Pat is right

We are young
Heartache to heartache
We Stand!
No promises, no demands
Love is a battlefield

zoo and I seem to be having an online love in comparable to the skanky jane/artswipe marraige of late '06.

I was inspired by another set of postings on skirts are bleeding - to think of the benatar - which reminds me of texta queen which reminds me of Abel - coz we were both obsessed with that song after seeing textas stirling karaoke rendition - in platform boots....

Strange silly synchronicity - which probably has LOTS to do with the smallness of sydney sapphic circles much more than anything else.(Did I tell you about the 'blind date' I had from pink sofa.... where I walked into a room and the new date was THE ONLY PERSON I didn't know?)

So today - I listenin to abel's CD she burnt me last year of classic faves.... which starts with the benatar....... then segues to lots of other stuff - that made my eyes water so I had to change to Patti Smith instead.

It's funny how the universe finds time to drop precious little turds of personal growth opportunities in our mouths at SUCH SPECIAL TIMES....

I spent last week getting increasingly weepy and mopey and miserable and piney and wishing for the wifelife and being reminded of her nipples and craving her body and missing her eyes and her skin and her softness and her voice and EVERYTHING.

And it was just like the Kathellisism song.... (which you can hear online)

and I want to kiss your neck
I want to touch your skin
I miss the small of your back
I miss the stubble on your chin
(yeah - well maybe the latter is a bit of an exaggeration for her bumfluff - but er.. yeah)


And I spent the weekend doing lots of sobbing and waking up in the middle of the night and texting the brixton cowboy to send back some chuckles and smut and a nice reminder of somewhere different and very far away from where I was and am aright now and a very different way of fucking and everything very very different and all in aid of remapping my circuits of personal longing and desire into something that should no longer be so piney and pathetic....

and so yesterday I woke up to his call and after being cooed and chuckled into a state of contentment - decided to check my email.

A message from Abel. guiltily I let my pathetic girl heart flutter with joy and opened it.... and read that she'll be joined by shewhoimnotallowedtocallslutanymore for a few months - as of next week. Yep. Next door. in the garden, in the barrio, at art openings, on the scene, at the sly. the happy bloody couple rubbed right into my face on my turf. Isn't Paris enough for them? Isn't Belle Ile? why here?

Bodies speak so much better than words, as thoughts flit between various ambiguities....

so I was tapping out a response... while shaking... and interrupted by bellows of pain emanating from my mouth... I haven't wept uncontrollably over a keyboard since ... Monday May 24th 2004 - when I read pred's last posting.

Weeping, shaking, running between keyboard and bathroom as my nether ends also opened and I thought "Oh, great - another bout of weight loss coming on - and all those fucking 'you look so attractive' comments when I feel so shitty"

then started plotting escape and hiding strategies, silently to myself. Made dates for bands, the zoo (I mean taronga), harbour trips, visiting friends out of town - anything to get out and away, far, fucking away from this shit. Felt glad to be not the only one. felt glad that that I've got Hermano Grande around the corner in case of random urge to silently sob into beer...emailed zoo and TEDG. Texted MFCC, replied to Abel, read over advice of Wonderboi....

fingers could talk, mouth could only howl, and I wandered shakily into uni somehow. dressed in war paint. Bright colours to ward off nasty dark pain. Pink hair, green tights, pink skirt, sacred heart on my chest. Talismans. Necklace from Kath, Top from TEDG....Was this march 2006 or July 2007 and how will I fill in july 2008? still this FUKKED UP?

Stupidly vainly noted the flatness of my belly and loose fit of skirt and hated myself for being SUCH A GIRL. Girls like to disappear. girls like to be skinny and passive and like to be looked at. and the thinner they are, the sadder they are the more passive and pathetic, the more they can be picked up by a big strong hero eh?

I'm not a girl.

I strode out of the house into the sunlight, reciting to myself "crisis is the condition for change, for challenge, for contingency, for the brilliance and beauty of indeterminacy, for becoming, for surprise."

then chuckled as I thought again of Pat Benatar....


wooo ooohhh hooo
WE ARE STRONG
No one can tell us We're WRONG


so is there reason to this wallowing?

Kind of. Part of me, however brutal and hard and hellish - means that what I asked for WILL COME. Abel will be here - NOT as my wife, or my ex - but with someone - with whom I find it impossible to revert back to any friendly nostalgia trip.

I'll be forced to move on, to protect myself - to not seek out contact - to stop trying to pretend that things are *cool* between us.

somewhere in my thesis I wrote about how pain produces amnesia - and I'm amazed by my own amnesiac relationship to pain. I always forget how bad migraines are when I haven't got one, I always forget how much Abel - HURT me. - and she of course doesn't want to remind me.....

so - daily little stabs of hell - will hopefully drive me to protect myself - to move and keep moving on, to grow into my own becoming....

does this sound like hypocrisy?

I have brought other lovers here, and Abel has been so 'civil' and 'nice' and non jealous, and so 'decently sapphic' around them.... that maybe I should reciprocate. but I only took lovers after we broke up. I was clear about when and why I would start bringing people back home... and I haven't used any lovers or friends to drive a wedge between myself and a relationship I didn't want to face or resolve or have the courage to end first.

I *know* I'm not perfect - but I don't make promises I don't intend to keep - and I tend to tell people what I'm doing and with whom - because I believe that sex and love and proud beautiful things and don't want use them for hiding, for shaming or for silence...

I know that Love is often really stupid and girly and spiteful and the spite comes form the most surprising places. A close friend who made some catty comment about another friend 'having no self respect' - like it was an insult - and not a reason to show this person MORE RESPECT. Maybe I feel so abject and pathetic so often - that I don't feel the need to distance myself from peoples abjection and pathos - but to actually give them affection, respect and support. Maybe i'm just too perverse for this world.

I've always been bad at sport. Always fallen over, missed the ball, tripped on my feet, broken my glasses and come last in the race. If I viewed sex as a contest I'd never leave the house. for me- sex is the thing that happens on the sidelines. Sex is drawing a silly face on the ball or pretending its an egg, sex is zig-zagging across the running field or swimming in circles instead of laps, sex is trying to catch the girls on the netball field instead of the ball - sex is the divine perverse mad possibility of doing everything in the WRONG WAY for the RIGHT REASONS.

I know that love and sex have some dark, dark, angry elements. I know my own heart has a mean posessive selfish controlling streak - but I'd rather grow back my hymen than reduce sex and love to a matter of competition. I had nearly 8 years to fukk abel in any manner both of us could have desired - and if I couldn't do then what I can do now - then so be it. I hope she's happy with shewhoimnotallowedtocallslutanymore and i hope that shewhoimnotallowedtocallslutanymore is a better fuck than I was. As much as I ache, and miss and pine for Abel - I'm HAPPY to have moved on, and happy about what I've learned and am learning and will learn and experience.

Anyway - there's a nice story to end all of this. I followed the Brixton Cowboy's advice and took the credit card into a decent sex shop and bought some indecent objects and used them indecently with my a very obliging friend.... and I discovered new ways of fucking, new ways of desiring, new parts of myself, of herself - of how bodies and feelings and gestures and roles can be remade and rethought and refelt. We fukked to patti smith, plotted mad performances and laughed and cuddled into the night.