Uncertainty

I went to see Helen Garner speak at the opening of the UTS conference on ‘Creativity and Uncertainty’ yesterday. I’m a big time fan of Helen Garner and it was all I could do to refrain from throwing my underpants at the stage and screaming “I LOVE YOU HELEN, SIGN MY CHEST!’. If you don’t know who Helen Garner is, run to your nearest bookstore and get this, and this, and this, and this, and then do not leave your house until you’ve read them all and you too are shaking with nervous excitement at the mere prospect of sharing an auditorium with this woman.

Anyway. Garner said something in her speech that amazed me. She said that she still feels the terror of sitting down at her desk to write, and feeling that she has nothing to say. It was one of those ‘but I thought I was the only writer in the universe with that problem’ moments. Pretty much every time I sit down with the intention of writing something, I experience this uncertainty, this momentary voicelessness. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.

The funny thing is, the more frequently you write, the more you find to write about. I would have thought it would be the other way round – that if you wrote all the time you’d reach a point where you’ve used up all your ideas, all your talent. But the reality is, the less you write, the less you find you have to say. The fewer ideas you have, the less you write, and the more appetising that bottle of red wine becomes. Which is… not so good.

I want this blog to be an experiment in not being so ‘precious’ about everything I write. It’s about rawness, of getting the ideas out and sculpting them into the rudimentary foundations of what could be something bigger, maybe one day down the track, but not necessarily now. It’s the literary equivalent of chatting.

So it will be. Not so pretty, but pulsing nonetheless with life.

Slutty Poetry

The best poetry comes to me when I’m hungover and supposed to be doing something else. Also for some reason this ancient art always seems to channel whatever depraved demon I happen to be entertaining that day. Whoever said poetry was dead?

Sirens
Now, your arms,
those great arms, around
my waist and reaching down
too far, all in plain sight,
as I wiggle, simper, twirl
around and through the light
like a girl with mist about her,
like a nymphet, beckoning you
closer, urging your hands
further, feeling those fat tips
on glowing parts, while I grow
ever more even footed,
nude soles flat upon the
ground, connected to a tidal
solidity, flush with unexpected
lucidity, receiving the wavelength
of sirens, all’s wet like oceans,
slowly easing in big rolling
droplets, this aqueous potion
which bleeds with a glorious
incandescence, that sick sweet
putrescence, eating us up for
breakfast, washed down with
booze-rich wetness, investing in our
coalescence, in the dry mouthed
remorse of mornings, of the void
outside your arms, of our certain
repentance.

Sizeable White Lies

This penguin depicts my inner turmoil.

I’m bad at lying. It’s not really a moralistic thing; more just a combination of laziness, naivety and having the world’s most obvious poker face. I inherited this trait from my mother, whose brutal honesty was at times difficult for a sensitive child. I’ll never forget that time my little sister came home from school with a hand-painted plaster of Paris penguin and my mum exclaimed: “Oh great! A doorstop!” Despite the look of horror on my sister’s tiny face, the lovingly crafted penguin got placed next to the back door, which my mum was prone to slamming. It took about five minutes for the beak to snap off, just like that chunk of my sister’s heart that will never, ever mend.

When I was at a similarly young age my dad explained to me that when people say “how are you?” you are supposed to respond with “I’m good, thanks.” I just couldn’t get my head around the concept.

Me: “But dad, what if I don’t feel good? What if I feel bad?”

Dad: “You should still say that you’re good.”

Me: “But that would be lying!”

Dad: “It’s called being polite.”

Me: “But lying is bad!”

Dad: “Yes, but being impolite is also bad.”

Me: “But lying is bad!”

I can’t remember how this conversation ended exactly, except that it probably involved my dad farting, my mum yelling, and the cat urinating on something expensive. My point is, I didn’t understand the concept of social bluffing when I was a kid, and I still don’t. I mean, I’ve gotten better at answering “good, thanks” to well-meaning acquaintances, but that’s probably because I’ve sorted some shit out and I am, actually, feeling pretty good these days. Which is convenient.

Most people appreciate that I’m honest about stuff. However there are certain circumstances where honesty is not always the best policy. Having a friend on Facebook who insists on updating his status every time he does a poo has made me realise that what for me could be exciting news, for someone else could be a gratuitous ‘overshare’.

So okay, I understand that there are some things you just don’t talk about, particularly when you’re at work. It’s just extra specially tricky for me because I happen to do a lot of really interesting yet inappropriate things on the weekend, and I suck at lying.

Oh, the weekend question! Bane of my existence. Bane!

Colleague: “Hi! What did you get up to on the weekend?”

Me: “I, um, er, went out. And, I did, like, things. It was, um, good. Like, yeah.”

This makes me sound like either of two things:

1. A tosser who obviously thinks her weekend was far too cool to share with a pleb from work.
2. A loser who did jack shit on the weekend because she has no friends, and is pathetically trying to hide this fact.

I mean, if I had my way, I’d LOVE to tell people what I really did on the weekend. I can’t tell you how much I’d love to look my boss in the eye and tell her that last Saturday night I was blindfolded, gagged, strung up to an A-frame, caned until I bled, punctured with needles, set on fire, wrapped naked in cling wrap to another naked chick and fucked violently by a machine while ten of my favourite perverted friends looked on. I’d love to tell her this, but gosh darn it, I have a pretty good hunch it would make our working relationship weird.

This problem has been cropping up more and more frequently since I’ve become truly passionate about immersing my life in kink. Earlier in the year I was on national radio (Triple J’s ‘Hack’) talking about BDSM, and even though I was really proud and told all my friends to listen, at the same time I was terrified that someone at work would hear it. By some miracle no one did, (despite the fact I made one of my colleagues listen to all the other informative stories that aired during ‘Fetish Week’) but I was actually a little sad that the cat remained bagged. I love my kink life; it makes up so much of who I am, and I want to share my life with the people around me. But, sharing is not always caring.

It’s just annoying, because coming out as queer is mostly acceptable these days, but somehow it seems neither necessary nor advisable to explain to friends and family that you’re kinky. You can tell your colleagues that you’re gay, and even if they disapprove they’re not supposed to discriminate against you, but mentioning kink during working hours just seems to me like a really good way to get fired.

Maybe I’m wrong? I could be, but I’m too chicken to test the theory. Not that I care about getting fired, but I do care about making other people uncomfortable.

Sometimes I think it’s an insignificant thing, and sometimes I don’t.

I suppose that as long as I can continue to tell my friends and even my little sister (who has never painted a plaster penguin again, bless her) about my life, it doesn’t really matter that I can’t tell the people I work with. And so long as some jackass in parliament doesn’t succeed in his frightful plan to censor Australia’s internet, I can vent my frustration via blogging. Hoorah!

By the way, I work in advertising. Not the best career choice for someone who can’t lie for shit. Who would have thought?

Monogamy: The Cause of, And Solution To, All Relationship Problems

Monogamy is like democracy – it doesn’t work, but then again neither does anything else.

Everyone knows it doesn’t work, and yet most people always manage to be surprised when it doesn’t work. This puzzles me. Because it’s not like adultery is a recent invention. I mean, it’s in the Bible for crying out loud (listed under “Things That are Really Sinful”). The bare fact of it is, people have wanted to shag people other than the person they’re supposed to be shagging since the dawn of time. So why all the hoo har? Why can’t we all just get over it?

My perception of Australian society is that we are, contrary to the popular belief that modernity has turned us all into Godless sex freaks, a very conservative nation. My perceptions are probably coloured by the fact I was reared inside the so-called ‘Bible Belt’ of Sydney (the Hills District – i.e. Sydney’s home of Hillsong). Despite being the bastard child of two apathetic atheists, from ages 4-12 I attended a small, private Anglican school, which did cause a wee bit of confusion for me on the occasions when mum and dad responded to my praise for Lord Jesus Christ Our Saviour with raucous laughter.

So anyway, the whole religious indoctrination thing  has probably coloured my viewpoint, but that doesn’t account for the fact that all around me, monogamy is largely accepted as the ‘norm’. It’s the default, the Windows XP of relationship operating systems. Of course, Windows XP is a piece of shit, but most people don’t even seem to realise that there IS an alternative, and even if they do, it’s all a bit risky and difficult to try something new.

My boyfriend is a Linux man.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I kind of like monogamy, although maybe it’s got more to do with that Anglican school than I care to admit. All I’m saying is, I’m sick of being told by the media, the music industry and the makers of Sex and the City (the film version) that cheating is the worst thing a person can do to you. I just don’t know why we continue to set up these rigid structures that suit virtually no one and then get upset when our lovers fall short of these naively unrealistic standards. At what point did human nature become something we have to rise above in order to love someone?

Like I said, I actually don’t mind monogamy. When I love someone, I tend to like to focus my energy on them. It’s also about quality control. In my opinion, the best sex happens when you trust someone completely; when you know them deeply. And call me predictably female, (ugh), but I’ve never had decent sex with someone I didn’t love (in one form or another). I suppose that trust and intimacy are by-products of love, and therefore perhaps it’s not love itself that is needed; however I still maintain that it is the sexual X-factor. (I’m trying very hard to avoid using the term ’special ingredient’…!)

However. I believe my current relationship works precisely because it’s not strictly monogamous. Rules and restrictions have a tendency to make people act out. If I’m not allowed to sleep with, or even flirt with other people, I become crazed with the notion: ‘this is going to be the only person I sleep with for the rest of my life’. Which is terrifying! No matter how good the sex, it’s always only going to be a type of sex. People such as me who are into BDSM will have a little more room to maneuver within this restriction, a lot more room than most, but at the end of the day, the act of sex is not very complex. The main points of difference come down to a person’s body, a person’s style, a person’s soul.

Marauder on the other hand, (my boyfriend), gets off on novelty and excitement. That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate quality (i.e. sex with me, lol), but he is always going to be drawn towards the thrill of the unknown. His previous relationships have been killed by monogamy, which is why he wanted me to enter into this thing with eyes wide open. He’s made it clear that he will occasionally need to have sex with other people, because it’s just something he needs to do. This doesn’t make him any less loyal, trustworthy, responsible, loving or kind. And yet because we live inside a society where monogamy is the norm, he struggles continually with feeling that he is a bad person, and that his desires are deviant.

Why does it have to be like that? Why should he have to feel guilty or ashamed? At least he is honest with me. Furthermore, at least he treats me with respect – which is more than my monogamous yet selfish ex-boyfriends can claim. I refuse to be his gaoler – it disgusts me to see men whipped into submission (not in the good way) by their jealous, insecure wives or girlfriends. It’s revolting to see men castrated, de-sexed by our outmoded and hypocritical obsession with ‘morality’.

I don’t understand the victory in forcing a person to remain faithful. Controlling them to the point where they won’t cheat – not because they don’t want to, but because they’re scared. I particularly hate that cliche of ‘getting the ring on their finger’ or ‘dragging them to the altar’; as if getting married guarantees complete devotion and fidelity with no effort on your part. I hate this idea that once you’re married, you can get as fat or obnoxious as you want and it doesn’t matter because your partner is stuck there for life. And I particularly hate that all ‘cheaters’, no matter what the circumstance, are shunned as monsters.

Come on, people. Shit happens. The only reason cheating hurts so much is because we make such a big deal of it. If we could all just accept that humans are flawed, if we could all stop acting like we’re so superior to animals, if we were able to be honest with each other without fear of recrimination, we’d all be a lot happier.

Surely I’m not the only one who feels this way…?