you hope they are, this will probably work, if only for honesty and no-bullshittery points. There are however, ways to do this, and ways not to do this. While it may not be the most romantic or sensual thing, the gasping mid-pash request for a condom paints a pretty clear picture of what’s going on, at least in your mind. The awkward cry of “erm, uh, do you want to have sex? Cos’ I’m down with that” generally won’t carry too much weight, unless your newfound bunk buddy has a thing for British bank clerks. You could always go for written notification, that waiver just might get you out of some legal indemnity later on. If so, go for the full non-disclosure contract, y’know, just in case…
The Trouser-Plunge
When one moves, one should be bold and move with impunity, and so it goes in matters of the loins. Just because someone is happy to make out with you and even rub against you semi-clothed doesn’t mean that they want to go the whole way. Or maybe they do, but don’t want to risk losing dignity and appearing like a slut, man or woman alike. There is but one brutally direct way to show them what’s on your mind: Put their hand down your pants. It’s just crazy enough to work, and following a short survey of some of the drunker and less-dignified members of my social circle found that it does! Tallying up the stats and we found the thus dubbed ‘trouser plunge’ to be ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SUCCESSFUL!!!
Now I’m not condoning unwanted or unwarranted sexual assault, such behaviour not befitting everyone. But busting a daring move always has its place. I guess the thing to remember when you dive past that final catcher (and begin to run out of ‘base’ metaphors) is to do whatever feels natural, and be yourself whether that be a timid officious sort or a seafaring Casanova. But seriously. Their hand. Down your pants. Guys and girls. Guaranteed*.
*Not actually guaranteed.
How to get dumped and remain single for 12 months.
One Febrary 10th I was unceremoniously dumped – further details don’t really matter. My life a confusing shambles, I got through the obligatory angry drinking stage and decided to get proactive and ‘find myself’. What I did not intend on doing was finding myself for the next fucking calendar year. This discovery circa February 10th 2009, on the previously documented Melbourne Student Media Conference, may have had something to do with my wholesale drunken belligerence and skyrocketing credit card bill. I had to ask myself “how the hell did I manage to cock up the best part of a year as a reasonably handsome, educated, charming and (very) single young male?”
Choosing a Mate: The first step, and probably the most crucial. For some reason, no matter how interesting and well–adjusted they appear when I meet them, I usually find that I have begun courting a girl whose psychological state ranges from to quirkily anxious to downright sociopathic and/or psychotic. Equally so, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys getting drunk to the point of blacking out and waking up wearing a woman’s fashion scarf with makeup smeared on your face, you probably shouldn’t go for religious and/or uptight sorts, unable to quote-unquote “take a cock in the face”.
Picking your battlefield: Location, location, location. There are excellent places to meet and take girls. I have as yet to find these.
Places not to try and pick up girls –
(i) Handing up an essay at 8am: most uni types aren’t mentally prepared for navigating public transport, let alone a clumsy breakfast-courting attempt. Warning: victim may run for nearest emergency exit.
(ii) Boarding public transport: you always want to have yourself a clear escape route for when it all goers pear-shaped, but a rapidly approach and hence departing bus piloted by a surly public servant is not a suitable choice. Nothing melts a girl’s heart like yelling dinner plans from closing hydraulic doors.
(iii) Foreign backpacker dorms: probably the best and worst place to pickup. On the one hand you have the ‘what happens on tour, stays on tour’ ethos to help lower some otherwise prohibitive standards, an environment which encourages public communal binge drinking and ready access to a boudoir. Somewhat negatively, a half dozen other cock-blocking denizens usually inhabit said boudoir, snoring, farting and using intrusively bright reading lights.
I really need to hang out in more cafes, bookshops and vintage shops.
Clear and Present Danger: Now in the thick of the dating game, having found a potential date in a less-than-suitable location the social minefield only grows more dense. Girls will often give subtle hints ranging from body language to off-the-cuff comments. I do not notice these. A direct statement of intent would be good. Written notification would be better. It pays to try and take notice of these subtle messages. Some girls have ex issues. Like being in the middle of a divorce. No, you cannot wait until proceedings are completed. The same goes for those with newly broken hearts and/or recently deceased relatives. Eyes wide-open guys, it’ll save you a lot of confused heartache.
The Getaway: By now, things have gone beyond pear-shaped and are deep in SNAFU territory. You are now staring down the barrel of rejection. If you are lucky, and haven’t perpetrated any of the above crimes, you will probably be given a polite “it’s not you, it’s me” or “I’m not really ready for a relationship”. Worse case scenarios include “it’s not me… it’s you”, abject laughter and “I’m carrying mace”. I joke. Don’t try and palm your fumbled romantic lunge as a joke, you’ll come off looking a fool. Why not try cementing your position, you’ve already been denied, what have you got to lose? It’s pretty clear dignity was left way back in paragraph three. If all’s fair in love and war then fight a battle of attrition. Chances are her pool of friends will be equally poisoned like a Crimean War town well, so let that one go too. Best bet now is to shrug, give a defeated nod and stride on into the distance. Don’t look back, either you’ll be turned into a pillar of salt, or worse, you’ll have to see her laughing on her mobile to her bestie.
Reading back over this article, I have to admit there are some glaring flaws in my dating technique. While I no doubt will be taking a dose of my own medicine and doing a rather drastic reappraisal of my tete-á-tete, I regret nothing.
In the words of Maxwell Scott, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Platonic Defenestration
On April 26th 2009 there was an incident in the (new) On Dit office, of potentially dire consequences. As Ms. Stephanie Walker was finishing her cigarette she turned and began to climb back through the window, which we smoke through. I, having just finished a cigarette myself, gave Ms. Walker a playful shove as if to push her through the window. She then said, quite firmly “don’t push me”, to which I pushed her, not especially hard, but ‘boy’ hard. It was to my horror that I saw her crash into the office, hitting her head on a pot plant and dislocating her knee. As I watched my co-editor’s body crumple into the ground I realized I had crossed the platonic female friend line.
Steph can definitely be seen as one of the boys, happy to drink, smoke and talk loud nonsense, at least until it gets a bit too ‘bitches and ho’s’ as she so succinctly put it. But while a girl can inhabit the ‘boys world’ for a little, eventually it will come crashing down, like an editor through a windowsill.
Guys grow up with roughhousing and it never truly goes away. Add to this the injection of alcohol to social situations and the testosterone fuelled moxie of post-pubescence and you have what can be a rough part of town so to speak. One party, after completing a game of centurion (100 shots of beer in 100 minutes, fucks you up real good, real fast) I was play fighting with my housemate Mr Metaphor/ when he pushed me, my alcohol-addled body limply falling, my head crashing into the car park ground. I was unconscious for a full 15 seconds, during which Mr Metaphor/ thought I was dead and promptly freaked out and ran away. The point of this story is that I groggily picked myself up, had a cider and a smoke, and went about my night, no hard feelings.
It’s not the first time I have been injured by and/or injured my mates in the course of having a good time and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Drunken boxing matches, beer bottles waved in the air with reckless abandon, people being thrown into the boulder-rimmed pool. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it’s hilarious.
Girls are great to have as ‘one of the guys’ type friends, but beware, they’re not quite as hardy as the rest of your beer-swilling mates. If you were to knock a girl out in a car park by accident, it would be a disaster of potentially party-ending consequence. Much like playing pushing a girl through a window. No one laughs, everyone feels bad, even the victim somehow.
Steph was okay, her knee popped back in (unlike the last time when her friend Jake was the perpetrator, and she had to pop it back in herself then went into shock) and I spent the night feeling like a dick, apologizing and offering to get her stuff. Our first aid kit contains only some gauze eye-pads, sunscreen and aromatic shower gel, but I did read the St. John’s Guide chapter on what to do if someone goes into shock, just in case.
We have however established some new boundaries. She’s still one of the boys. Just not one of the boys you push through an open window.