Nothing ventured, nothing gained

A lesson in reconciliation with Adventure Girl


‘You look so old.’

I’d just stepped into the restaurant. It took me a moment to recognise him. I was expecting someone tall, bearded and grey: the father I had last seen almost a decade ago.

Instead I saw someone large, someone pink and someone pale. His grey hair had faded to white. It was most noticeable around the eyes. Once blue and slightly beady, they disappeared into his face.

He stood to greet me. He wore a supercilious grin. Some things never change.

I hovered beside the table for a moment. Should we hug, kiss, shake hands? I dived for my seat.

‘There’s quite a bit less of you,’ he said, just as tactfully. ‘A lot less, in fact. Maybe too much less.’

I opened the menu. ‘What do you feel like eating?’

‘I have to be careful, you know, with my diabetes…’ And so began the theatrics. Dinner became a role play. Not of the prodigal daughter and absent father, but a game of show-and-tell where I played reticence and he played look-at-me-now.

I heard all about his new wife, his new daughter, his new life.

Yes, I noticed your ring, I answered. Yes, I know you have a new family. Yes, I know what songs you’d like played at your funeral.

I waited for him to ask me a question. A question about me.

Virtual silence.

I glanced at my phone. Pretended I wasn’t checking the time.

The game went on.

I grew stubborn. If he wouldn’t ask then I would tell. So I described how I’ve gone back to school, how I’ve been writing, and told him about my new job.

‘My wife writes,’ he responded. ‘And studies. And works.’

Good for her.

I told him I was sorry if I seemed distracted. I’d had a difficult day. I was almost in tears. The one thing I wanted more than anything in the world in that moment was to hear him say something nice, or to be caught up in a big bear hug.

Instead he said, ‘The problem with you is…’

Some things never change. I asked for the bill.

-AG

the night she took a slice off the moon

It was dark,
but not dark enough.
Amber backlit suburban rooftops.

She wanted to be hidden,
invisible, to not exist.
But she did.

She wanted to know who he was,
wondered where he was now.
She didn't know him at all.

When 'bitch' just doesn't cut it...

A lesson in online insults with Adventure Girl

I used to think I could hurl insults with the best of them. A bunch of 14 year olds proved me wrong...

CW: don't worry my heart was already Brocken :)
TV: good for you :L
T2 : You misspelt broken.
CW: Haha - I did too !! :P
CW: TV what's that supposed to mean?
TV: shutup? wait are you the one who was being a hoe to TK? :@
CW: Haha scum : and if by being hoe yu mean apologizing for what was a missunderstanding than yes :) now go stick ur big nose in someone elses convo annoyance :) bye.
TV: fuck you bitch ;)
CW: Oh haha I just realized there was a reason ur covering ur face in ur dp ><>TV: shut up slut.
CW: Omg go away ur sooo annoying! Something with u corinda perople or whatever you are. Go back to ur hole leave me alone.
JD: hey um "TV" guess it takes a slut to know a slut, whore.
CW: Luvyu JD :)
JD: im a good friend eh?
CW: U can just detect when a slut thinks they know it all. :P haha she's ugly too so dnt even think about letting her into the whore bizz aye
JD: no way, no room fo uglies in the um "services" industry
TV: uhhh pre sure your the ugly one, muttdogg, and its capalaba cunt. man your a shit faced slut, fuck off yeh?
CW: Lol nice try T1 but no one cares :) I mean ooh ouch that hurt Ima go dig a hole and die now :(
JD: ya, had a look at your dp, girl you gotta lay off the chips
TV: lol so your saying im fat :L
JD: yup, tubby
CW: Nah that's just the grease in her hair making an optical illusion... She's just ugly. Pure uglyness :(
DF: HOLY SHIT, WHO LET THAT DOG IN THIS POST :O. oh my bad, its just TV
JD: the dog thats been eating too many chips..
CW: Haha yeah u can tell she's been hangin round that ugly TK chik. Huh :s eughhh
DF: im such a jim in hehehe
JD: s'ok i did it too
TV: yous are all bull fucking shit. TK is amazing.. what the hell, how the fuck can you say shes ugly. thats so dog CW, your a fucking dogin slut. fucking shut up your embarrising. gay fag to that DF and JD kid, grow up and stop being so immatuer ! TK is amazing, your ugly, got it ? not stop !!
DF: wow TV, way to have ur period all over this post :/
CW: haha its funny, cuz they both ugly :) Its ok hun, TK still loves u. go away?

Note to self: better start practicing...

-AG

App downloaded, will f*ck

Rhonda Perky goes under the covers to locate an instant lover

Pine no longer for tawdry men’s room hookups! TheXChange is an application for your iPhone or iPod Touch that will allow you contact people in your area (and outside of it) to have sex
--John Brownlee on Geek.com

Can it be true? Can I really find myself an instant lover with something as simple as an iPhone App? For those of you who read my post about Red Hot Pie a few months back, you’ll recall my frustration trying to find a lover online. In the end I gave up wading through the onslaught of minimum-effort responses to my ad. It seems having standards is hard work!

So when a friend mentioned theXChange, an adults-only ‘social networking app' similar to GRINDR (the hook-up app for gay and bi-curious men) only for straight people, I decided to check it out.

Like GRINR, theXChange uses the GPS-like capability of your iPhone to share your location with prospective suitors. The official tagline is ‘an online nightclub on your iPhone or iPod Touch.’ No more sitting at home wading through messages – I can be putting out my cat-call to see which non-neutered Toms are in the area instantly.

As with RHP and other dating sites, users need to set up a profile. This gives you and your prospective suitor a chance to do some quality-checking before you agree to hook-up. But like all online matchmaking, user profiles are fraught. No one EVER looks like their pics in real life, and who’s going to declare up front that they’re ugly, have gonorrhea, suffer some kind of personality disorder, and are desperate for your babies? For this sort of encounter all you really want to know is how fat/ugly the potential suitor is on a scale of repulsive to brown-baggable (there’s a difference between a 'lights-off' and someone you wouldn't touch with anybody’s dick/pussy).

Once the basics are out of the way, you can agree to meet. If RHP is anything to go by, I’m expecting a lot more guys and couples registered than single girls, so I shouldn't have any trouble drumming up business.

But now that it's about to happen, I'm a tad apprehensive. Do I really want complete strangers knowing my location? What if they’re serial-killers or turn into stalkers?* It’s not like a date where you can have an emergency phone call lined up. Even on RHP you get a bit of online interaction space before agreeing to meet. On theXChange, if your suitor turns out to have a mouth full of metal, acne and a blistering case of herpes, you’re kind of stuck. It’s like a pre-contract that you’ll hook up, no matter what. I need some kind of assurance that other users have safely met someone (or someones) worth shagging, maybe even more than once.

I hit Google only to hit my first alarm bells: where are the user reviews? Either no one is using theXChange, or no-one is owning up to it. It seems this ‘virtual nightclub’ also has virtual reviews.

Finally I do find some feedback – from a non-user! Valkilmerisawful (Gizmodo) writes:

I wouldn’t even use this. I don’t see one single Asian. I just see a few busted chicks, a dude, and a dude dressed up as a busted chick.

And John Brownlee on Geek.com, concluded that:

Anyone you actually do hook up with for anonymous, indiscriminate sex, much like the women you see advertising on Craigslist, are likely to be perfect storms of venereal disease. But if you want to slurp down naked pictures of random, psychologically troubled young women (or the closeted middle aged men who play them on your iPhone), theXchange is available now.

Not quite the feedback I was hoping for.

I quickly check out Craigslist** to see what John Brownlee is talking about. In the personals section I find search categories for ‘strictly platonic’, women/men seeking, ‘misc romance’,*** ‘casual encounters’, ‘missed connections’, and ‘rants and raves’. I head to ‘casual encounters’. The ads are mostly one-liners that say nothing more than that the user is ‘looking for a blow-n-go’, ‘at yours or in public - sorry, can’t host’, i.e. married men looking for sideline encounters with other men, and occasionally women: a short-hand version of RHP. There are also many repeaters**** and a whole bunch of close-up photos of cocks (am I playing chatroulette here???)

This isn’t getting me any closer to finding a quality shag. The only hope I can cling to is that theXChange publishes some ‘house rules’:

• Do not post any nude or offensive photos.
• Harassing, threatening, or hateful language will absolutely not be tolerated.
• Club management reserves the right to permanently ban users who violate these rules or present a nuisance to others.
  

So do I risk it? If I want a shag – and now – and I’m not too fussy (after all, I’m not looking to start a relationship, or even see these people again), do I give it a go? All I’ve got to lose is $9.99… and possibly my dignity.

-RP

*There have been reports of GRINDR users being assaulted

**an un-moderated classifieds site. According to Wise Geek, ‘craigslist is perhaps the ultimate site for classified listings.’ Wise Geek also warns that those who use the list ‘have learned to be cautious about advertisements posted there.’ Craigslist is unmoderated, relying largely on user forums to alert other users to dodgy deals.

***checkout ‘misc romance’ for some miscellaneous ad categorisation. I found ads for a ‘massage - firm hands’, a ‘trainee sub female required’ and ‘ongoing spanking’.

****I’ve still never worked out if this is because the ad is working for them, or because it’s not.

Bearded weirdness or 'Playing Paddocks'

A lesson in mixing friends with Adventure Girl

Remember that game you used to play as a kid, where you drew up a grid of dots, as big as you could make it, then took turns to connect them with dashes? The object was to make as many closed-in squares as possible: paddocks. Then you would initial them, territory marked, borders closed.

I was never very good at it.

I'm not sure if the two are related, but I've never considered myself particularly territorial. Not over friends or family, or friends of friends. In fact, if I could put the acquaintances from one side my life's paddock in a room with a bunch from the other side, and they hit it off, that was all for the better. As superficial as it sounds, it made my life easier, because it meant I could catch up with more of my friends at once. It was like I'd managed to join lots of dots across the page in a kind of uber-paddock of friend efficiency.

As I get older, the dots of my life seem to join up more and more. My life is covered in interconnecting dashes. This should feel great. More of my friends are becoming friends, and I'm becoming friends with their friends.

But on a couple of occasions now, this has bothered me. I've noticed my friends interacting independently of me. Not just independently as 'friends', but forming connections that extend beyond being the 'friend of a friend'.

Suddenly I feel as though my border hasn't extended into an open-armed love-in, but has been crossed.

I've laid out a whole bunch of dashes without closing the gates. The paddocks don't contain my initials, but somebody else's. All that ground work, only to miss out on the paddocks! Worse, I'm standing outside the paddocks: borders closed.

I know this is a childish response. I shouldn't feel territorial at all. I should be happy that my friends are getting along so well. It's not as though I'm worried about what they will say about me to each other. They tend to say all that stuff to my face - that's why we're friends. And it's not like I'm worried about losing a part of their friendship when they offer that piece to someone else. There's always more to go around.

But it must come from somewhere, this feeling of bearded weirdness. If only I could pinpoint the cause, I could shake the whole thing off. And I know it will pass. I just have to get used to it.

Maybe I should start a new sheet, a new game. One where everybody works collaboratively. No initials and no borders.

Or maybe I should stick to Chinese Checkers.

-AG

the world according to Mad Julie

Mad Julie on...

working in an open plan office

...put up mirrors around your desk to see who is coming around the corner... then strategically jump under your desk and pull your chair in!

...get a bean bag... don’t fill it... place it under your desk or corner of your pod... and jump inside when pesky colleague/client/boss appears.

avoiding social occasions

...it’s totally the right day to pike :)

...do you need to physically be there or mentally? with or without attitude be there? or can you tell them that you will astrally project yourself there? then if it doesn’t work, it wasn’t your fault.

...pretend you have developed multiple personality disorder and today’s personality 'Margie' believes that she has baseball 2nite so can’t do dinner.

the midweek blues

...i'm struggling today and my head is woolly and overloaded.... maybe after my last meeting for the day i just skedaddle and crash on my couch.

...its sad but true - already over tuesday..... and in need of a glass of wine.... make that 2 gallons of booze!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

negative horoscope readings

...ignore it and just follow your path.... blissfully....

family

...hide from them!

rhonda perky

...when rhonda perky's closet door opens up unparalleled levels of evil spill out!!! remember pandora - well guess who taught her???


-MJ

Married Sex – A fairytale in three parts

***Warning – this post may ruin your best friend threesome fantasy***

Once upon a time, long term couples were encouraged to ‘share everything’, from a strand of spaghetti to the grizzly details of the monthly cycle. The idea was that this constant sharing, this living in each others’ pockets, was supposed to bring you closer together. And it does. You’ll be best-friend close.

The problem is, you don’t tend to want to shag your best mate.

Worse, your living arrangement most closely resembles that of a sibling. Again, not someone you want to shag.

Enter the world of Married Sex.

Not only does sexing your partner start to seem about as appealing as humping a manky dish cloth, you may find you’re not into sex at all.

This is what happened to me.

At the time I blamed the pill, not realising I was living with a constant libido suppressant called a husband. All I knew was that over time sex had stopped being something I couldn’t get enough of, and started becoming a chore - something I did out of a vague sense of obligation that would have to wait until after I’d finished the ironing and scrubbing the floor.

To be fair, my husband had also stopped beating down the door to rip my knickers off. So I decided (with some relief) that he didn’t really want it either.

During this time (which I consider some freakish aberration), not only did I rarely crave sex, not even to DIY, the thought of shagging my partner was a turn-off. In fact I used to dread it.

The most satisfying sex we had during the long drought was on the rare occasions when my sleeping brain decided it had been long enough, thank you very much, and I would wake from a raunchy dream, desperate for a shag. In the dark, still half-asleep, I could jump my husband and not notice I was shagging him.

Experts now realise that the previously advocated ‘closeness’ and total entanglement of each others’ lives is the worst possible thing you can do if you want to avoid this deadening drought I call Married Sex. They concede that by the time your husband has seen you in your pink fluffy slippers with mascara blubbing down your face and once you’ve experienced his regular AGBs (1), when you have no privacy left, no un-mutual friends, and no me-only time, your desire for one another doesn’t just start to wane, it plummets.

Add to this the scientific theory that evolution is working against us, playing out its war on our libidos using the very chemicals that make us want to shag in the first place. Scientists argue that the cycle of romance, sex and love, by its very nature, is geared to lead every long term couple toward parenthood and virtual abstinence.

The cycle goes something like this:

• Romance produces the chemicals that lead to sex
• Sex produces the chemicals that lead to love
• Love suppresses the chemicals that lead to romance

which traps us into a life of monogamy through ritual emasculation (testosterone being the chemical suppressed by ‘love’). With the desire for sex depleted, we are much less likely to stray, and much more likely to feel the ‘love’ bonds that will encourage us to stay and raise offspring (2). The problem is that over time this has an inevitable impact on a couples’ desire for each other.

And this is just one of the ‘chemical’ theories of sex and love involving libido enhancers and suppressants.
For me, the contraceptive pill turned my body into one giant sex no-go zone. Like many women my age, I live with the ongoing pain of endometriosis, and so had been prescribed a high-dose pill. The hormones stopped my periods and so stopped the pain, but then stopped me feeling altogether. Without hormonal drivers, I had almost no drive at all. Not just for sex, but for anything. It was like wearing a pair of giant granny pants, the kind that suck in your gut only to have the excess ooze out everywhere else. All the while you’re there struggling to breathe. In the end I decided I could live with the pain in order to feel again, and stopped taking it.

BAM!

Like a teenage boy hitting puberty my hormones went into overdrive. I had energy to burn, and as the first full moon approached, I was climbing the walls. Just about every man who walked past was a potential shag. I lost count of the poor unsuspecting guys I imagined dragging into the loo for some unbridled bouncing-off-the-walls passion. The cruel irony was that my husband was away at the time, and so for the first time in years I locked myself indoors and masturbated like crazy.

Eventually my husband arrived home. But then the weirdest thing happened. I didn’t want to shag him. It was like I’d been given a dose of instant libido suppressant.

It scared the shit out of me.

It was a while before I had a hormonal peak as extreme as the first, but I did notice the ups and downs of my cycle after that, and I was never quite sure who I might be tempted to crack on to. At one point I felt I ought to wear a public safety waning: CAUTION: FULL MOON APPROACHING, just to prevent any embarrassing misadventures while ‘on heat’.

Having rediscovered the joys of DIY, for the next little while, it was all that kept me sane. I certainly got no pleasure from my unshaven, unwashed, bad-breathed husband sprawling himself on the marital bed in his ‘come get it’ pose. And when we did do it, it was a far cry from the lets-do-it-in-every-room passion of the early days.

‘He’d moved into the wrong part of my brain,’ she said.

I could understand this sort of change occurring in couples who have children, who end up taking on the asexual role of parents, but that wasn’t true for either of us. The moment she said it, though, I knew she was right. My husband had slipped into the ‘brother’ part of my brain.

Not twelve months later, we separated. With hindsight I’m not the least bit surprised.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if our relationship had come with a warning: DON'T TAKE YOUR MUTUAL ATTRACTION FOR GRANTED. What steps could we have taken to focus less on the ‘smoochie poochie’ part and more on the 'red hot rampant sex' part? The idea that you might need to work at keeping on wanting sex seemed absurd at the time.

Since then I’ve read theory after theory on the pitfalls of long term relationships and how to counter hormonal inhibitors such as illness and the pill. Advice ranges from the basics of maintaining separate lives, to forcing yourself to shag, even when you’d rather spend the evening repeatedly sticking a fork in your eye. Others advocate watching porn (3) or even having an affair. These theories all come with warnings, of course (4).

After my divorce I managed to sustain a relationship for two years. In that time we maintained very separate lives and shagged ourselves silly. We also weren't particularly close, and never quite made it to the point where our lives became entangled.

Who's to say the two are related? I was in a difficult place, and we were two very different people. As for my husband, we probably just outgrew each other and ultimately liked different things in bed.

What I can be sure of is that I'll never have Married Sex again. I’ll do whatever it takes. Read endless volumes of self-help books, research sex-partiesparties, anything. Because good sex is part of what makes you feel alive. And I’m a long, long way from dead.

---

(1) After grog bog
(2) I suspect this is why some people run a mile after sex, as though they know in the moments after orgasm they are most vulnerable to a 'bonding attack'
(3) Or True Blood, if that works better for you
(4) Apparently affairs can also lead to a relationship’s demise...

'...not for the faint of heart'

Rhonda Perky goes under-the-covers to unleash the Beauty, Truth and Horror of Atrocity Burlesque

Described as 'a contemporary, thought-provoking and visceral brand of cabaret, burlesque and cinema for the new age', Atrocity Burlesque at the Burlesque Bar on Johnston Street, Fitzroy, did not entirely meet expectations.

The audience were promised ‘a 21st century sadistic soap opera of sex, violence, beauty, horror, audience participation and psychological play designed to entrance, enrage, entice and entertain.’

There was some of that.

I would concede it was a night of kink, some inspiring performances, and a creepy melodramatic soundtrack (think Alfred Hitchcock meets Trent Reznor during his instrumental phase).

But the costumes - wow.

Not just the performers and venue staff, but the audience, too. A room full of out-fitted stunners, including one notable brunette with inch-long gashes the length of a forearm (I am definitely playing dress-ups, and soon), all stuffed into an under-sized bar.

Plus I have a new girl crush (check out ‘Forma’s' website: http://www.scarlettburlesque.com/), and may have rekindled my fetish for accents.

But after all that hype and a promotional gallery promising an orgy of semi-naked women bound and slashed, the show itself was rather tame. Perhaps I’m just de-sensitised to the perversity of seduction and betrayal, the atrocities of war and infant mortality, and the psycho-sadism of the sexualised child.

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it. I did. It was just a tad reminiscent of a ghost train or theatre restaurant, only with boobs.

-RP