Hello world.
I have possibly swapped cooking mojo for blogging mojo. My kitchen has been on fire lately (mostly metaphorically), but every time I pick up a pen I get two paras in and delete whatever I’ve written.
I think this might be due to mental exhaustion. I’m into my third week of 12 hour days – so far that’s 144 hours of reading and writing just to keep a roof over my head. Kinda takes the fun out of it – even Alan Moore can’t hold my attention right now.
I just work, sleep and bake (although the long hours have coincided with some amazing sex – I guess there’s still a little creative energy left). I have lots I want to say but can’t get the words together.
Posts that might never get beyond conception:
• Why I shouldn’t work in advertising
• The cyber-sex episode, pt 2 (she got back in touch and left me wondering whether it hadn’t been her all along, and it was actually “my boyfriend stole my computer” that was the lie…)
• Where did it all go right – the conversation that changed J and I from monogamous to open
• Fast & louche – learning to be truthful
I also want to do a ‘12 months, 12 pictures’ photo update on the S’pore blog.
I’m writing all this down to remind myself once I finally have the energy to tackle things, and because a friend told me integrity was as simple as doing things you say you’ll do.
I’m also writing something, anything, to remind myself I’m not dead. Feels like I could be.
#10yearsago
The twitter tag writ large…
10 years ago to the minute, I was at a house party in St Peteres Loge, as the council insisted our student digs were called.
A rag-tag collection of us returned to uni during the Christmas break, to herald the new millennium from our wonderful, infested, enormous, used-to-be-a-church-but-was-built-for-parties place in Bath.
A few of my school friends were there, a few uni friends, but mostly a large collection of Boys From Sutton. I’d arrived the previous day, my little Mini stuffed with cheap fizzy wine from Aldi. Preparations involved moving the scummy mattress from the floor on the landing to the floor in the hallway, and buying a £60 bottle of Bolly I definitely couldn’t afford.
I wore a black strapless dress and red strappy shoes and tried to do my hair in ringlets but they looked terrible so I washed them out. There was vodka (I drank nearly a 70cl bottle by myself) and tequila snorting and a first stolen moment with a boy I saw last New Year as well.
At midnight everyone hugged and cheered and sprayed Aldi fizz on the ceiling (thank goodness it was cheap). The Y2K bug didn’t stop anything working, and how could it because we were young and fucking invincible and about to take the 21st century by storm.
Given the surreality of university, the ten years that followed included all my adult life. I no longer feel like I can walk on water – my life got less magical, more real. This sounds sad, but isn’t. I’m still not bound by oceans, but instead of expecting them to part, I’ve been learning to build boats.
In terms of shit happening, 2009 has been the hardest year of the decade. The sacking was only phase two of the work horror; phase one was much worse – to the extent that I couldn’t face writing about it. And the second half of this year has been home/people-sickness. It’s usually low level but sometimes it sneaks up and punches me in the solar plexus, leaving me breathless and prickling tears.
But in terms of my happiness and sanity, 2009 was far from the worst of the past 10 years. This discord means this year’s been invaluable, simply because it’s confirmed that it’s up to me to create that difference between how things are and how I react to them.
2009 saw the first anniversary of my marriage – something I was so unsure of that now feels intrinsic 
And why were only recent months plagued by homesickness? Because for the first six spent here J and I had the luxury of focussing on nothing but each other. I couldn’t have weathered any of this year without him – if our fate together wasn’t sealed in Spain, it certainly was when we stepped on that Singapore Airlines flight together.
But cool people aren’t the preserve of the UK. They are found everywhere, including S’pore, and a big ‘keeping me sane’ shout goes out to one such person. In some ways our backgrounds are worlds apart, but we see ourselves in each other (especially the strange bits) – that’s rare whenever it happens and amazing when the homogeneity of the country you live in struggles to include you.
So not a bad year, and an amazing fucking decade. An entire, sparkling, magical (ignore what I said before) journey through London skimmed over in this post. A friendship forged with my sister. A relationship that’s gone from break-ups and accusations to sharing brunch with the people we fucked the night before. A culinary adventure from fried egg sandwiches to eight course dinner parties (palate cleansing sorbet ftmfw).
Life was already damned good back in Bath when we were partying like it was 1999, and it seems to have been getting better ever since. I’m excited about turning 30, maybe becoming a mum, learning more about life outside London, and that’s just 2010. The short long forecast: the next ten years are going to be fucking awesome.
Books, covers and so on.
We make assumptions all the time. This is ok – grouping things according to typical traits allows us to make speedy, often accurate, decisions. There are occasions when this could be life-saving… if it looks like a lion, and sounds like a lion, &tc.
My relationship isn’t typical. When people see a hetero couple they assume monogamy. When they see someone from a couple chatting up a third party they assume cheating wanker.
It isn’t alway practical to set ‘em straight. ‘Open relationship’ isn’t a phrase with a universal definition – no one ever responds with “right, that’s clear then” – it invites discussion. I like having those discussion, even with people who tell me I’m wrong and insist my relationship is flawed.
But sometimes, as I said, I don’t get the chance. I have to accept that some people will always assume my relationship is fucked.
The Rape.
Possible trigger, which you could probably guess from the title.
I’ve considered writing about this before, but haven’t really had reason to. It’s not something I think about all that much, and it’s certainly not something I’m traumatised by, so I haven’t had that processing-through-writing desire.
But it does occasionally come up in conversation, usually if I talk about my teenage depression. Someone will ask, for example, if I know why I got depressed, and even though I am fine talking about being raped, I um and ah and make the conversation more awkward than it needs to be.
This comes back to something I mentioned before – the idea that I have a social obligation not to embarrass my listeners. I imagine that the bald statement “Because I was raped” is going to make the other person uncomfortable, but my reticence makes their discomfort more likely. I’m wondering if writing will help me deal with that discord.
Some speak the sounds, but speak in silent voices
I feel odd this morning. I felt odd last Monday too. Life not balanced. Mondays mean a knot of work somethings (adrenaline), and life has been too many people in too many spaces that should be just mine (misanthrope). My parents and their friend have been staying, which means three extra bodies chain smoking and talking when I want to write. Today, today is silence. It is beautiful. The city is still half asleep and the sounds are just me and the a/c and my beautiful clicky keyboard. It means more space inside my head to feel sad, but sometimes I need that. The boom/bust/polarization of people staying means bad feelings about guests get parceled up with a ribbon of guilt. All is tempered by the fact that each goodbye feels so fucking final.
Imitating life and art.
So around the time I was asked the question below, I was (briefly) living it. A very desirable and pleasingly feasible third party rocked up and stuck around for five days, half of which while the Boy was out of town, the rest after the Boy returned.
(Perhaps I should come up with some fun but non-identifying handles for people, but the reason J and I used our own names at swingers parties wasn’t to make a bold lifestyle statement, it was just paucity of imagination. So Boy = J, other boy = old friend.)
Synchronous linkhronous
One of the questions in the post below merges into something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few days. Handy.
How desirable/feasible is a stable multi-way relationship?
Open for business
I seem to be adopting a vague advice-giving role. It’s kinda fun, and nice to be reaching a point where I actually have useful experience to draw on. (Aside: Aunt Agony would be a great nom de plume for a column about SM.)
Questions in the pending pile include:
• The aforementioned 2a – which went something like, “Yes, yes, that’s how you act, but what about how you don’t act? What about overcoming fear and the instinct to defend against invasion?” (wrt falling for third parties)
• Then we have “Is a permanent multiway relationship desirable and achievable?”
• “You’ve mentioned affairs and dishonesty. What changed?”
Anyone want to know anything else?
