Lipstick On Your Collar.

By Vanessa | Published: January 15, 2010

For the last week and a half I have been looking for a lipstick. Not any old lipstick, I found 100s of those, but the lipstick. One that will make me look like a lady, and that will not rub off all over cups, cigarettes, and boys’ faces.

Back in this post I mentioned a party so terrible that I forgot sleeping with someone at it. While I erased most of it from my mind I have never forgotten a lipstick related mishap that nearly stopped that entire sorry blog post unfolding (why didn’t it?? why??).

At the start of the evening I bumped into someone I thought was my ONE TRUE LOVE. We’ll call him Chet. My primary reason for thinking this was because I’d met Chet while blissed out on some Es. The moment I met him was amazing: I looked up from my scrabbling hands and in a split second the world slipped away. For a few hours I followed him around, hands in his pockets staring at him like there was no-one else in the room. It was probably pretty creepy. A few days later Chet invited me to this now apocryphal party and most of the sheen had worn off him I was still fairly smitten. When I arrived he’d necked half a bottle of Ritalin and was gabbling at me about everything under the sun. I was horrible disappointed but followed him into an empty room anyway to put my coat down. Inside Chet grabbed me by the arm: “Nadia just kissed me.” My heart sank as he was smiling broadly. “She kissed so badly; let me show you.” and before I could say anything he was lapping at my face like a St Bernard. I seized the opportunity as he broke away: “How would you prefer it was?” and so we kissed. We kissed for some time stood in the dingy light of Nadia’s bedroom surrounded by coats and shoes and someone sleeping under a curtain. In my head I was going “Yes! Yes! Yes!” because I am an idiot and do things like that.

Then someone stepped in to drop a bag off and we stood about awkardly talking about how this was a terrible idea and that we should just be friends. Well Chet said that and I said “Oh yes I suppose so.” Mortified that I could have misread a situation so badly I had been staring at the floor, and when I finally had the courage to look up I realised my lurid red lipstick was all over his face. He was telling me, all serious like, that this was just something that we’d done in the moment, and that it would be best if we didn’t think about it again, blah blah blah. I gave him a tissue, told him to clean himself and left the room. It wasn’t until days later that I realised I too must have looked like Robert Smith when I walked back into the party. Subtle.

And so to avoid this ever happening again I have been looking for a matte lipstick that doesn’t smell like crayons, isn’t neon red, won’t dry my lips, and yet won’t leave a trail of smears everywhere I go. Any ideas? It’s rather important you know.

Photo from Le Smoking.

Posted in Advice, Make-Up, Not So Sexy Times, Questions | 7 Comments

B.A.B.Y.

By Vanessa | Published: January 8, 2010

Someday, in my uterus, where nothing other than blood, lining, and maybe a few lonely sperm cells have been, there may be, A BABY. Although I don’t particularly want one any time soon, or for a long time at all really, the thought sometimes enters my head and plagues me for days. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m getting older and more mature friends but I know of a handful of people pregnant in real life, and a few of my favourite bloggers are either getting ready to, or have just popped one out.

Excited as I am for them the idea of one day having one of my own freaks me out. Making a life? With someone else? And then looking after it for the next eighteen years MINIMUM? BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING SOMEONE WHO WILL ONE DAY GO ON TO BE A MEMBER OF SOCIETY? I’m having palpitations at the mere thought of it. What if you or your future baby daddy has a disease that you didn’t know about and you give it to your kid? Or you fuck them up badly when you thought you were parenting them in all the right ways? What if you drop the baby, or feed it the wrong thing? What if you just don’t love it?

But never mind any of that what about being pregnant? My mum said that she watched Alien not long after conceiving me, and sometimes when I kicked she would freak out and worry that I was an alien going to burst out of her stomach. It’s a thought I return to frequently when I see my friends bursting out of their dresses, waddling to the supermarket. They look amazing, but what if? what if?

People have always been around pushing babies out left, right and centre, which leads me to believe it really can’t be that bad. I try to soothe my anxiety related thoughts by telling myself that if it was so dreadful people would have stopped once effective contraception had been discovered, and we’d have slowly died out as a race.

So many people make it look like a fun, enjoyable way to spend time, rewarding even, but then there are the slew of programmes

that make it look like the worst idea you’ve ever had. In fact anything involving teenagers, or god forbid teenagers having babies, makes it look like hell.

All in all I think my paralysing fear of having a baby because it will a) inhabit my body like a parasitic host, b) change my life FOREVEREVER, is a good thing. This way I’m extra vigilant about making sure I don’t get in the club, and if and when it does happen I’ll have thought about it so much over the years that hopefully I won’t fuck it up. Or maybe I’ll fuck it up worse? Oh no, now a whole new can of worms has opened up in my brain!!

I really need to stop watching things like Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, Kizzy: Mum at 14, and reading things like Love It!, Hello, and old issues of Closer, and looking at other people’s baby’s with a stink eye while on the bus. I might get a reputation…

I have no idea where either the photo of Dakota Fanning or Lindsay Lohan came from, sorry!

Posted in Babies | 1 Comment

What I Learned This Year.

By Vanessa | Published: December 30, 2009

Although at one point 2009 seemed like the year that would never end, the last month especially, the finish line is finally in sight so I thought I would make a list of some pertinent things I learned this year. When I say pertinent I mean, ‘really obvious things that most people have probably figured out by now, but that surprised me, and which I still frequently forget’.

1. If the thought of going out with a particular person makes you have a panic attack, then don’t do it.
In January I rang Alex hyperventilating and crying because I was “going to have to be Conor’s girlfriend even though he’s mad and twitchy and has horrible teeth that look like the Berlin Wall”. He patiently explained that I didn’t have to be anyone’s girlfriend if I didn’t want to, and then hung up to watch Hollyoaks.

2. You are (probably) not going to die alone with cats.
And even if you did cats are pretty cool and can do awesome stuff like eat with a fork or chase a laser for hours, so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

3. Don’t exchange numbers with someone the morning after if you have no intention of contacting them again.
This is less something I learned, and more something I wish everyone else would learn: If you do give your number over then prepare to be contacted, and either have the balls to say “I’m a prick who gave you my number because I thought it was ‘what you do’ and didn’t want to upset you because I can’t handle emotions.” or arrange a date and see if the other person is any cop.

4. Pretending to like things that you actually hate is pointless.
See: politics, Belgian cinema, thrash metal, Nietzsche, and kale.

5. Although drinking can help you talk to new people, being trashed only helps you pull douchebags.
Because once you’re so wasted you want to dance on a pool table the only man who’s in any state to cope with you is one who’s been drinking since yesterday afternoon.

I learned some other things too obviously (like where Minehead is, the best way to cook salmon, and how to network a printer) but they’re less relevant to this blog… anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and that whoever you snog at midnight is a keeper, or at least a good kisser.

Ace photo of Takashi Murakami and Kirsten Dunst taken from their video Akihabara Majokko Princess for Pop Life: Art in a Material World

Posted in Advice | 1 Comment

Beauty And The Slightly Beastly Girl.

By Vanessa | Published: December 1, 2009

MV5BMTI5ODMyNjE1NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNjI4NzQ2._V1._SX450_SY309_

Someone once told me they were glad to be called shallow because it meant they were attractive enough to have that luxury. While this was, on their behalf, an utter fallacy, it’s an interesting idea. Shallowness is one of those things that we all fall prey to, and when we do, we tell ourselves it’s a one off, an exception, and that normally we wouldn’t behave like this, whereas to beautiful people who are used to getting by on the virtue of their looks alone it is every day sort of thing.

That’s not to say that beautiful people are also shallow, more that they benefit from it frequently, and rarely make a fuss. After all if you weren’t terribly bright, but had wonderful opportunities falling in your lap all the time, you’d take advantage of them too! It seems so unfair to those of us who are neither stunning nor infectiously charismatic, watching those who are less intelligent or driven than us suceed, but I like to think, like Earl, that karma has a funny way of sorting things out.

Let’s take for example, the time I attempted to put my brain on hold and date someone who wasn’t very bright. I’m not saying he was as stupid as my old flatmate who had anal sex ‘by accident’, or the intern who I watched stand outside our building for half an hour staring at the bell without pressing it, or even the girl who I convinced that ‘Smoksumgras’ was a nearby shopping centre, but just plain old not that sharp. My motivations weren’t entirely wholesome though, obviously. He was pretty, and sort of funny, and we’d had a drunken fumble and it had been quite enjoyable, so I thought that in the absence of a better candidate I would just hang out with him for a bit. Men, intelligent, funny, successful men, did this all the time I told myself. In retrospect this sounds really cruel, but he wasn’t picking out the flower arrangements yet either so it all seemed fine.

We went for exactly one date. One. In fact if we’re specific about this we went for half a date. In which time he had checked his hair behind my head so often that I had shouted at him, he had refused to eat any chips and marvelled at my capacity to pack them away, and told me I was being all fancy with my reference to Chairman Mao. The minute I finished my first drink I looked at my watch and asked if he wanted to hop it back to mine and watch a DVD. Although I thought we were both under no pretensions we did end up having to actually watch the DVD before making out, which seeing as I’d seen Vixen at least fifty times was slightly tiresome.

After he left I told myself it could be ok, we’d just talk about Hollyoaks (yay!) and people we knew. We’d eat separately and I’d just tell him to be quiet and look pretty if he started asking questions. Or start making out. Either way it was all going to be grand. After a while we’d almost definately have enough of a shared history for it not to matter anymore. Or we’d have moved on.

The latter occurred soon than I thought it would when, the next morning, I logged on to send him a message on Facebook to find him in a relationship with someone 7 years my junior. And that’s when I realised that he was way smarter than me any day.

Photo of Rock Hudson by unknown. (Please note I do not think Rock Hudson was stupid, in fact I am sure he was really really smart, as well as being smoking hot. Sigh.)

Posted in Dates, Not So Sexy Times, Relationships | Leave a comment

5 Things Not To Do If You’re Lonely.

By Vanessa | Published: November 27, 2009

ZXWEjgG0Pq4xqy3fKkoGk18jo1_500

1. Call an ex.
Speaking to your ex will only make your current singledom all the more unbearable, and if you’re foolish enough to meet up bad things could happen. Worse than sex things. Like telling him how lonely you are, how much you miss him, or that you think you’re (still) in love with him. Or you could do all that WHILE having sex with him! Eek!

2. Go to the cinema.
While a good film can pull most people out of even the darkest moods, going when you are feeling like Bubbles without Michael is a terrible idea. Almost every film has a romantic subplot, and crying over Couples Retreat or Crank 3 is only going to make you feel more pathetic than you need to.

3. Tell a friend who has a boyfriend that you’re lonely.
While this person will, at first, be all ears and you’ll feel like your black little heart is about to be unburdened, you will eventually feel obliged to ask how their boyfriend is, and then that crashing feeling will smother you again.

4. Clear out your room.
It might seem like a good idea, out with the old, in with the new, that crap, but once you start uncovering all the books and t-shirts he lent you you’ll be sat, a gibbering wreck on the floor wailing about dying alone with cats.

5. Log onto Facebook.
Why let an endlessly updated stream of other people’s happy lives mock yours? Oh look! It’s Clara and her boyfriend snuggling in Devon on a long weekend. Isn’t that lovely?

Look, just light a fag, crack open a beer, and scream along to Live Through This till you think you might puke. You can thank me later.

Photo by Dash Snow.

Posted in Advice, Not So Sexy Times | Leave a comment

Is This It?

By Vanessa | Published: November 23, 2009

90131P1

While on the bus to work a couple of days ago I sat near two old ladies. They were discussing the reasons women were marrying later and later, and sometimes not at all. It was, they reasoned, because women were too picky. Back in their day (I have no idea how old they were, but they had pure white hair and milk bottle glasses, so old old?) girls learned to love someone in time, instead of expecting to be in love straightaway. Cute huh? It’s like Stockholm Syndrome but with roses. Awww. This ‘expecting true love lunacy’ is because apparently we women go around with a check-list in our heads, trying to find people who will check all the boxes.

This got me to thinking what I want in a boyfriend, and the list I came up with was pretty ridiculous in retrospect. Here is a what I decided:

  • Must dress well. No sandals, no ‘witty’ t-shirts, no polar fleece.
  • Interesting teeth.
  • Funny or witty but not wacky or zany.
  • Taller than me.
  • Likes comics.
  • Does not have a wiry beard. Or wiry leg hair.
  • Listens to decent music, possibly not everything I like because that would be odd, but a nice overlap would be good.
  • Not sweaty.
  • Does not exercise or talk about eating healthy.
  • Likes animals but in a normal way.
  • Does not scowl at children.

As you can see it was a lot easier to think about what he wouldn’t be like than what he would be. Although if he looked like this I wouldn’t care what he acted like. Phwoar.

For all I know ‘he’ might turn out to be a woman, after all as Patrick Wolf says “I don’t know whether I’m destined to live my life with a horse, a woman or a man.” Nobody does really, you never know who you’re going to fall in love with or when or why, that’s the ‘great’ thing about it. My mother fancies Keanu Reeves and yet she got married to my Dad who is smart, skinny, and very English. Who you’re going to fall for is a totally unfathomable mystery! Only I do hope it’s not the horse.

Posted in Meeting People, Relationships | 2 Comments

Top 5 Songs For a Broken Heart.

By Vanessa | Published: November 20, 2009

5. Thieves Like Us – Your Heart Feels
This song is best listened to mid-way through the broken heart process: you’ve moved on long enough not to sniff things they gave you and weep, but not enough to talk to them without wanting to pee. It’s a bit like a 2000s The Rat, but about feeling shitty about seeing your ex-boyfriend everywhere instead of getting bored of ‘the scene’ after breaking up with your girlfriend. There’s a difference, ok?

4. Patsy Cline – Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray
Obivously this song is only applicable when you’ve been cheated on, but shit, Patsy Cline knows exactly what’s going on in your heart and if you smoke it’s even better because you can look at all the gnarled butts in your ashtray and sigh. Even better if some are still his. If you smoke his left overs, you are officially disgusting fyi.

3. Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own
Let’s just pretend for one second that after writing this Ames dumped Blakey and got on with her life, because this song is pretty much a distillation of everything heartbreak is: your whole life is grey and horrible, you love him so much but he’s a giant douche and doesn’t care about you, and you keep telling yourself you’re going to be an independent woman, but all you do is sit and cry. But hey! There are topless men in the video! Bonus!

2. Blur – To The End
Although you are nowhere near as cool as Justine Frischmann it’s nice to think that you could be sitting there, louche, drinking whiskey, listening to your ex wonder why you broke up, in classy way. This will probably make you cry if you’ve been heartbroken for less than a week though. (Another bonus from the video: Graham Coxon in a suit. Grunt.)

1. Chet Baker – But Not For Me
Bright Eyes – Landlocked Blues
Listening to these two songs got me so emotional it felt unfair to pick one over the other so it’s a joint top spot. And yes I know this is a cop-out but if these two songs don’t move you then you have no soul.

If you really want to wallow in misery then there’s always my self-compiled Saddest Playlist In The World on Spotify which contains all these, and more! And which always reduces me to a jibbering weepy wreck.

Posted in Advice, Relationships | 1 Comment

STI of The Month – Crabs!

By Vanessa | Published: November 19, 2009

krabs

Ever since I can remember I have been scared of fish, molluscs, sponges, and basically anything that lives in the sea. I am also scared of people who have really wiry beards. While we’re not here to talk about all my many and varied phobias (rapid motion photography, being touched by a stranger’s hair, photos of bacteria, etc etc) we are here to talk about STIs and whenever I hear about someone catching crabs I imagine their pubes looking like something out of More Joy of Sex, crawling with tiny crustaceans, and then I have to be sick.

Obviously crab lice aren’t crabs they’re just lice that look a lot like crabs, and they don’t just have to live in your pubes, they can also live in your eyelashes. That is the first fucking thing wiki told me. Does it want me never to have sex again? Crabs in your genital area will look like nits, however unlike nits no-one will tell you “They only like to live in really clean places you know?” and instead will gag and wretch when you say you have them. Unless you’re at a sexual health clinic, then they’ll probably be really nice and smile and nod. There are two ways to get rid of them: chemicals and shaving all your pubes off. The latter could even lead to you getting more sex as I hear some people are into that, but most of the time it just leads to ingrown hairs and more scratching…

While crabs are gross and deserve to die a chemical death asap, they don’t do anything terrible to you in the long run, and aren’t preventable unless you turn all the lights on and have a good check before you get down to it which would be a bit of a romance killer. So you, me, and the rest of the world, are going to have to get to grips with the idea that our nether regions may, at some point, be home to a band of merry wandering parasites looking for a good home and deal with it with dignity. Unlike my friend John who once bellowed at me in the street “Have you ever had crabs? Willow gave me them and they’re making my sack itch like fuck!”

Wikipedia article on crabs, photo from Spongebob Squarepants.

Posted in STIs | 2 Comments

Choose Your Own Adventure.

By Vanessa | Published: November 16, 2009

3681252669_9394dd9c42When I was a teenager I thought I wanted fast cars, fast people, bright lights and the big city. My life was so mundane that I wanted someone to come and sweep me away into a new one. So I waited patiently for someone to spin my world around but they didn’t come. My brain constantly resembled a Louise Rennison book: hearts on everything, glitter drenched rainbows over all my dreams. Despite being SO SO IN LOVE all the time I was terrified that someone prettier, or cooler, or smarter, or skinnier, would come along all the time. After all what could anyone want with me when they could be with some raven headed pixie girl who ran her own magazine from the garret of a Georgian mansion?

Biding my time hoping to be dazzled made me bored and grumpy: I was now in my twenties and still waiting. Every day was unbearable. Then I had a revelation. One evening, a shitty rainy Wednesday, against my better judgement I went to see a gig with a friend. At 4am I was standing wrapped in a nothing but a shower curtain on a burning hotel mattress while skinheads danced around me trying to douse the flames with brandy, all of us singing and laughing. And that’s when I realised it: I could be my own adventure.

Maybe it shouldn’t have taken causing a few grand’s worth of damage to an innocent hotel room to realise that but it did. No-one was going to come along and ‘save’ me because I didn’t need saving. All the excitement I wanted was there for the taking: I just needed to reach out and touch it. I’m not saying it’s been some smooth ride since then, nor am I going to claim that my life is a high octane thrill ride, but it’s a damned sight better than looking at every face trying to figure out if they are the one who’s going to inject the glamour into my life. The reason I was so scared of that girl in the garret? She was out there, doing things, not waiting to be found, and I was horribly jealous.

It is killing me to type this, it really is, but waiting to be driven appears to be a, whisper it, girl thing. Boys don’t seem to plan on a jazzy girl coming along and changing everything in their life, unless they’re in an indie film, and then it’ll just be to teach them to get in touch with their feelings (don’t mind me while I barf over here). I don’t want to use the words ‘knight in shining armour’ but that’s exactly what it is.  Whether it’s Josh in Clueless rescuing Cher from a life of braindead inanity, or Robin saving Helen from a lifetime of bogey eating in Wetlands, there’s always a man ready to take the wheel and continue the drive. Even in adverts women are constantly being rescued.

3779241110_a1e872acce

But what happens after the credits roll? Once you’ve finished being thankful for your saviour where do you go from there? When I meet my Future Baby Daddy I don’t want to kick it while he decides the course; I want us to be co-pilots, bobsledders, tandem cyclists, or possibly even runners in a three legged race. If I’m hammering this point a bit much it’s because it’s important!! All these stupid dating books I’m reading (for you! not for me! I hate them!), and all the advice I get from my friends, tells me that if I wait ‘he’ will come. Why do I have to wait? If I can take control of my life in every other way then why can’t I take control here? Waiting turns us into slaves to romance. Waiting makes fools of women, it takes us back to the predator/prey idea of relationships, and belittles the efforts that we make to meet someone new.

It’s hard not waiting, almost as hard as waiting, and there are books, tv shows, and nosey old ladies on the bus, who are going to tell you “When you least expect it, they’ll come along, and then everything’ll change!” but I’d rather be getting on with my life and living it the best way I know how, than counting the days on my calendar until he comes along.

Photos by Yann Faucher, blog title stolen from Heartsrevolution‘s awesome song C.Y.O.A

Posted in Meeting People, Relationships | 4 Comments

Three is NOT The Magic Number.

By Vanessa | Published: November 13, 2009

lara-stone-travis-hanson-and-doug-porter-by-steven-klein-05

Reading Platform’s piece on one guy’s distinctly unsavoury experiences with threesomes got me thinking about how shitty threesomes are. Logistically they’re a total nightmare: who has the time and resources to arrange one with three sane flexible people? And once you’re in the swing of it who’s going to be the facilitator making sure everyone’s having fun? Despite my total disinterest in these sordid situations being someone who is fairly obvious about wanting to have sex, and lots of it, I’ve come close way too often. I won’t go through them all because most attempts were just pathetic and boring, (touching my knee, then my boyfriend’s knee and then grinning like a maniac and saying you’re too drunk to take yourself home is NOT sexy thanks) but here are my worst moments:

  • Candy and I had spent most of the night getting totally trashed at The Dolphin when an incredibly good looking bloke came over, flirted ineptly for a bit, then he invited her back to his. For some reason she invited me and soon we were watching the sun rise from his amazing flat. Smoking weed, drinking ice-cold pear schnapps: everything was brilliant. Then he started massaging my foot. Being a fucking idiot I thought I’d let it go as I was so mashed it felt pretty good. He lent over my lap and started talking to Candy then suddenly they were snogging. I watched them while his hand travelled slowly up my leg, totally paralysed with awkwardness. I blinked and saw him looming towards me lips puckered. The next few minutes are hazy,  I remember shrieking “No!” in his face, and Candy shouting at him before running off to vomit. She was adamant that she didn’t want to go back to “the Marquis De fucking Sade’s brothel” and so we snuck out while he looked for my jacket. Annoyingly we ended up trapped in his apartment complex for so long that we resorted to lying on the tarmac in the car park crying until someone came and unlocked the gates an hour later.
  • It was my first year at uni and my roommate Brigid had a totally hot boyfriend Gerard. Brigid and I got drunk, made out a bit, and she asked me if I fancied Gerard, which I did. So we walked over to his and tried to get something going. I learned a few things that night: the threeway kiss from Laurel Canyon is totally rubbish, no matter what they say it is never ok to crush on a friend’s boyfriend, and that when your friend walks out saying “I’m not cool with this.” that’s your queue to follow. Thankfully/sadly it all finished rather early on while we were all mostly clothed, I mean I definitely still had my tights on. In fact I think this is my least sexy moment ever: sitting in my undies, ringing Brigid’s phone, and smoking a roll-up as she’d taken all my clothes, my coat, and my bag with her when she stormed out, while Gerard made a cup of tea.

It’s funny isn’t it how in your head the whole thing seems to move so seamlessly from ‘oh look me and my friends are by the pool and it’s far too warm’ to ‘hello!’ whereas in real life things seem, well, so horribly real and much less pretty. Everyone’s hairier and pastier, and boobs didn’t feel like I thought they would. Having said that to counter these two rubbish moments is that time when Sigrid crawled into bed with Evan and I that morning and… ahem. Yeah, maybe I’m not that disinterested in them after all.

Photo of the amazing Lara Stone from French Vogue.

Posted in Not So Sexy Times, Sexy Times | 3 Comments