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Tag Archives: I Choose My Choice!
Do I Look Like A Slut?
It seems that no matter what time I leave work my bus is full of teenagers. No matter if it's girls or boys, they're always talking about girls: who's a slut, who's a priss, who's not even worth mentioning. On and on and on. I feel like I know about the sexual lives of every teenager in Dalston at the moment. No matter how hard I bury my nose in a book I hear them, "She slept with him yesterday is it?" "Oh, my, god! What a slut!!!" Nice girls, nice.
This is something that I guess I keep going over on this blog: what the fuck is a slut? What does that word even mean? As I'm too much of a nerd to ask the teenagers themselves I turned to the next best thing: Urban Dictionary.
This is by far the most popular answer. A slightly confusing backhanded compliment, but hey, it's not terrible just sort of shitty.
Things get worse however...
Leaving aside the idea that someone could disassociate from their body quite at will (can someone teach me that?) this is a textbook definition and raises so many questions. Why does engaging in sex frequently and sharing your body with more than a handful of people make sex less special? What makes someone's sexual preferences discriminatory? What about all those girls who make their boyfriends wait and wait and wait and then get cheated on, treated badly, and dumped? Should they have worked harder beforehand? Probably not. If you give it up on the first date or after the wedding it doesn't make a shit of difference. Some people are douchebags, some people will be horrible to you. Sometimes you can sniff them out in seconds and sometimes it takes years. The amount of time you wait between meeting them and getting acquainted with their genitals makes no damned difference.
Now for 'meaning and significance'. I think that often sex can be likened to food. Some meals you wolf down, on the run, barely tasting them or appreciating them, others, like Christmas dinner, leave lasting memories each time it's consumed.
Sex is the same. Sometimes yes, it has meaning and significance, the first time you have sex after you fall really truly in love with someone is magic. For me in that moment the whole world seems to stop and there's a lightbulb over head feeling: this is it, this is me and the person I love being totally, utterly together. It's one of the most precious moments you'll ever have, I think. I don't know what having a baby is like, but I guess it's like a non sexual version of that. With added pain.
But yes, sex can have meaning it can have significance, it can be an exploration of trust, an episode of mutual discovery, and a fun filled rollercoaster ride, sometimes all of the above at once. And other times it can be like scratching an itch. An itch you just can't let alone. Do you have to scratch that itch with someone who understands you? Who likes you? Who thinks you're hot? One out of 3 generally isn't bad, but no, not really. Sex is sex, a strange, heady concoction that can be tied up with emotions and meaningfulness, but mostly is about being in the moment and something going on around your genitals.
Firstly: chill the fuck out! That guy was being nice to you, and you just pissed on his dreams!
Secondly... what people say about sluts, and by extension sex, says so much more about themselves than 'sluts'. Here we have someone equating sex with personal validation. The intricate way that her self-view is built into her idea of sex makes me think that for her having sex is a minefield: she at once wants to be accepted and loved and sees sex as a way of expressing this, but is also caught up in the idea that to give it away means that she doesn't respect herself. She's trying to withhold sex in order to get sex. Confusing? You bet.
FYI 'man' next time you see that lady give her a hug, she needs it.
SHIT! WE'RE ALL SLUTS!!!! Not you men. Don't worry, you're safe.
Amen. Read it, memorise it, and if neccessary tell people it, but in a more condensed manner because it's kind of long, and leave out the bit about nipples showing, because sometimes we just can't help it ok?
Stop calling other girls sluts, stop judging people by how many people they've slept with, and stop using it as a catch all insult. If you must call someone something nasty, and sometimes you must, then get creative! Call them a slinky eyed bottom feeding mouth breather, a higgedy piled rust bucket of pity, or a banana split on a cupcake, whatever feels right!
Or just move to Sweden and start confusing people.
Do You Remember The First Time?
Between the ages of 12 and 17 I was kissed precisely three times. First after my 12 birthday by my childhood crush (I screamed and kicked him in the legs) then aged 17 at a party where I got so drunk I passed out face down on the grass. The third time was by the [...]
Navigate-Colours
When I was a kid I told my mum that when I grew up I wanted ‘a red car, red dress, and red stilettos’ much like, it turns out, Cassandra in Wayne’s World. Though she looks totally sweet in a hair metal groupie sort of way, and I have always admired the work of Bebe [...]
B.A.B.Y.
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 [...]
Posted in Babies Also tagged I Love Having Anxiety, This Is Not Creepy, What If It's Not Cute?, What Would Joan Holloway Do? 1 Comment
Choose Your Own Adventure.
When 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 [...]
The Heart Has Its Reasons – Episode 1
In the first of what will hopefully be many videos my lovely lovely best friend Alexander Fury and I consider the question “Why Am I Single?” That refers to me, sadly, as he has an equally lovely boyfriend. Bastard. FYI, the choice of such a flowery name for this show will become clear within seconds. [...]
Posted in Videos Also tagged Alexander Fury, Books, My BFF Is A Mean Old Queer, OMG KILL ME NOW, Why Bother?, Wish I Was Drunk 4 Comments
Where Do I Go?
I guess it’s always good to start with the classics when going through date locations, after all they’re probably classics for a reason! So let’s start with the timeless dinner date. Personally I love dinner dates: if you pick the right spot they’re warm, cosy, last just the right amount of time, and if you’re [...]
STI Of The Month – Syphilis!
Ah syphilis! Catch this and you’ll be in the company of Baudelaire, Wilde, Hitler, Nietzsche, and my number one historical hunk Beau Brummell. Easily treated, but difficult to spot, syphilis is often mistaken for dozens of other ailments, and incorrectly treated due to its relative current obscurity. It starts with one, or more, small painless [...]
Posted in STIs Also tagged Beau Brummel, Mistakes, Scary Sores, STIs, Wear a Condom Duh Leave a comment
Qui Est “In” Qui Est “Out”
While I'm happy to point out that Gainsbourg was a very different person to the shambling greasy perv he is made out to be I have no desire to do the same with Slash. Its because I don't care about Slash now; I have no interest in how he's matured as a person, what he did after Use Your Illusion, how he feels about being in any of his subsequent bands, none of that crap. It's also because Serge is dead so it's easier to idolise him.
1987 Slash was a the perfect pin-up, the pinnacle of everything he'd ever be in public at least, so if I Doc Brown from came whizzing by in his DeLorean and asked me where I wanted to go it'd be to the Ritz, to stand right at the front, in a leopard print bodystocking, frantically swiping at Slash as he leant over the crowd. After he'd picked me out for some one on one post show backstage treatment, I'd hop in the DeLorian and be happy to wake up back in 2010. Obviously I'm hoping that this has no major repercussions on the world's time line, although even if it did affect Slash in some profound way G'n'R had already written and recorded Appetite for Destruction so I think everything would work out fine. Who really needs November Rain anyway?
Time paradoxes aside, having Slash and Serge as my top two crushes creates awkward conversations when these sorts of subjects come up, those typical late night 'guilty pleasures' conversations. Other people's secret crushes are people like the mild mannered Zachary Quinto, or wooden Stephen Moyer; people so nice and evenly mannered that my choices make me seem like an unstable masochist. However I'm unlikely to change my allegiances soon, and even if Slash came out with a bizarre Mel Gibson style rant I'd still fantasize about that half hour spent with sweaty top-hatted Slash in a backstage room in 1987. You see it's a fantasy, I don't know anything about either of them; Serge could have been a puppy kicking maniac in his spare time, Slash could be personally doling out soup to street orphans every night, it's all academic. Their politics, their views on women's lib, bleh, I couldn't give a toss. I just want to dream about fun, French accents, and deft fingers. And why not? Why make it realistic? Why can't we in our fantasies seperate the real from the imaginary and give the people we find beautiful every attribute we'd like them to have in real life? Do any of you have a genuinely guilty pleasure of a crush? If so tell! To those of you who can't make the quantum leap, I say try, or at least make your dreamboats less mundane! Further Reading: Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes by Sylvie Simmons Slash: The Autobiography by Slash and Anthony Bozza Further Listening: Histoire De Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg - Spotify Appetite For Destruction by Guns N'Roses - Spotify A brief Serge Gainsbourg sampler I made on Spotify, otherwise look for the Initials S.G compliation.