Well, I won't start this post by formally acknowledging the fact that I haven't posted in months...over a year...oh hell, a really fucking long time, because that would be stating the obvious. Suffice to say, I'm really sorry that I abandoned my readers and subscribers the way I did and, despite a false start last year, I intend to keep Disasters In Dating running for a long time yet. Now, on with the show...
They say that mistakes are there to be learned from, and it is a mantra that I try to pass on to my son as often as I can because, at the age of fourteen and a half, he has entered that wondrous time of life where a shitload of mistakes will inevitably be made. Most will be minor errors in judgement that, while earth-shatteringly significant at a time when your entire existence seems to hinge upon popularity (it is a perception I am doing my best to break, I assure you), will loom about as large as a dying sparrow's fart in a hurricane when he's forty. Then there are the big ones, the colossal cock-ups that have long lasting and far reaching ramifications which, fingers crossed, I'm confident G won't be making anytime soon because he is neither a) chronically neglected nor b) an ego-maniacal bully or a blind sheep. He has his little crises of conscience, and has even admitted to me that he might 'experiment' one day, (oh shit). But 'Not with drugs,' (oh, bless), but for the most part, he is turning out to be the wonderful human being I always knew he was. Lucky for me, he has a fully functioning moral compass, (thank you, G's Dad), but still accepts everybody equally and without judgement (that one's down to me, *self high five*). Long story short, while his year twelve year book probably won't contain pictures of him kicking the winning goal in the inter-school footy final, I'm certain his class portrait won't be used twenty years from now as a before shot in a Sixty Minutes story.
Most people wait until their adult lives to make mistakes that will haunt their daily existence. G won't be one of those people, but that won't be because I've been such an impeccable example. On the contrary; I have made quite a few errors in the last twelve years or so that no amount of mashing on the delete key is going to erase. Some of them he knows about, some he doesn't - and for good reason. The most serious of these was a "relationship" with a guy that I, for some unfathomable reason, never quite seemed to get over. I wrote three posts about it, (What I left on the ocean floor; Re-gifting the ruby slippers; and Two exes, no waiting). My long term readers will remember these posts, and will have undoubtedly noticed by now that they have been deleted. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I recently started seeing him again, and because he was there for me recently when I needed him, I didn't want to take the risk of him reading the posts and being embarrassed by them. No, you are not being at all harsh if you are sitting there calling me insane. Please feel free to screen-print my picture from Google Images and scrawl several more harsh but nonetheless accurate derogatory names on it in red marker. The second reason I deleted these posts was that, despite any personal aspirations I might have to the contrary I am, for the most part, full of shit. I thought that I was displaying some sort of artistic and moral (there's that word again) integrity by removing the posts in which I oh-so-eloquently waxed on about the self-loathing and emptiness that accompanied being involved with a married man in a relationship that never really existed above the waist.
Yes, I suffer from depression, but I'm old enough now to know that it is not an excuse for deliberately perpetrating an act this heinous. What am I getting out of it? Attention, affection, the ego boost that comes from the fact that someone can look at my non-mint-condition body and say how beautiful it is. I can assure you, I find all that as incredibly wet and pathetic as you do. I won't make the argument that because I'm not actually cheating on anyone, I'm only half as culpable as he is. That would be like saying that taking someone to a box factory, handing them a lighter and a can of turpentine and letting them decide what to do with them makes one person less of an arsonist. Whatever Aaron gets out of this thing we have, good or bad, isn't for me to contemplate. As I said, he was there for me recently when I had a crisis (my landlord refused to fix my central heating and my radiator broke, so rather than see my child and I spend the winter huddling together in front of the TV under a quilt, Aaron went out and bought us a brand new heater). Considering the risk he was taking, this was an incredibly selfless act.
He is not a bad person.
That would be me.
My definition of a bad person? Someone who continually displays selfish, self-indulgent, feel-good-at-all-costs behaviour without regard for any damage that might be done, because their needs are more important than anyone else's. For Christ's sake, I sent my son to his Dad's last Friday night so Aaron and I could have a dirty weekend while his wife was away. I put shagging my non-boyfriend ABOVE spending time with my own child! Not that I told G that. What I told him was that I went to a birthday party with some friends from high school.
A child's self-image is largely dependent upon his image of his parents.
My portrait has been censored with a rather large black sticker.
Showing posts with label dirty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dirty. Show all posts
Saturday, 4 May 2013
Friday, 13 April 2012
Pretty Pictures
My best friend sent me an email yesterday that provided a much needed ray of sunshine on an otherwise (metaphorically) rainy day. It was a list compiled by some magazine or another entitled: 'Hollywood's hottest 100 men,' and each name on the list was accompanied by an extremely savoury photograph. Like any red-blooded woman, I scrolled (slowly) down the list and poured over every inch of each entrant's visage, finding myself more and more 'exhilarated' as the cursor on my laptop drew toward the bottom of the page, and it led me to wonder: does that make me a perv?
Consider this: were I a thirty-nine year-old man, ogling a list of Hollywood's hottest 100 women, and someone were to walk in on me just as drool was beginning to course its way down my chin, I'd wager that terms such as 'Pig' and 'Dirty old man' would be bandied about, depending on the sex and moral bent of the witness. Yes, I agree that it sounds like I'm betraying the sisterhood by saying that we sometimes have double standards when it comes to issues of morality and taste. I agree also that not all women are like this, and I certainly don't mean to paint every member of my awesome gender with the same brush, but I think most women will, if they're honest, admit to accusing a guy of being disgusting or creepy at one time or another, for doing nothing more than appreciating physical beauty.
I know I have.
Yet, to my knowledge, no such derogatory terms exist for women indulging in the same harmless pass time.
There are, however, unfortunate and equally degrading terms that people use to denigrate women who, for one reason or another, enjoy carnal festivities with successive partners. Although the words 'Whore', 'Slut,' and 'Mole,' have never escaped my lips, they were used to describe me at one point in my life and, you know what? It hurt, and needlessly so, because my accusers were wrong. Just as I believe anyone who calls a man a pig for looking at pictures of gorgeous, half-naked actresses is wrong. Men and women are very different, it's true, but what separates human beings from most other animals is that both genders in our species were born with desires, and although those wacky theologians might argue that those desires were put there for the purpose of procreation, the fact is that more often than not, we act on them because we want to, not because we have to.
To put it more succinctly; lookin' at pictures of them there pretty people in their skivvies is fun.
I think that the desire to look upon beautiful - dare I say heavenly? - creatures is perfectly normal, no matter what your gender. Doubling your standards halves your humanity.
Consider this: were I a thirty-nine year-old man, ogling a list of Hollywood's hottest 100 women, and someone were to walk in on me just as drool was beginning to course its way down my chin, I'd wager that terms such as 'Pig' and 'Dirty old man' would be bandied about, depending on the sex and moral bent of the witness. Yes, I agree that it sounds like I'm betraying the sisterhood by saying that we sometimes have double standards when it comes to issues of morality and taste. I agree also that not all women are like this, and I certainly don't mean to paint every member of my awesome gender with the same brush, but I think most women will, if they're honest, admit to accusing a guy of being disgusting or creepy at one time or another, for doing nothing more than appreciating physical beauty.
I know I have.
Yet, to my knowledge, no such derogatory terms exist for women indulging in the same harmless pass time.
There are, however, unfortunate and equally degrading terms that people use to denigrate women who, for one reason or another, enjoy carnal festivities with successive partners. Although the words 'Whore', 'Slut,' and 'Mole,' have never escaped my lips, they were used to describe me at one point in my life and, you know what? It hurt, and needlessly so, because my accusers were wrong. Just as I believe anyone who calls a man a pig for looking at pictures of gorgeous, half-naked actresses is wrong. Men and women are very different, it's true, but what separates human beings from most other animals is that both genders in our species were born with desires, and although those wacky theologians might argue that those desires were put there for the purpose of procreation, the fact is that more often than not, we act on them because we want to, not because we have to.
To put it more succinctly; lookin' at pictures of them there pretty people in their skivvies is fun.
I think that the desire to look upon beautiful - dare I say heavenly? - creatures is perfectly normal, no matter what your gender. Doubling your standards halves your humanity.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
The dirty and the indifferent.
Know what it feels like to want attention, only to get it from all the wrong places? Welcome to my world. I don't know whether it's my non-threatening face, my tough stance against velour tracksuits, or just some 'Come get it while it's lukewarm' vibe I'm inadvertently throwing out, but lately I seem to have become the pin-up girl for a clique I really wish I wasn't cool enough for: The Dirty Old Men Club. While guys my own age remain relatively indifferent to my charms, I'm getting hit upon by fellas who are a few little blue pills shy of being my Dad's drinking buddies.
The first incident started innocently enough. While dropping my son off at a birthday party, I was invited in for a coffee. I sat down and chatted with the birthday boy's mother and a family friend for awhile, thanked them and left. A week later the family friend, a man in his late fifties, arrived on my doorstep with a DVD in hand. He explained that my son told him he was a huge fan of stand up comedy, and had put together a compilation for him. I told my son to thank him and invited him in for a coffee. The true nature of his visit was revealed when he remarked how astonished he was that I was still unattached, and I had to spend the next twenty minutes or so balancing my coffee cup precariously on one crossed knee while using my hands to cover the area toward which he was directing his compliments. Once I casually dropped into the conversation the fact that my (fictitious) brother was a policeman and amateur boxer who would shortly be getting up, my guest took the hint and left, never to be seen again.
You might want to reserve that sharp intake of breath I sense you were about to have...it gets worse.
After my landlord sent me an inspection notice, I went into panic mode and started calling professional cleaning services to ask what the going rate was for cleaning and sanitising a three bedroom petri dish. Shocked, but unsurprised that every one of them said they couldn't do the job for anything less than a Brazilian kidnapper's ransom demand, I began mentally cataloguing my DVDs and wrapping my glassware in newspaper to prepare for moving day. Then my mother reminded me that she knew a guy. Nigel had been cleaning her apartment, and those of her neighbours, for the past twenty two years, so I gave him a chance. After taking a quick tour of the place, he quoted me half the next best offer, and I hired him on the spot. It was only when I was seeing him off at the door upon completion of the job that I found out what my slovenly habits were really going to cost me.
'Listen,' he said, 'I know you must find it hard being on your own, so if ever you feel at a loss, just give me a ring. My wife goes interstate to see her mother every second weekend - we could catch up.' I slammed the door in his face and, needless to say, my newly spruced up house might have appeared spotless to my landlord, but it sure felt dirty to me. I'll sum things up and spare you the horror stories of spurned semi-retired taxi driver advances and the grinning pizza shop proprietor who offered to throw in extra cheese for free, if you'll pardon the double entendre, lest I put you off whatever meal you might be trying to enjoy while you read this. I marvel at the fact that I spent my mid to late twenties committed to a man whose football got more physical contact than I did, and never cheated on him despite the offers I got from men who were also in their twenties at the time. Now that I'm single again, men my own age seem to be beating a path to the fire escape, while their Dad's chat me up at the bar!
If there's a lesson here, I think it's that whoever you are, however old you are, the universe is a perverse old bastard with a wicked sense of humour who enjoys getting shits and giggles at our expense, and the best thing to do is to laugh it off and move on, which is what I'm going to do...once I'm done changing my locks and throwing out all my v-neck tops.
The first incident started innocently enough. While dropping my son off at a birthday party, I was invited in for a coffee. I sat down and chatted with the birthday boy's mother and a family friend for awhile, thanked them and left. A week later the family friend, a man in his late fifties, arrived on my doorstep with a DVD in hand. He explained that my son told him he was a huge fan of stand up comedy, and had put together a compilation for him. I told my son to thank him and invited him in for a coffee. The true nature of his visit was revealed when he remarked how astonished he was that I was still unattached, and I had to spend the next twenty minutes or so balancing my coffee cup precariously on one crossed knee while using my hands to cover the area toward which he was directing his compliments. Once I casually dropped into the conversation the fact that my (fictitious) brother was a policeman and amateur boxer who would shortly be getting up, my guest took the hint and left, never to be seen again.
You might want to reserve that sharp intake of breath I sense you were about to have...it gets worse.
After my landlord sent me an inspection notice, I went into panic mode and started calling professional cleaning services to ask what the going rate was for cleaning and sanitising a three bedroom petri dish. Shocked, but unsurprised that every one of them said they couldn't do the job for anything less than a Brazilian kidnapper's ransom demand, I began mentally cataloguing my DVDs and wrapping my glassware in newspaper to prepare for moving day. Then my mother reminded me that she knew a guy. Nigel had been cleaning her apartment, and those of her neighbours, for the past twenty two years, so I gave him a chance. After taking a quick tour of the place, he quoted me half the next best offer, and I hired him on the spot. It was only when I was seeing him off at the door upon completion of the job that I found out what my slovenly habits were really going to cost me.
'Listen,' he said, 'I know you must find it hard being on your own, so if ever you feel at a loss, just give me a ring. My wife goes interstate to see her mother every second weekend - we could catch up.' I slammed the door in his face and, needless to say, my newly spruced up house might have appeared spotless to my landlord, but it sure felt dirty to me. I'll sum things up and spare you the horror stories of spurned semi-retired taxi driver advances and the grinning pizza shop proprietor who offered to throw in extra cheese for free, if you'll pardon the double entendre, lest I put you off whatever meal you might be trying to enjoy while you read this. I marvel at the fact that I spent my mid to late twenties committed to a man whose football got more physical contact than I did, and never cheated on him despite the offers I got from men who were also in their twenties at the time. Now that I'm single again, men my own age seem to be beating a path to the fire escape, while their Dad's chat me up at the bar!
If there's a lesson here, I think it's that whoever you are, however old you are, the universe is a perverse old bastard with a wicked sense of humour who enjoys getting shits and giggles at our expense, and the best thing to do is to laugh it off and move on, which is what I'm going to do...once I'm done changing my locks and throwing out all my v-neck tops.
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