Tue 7 Mar 2006
Listening To: Fear Of A Black Planet : Public Enemy
Current Horn Factor :
Quote of The Day
Miyomei2 I had my portable CD player,
Miyomei2 and took it in the bathroom with me while I went to pee.
Miyomei2 And the second I whipped my penis out,
Miyomei2 the theme song to ‘Rocky’ started playing.
Miyomei2 I’ve never felt more manly than in that moment
It was Mardi Gras on the weekend, so today groovers I’m going to give a little blast from the past, so to speak. A little glimpse of personal darkness from less than two years ago. It’s a story about a girl … although you might have to read between the lines to divine that, considering the ostensible subject matter. All I can say in hindsight is – I’m soooooo very glad this person isn’t in my life anymore. It started out well enough of course – these things always do. In the end though it all went very much to shit, as this story so amply demonstrates.
I live in Sydney, Australia … one of the universally acknowledged ‘gay-capitals’ of the world. I’m prone to wearing tight little singlet tops (slightly less-so at the moment considering I’m having another of my bi-annual battles with the bulge, although they’ll be back on a daily basis again once I shed the pounds), baggy hipster flared jeans (or REALLY tight, black stretch ones), black leather armbands, and spiky, product-rich haircuts. I use various male skincare products, still remember how to apply my own nail-polish and eyeliner (damn those teen-goth days), know the difference between Manolo Blahnik & Fendi, and will freely acknowledge that Jai Rodriguez is a bit of a cutey. Given the preceding information, you may therefore be surprised to learn I’m actually straight, if you haven’t met me before or are a new reader to this blog.
I’ve documented elsewhere my brief teenage flirtation with ‘dating’ a guy (which essentially boiled down to a few bad kissing sessions while we were both conveniently ripped on various substances), and the few occasions since in my early 20′s when I snogged random guys at clubs. I won’t rehash old ground here – the point is simply that I can safely say I’m very secure in my heterosexuality precisely because I have flirted with the idea of ‘playing for the other team’, and know without a shadow of a doubt it simply isn’t for me.
At times though, this can be a bit of bummer (pardon the pun). Mainly because sometimes life would be so much simpler if only I ‘swung the other way’ – or even swung both ways. Y’see gang, ever since my late teens, and for reasons which still remain a mystery to me, I’ve found that gay guys will often be attracted to me. I’ve literally lost count of the number of times I’ve had guys come up and offer to buy me drinks at clubs over the years, proposition me, try to do the ‘bump and grind’ on the dancefloor or whatever. From the sweet-looking 60 year old grandpa at someone’s 21st in Sweden (who asked me if I wanted “some gay sex” in front of the girl in question, and when I replied in the negative, made sure to try his luck again a mere twenty minutes later “just in case you’ve changed your mind”), to the chubby, stalkey fuck who took my refusal of a drink with a scowl and then proceeded to follow me to every goth club in Sydney for the next 3 months and would try to ‘catch my eye’ on the dancefloor (or worse … try to dance up close behind me until I’d tell him to “fuck off dickhead, I tell you I’m straight every time – can’t you take a hint ?!”), it seems sometimes like every queen and his corgi have tried to cop a feel of the package over the years.
“Where am I going with this ?”, I hear you ask. Let me take you back now, to a warm spring night around August of 2004. I’m drunk, half-lying, half-sitting on the bed in my ex-girlfriend’s room in Paddington. She is also pissed to the eyeballs. We’ve just been out for drinks at the Fringe Bar with our boss, the bosse’s boyfriend, and the bosse’s obnoxious friend Howard. I’m not entirely sure (since I’m way too drunk to make sense of anything much), but it appears someone made a revelation a little earlier in the evening about my ex, the boss and the boyfriend of the boss having a Boy-Girl-Girl 3-way pash-session.
My own relationship with my ex has been slowly deteriorating for ages – she ‘broke up’ with me almost 6 months ago, we’ve both been going on dates with other people, and the sex has been getting less and less frequent to the point where we haven’t done it at all for the last month. This ‘no sex’ policy was instituted by yours truly just before we started working together (again), and just after I found out she’d slept with a sodding male model (of all things) who she’d specifically assured me she wouldn’t sleep with when she’d first met him. She’s also started ‘seeing’ someone else in the last fortnight – a scumbag commercial litigation lawyer; but that hasn’t stopped the ongoing flirtation on her part, or us regularly hanging out to drink and talk after work. Predictably enough, even with all these balls twirling up in the air, it doesn’t take my ex-girlfriend long to try seducing me again. Horny as I am in my drunken state, from somewhere deep within my sense of indignation rises.
“Piss off, N ! I’ve told you before … I’m not sleeping with you anymore !” I tell her.
“Why not Pete ?” she asks.
“Well coz you had sex with a fucking male model, for one thing ! How the hell is that supposed to make me feel ?”!” I spit back (it makes me feel like shit, of course).
“I told you I’d start sleeping with other people sooner or later. Besides, that thing with S just kind of happened” she says, not at all apologetic
“Oh really ? What about P ? You’ve been ‘seeing’ him now for what … 2 weeks ? What would he think about all this ?” I ask sarcastically.
“He’s not here right now, so forget about P. We’re both horny, we’re both drunk, and you know we both have a good time when we do it … so why fight it babe ?” my ex replies slyly.
I can’t believe the shit I’m hearing out of this girls mouth ! I can’t believe I used to be in lust with this person, let alone in love. The love did a Black Eyed Peas a while ago … but in that moment, it feels like the last stray tatters of lust flutter in the wind for a second … then … whoosh … they’re gone. My anger crests in a wave that actually manages to cut right through the alcohol haze for a few heartbeats, and quicker than you can quote the Poppies with “Wise Up Sucker”, I’m out the bed ‘n out the door. I manage to run safely down the first flight of stairs from the second floor before my drunkeness re-asserts itself. Consequently I stumble down the second flight and wind up in a crumpled heap at their foot, painfully smacking my ankle against the solid wooden runner in the process. “Fuck !” I scream in frustration, past caring what all the losers who live in this ‘rooming house’ complex along with my loser ex-girlfriend think.
I hobble out the door and into the night. Five minutes of walking, and I’m starting to feel a little sorry for myself. Ten minutes, and I hit Oxford Street. I ponder going back to Fringe Bar for a moment, “but the place is full of wankers” I think to myself and elect to press on. With no set agenda, a head full of alcohol, and a 1001 confused thoughts racing through my brain, I start walking towards Town Hall station. Another quarter hour later, I’m starting to feel really bad, and really lonely. As luck would have it, that’s when I realise I’m walking (nay – stumbling) past Stonewall Hotel. For those of you unfamiliar with the Stonewall, let’s just say it’s to the ‘Naughties what DCM was to the 90′s. In a city full of gay clubs, the Stonewall is to many the glittering jewel in Queen Barry’s Sydney gay & lesbian party ‘scene’.
Now as I’ve mentioned already I’m strictly hetero, but gay guys have always hit on me. Right now, I’m feeling pretty damn lonely – I don’t think words can really do justice to just how bad I feel. So on the spur of the moment, I decide to venture in to the Stonewall. Now let’s be clear about this. It’s not that alcohol or my feelings of self-pity have eclipsed my judgement to a degree where I would actually do anything with any of the guys inside. However, right at that moment I need to feel ‘desired’, and it needs to be by someone other than my clearly demented ex-girlfriend. “Any port in a storm, eh guv ?”
Now I could go on to give you a blow by blow (pun fully intended) description of the next painful hour, but I won’t. Suffice to say, the one time in my life that I was actually looking forward to the pink brigade approaching me with their usual directness, they let me down big-time. No-one offered to buy me a drink, no-one tried to catch my eye across the bar, and no-one tried to grope me as I sweatily danced with my gammy ankle and my baggy hipsters, to exactly the same music you hear every Saturday @ The Slip Inn and a thousand other generic nightclubs for the disaffected trendset. Essentially I think it came down to one thing – they could all smell the loneliness, self-pity and desperation just rolling off me.
Ultimately then, instead of making me feel better, my little sojourn to the Stonewall just made me feel worse. “Fucked over by my ex, rejected by queens … nobody fekkin wants me !”, was the disjointed line of thinking running through my mind as I finally stumbled back out the door. For a second I think I actually lost it altogether … one moment I’m standing on the pavement in front of Stonewall, the next I’m out on the road with an irrate Lebanese taxi driver honking at me and smoke drifting off his tires from the sudden stop he must have just made.
I babble out an apology and try to regain the safety of the pavement. Hands reach out to grab me … bouncers from the pub no doubt, but I manage to make a quick duck and dodge them. Then I’m running, running, running as fast as my feet will take me. Running away from the Stonewall, away from Paddington, and far away from the ex that’s messed with my head for so long until I sunk to feeling like this.
I’d like to say I never saw her again. That’s not quiet true – we continued to work together for another few weeks, and continued to be on ostensibly cordial speaking terms. That night finally killed any desire I had to be anything ‘more than friends’ with her though, and when ultimately even this casual friendship started to fade, I didn’t mourn the fact. Eventually in December I met my future fiance, and a few weeks later my ex (supposedly) moved back to India. Thanks to that fateful night in Paddington, I can safely say I have absolutely no regrets about the fact she’s gone – and I never will !
There ‘ya go peeps … that’s my Stonewall story …
March 8th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Ohh err, i was just at the Slip inn the other night! I feel like a dissafected trendset type person now!!
Nice story though. We’ve all nights where we’ve just stumbled about feeling sorry for ourselves….or maybe that’s just you and I. HA!
March 9th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Oh I luuuuurve the Slip Inn, Establishment, Greenwood – and all the other disaffected trendset bars Just check out some of the other posts filed under ‘drinking stories’ or ‘clubbing’. We’e probably got a lot of watering holes in common, along with the whole stumbling around in self-pity thing
March 9th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
yes, i dig Slip Inn & now Hotel Chambers is my new choice of bar. Glad to see you trendsetters have followed my example!
You’ll be right DB, i too have though of croosing over to the dark side, unfortunately the ghay women i know are too butch!