29 December 2010

Mixing and matching – living with the locals

‘I will never fob off a foreigner in Boganburbia again.’
In the time I have been travelling I am constantly amazed at how friendly and helpful South Americans are. Even sitting in an airport terminal, there is always a local traveller who wants to befriend you, to try out their English as you attempt some Español. Email addresses and promises are exchanged: ‘When you find yourself in [insert country here], look me up…’

Tonight at Quito airport a lovely, warm, Colombian woman named Martha used my Latin America phrasebook to find the word ‘trust’. ‘When you come to Colombia,’ she said, ‘you are welcome to sleep and to dream and to eat in my home.’

There is an openness and a warmth here that I admire. ‘You are travelling solo? Strong!’ Martha tells me, motioning Popeye-like with her arms.

Some places have felt warmer than others. Chileans are open and eager to adopt you, while Peruvians get there in the end, even in down-town Lima. The people in Quito, Ecuador, seemed a bit more wary, but probably with good reason. Even the locals will tell you Quito is riddled with crime and corruption. Engage an Ecuadorian in a political, philosophical, or ecological debate, on the other hand, and expect to be bailed up for hours.

On the plane from Chile to Argentina, the people beside me – South Americans – are helpful and considerate in a way their Western counterparts (also on the plane) are not. And yet when it comes to queues and the endless push-barge-give-way system, an entirely different cut-throat etiquette operates.

Each country, each city, has been distinctly different. Until now (I’m currently in Iguazu on the border of Argentina and Brazil), something each place has shared, has been the way their children and pets (mostly dogs), have behaved. Both are allowed to roam free, to mix and to play, and seem happy and well-behaved in a way I’ve never encountered. Take an Australian kid on public transport and expect whinging and harsh words and for everyone around them to be inwardly groaning. In South America, the children have been all smiles and quiet (when they’re not begging or scamming – but that’s another story), and the dogs keep to themselves, quietly curious and free from aggression.

Parents here don’t use prams. They carry their children in their arms or in blankets upon their backs or let them walk. In traditional towns you can expect to see children piling into three-wheeled taxis with alpacas and lambs in arm, negotiating available seat-space, while dogs and other domestic animals roam about unrestrained (when they’re not being carried in the same manner as the children), presumably going home at some stage for meals.

Argentina has been a bit different. I have spotted the first prams. The children here are noisy and whinging, while dogs are locked behind fences, and bark aggressively as you walk past. It could just be that I’m in a tourist town or that it is prosperous here in a way it has not been in the other cities I’ve seen, but the feel is definitely different, more Western, more commercial, and less friendly.

Having said that, when you can get someone’s attention, they will help, even walking you to your destination when you get lost, it’s just that time moves differently, and people have their own schedules where the push-barge system is the only way to get by.

One thing is for sure, I now appreciate how hard it can be to navigate new places, new people, and new languages, and I will never fob off a foreigner in Boganburbia again!

--AG

28 December 2010

Recipe for adventure: just add people

‘Girls who go on trekking tours don’t do one night stands,’ – a fellow trekker on the Inca Trail.
For my first real solo-adventure, I opted for safety in numbers, and jumped on a few smallish group tours. I figured this way it would be someone else’s problem to sort out all the logistics with the added advantage of a local English-speaking guide to rescue me from my floundering phrasebook Latin American Spanish. It wasn’t a cheap option, but it has meant I’ve been able to see and experience so much in such a short time.

More importantly, joining tours has allowed me to meet a bunch of new people from around the globe: Australians, Canadians, South Africans and Britons, young people, old people, and everything in between. The kind of people who will look at the stiff bread roll and blackberry jam served for breakfast each day and say ‘that’s fantastic!’ just because it’s something new, something authentic, and something other than what they left behind.

Surprisingly each of the groups has housed quite a few couples. This has its pros and cons. On the one hand, the trips haven’t degenerated into singles-shagathons and the focus has remained on the in-country experience, but when you want to turn to a partner, or a lover, or have someone looking out just for you and you for them, as a solo traveller in a couplish group, you’re pretty much on your own.

Like me, many of the solo travellers have reached a crossroads. We are skin-shedders, people at the beginning or end of a journey. This trip signals the conclusion of one life phase and the beginning of something new when we return. Travel is an escape, a hiatus, and an epiphany. I shouldn’t be surprised by this. These are the type of people who have chosen the same kind of adventure – if nothing else, this says we share a way of approaching one aspect of our lives.

The same is not true for many of the couples, who are mid-together-journey, and for whom this is a shared experience on a continuum.

Each group forms its own dynamic fairly quickly, and no two groups are alike. Even within the one group, as newbies arrive and veterans leave, the dynamic shifts, leaving you feeling more or less connected to those around you, but never truly lonely, even when you’re alone. In fact, I've had to opt out of some activities to spend the day apart, simply because the introvert in me can’t socialise indefinitely without burning out.

I've been lucky enough to meet some truly inspiring people this way, people who have generously shared their world view, their introspection and life lessons, and who have shown me it is never too late to start something new, as many times as it takes.

I’ve also met people whose paths wouldn’t normally cross with mine, who have very different interests and who I might not otherwise choose to hang out with, but that’s all part of the adventure, and in a big enough group, it’s easy to find the like-minded, or to temporarily retreat, without it being an issue.

With only a week left, and no more group tours, I’m left wondering how I can return to the mundane of home, how I can keep in touch with the new friends that I’ve made, and more importantly, how I’m going to save up for my next big adventure.

--AG

26 December 2010

The Guide Gallery

Having toured now for over a month, I’ve encountered tour guides in all shapes and sizes, but whatever the attraction, the excursion, or the adventure, you can be sure to come across one (or more) of the following types:

The Language Barrier
This is an advertised ‘bi-lingual’ guide who has memorised their English script but can’t deviate from it. Identifiable by their poor pronunciation, these guides are likely to provide some entertaining translations (for example, damage to monuments being caused by ‘thunders’), but will be at a total loss if you ask any questions.

The Super Sleaze
Typically an older señor who has determined you will be endlessly flattered by his ongoing attentions, serenades, and inappropriate remarks. And you might be, until you realise he’s tried it on every señorita he can find. If he’s particularly determined, he will ask about your family, your marital status, and even grill your fellow group members to find out all there is to know. Eventually of course, it just gets annoying and you wish you’d taken the advice of the Lonely Planet and invented a husband from the outset.

The Bundle of Knowledge
For this guide, the tour isn’t about showing you the sights, but showing off their knowledge. They don’t want you to learn, they want your adoration and adulation. For every tit-bit of information, you will be prompted to inquire, to expose your ignorance, and to marvel, not at the facts, but at your guide’s knowledge of them.

The Moral Crusader
This guide has an opinion on EVERYTHING, and [insert appropriate deity here] help you, you had better not deviate from theirs. If you do, you can forget whatever sights you’re seeing, you’ll be ear-bashed until you agree that Americans are the saviour of the earth, people who destroy the environment should be put to death, sharks aren’t dangerous and you will eventually win the lotto.

Get Thee to a Nunnery
Usually found in a converted convent, museum or art gallery, this guide will dress as though it’s 1934 and carefully express only orthodox opinions. While you take equal care to word your questions in order to get some semblance of useful (if sanctioned) information out of them, you’re left secretly wondering if this guide doesn’t do a naughty-by-night transformation as soon as she’s off-duty.

Everybody’s Best Friend
This guide makes an effort to get to know and entertain the group. Less likely to accurately answer your cultural and historical questions, this is the guide you want to have telling Dad jokes and doing magic tricks while you’re trekking to 4000 metres through sleet and hail. At their best, you will become friends with this guide, but at worst, they just want to be liked by everybody, but don’t really like anybody.

The MIA
When this guide turns up they might as well not be there. Happy to take your money, they are less happy to actually do anything to earn it. At best you will see this guide at pick up and drop off, at worst, you won't see them at all.

The Bi-polar
Moody is how best to describe this guide. Your Best Friend one minute, they will turn sullen by the end of the day. In the case of the Super Sleaze this may result when they realise not only do you not intend to return their interest, but you also find it humorous. In all cases the Bi-polar will result at your lack of tips.

The Kick-arse Awesome guide
Lastly I want to make a special (serious) tribute to our Peruvian guide, Bel, who faced illness, injuries, and the Inca Trail (again) to keep us working together as a temporary family, who went above and beyond to make sure we could kick back and enjoy while she worked tirelessly in the background. Tips are not thank-you enough for the kick-arse awesome guide.

--AG

02 December 2010

Peruvian poverty

Nothing quite prepares you for it. I was expecting beggars on the street, people hassling, hoards of homeless, and there was that, but there were also endless shanty houses stacked with mud bricks with not-quite roofs perched on desert slopes that would never survive if it ever rained. Homes dotted in the middle of nowhere where people have snatched a corner to prop themselves and nest.

What got me most was the sheer vastness of it, people making their living however and wherever they can. In soil that has never seen rain, people have irrigated just enough to grow and sell watermelon or papaya on the side of the road. Chickens and donkeys and goats have been bricked in with nowhere to graze. I can only assume they are grain fed.

On the streets and along the roadsides, people sell anything they can get their hands on. They even busk and perform at traffic lights. In restaurants, entertainers do the rounds at tables asking for tips and flogging their CDs. Our guide tells us there is no taxation here, no welfare. People make do with whatever they can, because if they don’t work, they don’t survive. She also tells us not to buy from the children selling lollies on every street corner, who should be in school, and who could be using the money to buy drugs.

In Pisco, a town devastated by earthquake, there is no money to rebuild. Roads have crumbled and been upturned and cars swerve to avoid the piles of rubble. Our guide tells us this was chosen as our overnight stop in order to support the local economy.

Further south, in the seaside town of Paracas, the wealthy have built impressive beach houses. Their swimming pools lie empty, but over summer they will be filled as the people pile in. Paracas also suffered from the 2007 earthquake and the almost-tsunami, but there is money here to restore.

Along this part of the coast is a constant sea fog, but it never rains. In summer the fog will lift, and it will rain in the highlands. This is where the people get their water, as it seeps into the ground. It has been especially dry this year, and there is talk of a drought. It’s hard to say what will happen if the rains don’t come.

Meanwhile we’re paying to ride mountain bikes down the desert slopes in Lima, touring the coastal districts, experiencing the wildlife by boat and the historical culture by air, and today, lazing by the pool. I guess it’s all part of the experience, for us and for them.

--AG

29 November 2010

Perilous Peru Part 1 – Living in Lima

´Don´t let people see where you keep your real money,’ my lunchtime companion, a local, tells me. ‘I keep my wallet in here,’ he points to his breast pocket, ‘and pay from here,’ dips his hand in another pocket. ‘And don’t let them see your camera.’ Later, he says, ‘See that bridge? Don’t go past there. That is a not good place. Keep this side only.’

Lima is constantly evolving. There are police everywhere, directing traffic, securing buildings, telling you off for not obeying the dancing green man at pedestrian crossings. A few years ago it wasn’t safe to walk the streets. Now, provided you keep your wits about you, a traveller can navigate the blocks around central Lima without too much trouble.

Once I got over my fear and began to explore I realised how steeped in history the city really is. All along the crowded, narrow streets, people duck in and out of half-sized doors to go about their twenty-first century business, but to the outside world, facades are being regenerated, revealing their post-colonial heritage. As the city gets cleaned up it also gets a makeover. Museos dedicated to art and Lima’s heritage are popping up on every other street corner and every time there is an earthquake another piece of Lima’s past is uncovered.

History, religion and politics are everywhere. The Monasterio de San Francisco for example gives you a taste of the city’s Spanish roots and Moorish flavour, which over time has been watered down and sanitised, only to be rediscovered and resurrected in modern times. Inside this and other historic buildings the Peruvians have uncovered layers of murals covered over with mosaics, and later covered up with plaster, but no one knows why. Teams of experts are working to not only restore the original murals, but to piece together their history, including why particular figures weren’t just covered over, but scratched out, erased from history.

Beneath the Monasterio visitors can tour the catacombs. Once housing only the bones of those belonging to the order of Franciscans, later they were reserved for select key figures; later for the order’s benefactors. Many of the remains have been repositioned and shifted, decorated and preserved, upturned by earthquakes and excavated by experts, now piles of bones and skulls, some scattered, some neatly arranged. Earthquakes and the restoration process continue to uncover Peru’s hidden history.

As creepy as I found all this, the Museo de la Inquisicion was more so. Sadly the Lonely Planet’s promised ‘multilingual guide’ only spoke Spanish, but the wax-work depictions of the inquisitors at work told me pretty much everything I needed to know about torture and how to perform it. It was as if everything in the seventeenth century was about excess. Artworks, devotion, torture. Nothing was done by halves.

As well as getting my history and archaeology fix, I got to see real life nuns not just in the wild, but in
action! Priests, too, taking confession (they have open confessionals here), and blessing people from across the other side of the room. Not being religious myself, I find religion fascinating. It’s like this whole other world that defies logic, rationality, and yet that’s the whole point.

At the Santuario de Santa Rosa de Lima I even got to read about the extreme and bizarre lengths Santa Rosa went to in her devotion, including keeping her chastity safely chained up (she threw the key down a 15 foot well), telling her mother to piss off and leave her to worship thank you very much, and then tying herself up by her hair to keep herself awake for all but two hours of every night (apparently sleep took away from her time spent in prayer).

None of this should be surprising in a city where most of the population is declared Catholic and churches abound. Even seismic activity (or rather, where something is spared from seismic activity) is attributed to the hand of God, and dotted all over the place are monuments to places where one pillar has remained standing where others have fallen.

Lastly (or firstly) I took in some of Lima’s artistic culture, at the Museo Del Banco Central de Reserva Del Peru, which housed artefacts from different ages and different origins from all around Peru. Despite their differences, Peruvian art all shares a certain roundness, or squatness, the closest to which I’ve seen was at the Minoan ruins in Crete.

And now I’m kicking back for the last few hours before I join up with my tour. I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to write and post in the coming weeks, but be assured there will be adventures aplenty.

Until then, Buenos Dias, Amigos.

--AG

28 November 2010

Pretty in Peru

Adventure Girl sets off solo

Today I head to Peru, first stop: Lima. This is where it gets hard. I’m on my own for the first few days before I join my tour. I don’t know the language and I can’t always rely on finding someone who speaks English or who can navigate my clumsy charades. My Latin American phrase book has been better than nothing, but not much.

It’s odd. I’m not worried about keeping my own company for these few days. I’m more worried about how I will feel when I’m bunked in with a bunch of strangers. Over the last few days it’s been great to have a companion, someone to find my feet with, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have done half those things if I’d been on my own, but I did crave time out.

In a social situation I can’t properly relax. I can feel my energy being sapped just from having to stay alert, remaining aware of the other person, or people. I can’t get lost in my own thoughts.

For the months, weeks, days, leading up to this trip, I’ve been running from being alone, filling the gaps with social networking and online communications, telephone calls and socialising, all the while craving stillness, quiet, calm. But whenever calm came, instead of relief, panic set in, and I rushed to fill up the gaps, as though I feared the same void I’d just craved.

Part of the excitement of this trip is the opportunity to rediscover the calm, the quiet, the feeling of being so lost inside myself that I never want to come out. It’s in this space that I recuperate, that the depression finally lifts, rather than being temporarily diverted. Because that’s what the constant interaction has been – a distraction, a diversion, never a cure. And if I can find space again, perhaps I will rekindle my creativity, and in the quiet, bring my inner worlds back to life.

The hardest part of being on my own isn’t being alone; it’s worrying about safety. People keep saying ‘be careful in Lima, be careful in Peru,’ but they never tell you how. I have to somehow be prepared to be a victim of opportunistic crime, but not expect it; (‘that’s asking for trouble’). I’ve got some contingencies for keeping my belongings safe, and according to the Lonely Planet, the best way to keep safe in Lima is to take a taxi door to door, whereas in Boganburbia it was keeping my phone by my side. I ummed and ahhed about activating Global Roaming on my iPhone. In the end I opted against. I didn’t trust myself not to maintain my reliance on social network interactions. I knew I needed to force myself to go cold turkey, even though it means I’m also disconnected in an emergency.

Strangely enough I haven’t missed it. I’ve missed the convenience, but not the weight of feeling as though I need to be constantly plugged in. I even felt a sense of disappointed obligation tracking down Wi-Fi, just because I knew I had to let people know I was okay. Sure enough, after my first bout of correspondence and an appearance on Facebook, I began to feel the itch, the discomfort when my access was cut off again, and craved hopping back online. That’s when I knew I’d made the right choice limiting myself.

I’ve only regretted my choice once, and that was this morning at the airport. It was my first real moment alone, and having queued for almost two hours to check-in, I had an hour or so to kill before boarding. Clutching a handful of pesos, I sought out a payphone, but couldn’t get through. I panicked, feeling like I had to find Wi-Fi, I had to get online, had to connect. All I really wanted was to hear your voice.

Now I’m on a plane, listening to my iPod, reading a novel when I’m not writing this post, and marking out the places I want to visit in my Lonely Planet guide. This is my chance to make the trip mine.

Skipping the pages on shopping and night-spots, I’ve marked out the Monasterio de San Francisco, famous for its creepy corpse-filled catacombs and the Museo de la Inquisicion, where according to the Lonely Planet, ‘visitors can explore the basement where prisoners were tortured’ plus a no-doubt tacky ‘waxwork exhibit of life-size unfortunates on the rack or having their feet roasted.’ If I get time I also want to check out the Museo Larco which has an impressive pile of pots (growing up with a potter has left its mark) showing pre-Columbian erotica, and spot some Peruvian pyramids. My kind of stuff.

I also know it’s only a snatch of my kind of time before I meet up with a bunch of strangers to begin a whole new set of adventures.

-AG

26 November 2010

A Chilean Adventure

Adventure Girl sets her sights on Santiago
I am sorry to be leaving Santiago after only a few days. The Chilean people are playful and irreverent. They seem proud of their city and want you to like it, too. Wherever you go, someone takes you under their wing, whether it’s to make a cup of tea (when you attempt to ask for bottled water), teach you a Chilean phrase (when you inadvertently tell them they’re fat and you’re pregnant), or let you into a private party uninvited (in our case, after we attempted some sight-seeing and found ourselves trespassing).

Narrowing down our choice of adventures has proved another challenge. My travel companion and I aren’t quite on the same page when it comes to priorities for activities and sight-seeing (my love of serenity conflicts with her love of bustle), but the net result is that I probably pushed her to do things she wouldn’t normally (like trekking up the side of a mountain, rather than taking the funicular at Cerro San Cristobal), while she has taken me to trendy nightspots and pushed for us to get let in uninvited where I’d ordinarily shrink away, defeated.

So far we’ve come to some pretty spectacular compromises. Like every self-respecting Australian tourist, we headed everywhere wearing our boots and backpacks, phrasebook and Lonely Planet in hand, and still managed to successfully gatecrash a promotional party at a converted convent, fire not-quite paintball rifles at an almost-gun club meet, and score free drinks while dragging a group of Chileans into a debate about where we ought to go next.

Valparaiso! You must go to Valparaiso!’

‘No, no, see Vina del mar.’

‘He only says that because he comes from there…’
Later we dined in the QV of Santiago and saw Chile’s answer to Mr Bungle-meets-Interpol at a student-ish nightspot. (Tip: when in Chile if you look like a lost tourist, stare blankly at people and smile, they will let you in places no matter what you wear).

The next day we climbed the mother of all creepy Jesus hills to see the Virgin at Cerro San Cristobal, before hopping across the less savoury part of town to the Cemeterio General, only to discover Chileans know how to do death in style. There’s nothing gaudy about these enormous art-deco inspired crypts. Most are labelled with simple inscriptions and subtly overgrown greenery, and with one exception (which I managed to track down and photograph), the cemetery is not at all creepy, but warm and serene, so that you forget about the proximity to so many bodies, except as people who were loved and remembered and who you’d quite like to spend an afternoon visiting (though I’m not sure I’m sold on the Coke vending machines and ice-cream vans parked inside).

Still, that saw us through a few jet-lagged days followed by late-night dinners with crisp Chilean vino and local musica before we parted ways early this morning. 

I never made it to Valparaiso or Vina Del Mar; I didn’t want to risk getting stuck too far from the airport, considering I was flying out at 9.30am, and Latin Americans seem to go on strike fairly regularly, closing their doors and leaving you stranded. Besides, there’s plenty to do and see in Santiago…on this trip anyway.
-AG

17 November 2010

The New Adventures of old Adventure Girl

So this is it.

Looks like I am actually going. Like really, actually going. After all the angst and doubt and doubt and angst. F**k it, I'm going.

Better than that, I'm going with barely a few days to plan, to pack, to panic....

No. No time to panic. This is the best way. I'm going to f**cking do it!!!

Galapagos, Lima, Incas, Amazon, Iguaza, the works. Well, almost the works. Minus some stuff, but you can't do EVERYTHING. Not in one go, anyway. You want to leave something to go back for. Leave yourself wanting more....

I have so much to do in just a few days, it seems crazy. Am I insane? Or just adventurous. Either way, this will be a crazy adventure. And I need this. I may never get another opportunity.

Stay tuned for adventures galore...

...as long as I don't get raped, mugged, murdered, or just lose my Internet connection again...

-AG

15 November 2010

Someone else's slippers

Adventure Girl learns a lesson in friendship

‘Does this mean I’m dumped?’

In relationships, there are commonly accepted ‘rules’. There are statuses like ‘single’, ‘in a relationship’ or ‘f-buddies’. You form a ‘relationship’, you break up, and sometimes you make up. You have ‘the talk’, assign the appropriate label from the drop-down menu, and alert the rest of your social network via Facebook. All of this is clearly defined. We even have laws and ceremonies dedicated to officially sealing two people together.

Friendships aren’t so clear cut. The boundaries from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘colleague’ to ‘friend’ to ‘BFF’ are more subtle. They are also more fluid.

Friends can step into your life suddenly and intensely, or they can shift gradually into focus and back out again. A friendship can become strained, or a shared experience lost, causing distance to stretch between you.

Where a friendship does come apart, there is rarely a single event you can point to as the end. You don’t ‘break up’ with a friend; you just stop calling, but this can mean you both drift away, assuming a slight on the part of the other, when they are thinking the same as you. Leave it too long and the silence stretches into awkwardness and you may never know if they felt wronged or just got busy.

And if your friends are friends with each other (you may recall my post on mixing friends from a few months ago), there’s a whole extra layer of grey to worry about. There are issues of confidences, sensitivities when discussing one friend with another, entire areas of taboo which can place a strain on that friendship, too.

Post-rift, it gets more complicated. Social gatherings can become awkward when there is an issue left unresolved, especially when there is no rigid boundary or expectation that you will take sides, as you sometimes divvy up friends when a relationship dies.

With so much murkiness, it can be difficult to know what is reasonable to expect from the other person, and what they can reasonably expect from you.

There are rules, but we don’t speak of them. There are expectations, but we don’t acknowledge them, except as we navigate their fragile borders… oops, she got pissed off, I won’t do that again. And sometimes by then it's already too late.

Forgiveness is important, but for me it’s one of those paradoxes. The more you care, the more you are prepared to let things slide, but something can hurt more because you care so much. And then you get the flip side, where you let things go because you don’t care enough, or you forgive less because it's not worth the effort when you can simply walk away.

In the absence of defined rules, it can be more difficult to acknowledge jealousies and rivalries, slights and injuries. You suck it up and you move on, together or apart. You withdraw, or you extend, but it is all unspoken, at least between the two of you.

Most of the time when a friendship does end, it’s like an old jumper pulled out of shape, or worse, a borrowed jumper, stretched until it fits neither of you. You accept your time has come and gone, the season has past, you slip it into an unused drawer.

And when that happens I mourn its loss. Others come along and fill their place, but it’s never quite the same shape, like wearing someone else’s slippers. A lesson learned too late, or sometimes not learned at all.

-AG

08 November 2010

So you think you can cross-dress? A straight guy’s guide to getting into her panties

Will she love it, will she freak, or will she just hate that you have better legs?

As a straight guy, the idea of cross-dressing has always interested me. There’s something very tempting about the thought of sliding into some soft silky girly undies. In fact the thought of that flimsy material straining against my package and fishnets hugging my calves and thighs makes me positively shudder with delight and go weak at the knees…

(Ok, ok, putting my brain back online).

We now all know that I like it, maybe you like it too, but will she like it?

Perhaps if she’s a little dominant, the thought of you emasculated like that will be a turn on (maybe that’s why you like it). Maybe she’s vanilla and will freak out, running away, sobbing and screaming. Or maybe, just maybe, she’ll be jealous because you look much sexier in a garter belt than she does.

Putting all of those ifs aside, let’s assume you’re prepared to take the risk and give it a try, hoping against hope that she isn’t as vanilla as she seems (after all you can have vanilla all your life; why not sample some of the other flavours before you die?)

First you need to work out what to wear (decisions, decisions… I’m sure that cellulite wasn’t there this morning…) Do you secretly borrow some of her stuff and surprise her? (If so, avoid the expensive designer ones as you will most likely stretch them beyond repair.) Do you go to a lingerie shop in your local shopping centre and enjoy the speculative glances from the sales assistant when you ask for something for your girlfriend who’s about your size, and oh incidentally does this colour go with my eyes…? Or do you head to a sex shop, where (assuming you choose the right one) you will get lots of help, be able to try most things on, and find a range of absolutely delish corsets – uh, I mean, find some really great stuff.

Actually, let’s take a step back. Before you get to what to wear (the fun part) you might like to sound your partner out. The last thing you want is for the poor girl to walk in on you unexpectedly wearing her undies and makeup.* If it was me, I would talk to her on a quiet evening at home, perhaps after a glass or two of red to relax (her, not you – you need all your wits about you), share your fantasies, and find out what turns her on. I’d gently open with how hot you think her undies are and how you’ve always been curious about what they would look/feel like on. If she’s not vanilla she may suggest you try some on as a joke. This is the crucial point. If you agree and she doesn’t freak, you know it’s ok to start suggesting where to get stuff; if she does freak, you can always pass it off as a joke (preserving your poor bruised ego).

Say you do end up trying things on. Be honest and tell her how it makes you feel (sexy is a good adjective here). If she’s understanding, the fact that you so obviously enjoy it should make her much more open to the idea.

And it that goes well, you could even go shopping together.** And if it doesn’t… well, you live and you learn.

Above all, have fun exploring.

--Tiger

*Under no circumstances should you start giving her tips. Even the most reasonable and understanding girlfriend may lose her shit at that point.
**Make sure you both get something sexy; it’s no fun if she doesn’t get spoilt a little as well, and who knows, you might get matching colours.

05 November 2010

Recipe for disaster... Part 1 – My Best Friend’s wedding

So your eternally single Cold Date* has finally got himself hitched. You’re over-the-moon happy for him (and her), even if it means you rarely get to see him because he still hasn’t crawled out from under the new-love covers for air.

The problem is you met him through your ex.

It was all a long time ago and so far you’ve managed to skirt around all those awkward ex-encounters such as birthdays and bar mitzvahs, but then comes The Wedding.

Obviously, this is a biggy. The groom was in your bridal party as a mutual friend, but in the post-break-up friendship war, you won. This makes you the equivalent of his Best Man.**

This could be a recipe for disaster… or a whole lotta fun. I’m going to try for the latter. Here goes.

Ingredients

You (alone)
Your ex (also alone)
A room full of people you barely know
A room full of people your ex barely knows (most likely the same few people)
Free alcohol (essential)
A dance floor (people willing to dance are preferred, but not essential – see Method)

Method 
  1. Drink
  2. Find people to socialise with. Typical openers include, ‘How do you know the bride / groom’, but you can also ask what people do, for pleasure, for pain, or for best effect, both***
  3. Drink some more (very important)
  4. Find some dance buddies
  5. If there are no dance buddies to be found, apply steps 1 and 3 to your potential partner(s) until they agree to dance (this has the added advantage of making you look like a really good dancer compared with them)
  6. When all else fails, play the Adventure Challenge Game (see below)
How to Play

Set challenges to earn points. Points can be lost as well as won. The object is to make it home with a positive score.
  • (+ 5 points) If you look waaaaaay hotter than your ex
  • (– 10 points) If he looks waaaaaay hotter than you
  • (+ 2 points) For every compliment received from people who knew you ‘before’ on how great / young / slim you look
  • (+ 10 points) If the same people complimenting you say to your ex, 'Oh, yes, you look um, good too....’
  • (– 20 points) If this scenario happens in reverse
  • (+ 5 points) If you speak to your ex before he speaks to you
  • (+ 2 points) For every member of the groom’s family who offers to help you overcome this hurdle
  • (– 5 points) If you let them
  • (+ 3 points) If you discover your life is waaaaaay better than his
  • (– 10 points) If you discover his life is waaaaaay better than yours
  • (+ 5 points) If you realise your ex is ridiculously boring and wonder why you ever dated him, let alone married him
  • (– 8 points) If he thinks the same about you
  • (+ 25 points) For every person who confesses to you that they got ‘stuck’ talking to your ex until you came along
  • (– 25 points) If they say the same to him about you
  • (+ 2 points) If you can get the Mother of the Bride to dance
  • (+ 8 points) If you can get the Father of the Groom to dance
  • (+10 bonus points) If they are the kind of dad who wears his serious face for all occasions
  • (– 2 points) If he is secretly a giant teddy bear
  • (+ 2 points) If you manage to drop into conversation how young / hot / talented your current lover is
  • (– 10 points) If you do it badly (e.g. Him: ‘So how have you been?’ You: ‘OMG you should SEE my new lover, he/she is AMAZING… SOOOO much better than YOU…’)
  • (– 2 points) If his current lover is also young / hot / talented
  • (+ 10 points) If he mentions this repeatedly in a way that lets you know he/she is really old / overweight / ugly / stupid
  • (+ 10 points) If she IS old / overweight / ugly / stupid
  • (+10 points) If she is pregnant
  • (– 10 points) If she is pregnant and you want to be
  • (+ 25 points) For every family member of hers currently living with them
  • (+ 5 bonus points) If it is her mother
  • (+ 12 points) For each boundary set when your ex gets protective / judgemental / annoying / flirtatious (e.g. Him: 'Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a water?' You: 'I'll have another vodka, thanks. Make it a double', or Him: ‘So… are you staying nearby?’ You: ‘Yes, with my new lover, Cassandra’)
  • (– 20 points) Regretting the consequences of the boundaries you chose to set (e.g. when you have to be escorted to your hotel room by the groom’s family, or when you wake up beside some stranger named Cassandra who you think may have been at the local, but you’re not really sure)
  • (+ 50 points) If Cassandra is hot
  • (– 100 points) If Cassandra has no teeth
  • (– 25 points) If you wake up naked in  your bed (alone) with your $400 Ted Baker dress crumpled on the floor, your make-up halfway down your face, and all of your jewellery still on, including your glasses
  • (– 150 points) If you wake up naked in your bed (with toothless Cassandra) in the same scenario.
Result

If nothing else, by playing the game you get a night of free booze, a chance to catch up with some old friends, to perve on a Ghost of Boyfriends Past, and more importantly, see one of your oldest and bestest friends get happily hitched in a way you never could.

Happy gaming :)

-AG

*Similar to ‘Bromance’ but for a guy and a girl
**She-Broman (?)
***Tip: if you get stuck with people who are particularly boring, you can always try the ‘Dom/Sub’ guessing game, or make up lives for them. That way, when you smile and nod you don’t have to feign amusement / interest.

01 November 2010

Tiger Tale Regales... on being THAT guy

A short response to being THAT girl from Tiger Tale

Let me preface by saying I’m a geek and a nerd. I take pride in my geekiness and childlike delight in old cartoons and dressing up like a fool. Let’s be honest, I can and do work out. I can dance, I’m socially adept, but I still never quite feel like I have reached the pinnacle that others seem to effortlessly attain.

I like to call myself an extroverted introvert. For those that don’t know what I mean, it’s someone who will occasionally be the life of the party, regaling others with anecdotes and soaking up the adoration, but then you won’t see them for months, or if you do manage to drag them to some social engagement, they end up being the moody one in the corner because their social batteries haven’t yet recharged.

I understand the urge or the drive to be THAT person, the one who’s sought after, the one the girls want and the boys want to be, but I don’t want it all the time. I recently attended a very good friend’s engagement party. I was a member of the 'bridal party', so to speak, and was dressed as such. The theme was Burlesque Casinos and I was resplendent in my pin stripes and cufflinks with matching braces and Panama hat. It was a blast. I danced through the room lavishly spending thousands (we had lots of play money provided) on roulette and standing at the end of the table surrounded by stunningly dressed young women with a mountain of chips in front of me. It was like a scene from a movie.

It was fun. For that one night I was the guy in the spotlight. I had the nice suit, the pretty ladies on my arm, and the wad of cash to support it all. But the next morning I got up after a night spent alone and put on my 8 bit gamer T-shirt to become that nerdy guy again, so I guess yes, it was a nice break from reality, but eventually I had to come back to earth and just be me again.

Yours,
Tiger Tale

25 October 2010

What colour is your Polaroid?

Adventure Girl finds spiritual enlightenment... well, sees a picture of her aura, anyway

So apparently I'm clairvoyant.

I know this because Chris from Enlightenment Photography knows this.

'See how the purple extends almost all the way to the edges? That indicates intuition and psychic ability.'

I'm sitting in a small study in Boganburbia staring at what appears to be an over-exposed Polaroid of myself.
Everything smells like oils and incense, and I'm sure someone has taken to the entire house with a crystal Bedazzler.

The photo is mostly violet with a smudge of blue to my left (the picture's right).

'Blue is a communication colour, so you are a good listener, an intuitive listener, able to transform others through loving listening.' This represents my future.

In the centre I'm told 'Mystical unifying would best describe you... Enchantment, charm, sensitivity and deep spiritual understanding are the qualities most important to you.'

On the right side is the energy I am 'putting out to the world... People see you as magical... What you want comes to you as if by magic.'

The Polaroid was taken over several seconds of me sitting on a bench, spreading my palms on a metallic hand-shaped template with some kind of electrode sensors on each fingertip. 'Don't move,' Chris says, and I feel like I'm in an episode of House undergoing a CT scan.

Afterwards, we don't just talk about the photo.

'Dreams?' Chris asks. His flavour-savour beard jiggles when he talks. It's reddish-brown and it reminds me of a faun. Actually he's kind of faunish in general. It might be the purple t-shirt (or the purple everything), but there is definitely something mythological about him.

'What about them?' I ask.

'Do you have them?' Not the everyday vanilla ones about stuff that happens during the day, he explains, but the really real ones.

'Oh, you mean those horrendous ones where you can't wake up?' (which I always thought were a case of sleep paralysis), 'Or the ones that later come true?'

Chris is staring at me. It's an intense stare. The kind of eye contact that makes you want to scream, blink already!

That's when he asks me if I believe in ghosts. Except he doesn't word it like that. There seems to be an entire vocabulary that spiritualists use that I haven't quite gotten my head around. Thank God/my Spirit Guide/the Earth Mother for Google.

'I don't know if they're ghosts or spirits or whatever, but I see what I call the Night Eyes. In the dark, with my eyes open or closed, they stare back at me. All different ones.'

'They're people who have passed on,' he says. He wants to know if I'm in touch with them. If they make contact with me.
 
'Hell no.'

'Why not?'

Is he serious? What about the girl with long blonde hair who came to me at my lover's house, terrified, or the one standing in my bedroom doorway, mouthing silently as she strangled, or those guys who were hovering in my living room, looking like they wanted to steal my TV? 'These are different to the night eyes.' I shudder.

'Are they malevolent?'

I nod. 'The others, the eyes, the faces, they're neutral, they just watch me like I watch them.' I always assumed they hadn't 'passed over'.

'Maybe you need to get in touch with your Spirit Guide.' Apparently my Guide will protect me if I ask it to, keep the ghosts away from me, away from my room, and the hell out of my house.

'Do you sometimes wake up with a song stuck in your head? When you've had these dreams?' This, too, is a spirit, sending me a message, he explains.

For some reason this freaks me out. Not the idea of someone sending me a message, but the mention of hearing a song when I wake up. It's probably something he says to everyone, but it resonates because I was talking about exactly that to a friend the night before. In this case (because there are others), it is a song by UNKLE called 'Nursery Rhyme,' and it has haunted me for years. 'There's something in the way it makes me feel that is also in my book, something I am trying to write out, that is also in the way that my lover sometimes holds and whispers to me. They are connected,' I say, 'but I don't understand how.'

I know this makes no sense to him. It barely makes sense to me.

He asks about my writing. I tell him yes, sometimes when I write it's not like I'm writing at all, but as though I'm reading. I have no idea what is going to happen until it is on the page in front of me. 'When that happens it's exhilarating.'

He tells me that it is most likely a spirit guiding me in those times.

Then he takes a bag and asks me to pull out a crystal. I rummage around for the one that calls to me, that feels right in my hand. I don't quite get the sensation I'm looking for, but we're running out of time, so I take the next best thing. It is small and blue-ish black with lighter blue veins. He thinks it is sodalite rather than lapis, and this is consistent with his opinion that I am very in tune with my third eye. It is the stone of 'insight and intuition'.

Next he draws out two cards.

I take a sharp breath. One of the cards shows a child standing at a gate. She is locked out. It is called 'The Outsider.' It is a scene from my book, a premonition that comes as a dream to the main character of her daughter standing at the gates of Nedran. It is also the name of one of these posts, and represents how I feel about my family.

His explanation of the card bears no resemblance to mine.

The second card is called 'Comfort,' and is mostly words but we run out of time to look at it in any detail.

I want to be able to stop looking into his unblinking eyes, stop seeing the flecks of dark against light. I can feel things crawling behind me. Hovering. It is a sensation of eager malice. They don't want to get to him, they want to get at me.

'Do you have any questions?' he asks.

Where do I start? 'No, I think that's it.'

I pay him in cash, take my photo, my crystal, and leave.

It has taken a while to shake the creepiness, to stop remembering those dreams, the picture on the card, and the feeling of that song. I know I've had dreams that have come true, names of people I never knew and later met, always in some significant way. I know that if I ignore the nagging in my gut for too long it will slam itself in my face, usually at 3am.

I have no idea how much I believe of what Chris said, whether the photo is a reflection of the colours I happened to be wearing, a random result of over-exposure on film, or some other con. I didn't get any insights into my future, or any signs to help me work out what I should do next, but I did learn a bit more about me, about the things that haunt me, real or imagined, (and I did wake with a song stuck in my head the following morning, this time, the Eurythmics' 'Thorn in my Side') and maybe that's adventure enough.

-AG

18 October 2010

‘Use it or lose it’

Rhonda Perky’s guide to DIY
‘If women just fucking got over themselves… to [women like that] it is about men having needs that are lesser because they are physical rather than emotional and that sex is somehow an animal thing… a degrading thing, and that if you engage in sex you have somehow let the man “win” and all that other stuff that is so great about having good sex with your partner is lost.’ – The Desert Foxx
I am going to put it out there. I think women should take responsibility for maintaining their own libidos.

Not as some ‘feminists’ would argue, to kowtow to the whims and desires of men, but for themselves. To feel alive. To be more than a role-extension to the lives of those around them.

The death of a women’s libido is a well-documented phenomenon. Bettina Arndt’s The Sex Diaries details case after case of women whose libidos have withered and died, while their male counterparts shrivel in hopeful longing. Arndt goes on to argue that this is evolutionary and natural, that women are geared to lose their libidos. Unfair, but biologically unavoidable.

In ‘When difference of desire is sold as a deficiency’ (The Age, June 6, 2010), Leslie Cannold also writes, ‘While men tend to find their partners more desirable over time, women often need a new partner to rekindle desire.’

You may recall from my post, ('Married Sex: a Fairytale in Three Parts'), I suffered a massive loss of libido while I was in a long-term relationship. I was a text-book case, and would probably accept the theory that libido loss is unavoidable, except I have since managed to do just that. I have regained -- and successfully maintained -- my libido through two subsequent relationships.

I would instead argue that I contributed to the death of my own libido.

When I first met my then future husband, my hormones when crazy. I took it for granted that they would stay that way. They didn’t.

I can point to a long list of things which may have slowly poisoned it. Being in a long-term relationship was just one of them. I got sucked into living my life day by day. I did what I thought I was supposed to. I became a wife and a mother to my cats, and a faithful employee, and a daughter, and a sister, and there was never enough time or energy, or desire. I had secured a partner (*tick*). I could worry about him (and me), later.

First, I had to look after everything else.

During that time I didn’t even think about sex. It wasn’t as though I didn’t want sex with my partner. I didn’t want sex at all. I didn’t even want to masturbate. It became way too easy to surround myself with the bland unsexiness of routine and responsibility. It was what was accepted and even expected of me.

Besides, there was always tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the week after that. There was no urgency anymore.

There was also no stimulation.

This is where society – including women – has got it wrong. Men are stimulated constantly. It’s no wonder they can seem like walking Viagra-fuelled hard-ons. They are sold sex and more sex, while women are sold motherhood and washing detergent.

Looking back, I wonder if I would have felt differently if I had ready access to sexual stimulants in the same way as men (0). Because now that I have my desire back, I realise how precious it is. Something to be nurtured and maintained. I never want to feel that downstairs deadness again.

The Sex Diaries advocates women not waiting for the stimulation to come to them. Leslie Cannold agrees: ‘Sometimes, women won't want sex until they've started having it.’ I would advocate taking it one step further, and making use of third-party stimulation to get themselves there BEFORE their husbands / long-term partners make their clumsy advances (1).

For me this is where DIY comes into play. It’s all too easy for life to get in the way and for the sex part of your brain to be clogged with everything but, however it is possible to make it happen solo if you make the effort and take the time. And once you start you will start to want it, and then want it more and more, and yes, you may even want your partner again and not inwardly (or outwardly) groan when he pokes you in the back, saying, 'Hon...?'

And here I risk being slaughtered by my feminist peers again when I say, if you're having trouble finding the time or the mental energy, why not try using porn? It's quick and easy and direct (2).

First you have to get over the stigma. After all, you don't use porn for the articles, which means admitting to using porn = admitting to DIY. There is a public perception that many women do not use porn to masturbate (3).  There is only a growing perception (acceptance) that women masturbate at all. I don’t want try to guesstimate the accuracy of those perceptions, because I think masturbation, whether assisted by pornography or not, is still a taboo topic for many women, and therefore skews this perception. Hooray to Cosmo for all those G-spot and Clitoris specials that made women seeking self-pleasure more socially acceptable, but I think there is still a reluctance among women to admit, even to themselves, what sorts of things truly turn them on.

In ‘Even Better Than…?’ I alluded to some of the more ‘acceptable’ sources of stimulation available to women, and how this differs significantly from that which is available to men. I’m not convinced this difference is our natural inclination. Were we to climb The Magic Faraway Tree and step out into ‘Topsy-Turvy land’, we might see men fantasising about romantic leading ladies sweeping them off their feet, while women dream of anally penetrating hardcore male sex slaves. I suspect the difference in the materials available to us has more to do with the diet of acceptability on which we are raised than any innate difference in our sensibilities.

For instance, The Desert Foxx and I spent an afternoon perusing Good Loving, Great Sex, by Dr Rosie King (‘Australia’s leading sex expert’), which discusses libido enhancers and suppressors. Following an extensive survey, Dr King came up with a shortlist of what turns men on versus what does it for women, and conversely, what turns each of them off (4). To our surprise, Foxx and I found we related more to the guys’ list than the girls’. Rather than conclude we were more ‘male’ than ‘female’ in our thinking, we wondered at the voracity of the survey results, which seemed VERY clichéd, and VERY 1953. It was almost as though when presented with a list of checkboxes, women gravitated to the socially acceptable and familiar, rather than the stuff that would actually get them ‘percolating in the nether regions’ (-- Mr ‘Longrod’ McHugen Dong).

It occurred to me there was no ‘control group’ in this experiment. No group of participants divorced from societal pressures to tick particular boxes.

Similarly, The Sex Diaries examines the libido of women throughout the lifecycle of a relationship. It does not consider a woman’s libido on its own; in one sense, in its natural habitat. It wasn’t when I entered a new relationship that I rediscovered my libido; it was in the privacy of my bed-made-for-one.

But this lack is reflective of our society. What is the norm and what is considered ‘acceptable’ is pervasive, and creates a loop in which we are trapped and in which we trap ourselves. Foxx and I are quite unabashed with each other when discussing sex, and this was reflected in our survey results, but not everyone is like us.

I would go on to argue that these societal expectations are reflected in the masturbatory marketplace.
Perhaps if there was a wider acceptance and acknowledgement of women needing secondary stimulation, the porn market might shift to more women-friendly material (5), which may in turn make it more appealing to women entering the market, and we may find a rekindling of our libidos by the increased presence of external stimulation (6). We might end up as horny as (if not more so) than men.

Yes, life gets in the way of desire, and this is rubbish, but when I hear women describe sex as a chore, something their partners demand of them, and that they (grudgingly) mete out, I am horrified. I want to scream, ‘Don’t you want to enjoy sex for yourselves? Don’t you want to feel alive?’

Because you can. You simply have to want to enough.


--RP


(0) Whether or not I maintained my desire for my partner is another thing entirely. We had all kinds of issues. But while we weren’t having sex, we weren’t communicating either. Domestic-bliss 101 we could share. True intimacy eluded us.

(1) A word to the wise, men: nagging at a woman for sex / complaining about not getting sex / not making an effort to entice your woman to want sex are sure-fire ways of ensuring you do not get sex. Try wooing your woman as you once did to get into her knickers in the first place. You succeeded then, you will probably succeed again now. Just because you’ve worked through the bases once, doesn’t mean you get to ‘skip to the end’ every time. Try working the bases again. You might be surprised.
 

(2) Remember, it’s geared towards men.
 

(3) I once bought an FHM over the counter, only to have the man who served me say, ‘Um, there are some Woman’s Days out the back… I can go and grab one for you…’
 

(4) A list which pretty much described my marriage.
 

(5) What a good friend describes as ‘Couples’ porn, rather than ‘Single Guy’ porn.
 

(6) The shift in the type of porn that is produced may also go some way to helping reduce men’s difficulty in relating to women from over-exposure to hardcore material where ‘consumers are catapulted into a world of cruel and brutal sex acts designed to dehumanise women,’ ('Porn has hijacked sexuality and is destroying men,' Gail Dines, The Age, October 14, 2010).

15 October 2010

‘Even better than …?’

Rhonda Perky ponders the place of porn in the ‘real world’
‘Of course I don’t fantasise about my current partner when I masturbate – I get to have real sex with them.’ -- Mr ‘Long Rod’ McHugen Dong
Modern men have access to more hardcore porn than ever before, but according to Gail Dines in ‘Porn has hijacked sexuality and is destroying men’ (The Age, October 14, 2010), this isn’t necessarily what they want. Constant exposure is causing men to complain of being porn-reliant, or even forming an addiction to hardcore pornography, and that this is having a flow-on effect to the way they relate to women in the ‘real world’.

I'm not arguing a case for or against porn, hardcore or otherwise, but I do want to look at some of the issues Dines raises.

Dines makes the point that due to an increased exposure to hardcore porn, men report needing to fantasise in order to achieve orgasm during sex.
‘What troubles many of these men most is that they need to pull up the porn images in their head in order to have an orgasm with their partner. They replay porn scenes in their minds, or think about having sex with their favourite porn star when they are with their partners.’
I hate to disappoint all the men out there who believe their women are being taken over the edge by their awesomely sexy presence and superior technique, but chances are those moans are as much about what is going on inside the woman’s mind as what you are doing to their body. (Don’t get me wrong, what you do is important -- VERY important -- it’s just that a combination of mind and body is usually required to get us there).

Certainly there is a case for the argument that hardcore porn desensitises men. If they’re accustomed to watching extremely graphic images, a tame session of pink-lace lingerie, muffled moans and missionary probably isn’t going to compare. But to be fair, it’s also a stretch for women to imagine that beer belly and B.O. is really a tanned and deodorised six-pack.

Men are also complaining that real sex doesn’t live up to the fantasy of porn sex.  
‘These men have become so accustomed to porn sex that some are disappointed by their own sexual performance. When they compare themselves with the male porn actors, who can sustain Viagra-fortified erections for long periods, the guys I talk to often admit to feeling like sexual losers, and worry something is wrong with them.’
The issue for me here is less to do with the use of porn and the images it makes use of, and more to do with men confusing fantasy and reality. For years women have been accused of having unrealistic expectations of men, resulting from a steady diet of Walt Disney, Bridget Jones's Diary and Sex and the City, because no relationship will ever possibly live up to the ones of our imagination. Prince Charming doesn’t exist, and nor does Mr Darcy. Certainly the revolving door of available, successful and good-looking Sex and the City men aren’t there for the taking. Perhaps it’s time men were given the same bitter pill we've had to swallow for years, that what they are watching isn’t real.

And as for men feeling inadequate compared with their male porn-star counterparts, do they not realise women have the same issue, having to live up to the standards set by Angelina, Jenna Jameson and Felicia Fox? We can’t all be man-eating stunners who represent charities by day and act as bisexual BDSM fetishists by night. I’m not saying that makes it okay, it’s just something we all have to deal with in a consumer society.

At its heart this article seems to imply that men are having difficulty doing what women have always had to do: use their imaginations.
‘Many of the men I talk to believe that porn sex is what women want, and they become upset and angry when their sex partner, perhaps their wife, girlfriend, or a one night hook-up, refuses to look or behave like their favourite porn star. The women often refuse to perform the sex acts the men have routinely enjoyed watching, and next to the screaming orgasms and sexual gymnastics of porn sex, real sex with real women starts to feel boring and bland.’
I won’t talk here about the questions the article raises on the content of hardcore porn – I’ll save that for another story (watch this space), but I will argue that the difference here for men and women is that women have had to make do with very little hardcore stimulation for a very long time. Mills and Boon, the pages of our favourite novels that fall open at the mention of a lifted skirt and heaving bosom, or a movie scene where the heroine is pressed up against the wall in a passionate embrace by her robust anti hero (this may be part of the reason for women’s reportedly low libidos -- again, I’ll leave that for another story), but this has in some ways kept our ‘boudoir’ imaginations relatively active. We have to continually fill in the blanks.

Male-oriented pornography on the other hand leaves very little to the imagination (though I would argue it takes a ‘special’ kind of imagination to believe she really wants you to shove that enormous dildo up her ass and then lick it). Men become desensitised, but they also become lazy. When the images are presented to you, when you are slapped in the face with them, you don’t have to do the work.

This is possibly the real tragedy.  Like tobacco or caffeine or any other stimulant, it is to the advantage of the supplier to build user-dependence. A dysfunctional sex-life is a by-product but also a market-force, turning users into repeat users, and ensuring a constant market for more and more extreme stimulation.

Men and women are the losers here.

--RP

11 October 2010

'Six months in a leaky boat'

Adventure Girl learns how to swim

So you’re in this relationship, and it’s had a bit of a rocky start, travelled some rough seas, but finally you’ve reached calmer waters, and you can see land up ahead.

In real terms, this is the point where you know you love them, and they love you back. They say it and they show it and you feel it. You’re floating, and it’s thrilling, and it’s peaceful. Then BAM.

The storm.

Out of nowhere you’re throwing a 15-year-old tantrum, all the while aching for them to hold you, to reassure you, to carry you to shore.

Of course they don’t. You’re behaving like a child.

It gets worse. You panic. You’re grasping. You don’t just want to be rescued; you’re drowning and feel like you can’t get to the shore without them.

But they pull away. If you’re lucky they offer you a life-raft, but most times they’re reaching for one for themselves.

‘See?’ you tell yourself. They don’t love you, not really.

The storm might come in the form of that nagging thing they once told you that still doesn’t quite add up, or yet another text message from the Ghost of Shaggers’ Past. You ask AGAIN for an explanation, you want to know AGAIN why she is texting him. Not, as he supposes, to find the worst in him, to prove that he’s lying, cheating, but to be reassured that he’s not.

It’s a test not of him, but of his love for you. You’re looking for cracks and testing if the boat is watertight.

Because can he really love you? I mean, REALLY? Love YOU? Doesn’t he know who you are underneath it all? Won’t he run screaming when he finally discovers the truth, when he finally sees who YOU are?

So you push and you squeeze and you test, but it’s not about not trusting him, it’s about not believing in you.

If you think of the relationship as like being on a leaky boat, you see yourself running around trying to plug and test every last hole. But when you test the holes, you put more pressure on them, and most times make them bigger. Do it too often and chances are there will be so many holes the ship will sink.

The other part of you, the secret part, doesn’t just test the holes that are already there. This part wants to be sure that the boat can withstand an attack. This part steers the ship into the storm instead of away from it, to see if you can weather it, and punches new holes to see if together you can plug them up and keep afloat. Eventually, if you punch enough holes, or steer into enough storms, you’ll both be grasping for life rafts.

Deep down, you know where the fear comes from, a history of sunken boats as long as the Shipwreck Coast. Too many people have been in love with you, but not loved you. Because they didn’t know you, didn’t see you. They saw an idea of you. You felt like a fraud and it never worked out. Because the more they tried to love you, the more you were convinced that they didn’t. Or rather, couldn’t. Because they never saw who you really were. Never saw the rocks beneath the surface until you rammed your boat into them.

But now you’ve found someone different. Someone who sees, who knows. Who has seen your flaws, and still loves, just as you have seen his. He can even tease you about them and make you laugh at yourself. This time you want it to be different. You want to BE different.

You’ve learned your lesson.

Instead of trying to plug and test every possible gap, instead of punching new holes, you will try to accept that nothing is watertight, that the ship can have a few cracks in it, and still stay afloat.

Because even if you do manage to seal the boat completely, there’s no guarantee it won’t one day break down. The motor could simply run out of steam.

And if it does? You might be battered by the sea and swallow water until you choke, but you will make it onto shore. You’ve done it before and you can do it again. And again. And again. You have a life raft, and a vest, and you know how to swim.

-AG

07 October 2010

Soul-Sucking Demons

Mad Julie exorcises her right to a demon-free workplace

So what do you do if you are stuck working with soul-sucking demons?

Well let me tell you my little tale of what I have tried, tested, and scratched out… before finally happening upon a very sophisticated means of revenge…

1. Drink Lots!!!!

Problem – numbness only lasts for 3-6 months and there are sober periods… hmmm….

2. Eat lots of Chocolate and Comfort Food for Emotional Recovery!!!

Problem – ummm 5 plus kilos later… hmmm….

3. Shopping Therapy?

Problem – the pay cheque doesn’t last as long as it used to… and then can't afford as much booze… hmmm...

4. Exercise out the demon toxins

Problem – hard to outrun them when stuck in a meeting… hmmm…

5. Hide!!!

Problem – they HUNT you down and CALL you… Hmmm…

6. Look for a new team to join?

Problem – you find MORE soul-sucking demons and the old ones STILL HUNT you down!!! HORROR!!!!

7. Take Sickies?

Problem – they ARE STILL THERE when you return!!!

8. Take a positive approach and try to get to know them better?

Problem – you discover these demons come from the LOWER LEVELS of HELL… hmmm… what now?

And nope, am already spacing out the drinking, chocolate, shopping, sickies, hiding and occasional bits of other toxins… and I refuse to join the demon ranks!!!!

9. Have a life? Hmmm… but what type?

You interact more with the nicer demons and discover they had angelic mothers;

...you smile and laugh lots and the soul-sucking demons become uglier with their jealousy to all (you are now not alone);

...you now look like a catwalk queen with all the exercise and shopping, while they favour bag-lady-esque fashion (YEAH);

...and you are fairly popular going to all the latest shows, movies and bars around town…  the laughter is your ammunition… (UH HUH!!!)

...meanwhile… the soul-sucking demons are withering in their bitterness and becoming fat and dumpy with new wrinkles and white hairs appearing by the hour… AND they are LOSING their hold… slowly their suckers are dying… and so is their poison…

10. SOLUTION – REPEAT POINT 9 TIL THEIR ASHES HAVE BEEN CAST…

01 October 2010

Trampolining Love

Adventure Girl bounces back

We all know about the rebound effect. Heart torn, ego shattered, we desperately want to feel the upward rush of replacement love, or at least a new almost-crush. Anything to fill that gaping hole of hurt (or according to Dr Helen Fisher, of Rutgers University in New Jersey, to get our next dopamine fix).

Chances are, the first person to fill that void is not the most likely long-term partner, but rather, someone easy, someone gentle, someone safe (or in the case of the Attachment-Avoider or Commitment-Phobe, someone completely unobtainable). Either way, Mr (or Ms) New is ultimately, not for you.

I tend to oscillate between a Mr Bad and a Mr Safe (though one of these days Mr Bad will surely rip me into so many shreds I’ll turn to Mr Unobtainable. I was almost there, once, having an obsessive crush on someone young enough to break the Half-Plus-Seven Rule. At the first sign that something might actually happen between us, I ran away, screaming).

Because I bounce from one extreme to the other, being acted upon, rather than acting on, it ends up feeling like a constant state of inertia. I don't act, I react. Heart torn, I retreat to a Mr Safe. Mr Safe waits for me to recover. He is kind, he is besotted, and though I might grow to love him, I am not in love with him.

From safety I grow restless and long for the excitement and risk of a Mr Bad. I crave the in-love feeling of dopamine. I may even create drama within the stillness, like an artificial stimulant. If I can’t feel in-love, let me feel the imitation cocaine-effect of a make-up... and eventually (always) a break-up.

If I'm lucky, I will find a Mr New who also resembles a Mr Bad, so I can fall in love all over again.

One day I hope the lessons learned from this constant back and forth will even out my cravings, that I will find someone who excites me who is also relatively safe. Like when you decide to stop bouncing on a trampoline. The push-offs get smaller and smaller, until you come to a complete stop, only you are right where you want to be, whether that's on your own, or with Mr Just-Right.

But it isn't only the dopamine-cravings that keep me jumping. According to descriptors of my personality type (Myers Briggs-style,  if you believe that stuff), I have a tendency to 'striv[e] for the Ultimate Relationship', and will 'fall into the habit of moving from relationship to relationship, always in search of a more perfect partner'. To make matters worse, I also have 'difficulty leaving a bad relationship'.

It's this combination of perfectionist and idealist (mixed with some attachment-anxiety, according to a psychologist friend) that will keep me reading that 'Use-by' date as a 'Best Before'.

One lesson I have learned that I can share, is that like wine, no matter how good a relationship is when you first get it, once it's past its peak, it will start to taste a whole lot like vinegar. Let's hope I find a Mr Just-Right before I have to taste that again.

-AG

17 September 2010

why Wing Men are more fun

Adventure Girl learns a lesson on dating in-the-flesh

Have you ever been out on the town, keeping an eye out for possibles, as they hunt you, but when you finally get your chance to meet, talk, drink (and hopefully a bit more), with your Target, you end up spending the night talking to his best mate?

The best mate is most likely his 'Wing Man', on a mission to talk your Target up, break the ice, and keep you interested, all without making a move himself.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, it helps you as much as your Target, particularly if you're as shy and hopeless at talking to strangers without a bottle and a half of Sauv Blanc in you as me. The Wing Man is easy to talk to. He tells you the pertinent details, like where your Target is spending the night, what he pretends to do for a living, and what he is posing as for the evening.

You play along, make up something equally as banal that you do for a living. I usually go for the zookeeper or fluffer, or a fluffer at the zoo. This interaction gives you the advantage of appearing fun and flirtatious without putting your skills directly to the test. The Wing Man has no vested interest in you, and so can be as absurd as you are prepared to go along with.

But there's the crux. You realise several drinks into the night that you might actually prefer the Wing Man. Hell, your target has barely said two words to you. They're just standing there like the undertaker their best mate has proclaimed them to be. And you're left chatting, laughing and flirting with someone who is not only off-limits under the Wing Man rules, but is more than likely already taken (hence their willingness to play WM)!

And so you leave without your man-fluff on your arm, and possibly even without having given over your phone number (false or otherwise) with some fond memories but an empty bed, ready to meet your next potential Target the following week... as long as their WM doesn't prove more fun.

-AG

15 September 2010

After the crab crawled, or 'doormat-no-more'

‘She needs to grow up. She’s a dissatisfied middle-aged woman who sees herself growing old in an unhappy relationship, with kids taking away her life and she’s jealous of your freedom, although she wouldn’t have had the balls to make the choices you made, but wished she had. Hence the sourness… Rhonda can feel free to pinch my argument if she agrees with it.’ -- a friend about a typical 'crab'.
It seems I have inadvertently managed to put my crab-crawling theory into practice... with spectacular effect.

Having spent the first 30+ years of my life filling a particular niche in the lives of my friends and family, I have reached the point where I not only realise it’s a place I don’t want to be, but I have actively tried to re-define my position, or rather, affirm my identity and establish boundaries around it -- something I failed to do before.

Part of this process has involved looking at the way I have chosen to live my life, and asking if this is what I want for my present and future.

For example, I established my current career not so much by choice as by accident. I grasped at the first grown-up job that came along, and then worked my way up to something I actually liked. But I haven’t explored beyond that, so I’m taking some time to look at where to head next. So far on this front I’ve flown under the radar, but I’m bracing myself for some kick-back when I finally do make the move.

I’ve also decided to relocate. Leave Boganburbia to the nuclear-family-oriented and position myself nearer to the things I value and with more like-minded people. When I first raised this in front of my family, the response was, ‘What would you want to live in that area for? It’s full of hippies and weirdoes.’

Over the years I have thought about having children but have come to the conclusion it’s not for me. This decision has been attacked from more directions than I care to count. The response has ranged from the use of assumptive language, ‘When you have children’ rather than ‘If you have children’, to ‘What if you regret it one day?’ (to which my standard reply became, ‘What if I regret having children? You can’t take them back.’

More recently the approach was to tell me if I didn’t have children I would lose my then partner. ‘You’ll need to have children if you want to keep him,’ they said. I remember thinking, Wow. That’s a healthy basis for a relationship, and an even healthier basis for raising a child. And they didn’t stop there. ‘You only have to have one. You can manage that. It won’t interfere with your life too much.’ Imagine the therapy that kid would eventually need. In the end I was tempted to pretend to be barren, just to get them off my back.

Another choice that has come under fire is my decision to not remarry or even have a quasi-married relationship. I’ve tried the whole miserable-marrieds-with-weekends-at-Bunnings thing, and failed. It just isn’t for me. This decision was affirmed during a subsequent relationship where every time things veered towards domestic-bliss-101 I found my insides screaming. I was miserable. I was lonely. I was trapped. And eventually I left. Crawled out of the basket amid screams of protest. How could I be choosing not to stay with someone who was kind, considerate, loving? My response: ‘If you want all those things, why don’t you marry him?’

I have since moved into a new relationship and ‘failed’ to integrate that relationship into the mould. No going-through-the-motions ‘family’ dinners, no weekends at Bunnings. And an endless barrage of criticism.

All this is before looking at the hostile response I’ve encountered to reforming my slobbing-on-the-couch-eating-takeaway lifestyle. Apparently prioritising diet and exercise and maintaining a healthier weight is cause for all kinds of snide remarks. I finally got one sister to stop by pointing out that I'm not so rude as to tell her she is overweight and should really do something about it, so I don't see why she feels it is okay to discuss my weight.

I can only imagine their hositility is because as crabs who share my mould they are more comfortable with dumpy, tubby me. I have redefined the mould's shape, both physically and metaphorically.

The remoulding process has been slow, and is still underway, but as I make progress the attacks become more intense. Criticism, lectures, guilt trips, the works.

Because I don’t hang out with my sister’s kids at the weekend, my other sister tells my nieces and nephew that she loves them more than me, that she is the better aunty, and they openly discuss my being outside the fold in front of the kids.

Because I’ve changed the way that I use social networking, and part of this involved removing my family, I’ve received hostile messages, vicious phone calls, text messages and emails. ‘Total cow! what the hell???? You just don't do that!’ and, ‘What the hell is wrong with you. Why are you trying so hard to not be part of our family?’

I even received a similarly parroted message from my twelve-year-old niece, who has been dragged into the whole saga by her mother.

I want to stress that I’m not writing this to vilify my family, but to illustrate the consequences of leaving the crawl too long. If I had been comfortable enough in myself to assert my boundaries as a teenager, or even when I first left home, I wouldn’t now be suffering because those who shared my mould are feeling the shift so acutely. Previously my position in the mould was beneath theirs and effectively propped theirs up, which means my shifting makes them feel less secure, less in control.

And in this case it is about control.

Ideally I’d like to have a loving, respectful relationship with my family, where I accept them for who they are and they respect me for who I am, but right now that choice isn’t open to me: ‘When you feel like joining us again as [the person we expect you to be] then I am here with open arms’, was my sister's last text.

Now that I’ve peered over the edge of the basket and seen the possibilities waiting for me on the other side, I have a chance at freedom, but unless me and my fellow crabs can establish a new, flexible mould, it looks like it will mean cutting ties with the crabs trying to claw me back, and leaving the basket for good.

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