"I've slept with a few hot chicks in my time..." he said.
"How about you? How many girls have you fucked?"
I looked at him, and thought : this is him when he's sober?
"You don't need my stamp of approval." I said.
"Damn right I don't, I've already got her, and I'm marryig her" he said, missing the point entirely.
It turns my stomach sometimes, interacting with elements of "high society" in Singapore.
*****
I've made some monumental mistakes in my time, loved people I shouldn't have bothered with and hurt people I loved; told a few misguided then-white lies that have caused too much pain, spoken too bluntly and caused more.
I remember things wrong, I'm emotional, I'm fraught with fallibility.
But if there's one mistake I don't ever want to make, it's to rush headlong into a marriage destined for disaster.
Because marriage is for life... not for-ever, but for life. For a shared life that ought to be special to two people.
Not for anything else, wealth, fame or power. But for life.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
What's Hot and What's Not
Hypothetical scenario.
Imagine a bloke. Goes out clubbing to meet girls. Meets and flirts with a lot of girls, gets it on with one or two, hooks up with one, gets her believing that they're committed to each other.
After an undefined and variable while decides that he is stuck in a rut, starts going clubbing and flirting with other girls again ("acting single", a nurse I knew once put it) even while continuing to claim love and committment to the first girl, perhaps gets it on with one or two, then loses the first girl for the second. Feels no remorse about it, because after all he didn't love the first girl, and it's not really cheating right... and it's all about me! Repeat cycle ad-nauseum, over and over again.
What words come to mind?
Certainly to mine, all sorts of unpleasant ones.
Now turn it all on its head.
The other half has been following the blog of a girl who's just like that. (of course, she goes out with blokes and not birds.) She thinks that must make the girl hot.
I guess it's one of those societal stereotypes...
Sometimes we have the same discussion about one of her some-kind-of-friends who is kinda skanky and puts out a lot; boasts to her about being fingered by strangers in public etc, and for some crazy reason the other half thinks makes her hot.
I look at said friend and see someone who just isn't hot. She's just... cheap. And a little sad. I feel a little sad for her.
It's the same with the girl in the story above. Sad.
These people call themselves hot. They desperately want to think of themselves as hot, and they want the world to see them that way too.
But at heart they're unhappy with themselves. They're insecure. They're just... ill.
It strikes me as just a little funny, and unfair in an odd way that we automatically peg guys who "play" as bastards, but girls who "play"... must be hot to play. Men get moral judgements, women get assumptions into the way they look.
Hot isn't about being able to sleep with a lot of men at once, or to turn many of them over like an autumn gust of wind turns over leaves.
You can be ugly. Short. Fat. Have weird cheekbones. A weird nose. Bad teeth. And still sleep with a lot of men / women, or run through girl/boy friends like water. If you're undiscerning, if you're cheap, if you don't really care... the point is. If you don't treat relationships like they're special. If you don't treat your partners like they're special. If you only treat yourself like you're special. Then you get all that...
You don't have to be hot. Just very, very self-centered.
Hot is... simply about being hot.
Hot is in the way a girl's eyes light up when she laughs, the way her hair falls across her face, the shape of her lips, the way she moves. Perhaps the shape of her body, the length of her legs, perhaps the way she speaks.
Hot is something unconscious that you simply have, or that you learnt, or that you were born with.
I never thought either of the two girls above were hot. I thought one of them was attractive, once - but that was because she wore an elaborate mask, built entirely out of lies.
*********
It's easy to play; it's easy to run through women like water, or men like a hot knife through butter. You just have to show that you want to play, and that you don't really... care. You just have to... put out.
S wanted me to play; she wanted me to be the guy in the book. She thought I might need lessons, that it would do something good for my self confidence.
She didn't quite get it right.
I don't need to play. I don't even want to.
One of J's friends - an image consultant who creates "players" - was rather acerbic when she was asked to work on me, once upon a lifetime ago. She said but you're already right, just the way you are...
I know I could play; it would be so very, very easy. I know the words; I know how to time the little smiles, I know how to make that kind of eye contact. I know how to reach out and touch at just the right moment, I know how to lie.
I don't want to. It wouldn't... give me anything worth remembering.
******
A friend of mine once told me how lonely he was; he was fucking a different girl almost every night. He went out clubbing, and got drunk, and the half-drunk girls thought he was kinda cute; best of all he gave off the vibe - I'm not serious, I don't want to know you, I just want a fuck.
And so he got fucked; it was that simple. Some of it's mind games, some of the girls wanted to "win", to change him. Some of them just wanted to fuck, and recognised a commitment free lay when they saw him. He got lots of action with all sorts of chicks, some hot, some not, some rather... cough... underaged.
On the surface he was happy, carefree, well-fucked.
Sometimes he'd confide in me though, and that was when he'd talk about how he hated his life, how little meaning it all had, how he missed The Girl, the one girl he went so crazy about he wrote poetry - imagine that! - and how they spent all summer together and didn't touch that much, and how he fell in love with her.
******
Fucking a stranger isn't a special memory. Regardless of how hot he or she was.
Special memories aren't the ones that are just about "me, me me."
Special memories are the ones that are shared. The things that really give us a sense of fulfillment are the things we share, the moments when we touch the lives of others, and have our own lives touched in return. Moments of actually giving a damn about someone other than yourself.
I think human beings are hard-wired that way; I think it all ties in with that unspoken fear of being alone, living alone, dying alone without meaning anything to anyone else. Of passing through this life unremembered, and being forgotten.
Imagine a bloke. Goes out clubbing to meet girls. Meets and flirts with a lot of girls, gets it on with one or two, hooks up with one, gets her believing that they're committed to each other.
After an undefined and variable while decides that he is stuck in a rut, starts going clubbing and flirting with other girls again ("acting single", a nurse I knew once put it) even while continuing to claim love and committment to the first girl, perhaps gets it on with one or two, then loses the first girl for the second. Feels no remorse about it, because after all he didn't love the first girl, and it's not really cheating right... and it's all about me! Repeat cycle ad-nauseum, over and over again.
What words come to mind?
Certainly to mine, all sorts of unpleasant ones.
Now turn it all on its head.
The other half has been following the blog of a girl who's just like that. (of course, she goes out with blokes and not birds.) She thinks that must make the girl hot.
I guess it's one of those societal stereotypes...
Sometimes we have the same discussion about one of her some-kind-of-friends who is kinda skanky and puts out a lot; boasts to her about being fingered by strangers in public etc, and for some crazy reason the other half thinks makes her hot.
I look at said friend and see someone who just isn't hot. She's just... cheap. And a little sad. I feel a little sad for her.
It's the same with the girl in the story above. Sad.
These people call themselves hot. They desperately want to think of themselves as hot, and they want the world to see them that way too.
But at heart they're unhappy with themselves. They're insecure. They're just... ill.
It strikes me as just a little funny, and unfair in an odd way that we automatically peg guys who "play" as bastards, but girls who "play"... must be hot to play. Men get moral judgements, women get assumptions into the way they look.
Hot isn't about being able to sleep with a lot of men at once, or to turn many of them over like an autumn gust of wind turns over leaves.
You can be ugly. Short. Fat. Have weird cheekbones. A weird nose. Bad teeth. And still sleep with a lot of men / women, or run through girl/boy friends like water. If you're undiscerning, if you're cheap, if you don't really care... the point is. If you don't treat relationships like they're special. If you don't treat your partners like they're special. If you only treat yourself like you're special. Then you get all that...
You don't have to be hot. Just very, very self-centered.
Hot is... simply about being hot.
Hot is in the way a girl's eyes light up when she laughs, the way her hair falls across her face, the shape of her lips, the way she moves. Perhaps the shape of her body, the length of her legs, perhaps the way she speaks.
Hot is something unconscious that you simply have, or that you learnt, or that you were born with.
I never thought either of the two girls above were hot. I thought one of them was attractive, once - but that was because she wore an elaborate mask, built entirely out of lies.
*********
It's easy to play; it's easy to run through women like water, or men like a hot knife through butter. You just have to show that you want to play, and that you don't really... care. You just have to... put out.
S wanted me to play; she wanted me to be the guy in the book. She thought I might need lessons, that it would do something good for my self confidence.
She didn't quite get it right.
I don't need to play. I don't even want to.
One of J's friends - an image consultant who creates "players" - was rather acerbic when she was asked to work on me, once upon a lifetime ago. She said but you're already right, just the way you are...
I know I could play; it would be so very, very easy. I know the words; I know how to time the little smiles, I know how to make that kind of eye contact. I know how to reach out and touch at just the right moment, I know how to lie.
I don't want to. It wouldn't... give me anything worth remembering.
******
A friend of mine once told me how lonely he was; he was fucking a different girl almost every night. He went out clubbing, and got drunk, and the half-drunk girls thought he was kinda cute; best of all he gave off the vibe - I'm not serious, I don't want to know you, I just want a fuck.
And so he got fucked; it was that simple. Some of it's mind games, some of the girls wanted to "win", to change him. Some of them just wanted to fuck, and recognised a commitment free lay when they saw him. He got lots of action with all sorts of chicks, some hot, some not, some rather... cough... underaged.
On the surface he was happy, carefree, well-fucked.
Sometimes he'd confide in me though, and that was when he'd talk about how he hated his life, how little meaning it all had, how he missed The Girl, the one girl he went so crazy about he wrote poetry - imagine that! - and how they spent all summer together and didn't touch that much, and how he fell in love with her.
******
Fucking a stranger isn't a special memory. Regardless of how hot he or she was.
Special memories aren't the ones that are just about "me, me me."
Special memories are the ones that are shared. The things that really give us a sense of fulfillment are the things we share, the moments when we touch the lives of others, and have our own lives touched in return. Moments of actually giving a damn about someone other than yourself.
I think human beings are hard-wired that way; I think it all ties in with that unspoken fear of being alone, living alone, dying alone without meaning anything to anyone else. Of passing through this life unremembered, and being forgotten.
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