Flirt Fail

My attempt at face to face flirting hasn’t been going down too well. Ask the cute guy who works at the coffee shop I just happen to be frequenting. He’ll probably be like, “Who?!” mostly because my idea of flirting is to look at him(intently), while he makes my coffee and think, “Damn, you’re so cutecutecutecutecute, oh.” Also, it doesn’t help that he hardly even looks at me when I go in there. Not even the usual client patron fake courtesy – NOTHING!!! He might as well just spit the coffee in my face and say, “There you go, curly head!” The coffee’s pretty good so I’d probably still go there, except when I’m wearing a nice top, duh!

So, I’ve been thinking that the internet might be my saving grace. And, no, not because of all the porn I could get to fill up those lonely hours. Rather because of online dating. I could attract someone by pretending to be something I’m not and keep the show up until he’s too lazy to find someone else. Yes, I’m after the real thing here.

Luckily, I’m ahead of the pack. I don’t happen to have many hobbies as my criteria for it involves doing as little as possible. Preferably, I should be able to do it whilst sitting/lying. That’s why I like eating in bed and the internet. Particularly, I have what you might call a thing for reading up on relationship advice. I would be lying if I said I visited these sites to laugh at the sometimes crazy advice complete strangers give out to the sometimes desperate. I view it as if preparing for a test. You never know when it’s going to happen or what it’s even going to be about. For this test you need to know ALL THINGS! Oneday when I do find someone I will know exactly what to do in every situation. BAM!

What I’ve learnt from hours of internet trawling is this – everything I’ve ever done in every relationship I’ve been in, thus far, is wrong. Like did you guys know that men don’t like clingy women? Really?! Do you mean to say that calling someone 15 times, within the space of a few hours, isn’t sexy? Even if I’m wearing lingerie? According to all those relationship blogs that’s suffocating and creepy. Good to know. Also, being jealous and possessive isn’t good either. I honestly thought that access or possible access to my vagina, however limited, bought me exclusive rights to own your ass. Not so I’ve come to learn. I’ve yet to relay this information to my vagina, I’m not looking forward to that. Relationships are about space and letting people be who they are. But not too much space because then he’ll think that you’re not interested and will inevitably use that as an excuse to have random sex with someone. Now I really wouldn’t want that. As a mature individual I enjoy the idea of obligatory sex followed by watching tv, you know, because tv’s my reward.

So, now I feel I have adequate information on my side to tackle online dating, but the minute I go onto a site I freeze. Then like with everything that’s supposed to be fun in my life I get SERIOUS about it. I start thinking about it way too much, “What are people really doing here?” They’re here to find love, apart from the people who just want to have sex, but apart from those people I feel the love theory isn’t completely dismissable. Then I get more uncomfortable because what I know about love is laughable. Seriously, I choose to trust the opinion of complete strangers above my own, this should tell you something. Yes, I am an idiot. I’m not trying to be endearingly self-deprecating here, because if you were to take a look at my relationship record I think you couldn’t help but agree.

I don’t like these sites, because I feel it takes away one of those factors which I’ve learnt to covet over the years. The chance meeting and that weird chemistry that’s just there, like crazy magic(or maybe just crazy crazy). That’s romantic me, which is also the me that I can blame for making all those horrendous, borderline insane relationship decisions. In my twenties I wanted the spontaneous, grand love…the stuff you see on movies, the stuff you sing-a-long with on love songs. You know what, I got it. It was a big disappointment. For instance I had a guy write a song about me once. This is always something I thought I wanted. Then I listened to the song and it was bad and I really didn’t like it! Also, I was later to find out that he’d written songs for about 12 other people making the gesture appear seemingly less special. It goes for smaller things too like making up after a fight, however, getting a huge bunch of flowers and a crappy poem doesn’t feel at all good when this is what you’re doing every few weeks. At the end all gestures become meaningless, sometimes even funny.

Yes, it does boil down to the fact that these were dysfunctional situations and I’m not saying that people in healthy relationships don’t do this sort of thing, but they do other stuff too like treat each other with respect and consideration every day. It’s the "every day" thing which is important, because it’s honestly what was sorely missing from my relationships,  from my side as well as the person I was dating. You know why? It’s about consistency, something I wasn’t very into when I was younger. The grand gesture is easier, because you only have to put in the occasional effort and since it’s supposed to be “big” it means you’re covered for the next few more months until guilt sets in and needs easing. This applies to friendships as well. The thing is you don’t build lasting relationships like this. After years of this kind of behaviour I found myelf with almost no real relationships to speak of. Those I did have were because those people chose not to fuck off while I was up my own ass.

I wouldn’t say I’m as bad as I used to be, at the same time though it’s really hard to undo years of behaviour and as a result my default responses are often very off. I guess this is why I’ve resorted to looking up advice, because deep down I don’t completely trust myself yet and I don’t want to rehash those past mistakes. Putting this on a blog where anyone could see this probably isn’t good advertising – coffee boy, it’s too late to look away, isn’t it?! It could also just attract freaks, although they probably don’t like sites with too many words. I’m not too concerned though because when I was up my ass I didn’t know it. Another thing I didn’t know was that Mr Emotionally Unavailable was, well, emotionally unavailable(it’s in the name Dummy!) to me he was perfect simply because he was with me. Plus, I'm employing a new defence mechanism I call it - expecting you to do what you say you’re going to do.

Just like the Four Tops

For years I was trying to figure out what I’d be doing as a, “Career! Career! Career!” as Stephan Malkmus sings in Cut Your Hair. In my third year of university, as I was diligently working towards my BA in English Lit.(“instead of law or something more practical”), I did in fact get a new haircut, which maybe was my 1^st mistake, the song does not suggest this. Also, by diligently working towards my degree I mean actually reading some of my setworks, some of the time or only partly. Come to my fourth year and still not knowing what to do, I just floundered really, it happens.

Only after much trial and error and tears and more new hair cuts was I able to see somewhat more clearly. One of the few things I’ve been able to ascertain in my 27yrs of being alive, 25 of which were spent on cloud cuckoo cuckoo land, I do the things I love without even thinking about it. If you know me perhaps the first thing that will come to mind would be talking, because I do it a lot and about all things! However, there are a few other things to add to this list like cooking, singing and writing. I am obsessed. I have spent countless nights just thinking about food, fantasizing about recipes I desperately want to try out. In fact, one of my favourite things to do is to read menus, those little takeaway pamphlets bring me untold joy. As for singing I just do it whilst doing just about anything. Count your blessings if I’m not comfortable with you yet, because I’m afraid I’ll irritate you with my incessant singing. Don’t worry this won’t last very long, because soon I’ll be annoying you with the latest song I love.

Writing has been a bit different though. One of the things that characterised being a student is writing, all the time. And in my case it was writing about writing about writing etc etc. By the end of an unfinished masters I had had enough of it. Before that I imagined that oneday I would possibly write, but after 2½ yrs of what felt like fruitless research and … writing, I all but jettisoned the idea. Understandably, I was smarting from my failed experience, “I shall never write again!” I wrote to a trusted friend. One of the things I had to get over was the thought that I hadn’t finished my masters because I was dumb and couldn’t write. I didn’t dislike writing I was simply afraid of it because I thought that I was genuinely bad at it. But much like food and singing – I couldn’t stop myself. When I go through my old stuff, there are notebooks of writing. A lot of the time there wasn’t anything concrete, just thoughts, ideas or quotes. There are also my diaries and letters written to friends.

About a year down the line and I was starting to feel happy and healthy again. I slowly started writing things and having ideas for things to write. Ag, but it wasn’t serious, it never is, right? Then I read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet I think, like many before me, I felt as if I was reading something written especially for me. Sometime after that I found a gift given to me by a Sunday school teacher of mine. It was a diary and on the inside she’d written something very special, “I want to be the first to read your book!” I’d completely forgotten about this. I couldn’t have been more than 9 and what got me at the time was that this message was written in fancy handwriting. What got me now, almost two decades later, was the fact that even then I was talking about being a writer. There are those unfortunate moments in our young lives when an unwitting adult puts into question the veracity of that which you love most. This was the exact opposite of that and I think it’s something that has stuck with me, without me even realising it. In a big way I’m writing because of it, because an adult took a little girl seriously and went to the trouble of putting it down on paper.

The cheesy conclusion is this - if you love something you just do it. Not because you’re good at it or because people will praise you for it but because in the words of Orange Juice, “Just like the Four Tops, I can’t help myself!” Clap! Clap!