Friends and violence.

He was in town for just a few days, playing shows and trying to make enough money to buy a plane ticket, continue his tour, and never come back. She had just started feeling like she had caught the flu when he called and asked what she was doing.
"I'm going to watch a Cassavetes movie and go to sleep, I'm sick."
He came over because he loves Cassavetes and didn't have anywhere else to go. They watched Opening Night without touching, then one back rub led to another then to laying in her bed wondering what to do next.
"Hey, buddy," he said as he played with her hair. She decided she needed to get some cough syrup and convinced him to go with her to the 24 Hour Walgreens.
"Just to knock me out and make my throat feel better," she explained. He laughed, knowing she had a predilection for recreational substance abuse.
Later that night, after drinking the entire 4oz bottle of nighttime Robitussin, she contemplated dying on the bathroom floor in a swirl of her own brain. She recovered and returned to her bed. Half-naked and half-asleep, he asked if she was okay.
"I was ill."
"Violently ill?"
"Quite."
They fell back asleep in each others arms.
The next night, he came back to her room at 4am after playing a show and walking in the rain. They woke up and continued rolling around in her bed like they had for for the last two days, never really kissing, only stroking each others hair, looking into each others' eyes, occasionally pinching and biting the soft spots on each others' bodies.
"Hey buddy," she hoarsely whispered. "Why are you being so sweet?"
"That's just how I am..."
She believed him because there was nothing else he could do for her, he was broke and short of favors. There was no reason for it except that she was letting him sleep in her bed and he had found his ex-girlfriend kissing his best friend a few hours earlier in the place that he was planning to stay. The ex-girlfriend, the best friend, the sweet boy, the naive girl - they all knew each other and vaguely loved each other in a tragic small town way. They were all young and beautiful, or maybe not so young and maybe just beautiful in the sense that they didn't care. Either way, no one made excuses anymore for the things that happened late at night or early in the morning when they awoke in each others arms.
Suddenly serious, in a way he himself found comical, he said, "Can I ask you a personal question, I've never asked anyone this before..."
She considered saying no to annoy him, but was curious.
"Sure," she purred in a sore throat voice.
"How do you feel about sexual violence?"
She got out of bed and took off her underwear, carefully putting them on the floor. Sliding back next to him, she said, "I'd rather show than tell." Pulling the back of her slip revealed the horizontal scars and bruises usually hidden under cloth or nighttime darkness.
"I think that might have been one of the reasons someone once broke up with me, but I'm not sure." She wanted him to understand so much with the least amount of words possible. "I confused his self-destruction with something we could both enjoy, but I was wrong"
He looked at her with soft brown eyes, relaxed as her fingers combed through his dark hair.
She asked him the same question, "so, how do you feel about sexual violence?"
Their bodies intertwined perfectly, softness next to softness, arms tucked into comfortable places.
"I don't want to hold back, I want to feel free."
She agreed.
"Better to feel everything at once than nothing at all."

subject verb object

-let's go to my room.
-okay.
-don't sound too excited.
-sorry, it's not that, just too drugged out for a decent response.

we get up and go to her room.

-get naked.

kissing, fumbling, stripping myself, stripping someone else, kissing, fumbling my thoughts.

-i'm sorry. i can't do a one night stand with you. i really like you. if we have a one night stand, i won't want to see you, and that's not what i want.
-that's a shame, i invited you over to fuck you and not see you afterwards, but if you want we can be friends.
-yeah, i guess i'd rather spend time together than just have sex.
-yeah, we can be friends. you have to understand, since my fiance left me, i've been going on four a week, never to be seen again.
-there's no way we could have sex and hang out sometimes?
-no. i brought you over to fuck me and then leave.
-i've actually given this same mantra before because i think if you're using someone on a purely physical basis you should let them know it. it's weird being on the receiving end of the objectification speech.
-i'm not objectifying you. you're the subject. we're friends now.
-you're subjecting me to friendship?
-we're not having sex.

iTunes playlists vs. mixtapes

During the summer of my 22nd year, I was in my first and only relationship that involved consistent sexual intercourse over a period of a few months. It was the relationship that I thought I could be miserable in for the rest of my life, but I tried to think of ways to make it fun. In much the same way that the woman of the 1950's might have bought a skimpy teddy to spice things up in the bedroom, I flaunted a 50-minute long iTunes playlist called "devious," sure to get him in the mood after a long day of work.

So I really thought about it, or at least I considered the ideal length. The play list had to be the perfect accompaniment for the one activity we enjoyed together, having sex. The songs should be chosen for their individual rhythms and ability to meld to each other in such a way to simulate climaxing. It's how you should think of any play list, you know. It's not rocket science, but if you don't provide some shape to the mishmash of songs written by other people, you might as well have your iTunes settings on "random".

I'm currently listening to it, two years after it's conception, doubting my choices. Why did I put in that Simian song? It's far too obvious...those lyrics, "Here it comes...." ?? and that heavy bass line?? Perhaps I was still nostalgic about my college boyfriend who once put the same song on a mixtape sent to me during the summer I worked at a camp upstate. I searched for hidden messages in that tape and whichever ones I found were apparently not compelling enough, I inexplicably broke up with him once we moved back onto campus in the fall.

The Jefferson Airplane song on this play list was a good choice, but why not just listen to the whole album? It's pretty hot. I wonder if I even cared how "devious" sounded in it's entirety or if I just got bored one day waiting for the guy to come home and didn't mind waiting the 2 minutes it takes one to burn a cd before we had sex. An iTunes playlist was as committed I could be, quick enough to put together and could be burned on other cds for other lovers. After all, he made it fairly clear that he couldn't fall in love with me and he didn't pay too much attention to music anyways. Why go through all the trouble of a mixtape? That'd be like baking a cake from scratch when all I needed was a new negligee.

Pomo romance meets its inevitable conclusion

So as much as I complain about being pegged as the girl in the movies- the Natalie Portman, Kirsten Dunst, Kate Winslet bright yellow jacket girl, I kind of have it coming. I am just too adorable. And supportive. And spontaneous. And I roll with it. So I am asking for rejection from boys who can't help but overthink EVERYTHING and are scared that I don't mean it when I say "just tell me what's up."

I should have seen this one coming a mile away, when I explained my love/hate affair with the Zach Braffs of the world and how I was sick of movies that made the quirky fun girl into this ideal. I was sick of being some backwards amphetamined knight in shining armor... I'm not a concept. His response: "guys really do that though." I should have laced up my new balances right then and hit the ground running, but I was intrigued.

Fast forward a week to kiss cuddle revolution philosophizing in his bed and forgive me for getting the wrong idea... I thought this one might be going somewhere. Fast forward another week, and I decided "screw it, maybe I am a concept" and dressed up pretty for the part, deciding that maybe novelty isn't the worst thing in the world to be. So the other night, he was up late working on his thesis... or not working on his thesis, and I thought it would be super cute after I got out of my two after work engagements to bring him some brain food (beer and m&ms) and help him get some stuff down on page. I talk to him on the phone, then tell him i'll call him in 10 minutes (my estimation of how long it will take me to be in his neighborhood).

One hour later I call three times to no avail and realize that this is a terrible idea. But it's too late now, so I ring the doorbell. He answers and says... "So you didn't get my email." (his email of course being the 'it's not you, it's me. i hope we can still be friends speech... just in text') We then proceed to address concerns about me getting the wrong idea that he is interested in something besides friendship. And he seems very freaked out that I'm not freaked out and basically we spend an hour just talking about stuff. Mostly not us stuff, but all the other stuff that he says makes us stuff not possible right now (Jesus man, just say you don't think of me like that... why does it always have to be "I can't right now.") Then... get this he says, by way of explaining what happened last week, "i just can't resist cuddling." And I start hearing Amy Winehouse in the back of my brain...

The screenplay never tells you that's what happens next. Novelty is novel for a reason... because you can't deal with its reality. All in all, we're better friends for having talked it out. I tried to explain to him that this is just how I make friends with boys. Test drive them first and when the transmission goes decide it's better off this way. I'm not a playa, I just crush a lot.

why can't life be like the movies?

A guy I went to college with tells me a few weeks ago that he always had wanted to kiss me. He never tried, he tells me, because he felt he was “too simple,” he imagined I’d prefer a more “complicated dude.” I was surprised by how astute this was.

The thing is, he’s confessing all of this over IM. I’m flattered, kinda, but it feels cheap. He asks me if I ever thought about it, and I tell him I think I considered it once, but I liked much better how we would just sit on my bed not talking, wasting the late afternoons drinking 40’s of Golden Anniversary and mooning over Morrissey. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, so I explain that I was pretty bonkers back then, and only liked dudes that made a living out of hurting my feelings. This isn’t a lie, but I don’t tell him the part about how I didn’t consider him a prospect because he was just too dumb for me. That’s the mean part.

I think about how this would have gone down if he had told me over the phone, rather than IM. He gets bold and says he’ll be in town next week, and that I “owe him a kiss.” I read the text over a few times and imagine some grizzly Sam Spade-looking bastard pushing me up against a wall and telling me that. I get turned on. Then I deflate again looking at the screen. I start to feel hot and angry. Am I supposed to be charmed by a dude who tells me he wants to kiss me over the internet? Am I supposed to be charmed by a dude telling me he want to kiss me at all? Why doesn’t he shut up and kiss me? I’m totally bored by his cowardice all of a sudden. “I don’t owe you anything,” I type. I close the window.

Most of my girl friends are hard bummed by how wimpy our dating pool is. My sometimes-lover B. says it is the result of a “feminized” society, that masculinity is denigrated in mainstream culture, and you only have to look to the catalog of limp-dicked fathers from any American sitcom for proof. Masculinity is increasingly recognized as something to be feared, and thus mocked, he says. I think.

Even though it gets my feminist hairs all in a bristle, I think there’s something to his theory. How much, I’m not sure, but sometimes it starts to look like all of what we ascribed to traditional masculinity, the yang, is more applicable to the "empowered female" than any 20-something dude. That can make for some messy identity politics. But no matter how much of a "man's man" the ghost of your lusty dreams is, it's never a good sign when they ask you out (whatever that means) via text message, e-mail, or IM. If you've ever enjoyed the unparalleled crazy to come out over these mediums, you can't help but consider the separate psychic space communication without physical presence takes us to, a realm that's patently PoMoRo--meaning unstable.

All this hyper-connectivity of the modern age seems to be ushering in a pretty brutal death for the art of seduction. Am I a bad girl for wanting to play that game? Can I be a feminist and still want to be ravished? Was Robert Evans really such a bad guy? And should I feel guilty for being such a jerk to wimps? All I know is, there ain’t no steamy film noir starring the internet. It's all about being there.

I was a murder suspect until semiotics exonerated me.

That's the short version of the story. The bartender at my local found himself in Gainesville FL suspected of committing a series of murders. His big haired blond date pushed away, his feet kicked apart and head slammed to the hood of a police car, only a notepad could save this Englishman from wrongful incrimination. It was just a simple coincidence that he had been standing at the very intersection, drunk, with a drunk woman where at least three women had last been seen. Welcome to the You Ess of Ay. The policeman decided, in good form, to give my friend a ride to the address he was staying, so conveniently written in the notepad amongst drunken scribblings insulting various aspects of Americana. One word didn't make sense. Semiotics. "No, it's the study of signs." The police car came to a stop.
"Like that sign there?"
Yield.
No.
Stop. Fucking stop.
No one should have to explain semiotics to a cop at four in the morning.
"Yes, like that. It's like urban planning. I'm studying urban signs."
"Oh, my cousin is an urban planner. Let me give you a tour of Gainesville and her signs."

As my next effort in pomoro, I've decided to take out a personal ad. No, it's not very original. I was thinking of spicing it up with some new acronyms but confusion is a turn off. No, my ad is pretty standard.

SWM, 23, ISO SF 20-45 4 FWB maybe LTR, into random fits of dancing, 3rd person omniscient jokes, walking fast, peoplewatching. Let's have a drink together.

I always assumed people who wrote personals did so out of shyness or ignominy. Continuing this would be an exercise in existing conventions of romance. Therefore I've decided to take out a personal in the Gainesville school of semiotics manner. Affording myself neither the confidentiality of a personal nor the luxury to express myself in more than fifty words, I will be holding up my personal ad in high volume centres of traffic. If you're around East London over the next few days and see a skinny kid with a sickly hunger for booze and company holding the sign described above, I suggest you join him.

PoMoRo "Success" Story.

So the "friend date" turns into "just friends" and then you have a friendship with a really awesome member of the opposite sex (or same sex depending on what orientation you thought you had going into the "friend date"). That's great! People who may have been superficially sexually attracted to one another at some point can have very fulfilling platonic relationships. Would any collective living situation work if people our age couldn't be friendly to people they know they will never fuck? Perhaps that's a rhetorical question requiring a later post, but you get the idea. Anyways, one minute during some day in your very pleasant platonic relationship you will look at that person you've seen urinate next to a brick wall and think to yourself, "we'd be so happy together." So you profess your love and they confess their reciprocated feelings immediately. Immediate in pomoro means the next day at 7pm, but still, your heart is filled with joy the second you hear the text message beep. Eventually, both of your Myspace profiles feature pictures you've taken together. Next step, moving in to the same loft space. Then, even though you swore it could never happen to you, you've taken on the final sign of eternal bliss: the couples food blog.

The New Age explanation to PoMoRo.

Based on the position of Pluto during the decade or two when current 20-somethings were born: " For your entire generation, this is a time of radical changes in society's attitude toward marriage and interpersonal relationships. There is a general fear and awe at the power inherent in making emotional or contractual commitments -- they will not be entered into lightly."

The "Friend Date"

When was the last time you went on a date? Sorry, that's a trick question; you may have gone on a date recently and not even realized it. That's the way po mo romance goes.
I asked this to a friend last night and he said, "oh, people don't go out on dates, they 'hang out with their friends'." This was the first time I had heard this, but it was a theory he assumed everyone knew about and lived by. The "friend date" theory is one that a lot of people fall back on in these days. The pressure is off when you're just grabbing a beer with a friend to get to know each other better, but what if that "friend" is a member of the opposite sex who you wouldn't mind ending up at their place at the end of the night? Does that turn into a date the next morning and how much responsibility do each of you have to discuss what happened? Po Mo Romance strives to answer these and many more questions. Stay tuned.