How To Date Yourself

I've been living on my own for two weeks now, and it's been an interesting experience. At first I hated it! It was so quiet when I'd come home, and I felt starved for conversation. Plus, there was nobody to get annoyed at for the dishes piling up on the bench, as they were all mine. But soon enough I found myself looking forward to coming home to my empty apartment, where I could wander around pantless to my heart's content and take over the kitchen table with my uni work. I even started doing my dishes in a timely manner (helped, of course, by my neighbours' naked bathroom antics). It's been fun, and enlightening to realize that maybe one day when I can afford to, I might enjoy living on my own. My new flatmate moves in next weekend, and I am looking forward to that! It'll be fun to have some 'new blood' in my life.

Living on my own has got me thinking about being on my own. I've spent more of my adult life single than not, so it's hardly new to me. I've learnt a thing or two about dating and being single as the years have gone by and the exes have pile up. For one, when a relationship ends, it's always a good thing. It'll take some time to actually feel that way, but inevitably I find myself thanking my lucky stars that I'm no longer the passenger on a train destined for disaster. After all, if the relationship worked (really, truly) it wouldn't have ended.

Now, apparently I'm not fooling anyone if I try to say that I'm happy being single, but I am. I would prefer to be in a relationship, sure, but I'll take being single over being in a shitty relationship any day of the week! One of the things I like best about being single is dating. This wasn't always the case. Back in the days of my repressed homosexuality the thought of having to date was enough to drive me to accept a relationship with whatever man came along. Turns out, dating's a heck of a lot more fun when you do it with the right gender! What is both great and horrible about lesbian dating is that when you meet up with a girl, you're never sure if it's a 'date' or 'just coffee'. And whatever it is for you, it's likely not the same for her. That may sound horrible, but I love it! Though, to be fair, I do rather enjoy making my life more complicated than it ever need be.

I love meeting new people and getting to know them, seeing if there's a connection or not. And I especially love bad dates! Like the time I saw Sex and The City II. As if it wasn't enough that the movie was a crime against humanity, at one point my date turned to me and said "I always wanted Carrie to end up with Aidan." What the fuck?! I nearly got up and walked out of the theatre, it was so over for me in that moment. But I didn't. I eventually, reluctantly, agreed to another date and crushed her hopes then. On a more recent 'just coffee' date, I said that I'm really not too concerned with what other people think of me. I think she believed me by the time we parted ways. That's another thing I've learnt: if they can't accept me as I am, don't bother. Though, that one's still a work in progress. There's that whole 'good first impression' thing, so if I do think I'd like to see them again, I've realized I need to not be quite so full on with the 'being myself' stuff. Although... if I'm full on and they do stick around for a second date, I believe protocol allows me to hire a U-Haul for said date.

I'm mentioned before that Kanye West has altogether too much insight into my life. Recently I was walking home and listening to one of his songs when a lyric I've heard a hundred times struck me like a frying pan across the face because it sums up my attitude towards dating so well:

But I know that God put you in front of me

So how the hell could you front on me?

There's a thousand yous;

There's only one of me

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am probably going to be single for a looooooooooong time! Granted, maybe one day I'll meet Kanye and we can discuss what, exactly, this 'anything' is he's willing to do for a blonde dyke. (Speaking of which, I was looking through my pictures yesterday, and while I looked good as a brunette, I look better as a blonde. Well, with this haircut I certainly do!)

Given that I have no way of knowing if I'll meet my perfect woman tomorrow or ten years from now (who will be so perfect she'll find my Kanye West-esque attitude charming and delightful) I've got to make the most of being single: I've got to date myself!

Single or not, I think the ability to take yourself out on a date is a skill that every woman, if not everyone, should develop. I take myself on some pretty awesome dates. Possibly too awesome. When I go out on dates with other people, they usually don't live up to the ones I take myself on.

Dating yourself is not meeting up with your girlfriends; it is not sitting at home with a tub of ice cream and a box set of chick flicks; and it is not going to the salon to get yourself prettied up for someone else's benefit!

Dating yourself is about scheduling time out to spend with yourself doing the things you enjoy doing, but don't make the time to do. It's about doing things for yourself that you would normally just do for someone else. It doesn't have to be anything particularly fancy, as long as it's all about doing whatever you fancy.

The past month my workload has been completely insane, and it's not getting any lighter. And while I've gone out on 'dates' since LC and I broke up, I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken myself out on a date. So I said to hell with my workload and scheduled in a Saturday date with myself. I got up early and did some work, then headed to the gym for the first time in 3 weeks. That wasn't technically part of the date, but, it made me feel good and if I had been going on a date with someone else I would've been sure to get to the gym first, and that is the point of taking yourself on a date as opposed to, you know, taking yourself to run errands. I came home, showered, got changed, and headed out. It was ridiculously nice out, so I decided that I'd walk from my place to Carlton, where I planned to grab a late lunch, buy myself something nice and unnecessary, and catch a movie at my favourite cinema.

It was a completely awesome afternoon! I love wandering around Carlton, and I hadn't done it in a really long time (and an even longer time on my own). There's always good people watching in Carlton, and lots of pretty girls (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know they're all like 20 year old undergrads, whatever! They're still cute!). And everyone is there to enjoy themselves. Or shoot someone. Either way, there's excitement to be had! After lunch I wandered through the shops, knowing I could buy myself whatever I liked with the money I had set aside for this date. I thought it would be clothes, but it ended up being books! Which was great because I've been in a real book slump for a few months now, where not much is grabbing my attention. When I have been able to get into a book I dread it ending because I know it's going to be ages before I find something else to read. But now I've got a backlog of books I'm excited to read!

I had time to kill between my shopping and the movie starting, so I went and lay in the sun in a park for awhile, while a bunch of people my age square danced. I have no idea what that was all about, but they looked like they were having fun. I thought about going closer to check it out, but I wasn't actually interested. After the gym and the walk and the shopping, I really just wanted to lay in the warmth of the sun and not do anything at all. Which is exactly what I did. Then I went and saw 'Begginers', which was absolutely beautiful. I don't care what those harpies sitting beside me said about it! Ewan McGreggor is a gorgeous man and a talented actor, but he really cannot do an American accent. The resulting awkwardness in his speech actually really suited his character though, so it works out.

I planned on taking the tram and bus home, but when I got to the bus stop I discovered it was too late. So I walked, and I'm glad I did. It was such a beautiful evening. I came home feeling refreshed and at peace with myself. Whatever happens with the other people who come into and out of my life, I'm always going to have myself. It was really nice to take some time out from everything just to remind myself of how much I actually do like myself and enjoy my own company.

I recommend you do the same.

Ain't Nothin' But a G Thang

At the start of 2010 I decided that it would be a fun idea to get a year's weekend subscription to The Age. As I'm a student, I was able to do this for quite cheap. I'm not the kind of person who sits down and reads the paper over the weekend, so it wasn't long before I had amassed a person sized pile of unread news papers. The weekend subscription was not a good idea! I comforted myself, saying that it wasn't a full year's subscription; it would only last for the school year. But then the school year ended and the papers kept coming! What was I to do?

At first I tried to ignore them, telling myself that someone else in my apartment block must have gotten tired of stealing my newspaper and had decided to get a subscription of their own. I was able to delude myself with this for a few weeks, but then I had to face facts: my subscription has not run out. You know the saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

By this time I was much jaded about the quality of content in these papers, so now when they come I open them up in front of our recycling bins and immediately chuck all the sections I am never going to bother with. Basically, this leaves me with the Arts and Lifestyle sections (both of which I merely skim). My flatmate enjoys having these parts of the paper around because it gives her something to read when she's got 10 minutes to kill before heading off for a social engagement, and I like to cut articles out so I can pretend to myself that this is the kind of life that I am living. And so the pile of newspaper slowly starts it's growth to person-sized yet again.

Snark though I might, I must admit that sometimes the A2 is littered with awesomeness, as it was a couple of weekends ago (though today it was littered with cockroach). That paper a couple weeks ago had reviews of shops that I've been meaning to go to for over a year, a controversial piece on Midsumma, and an article explaining new fads in games. Now, I love playing games. My domino's set is one of my most cherished possessions, and my flatmate and I frequently spend the evening battling it out over the Scrabble board (she beats me every time, but I'll get her yet!) My previous flatmate and I had a few good rounds of Monopoly (we were much more evenly matched at that). Plus, the day I whooped Lady Cop's ass at Battleship will always be a treasured memory. So I was pretty psyched to read about what these new game fads were.

Of the five trends the article described, I can't say as I find much appeal in Cos Play or 'No Lights, No Lyrca'. But I definitely want to check out Settlers of Catan and geocaching. Secretly I am a total geography nerd and I dream of being one of those retirees who occupy their time and money scouring the globe to find their next geocach. I'd totally do it now, but it's definitely an activity that requires a car. So much like Goldie Locks, I came to the last fad and found that it was just right!

Secret Wars is really more of a spectator sport than a game, but I won't hold that against the article that informed me of it's existence. Basically, it's a draw off between two artists, generally of the graffiti genre. The idea is that each artist draws a picture of something awful happening to their competitor, and the best picture wins. When I read that, I was immediately hooked. After all, that is pretty much what I did with one of my friends for all of Chem 30 and the second half of grade 12....

It started off as my friend trying to slag me off, and soon turned into an elaborate story line about two super villains vying for domination over each other. We took turns drawing comic strips whereby we would do something horrible to each other in order to claim victory. Once we had completed our strip, we'd hand it over to the other who would then attempt to exact even more extravagant revenge. To this day I am convinced this has been the best use of my creative talents, ever. At no point is my PhD going to involve me and David Bowie running over our enemies with trains.

Unfortunately, my friend lost the first page of the comic (I'm sure she remembers this differently, but I don't lose anything, ever, so as far as I'm concerned any other explanation violates the laws of physics). I still have the second page, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and by that point our storyline was wearing pretty thin. I have produced a few solo venture comics since then, all as gifts for other people. The next time I decide to break out my mad stickman drawing skillz I'll be sure to keep a copy of my work for myself!!

Upon reading the description of this Secret Wars phenomenon, I discovered that the next event was only a week away. After checking out ticket prices, I fired off an email to Lady Cop, who I knew would be just as excited about this as I was. We booked our tickets and off we went!

If I had to sum up the event in two words, I was say it was "pure awesome!" It was set at Thousand Pound Bend, which really lent itself perfectly for this type of event. The DJ was phenomenal! He kept the hip hop pumping all through the night, which left me turning to LC every other song going "OMG! I love this song and I haven't heard it in years!" I'd forgotten how much good hip hop came out in the early 2000's. And anyone who doesn't love hip hop from the 90's probably doesn't have a soul. But let's not forget about the artists, both of whom were very talented and put on a great competition.

This event was the first round of the semi-finals and saw Scale face off against Pierre Lloga. They had 90 minutes to produce their work, using only black ink/paint on white.

That's Scale starting off picture. It was really interesting watching each artist's vision come to life right before our eyes. You've got no clue of what the end result will be when it starts out, and these two artists had quite different styles, so their works came together in very different ways.

At the start of the competition I was cheering for Pierre because I preferred his artistic style over Scale's. But I did have to admit that I thought Scale's concept was more interesting. Scale had Pierre locked up in an asylum, restrained in a straight jacket, whereas Pierre had Scale being chased by a crazy chainsaw murderer.

About half way through the competition Scale won over my support... by drawing Hello Kitty on the cell wall. I mean, you just can't compete with Hello Kitty. I also really liked that his concept was looking in on Pierre through a security camera in his asylum cell.

It was a close competition the whole way through though, with crowd support seeming to be favouring Pierre. Several times the MC came out to get us to cheer for our preferred artist, and to throw out prizes to whomever could be the most obnoxious in the crowd (it goes without saying that LC got a shirt).

As the competition came to a close, we counted the artists down to when they had to step away from the canvas. Both completed works were very impressive and involved quite a good effort at getting down to the nitty gritty details. It was obvious why they were both battling it out in the semi-finals! But it was up to the judges to decide who the winner would be...

The judges were unanimous: Scale was moving on to the next round! The crowd support remained strong for both artists, but Pierre's supporters cheered the loudest, giving him the accolade of crowd favourite. Both artists made an amazing effort and provided us with a very entertaining and enjoyable evening. LC and I are hoping to make it to the next round of the semi-finals and the grand final.

Here's the artists' finished works, decide for yourself who you think should have moved on to the next round:

Like I said, pure awesome! It certainly makes me want to break out the pencil crayons and get those pseudo-artistic juices flowing. But for the time being, my pencil crayons are strictly engaged in colour coding my data. One day I'll get back to my true talent of drawing stickman comics, one day.

Vouyorism 101

I enjoy Tegan & Sara's music enough to consider myself a fan. And I am not the kind of person who feels the need to know the life details of the musicians that I enjoy. So, when I made my 'debut' into the lesbian community of Melbourne, I really had no idea that these two facts would lead to my foot being put so firmly in my mouth. 

About a year ago I was chatting with a woman online and she was excited to hear that I'm from Calgary, because she is a big Tegan & Sara fan and they are also from Calgary. My response to this was "Yeah, well I know one of them is, but I don't know if both of them are." It wasn't until a good 6 months later when they were featured in an issue of LOTL that I realized why I never heard back from that woman: Tegan & Sara are twins. They're also both out and proud lesbians (my response to which got me in even further trouble!)

Prior to my finding out about all of this, one of my favourite Tegan & Sara songs was (and still is) 'Living Room'.



So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered that my new apartment allows me to quote from this song in relation to my own life!

"My windows look into your bathroom. Well I spend the evening watching you get yourself clean."

My apartment building is directly across from another apartment building. The windows on the bathrooms for the apartments on these two buildings are frosted glass. Now, the point of frosted glass is meant to be that it obscures the view in while still allowing all the natural light in. But my experience of frosted windows, time and time again, has been that they only actually obscure the view out, so anyone looking in can actually see in fairly clearly. Frosted windows must have been designed by a voyeur!

Now, I have to admit, I am a bit of a voyeur. For years now I have peered into people's windows as I walk down the street. Why? Because it's amazing the things people do when they think no one's watching. Maybe that is why the internet fascinates me so much; it has the feeling of being private while actually being very public - you never know who's watching (yes, yes, there's an exhibitionist in me too).

My kitchen window looks directly into the bathroom of the apartment across from me. I discovered this one night as I was doing the dishes, gazing out the window, only to discover that I could see my neighbour peeing. My reaction was a mixture of being grossed out, being glad that he washed his hands afterwards, and being intrigued that my kitchen window offers a view into such an intimate and private part of my neighbours' lives. Suffice to say, the kitchen window has become my favourite window.

A part of me feels like I should be ashamed of this, that I should make some effort to respect their privacy. It is only a small part. The rest of me says that I should just accept that this is just who I am and this is what I enjoy. So thank you, inventor of the frosted window, for creating such a wonderful voyeuristic tool. And thank you, neighbour, for that little dance you did while brushing your teeth this morning. It made my day.