28 Apr 2004
“Excuse me miss, are you over twenty-one?” HA!
Don’t you love it when people think you look a lot older than you are? Okay, unless you’re like thirty and have spent way too long in the sun without sunscreen and you look so hideous that people mistake you for someone ten years older, but that’s another story altogether. I was walking through the shopping centre in the afternoon after I’d changed out of my school uniform and the guy at the World Vision stall beckons for me to stop and listen to his spiel. (Oh, all the poor starving children… I am so damn heartless.) HA! And you know what the ironic thing is? I must have walked right past the stand a mere fifteen minutes ago wearing my uniform and not one of them gave me a second look! I didn’t stop because I had a train to catch, but I did smile at him like I would consider donating five cents a day to World Vision or whatever it takes to put a starving Ethiopian and all his relatives through school. I really should you know, except for the fact that I’m broke. And I’m already sponsoring people for the 40 Hour Famine.
When I came back through the shopping centre a few hours later in the other direction, he waved to me again, and tried to get me to look at some brochures. (Or something.) I suppose I should have given in and stopped, at least had a look at what he was trying to market. I don’t know why I didn’t, why I just shook my head and smiled and kept walking. He was kind of hot. Damn. Rightio – just to clarify: it’s NOT okay for a much older guy to be checking me out. (Unless he’s heartstoppingly gorgeous but let’s not get into that…) However, it IS okay for me to check out someone who is obviously out of my range. Double standards, you say? Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ‘silly schoolgirl going off onto a tangent’ but there is definitely something wrong with older guy thinking bad thoughts about high school girl! Is that fine with you now? Okay then.
Maybe next time I go by the stall, I’ll stop and see what they want us to give.
25 Apr 2004
In a moment of insanity last term I signed up for inter-school debating. So what if guys were involved?? Seriously though, debating is somewhat enjoyable and I didn’t sign up for the guys. I, however, know some girls who most probably did, as they as far from people interested in debating as I can find. (Yup, it was the one who crossed the street to ask a random stranger for his phone number.) Anyway, debating guys are very rarely the… shall I say, interesting kind. Although you can never be too certain. There are always exceptions to the rule.
Procrastinating as usual, I thought there’d be plenty of time after we’d gone back from the holidays to prepare. Imagine my ‘surprise’ when I made the wonderful discovery that we had exactly two days left to get organised. Yay. But ah well, I work semi-competently under pressure, and we managed to pull everything together without breaking out into full-on panic and chaos.
When we got there on the day our adjudicator says to us, now girls, we’ve received word from the other school that they might be forfeiting, and we’re like THANK THE LORD! After the initial relief of skipping out of public speaking had subsided, I was a bit pissed that all our hard work had gone to waste. Okay, so maybe not THAT much hard work, but still! So with our debate ‘won’, we tried to sneak into one of the other debates going on at that time but they’d already started and when I opened the door both the audience and the speakers all shot us dirty looks. So that was out of the question.
We wandered around the darkening terrain of the school that was hosting the debates. They have the most vast and gorgeously maintained grounds AND do not spend a fortune paying the gardeners to dig up and replant all the flowers beds every bloody fortnight. We ended up on the enormous oval, idiotically posted with a sign saying “Please walk around the oval”. Hello?? What else are you going to do on an oval if you’re not going to play sport on it? So we trod on their freshly trimmed grass anyway and I though gee, wouldn’t it be classic if the sprinklers suddenly turned on with us in our poncy private school uniforms standing right in the middle and getting absolutely drenched? (Perish the thought!) Then I spot this dark hooded figure slumped over one of the benches and it’s just like shit! Aaargh! A hobo! Well obviously there is a very slim chance that a hobo would be lurking around at night in some high school, but we ran as fast as we could in the other direction and collapsed onto the pavement in fits of hysterical laughter. Oh, life was hilarious.
There was this funny little hilly bit next to their church so we’re all what the hey, let’s roll down it and get woozy on grass fumes. It was so much fun though, I love the adrenalin rush that comes with rolling down hills. So what if the grass was all hard and scratchy and there were all those damn trees in the way everywhere?? It sure beat being cooped up in a stuffy classroom with at some girl glaring at your team whupping their ass. Having the best laugh I’ve had in ages was totally worth it.
22 Apr 2004
Was going home on the bus (again) with JV. We never see them usually, but today the lipgloss-and-bubblegum ‘a2n’ group was out in full force with their unnaturally highlighted and layered hair, metallic lips, heavy eyeliner and schizophrenic pigtails. Oh, and their skirts three inches above where they should be. As JV rightly observed: what, is it national slut day or something?
They’re sitting across the seats from us and for want of better things to do we surreptitiously eavesdrop onto their conversation. They’re all: …and why do people say dosh anyway? What kind of word is that? I just call it money …or bling bling! Yeah, bling… so she didn’t know what a condom was so she looked it up in the dictionary… and she’s just like ew! …my boyfriend took me to this place… and blahdiblahdiblah…
And then I just thought God, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a life as shallow as that? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I never had all this messy insecurity and philosophical crap to worry about? If I didn’t have to think about schoolwork or the future ahead of where I’m going to go out on Friday night? (Clubbing, or something other than clubbing? With boyfriend, or without boyfriend? Oh, the possibilities.) Wouldn’t it be great if my parents didn’t give a flying fuck what I got up to in my free time and my biggest worry was whether my lipgloss matched my eye shadow? Ah, that would be the life. But really, what DO they get up to in all that spare time? It’s not like they’re very likely to be wasting precious brainpower on something as uncool as – gasp, gasp – thinking! (On second thoughts, please don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to know.)
Life then would be so gloriously simple. Oh, if only.
21 Apr 2004
As part of our community service course this year, we had a bunch of babies and toddlers come into our class for no apparent reason but for us to observe their different stages of development. Pretty pointless if you ask me, but hey, I’m not complaining. We got to play with babies!!!
At one point when the teacher left the room with the last lot of mums and bubs, AY and her gang invaded our class. Now let me clarify a few things about AY. (This is the part where I’m going to get suitably bitchy.) AY is short, blonde, “voluptuous” (read: heavy on top) and flirts with basically any guy she comes into contact with. Even when they’re forty-year-old balding guest speakers. Gross. Oh, and did I forget to mention she’s Greek? In a very big way? Not that there’s anything WRONG with that, but I thought you’d like to know. So then, at least two of the facts I have listed automatically qualify her for the leader of the wog and/or slut group, a position that she indeed does claim. I’ll let you decide which two facts those are.
So anyway, AY and her ‘gang’ (of which at least two-thirds really secretly hate her, but c’est la vie when you hang out with the bitchy girls…) have stormed into our classroom and they’re all like, oh my God, how hot was that baby! He is exactly like a mini version of… (sorry, stealing this technique from Candace Bushnell) and then they name one of the really hot guys from ballroom dancing. Speaking of which, they might be holding more classes later this year. Yay! But anyway.
Uh, a baby? Hot? Does anyone else think it’s getting juuuuust a little bit wrong here? And AY’s like, if he was ten years older I’d marry him! And everyone else is like, um honey? If he were ten years older he’d be twelve. At this point I am ready to start bashing my head into a tree.
I don’t know, help me out here. Just how bloody des-per-ate can you get?? Thinking that a two-year-old is hot has totally crossed the boundary between pervy and perverted. So maybe if you were Demi Moore and needed a toyboy to make yourself feel young again that’d be okay, (well, it still wouldn’t be okay to check out a two-year-old toddler but the equivalent, someone over a decade younger, is acceptable) but she’s NOT BLOODY DEMI MOORE! Maybe it’s just that all of us have spent way too long at a girls’ school for our own good. (Amen, sister. Amen.) But seriously, that is soooo wrong.
20 Apr 2004
Went swimming with JV at the local pool. I had a little ‘slumber’ party with a couple of friends the night before (note the word slumber in inverted commas) and we spent the night gorging on unhealthy fattening foods, watching infomercials and squealing over a ten-year-old Elijah Wood in ‘Forever Young’. (Well, the three of us were squealing, the rest of them were just staring back at us, nonplussed. I think it was lack of sleep more than anything else.) I honestly didn’t have any decent videos around the house; the folks go narky when I mention renting something from the video store.
We ended up collapsing into our sleeping bags at about half past six in the morning (when we turned off the lights the beginnings of dawn had already started to filter through the gaps in the blinds) and woke up five hours later by the sound of an unexpected doorbell. Turns out the parents thought it was time to take their people home. Whoops. So there I was functioning on five hours of sleep, going to the pool with JV. Perhaps not the best idea, but what the hey.
Where the hell had all the hot guys gone??? Granted Monday afternoon is not the best time to go scoping for desirables (weekday mornings when the swimming nuts come out in full force for their daily swim is more like it… why hellooo there) but not even one?? Major wasted effort. Okay, not really, we still had fun on the diving boards even though plunging from three metres in the air into chlorinated water wearing a two-piece that MOVES is no easy task, but we managed – somehow. I didn’t even bother attempting a proper dive. No guarantee what my bather bottoms were going to do. The next time I looked blindly at the mounted clock it was quarter past five and I was like shit! Time does fly fast when you’re kinda having fun.
17 Apr 2004
Broke out of my fast-sinking hermitdom to go see a movie with a couple of friends. Not that I’m not necessarily content with staying at home all day cooped up from the outside world, staring at the computer screen and/or reading 600-odd pages of chick lit for three hours straight. But DD pulled the plug on my internet access, so to speak – that is, he changed the password on the connection and won’t tell me the new one – which means I’m not even connected to the grand old cyberspace haven of the geeks. I swear – leprechauns skipping merrily over the fields of daisies in my head are slowly unbraiding the remaining threads of my sanity one by one. Give me another three days and I’ll have totally lost it. One good thing that’s come out of it is that I’ve stopped twitching altogether.
So. The movie. The ticket attendant actually makes the effort to ask us for identification when we request to buy children’s tickets. My only form of age-specific ID is my school student card and like hell I’m going to carry that around with me when I go to the movies! (If I get run over a bus and they need to find the identity of my mangled remains, they can do their own damn investigative work!) (Besides, I’ve already managed to lose my ID card.) In the end I had to get my friends to vouch for me that yes, I was a legit full-time student and was not trying to scrimp on the two bucks extra it would have cost me to get an adult ticket. Even then she still didn’t look totally convinced, more like she was just letting me off the hook this time because she couldn’t be bothered arguing.
Then after the movie had ended I was in the middle of wrestling JV’s phone away from her and getting D’s number so I could call him and make her talk to him. Can you believe it, two weeks and he still hasn’t called her! They looked bloody cosy on the ballroom dancing social night (hell, they had their arms around each other for the whole night) so it’s not very likely that he’s gone and gotten close to some other girl. (Still possible though, as a horror worst-case scenario, but don’t tell her I said that.) JV won’t call him because she reckons that’d make her look desperate (whatever happened to the girl taking the initiative and making the first move??) so acting as a good friend I have no choice but to call D for her myself. So anyway, we’re wrestling with her phone all the way out of the cinema, only mutually stopping for a few sec to fix our rapidly rising hemlines (squishy slippy seats, short denim skirts – you do the maths), neither of us willing to concede the prize. We end up wandering to the chock-full of sugary goodness lolly shop a few stores away with the phone still clenched in all four of our hands.
They are in the middle of creating a new batch of tailor-made worded sweets and we decide to stop and watch with, you guessed it, JV’s phone between us. One of the guys making the lollies start to shoot us these funny looks every so often. I’m thinking huh? Is he… and then – oh. Ohhh. He was checking JV out. My suspicions were further confirmed when he asks us, so what have you girls been up to today? Given that the people from the lolly shop weren’t normally the talkative type and he hadn’t attempted to strike a conversation with any of the other avid watchers of the lolly making, I can safely say that something about one of us, most likely JV, had caught his eye. Which was, frankly, very disturbing because he had to be at least ten years older than either of us if not even older. And that again got me thinking.
In all honesty, I’m still very young at heart and nowhere near being a ‘grown-up’. That is, unless I’m trying to convince my parents to let me go to some party or another. THAT’S when I’m as mature/reliable/responsible as the frickin’ wizard of Oz. But other than that, there’s still a long way to go from where I am now to full-time responsibility. Which I am so not ready for. And to think, the world already perceives the likes of myself as almost one of them, kind of like we’ve already crossed the line between jailbait and desirable. It freaks me out sometimes, that no one thinks I’m a child anymore. God, how I wish someone would open the door of childhood and innocence for me again.
10 Apr 2004
Out grocery shopping the other day, I was making my way across the sidewalk, seeing the world pass around me but not really registering – lost in a vortex of empty white thought. Suddenly there’s a voice in front of me, questioning at first, then getting louder and more insistent. It takes me a second or two to realise it’s my own name that the voice is calling, the voice belonging to none other but my friend Stephanie. She’s got another girl with her, someone new at school this year who I don’t really know. They’re both dressed in slinky black outfits, with glossy watermelon lips and darkly outlined eyes. Heading out clubbing. It shocked me at first, and I didn’t recognise Stephanie because I’d never seen her quite so dolled up before. Hey there, I say, at a loss for suitable words. Haven’t seen you around here for ages.
She haws and hems for a bit, giggles nervously, and finally gives me some sort of broken, distant-sounding answer. We have a mini-conversation, neither of us having anything meaningful to say to each other. I wonder to myself – has our friendship always been so awkward? I’m just um, well, walking this way, she tells me. And she has to keep walking, her new friend butts in, we’re ten minutes late. With that, she drags Stephanie off and they yell a hurried goodbye over their shoulders. I wave back with a non-judgemental grin on my face and return to my own journey, stunned.
My mind reels. Was that really Stephanie? The Stephanie I met on the first day of secondary school so many years ago, all bouncy hair and overbite grin?
I think it’s time for a sojourn down Memory Lane…
It was a balmy day in the summer of nineteen ninety- okay, never mind what year it was. (Perhaps it wasn’t even a year in the nineties…) It was a balmy summer day a week before the start of the new school year. Orientation day, for us littlies and newbies to the high school system. The hallway was already bubbling over with girls who had known each other from primary school, eagerly catching up on all that had happened over the holidays. Being the only one from my old primary and stepping into a great wide unknown, I entered the school hall of the next six years of my life with trepidation. In my mind it had already grown to a hulking monolith, ready to swallow up all the loners and stragglers not wise enough to band together.
Finding a seat in the fast-filling auditorium was proving to be no easy task. Originally my plan was to be all antisocial and to take the seat at the end of a row with a gap between the nearest person and myself – so as to act as a barrier against awkward conversations of any kind. Alas, there were plenty of girls who shared my idea and plenty more who decided to be friendly and had filled up the whole row. Plan A, scrapped. My next plan of action was to find a happy-looking sort of girl and plonk myself down next to her. Failing that, I could always spend the whole morning staring at the head of the person in front of me.
I edged myself gingerly into a seat, then took a deep breath and turned around to face the person sitting next to me. And there she was, my new best friend. Stephanie. We introduced ourselves and shook hands with each other. A getting-to-know-you conversation – hobbies, star signs, countries of origin. We hit it off immediately. By chance out of the 200-odd people in our year level, we got sorted into the same class. I remember our first actual day of school, how I stepped into our deathly silent classroom seven minutes late, after catching the train that didn’t deliver me to school at the time I thought it would. The teacher shot me a disapproving glare as I slipped meekly into a chair at the corner of the room. I scanned the unfamiliar faces for the one I recognized – Stephanie. When I caught her eye she smiled and gave a little wave back. I felt a lot better about being late.
I got to know Stephanie over the years for the person she was. The smiling, bumbling, endearingly clumsy Steph with the habit of walking into closed doors. The Steph who was great to have hours-long conversations with over the phone, leaving my parents fuming when the bill came in. The Steph with her obsession with horror novels and Deltora Quest. ‘Honorary blonde’ Steph, as described one memorable time by a basketball coach. Innocent bubbly Steph, never one of those air-headed boy-crazy bimbos who dominated our school. Sure she wasn’t the brightest thing around, but we loved her all the more for it.
What went wrong? When did we lose her? I think it might have been the beginning of Year Eight, where she ended up in a class with the ‘Asian pride’ people, the Natalies and Jennys. To be honest though, she had already started to drift away before then. Being put in a class away from the rest of us was what really finished her off. We can put all the blame on Lydia, the new girl in Year Eight who came from a school with a reputation for sluts and sordid stories. I guess we can accredit her with the dubious honour of being the one to turn the ‘Asian pride’ group into what it is today. But I know it wasn’t just Lydia, it was a whole lot of things that resulted in our sweet, innocent Steph morphing into one of those girls we try to steer clear of.
Perhaps I’m being a hypocrite here. Again. After all, I myself would feel totally comfortable wearing a black slinky outfit and have been known to wear them on several different occasions. I am very obviously interested in guys. I wear eyeliner and eye shadow and lip gloss too, although not the dark and heavy stuff that Steph had on. But that could all come down to technique and not yet mastering the art of applying subtle eyeliner if I do say so myself. I guess I’ve always been girlier than I thought. But Steph? Steph was never like that in the past. Steph wasn’t into that stuff until she got in with the ‘Asian pride’ group. Maybe I’m being selfish, wanting all my friends to never change. Maybe it was inevitable anyway, the interest in guys and makeup. Puberty, they call it. Perhaps if she’d stayed with our group I wouldn’t have minded so much. But the thing is Steph hasn’t, and she’s becoming one of THOSE people. And frankly, it sucks.
One day, after all the initial craziness and hormones have taken their toll, I hope Steph can still hold some semblance to the girl who became my best friend. I know she still has that girl in her, buried somewhere underneath the makeup and shallow laughs. I see it sometimes, when she’s not around her new group of friends and trying so hard to be one of them. I just hope it’s not too late, that she’s not too far-gone to be rescued from the ‘other side’. I hope we still have a chance to find her again, our sweet, bumbling Steph.
9 Apr 2004
Guess who left a message on my answering machine. No, it wasn’t Santa, or the much-expected Easter Bunny. It wasn’t someone totally obvious and mundane like my mother or my best friend. And regretfully, it wasn’t Rafael Nadal or Elijah Wood. Stumped? Intrigued? No? Well, I’ll tell you then. It was the guy from ballroom dancing – the guy I gave my number to, the one at the social who said I was the prettiest girl in the room. Come to think of it, there have been an increased number of hang-ups on the machine as of late. Three today, and the message. I’m assuming they’re all from him, as none of my friends have mentioned trying to call me and getting the automated voice, and not that many people calling us hang up without leaving a message anyway. By chance of fate I have not been in to answer any of these calls and was presented with the recording by DD. MD was surprisingly cool about it, she didn’t freak or anything when she heard the message. Maybe because I didn’t tell her news that was totally freak-worthy, like I was completely in love with him and am planning to elope with him right after I graduate high school, forsaking a university education. (Yeah, right.) Or something.
Naturally I was stuck in a very uncomfortable situation where if I called him back I’d give the impression that I am actually looking for a relationship, but if I didn’t call I’d come off as a total Ice Queen and quite possibly crush him. Well maybe not exactly CRUSH him, but make him disappointed at the very least. I thought it over and didn’t know what to do, but in the end I let DD erase the message without returning it. I’ve even come up with an excuse too, if I end up talking to him again – I’ve been away for the last few days and didn’t know he called. But now I feel so guilty! Here I am being a total hypocrite, spouting all the stuff about looks not mattering on one hand, and then turning around and rejecting a guy because he’s not much of a looker. For all I know he could be a really sweet, wonderful guy. We could have so much in common and be perfect for each other. Then again, when we were dancing there wasn’t much of a conversation going because, to be honest, I wasn’t that interested. But he didn’t make a huge effort either. Maybe he’s just shy. I don’t know; we didn’t really click anyway. Like the other dude I gave my number to, he’s kind of scary looking. As J keeps saying. I’m not interested in a relationship with him either, but he was the best fun and would probably make a great friend.
Okay. Let’s make a pact, just between you and me. If he calls again or and manages to get in touch with me, I’ll go out with him. But only once mind you, and somewhere that won’t lead to any awkward situations. If it does turn out that we have heaps in common then it’s an added bonus, but if we don’t then like they say on the teenybopper’s silver screen, we can still be ‘good friends’.
8 Apr 2004
You know what? I am well and truly over feeling sorry for myself.
I woke up this morning and thought, hey, what on earth do I have to be down about in the first place? I’m young, I’m gorgeous, I’m intelligent and I have just scored a genuine Paul Frank tank top from the op shop for 50 cents. (It fits almost perfectly too, and when I wear it, from the waist up I go in and out in all the right places!) My life is cushy and I don’t have any major problems with my folks (apart from a brief spat with DD having the shits with me over the whole internet/downloading ban thing, but I’m sure I’ll be able to crack the code on the dial-up modem soon enough…). So what if I didn’t meet a guy at the ballroom dancing classes? So what if I don’t have a boyfriend yet? At least I actually had a guy who was interested in me, maybe even two, unlike a lot of the other (skinnier and wearing a lot more makeup) chicks who also went to ballroom dancing.
Last thing I want would be to fall into a faux depression like B. Don’t get me wrong, B is a perfectly nice, dynamic, likeable, multi-layered person, but that’s exactly my point. She’s popular and influential, friends with everyone and fitting in with every group. She’s a lonely only like yours truly, which, speaking from experience, only means that you are ridiculously precious and outrageously spoiled by your parents. Remind me again why she thinks she’s suicidal?
Okay, now is the time to call me an insensitive cow. I know all the stuff about the people you’d least expect to commit suicide doing it, the people who always seemed so happy on the outside. Perhaps I don’t understand her life at all. Perhaps I don’t understand the depression and profound sadness that stems from being gratuitously rich, having every material possession you desire and knowing that basically everyone loves you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds pretty damn close to the perfect life to me.
So anyway, enough of my unjustified bitching. Let’s get back to the original line of thought here. Besides for the fact that I have been gorging myself on chocolate and have started spending all day sitting on my arse designing pointless web pages and blog templates, from an outsider’s point of view – because everyone judges themselves too harshly – I am reasonably proportioned and not horribly overweight. I look passable when not wearing makeup and have pretty much got the adolescent zit problem under control. I don’t need to slut myself up like some of the girls I know to feel good about myself. As nice as it would be, I don’t need a guy in my life in order to be happy. Baby, I rock!
Ah, the feelgood-ness of feminine empowerment.
6 Apr 2004
My house is filled with scent of dark-chocolate mini-brownie slice. Ah, the memories of sickeningly sweet chocolate and all the delights and accumulated fat it brings! Rich, thick, and artery-clogging, just like Ma used to make...
And I really need to get some proper baking utensils or I'll be cooking brownie slice out of muffin cups for god knows how long.
Okay, so this is totally random and I don't have anything even close to useful to say, but hey, I'm bored.
5 Apr 2004
Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!
My parents have possibly read an entry of my blog. Sure, it’s all well and good when you can wallow in your relative online anonymity and have the whole world for all you know reading your private thoughts. That’s okay because you can almost be certain they don’t know and will never know who the hell you are and you won’t ever have to look them in the eye with the disconcerting knowledge that they have had a glimpse into the dark workings of your mind, but these are my PARENTS, for god’s sake! In case you’re wondering, no, they haven’t stumbled upon either of my web addresses so that’s okay; I’m not going to have to move everything onto another page. (Not that anyone CARES or anything. But just for the record.)
Let me explain. I sometimes write out my entries on good ol’ fashioned pen and paper before transferring it to cyberspace. That way when I am bored and have time to burn I have something constructive (or, well, interesting anyway) to do. Also that way I can jot things down when inspiration strikes and I don’t have access to my trusty computer. What’s happened is that after typing up my last entry I stupidly left the pencil-&-paper version next to the screen. (Or perhaps not… has someone been SNOOPING?) This morning while logging on I discovered it, laid out in plain view for all to see, sprawled oh-so-casually on top of a growing pile of various junk. So then of course I grabbed it, chewed it up and ate it. Okay, well maybe just the first part. But you can be guaranteed I’m going to either stow the paper somewhere where it will never see the light of day again, or put it through the shredder multiple times until it has no resemblance to its original form. Hell am I glad it wasn’t one of my more revealing notes!
Omigod omigod omigod omigod. I am such an idiot! Let’s hope my stuffed up left-handed pencil writing is so indiscernible that they gave up trying to figure out what the hell I was on about. How on earth could I have been so stupid?? This is one lesson I’m learning hard.
3 Apr 2004
Am I not pretty enough
Is my heart too broken
Do I cry too much
Am I too outspoken
Don’t I make you laugh
Should I try it harder
Why do you see right through me?
Yup. Still depressed. I think I’ve pretty much gotten over Jake and have accepted the fact that I lost my chance before I even had it. Someday, maybe, I’ll find myself a guy who I like and who likes me back as much in return. Someone I’m attracted to. Someone who is, hopefully, reasonably hot. But then I start thinking, what if I don’t? What if this is all I’m destined for, unrequited attraction from random parties involved in my life? Well, granted my rare recent experiences of interaction with guys don’t provide a good basis to judge the rest of my life on, but what I’ve seen so far is not shaping up well. Then all that thinking leads to the thought: why is it that I only seem to attract the less attractive ones? Am I just sending out all the wrong signals to all the wrong guys? My mind goes spiralling downwards to the pessimistic conclusion that maybe… because they’re less attractive they don’t want to aim for the pretty ones because they know they won’t have a chance. And the reason they’re seeking after me is because I look attainable. And then – shit, am I really that hideous?
Sure, it doesn’t always work out like that (G with her granny slacks who I admit did scrub up okay on social night ended up cosying up to S, who just happens to be a total hottie). Just because ‘scientific research’ states that people tend to like those who look similar to them doesn’t mean there aren’t numerous exceptions to the rule. I’m a perfect example; I usually go for the blonde, blue-eyed Hitler’s perfect Aryan fantasies of which I look the exact opposite. Meanwhile JV has gotten herself an instant boyfriend out of D in about two hours. There she is bouncing off the wall and talking incessantly about him every chance she gets while I sit and lament the loss of a non-existent love affair. I’m happy for her, seriously I am, and it’s not like I want to make a move on her man, but it sucks for me to see someone attached so quickly and successfully.
Why do I always fall for the ones out of my reach?
I keep telling myself I have a hell of a lot of years of frivolous romance ahead of me (“I’ve got all my life to live and I’ve got all my love to give…”) but right now, I’m having a bit of trouble convincing myself.
Fuck, I don’t want to die alone.
Just the other day I was walking down a deserted street in the lonesome part of town. I came across a red brick building set with yellowing windows, all dirty and cracked. On the pane of opaque glass in the middle, scrawled in crude black marker, was a prosaic message just for me: such is life.
2 Apr 2004
My heart has been trodden on by a silver stiletto shoe.
And yes, it hurts. It really, really hurts. I didn’t realise I was into him that much in the first place. Here I am thinking this is all well and good, that it’s just some silly schoolgirl flight of fancy. I’d convinced myself I didn’t care, that nothing big was really going to come out of it. But sometime during the last few weeks it’s crept into my mind that hey, perhaps I do have a chance with him. Perhaps I do care after all. And then he goes and spends the whole bloody night with his arms around the little short-haired starry-eyed chick with platinum blonde highlights.
What the hell does he see in her? Okay, so maybe now is the time to recite all the crap about beauty being on the inside, personalities clicking and chemistry and whatever. Maybe he doesn’t like the age difference, however tiny it is. It’s a whole different system at high school. Or maybe I’m too tall for him? Maybe he likes those tiny girls he can wrap his arms round.
But who am I kidding? He was hot, but he was never going to be mine.
And I can’t help thinking, what if I’d gotten in there earlier? What if I’d set my eye on him long ago, and snatched him right from under her big protrudent nose? Shit, that would have been fun. Nasty of me to say so, but honestly, it would’ve. If only I’d been a little flirtier, a little more forward, and hadn’t just smiled absentmindedly when he tried to strike up a conversation. Maybe I gave off the impression that I wasn’t interested. Which is so not what I wanted! As ‘they’ all say, there’s plenty more fish in the sea. I should just write him off as a failed experiment, one of the many who go away.
This totally sucks.
The night wasn’t a total loss though. It was so much fun, and I went totally hyper. Just in hindsight J’s being all over the starry-eyed chick really got me down. One of the not-so-hot guys was one of the first ones to ask me to dance. Then he said my dress was pretty and that he was dancing with the most beautiful girl in the room. Which was so sweet. But so not viable – he’s not my type of guy. And we didn’t click. I think I’m slowly building up the cliff face right now, and then he’ll get so hopeful that he has a good chance – and I’ll be the one to push him off. Aren’t I a heartless bitch? I don’t want to have a huge rejection scene though, for his sake.
He asked me for my number at the end of the night. I think he was just waiting for an opportunity to break into our little circle and ask, but I just happened to catch his eye and smile and he took it as an invitation.
“So uh, I think we should catch up sometime over the holidays?”
Translation: “Please can I get your number?”
I wasn’t really interested, but I didn’t have the heart to say no. I’m not that much of a bitch. So I did, and I also gave my number to this other crazy guy who’s so much fun, but I have no idea what his name is! Two numbers! In one night! A record! Considering my record so far was none, that wasn’t very hard to beat. But still.
How much are the folks going to freak when I have random guys calling at the house?
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"This is Not Porn"? - okay, so I'm thinking that's pretty damn obvious. If you were wondering, the title arose after one too many strange and... unusual web searches generated a link to this blog. The things people will Google when they think nobody's watching...
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