Never Google Your Therapist

Recommended Sanderwich: This week it’s smoked pork and fresh coleslaw in ciabatta because I had one at my local café, Browns of Brockley, and it was amazing.

 

For a few weeks I’d been feeling really bad. That kind of knocked-off-kilter bad where no matter how hard you try you can’t quite get a handle on it. My heart felt literally heavy in my chest. I used to feel sad a lot of the time, but I usually don’t any more. And feeling so sad was a horrible, draining experience. Some days leaving the house felt like running a marathon.  I decided to book an appointment with a therapist. I know a therapist isn’t a magician who can wave a magic wand and rip a raging, fang-toothed bunny rabbit from the black hat of one’s psyche, but I thought anything was worth a try. I should mention, too, that my mother is a therapist , and as my relationship with my mother  was one of the contingent factors in making me feel terrible and seek therapy, I was aware that some of the psychobabble jargon used by one of her kind might really set my teeth on edge. After looking at a website on which therapists flaunted their wares exactly like profiles on a dating website, I wrote to a therapist. Unfortunately, in the confusion, I wrote to her a bit like I was asking her out on a date. She didn’t reply, but luckily,  I also sent a message to two other therapists, in a way that was much more like I was just asking them to be my therapist. The first one to reply was the one that I went to see.

In my first session, the therapist, let’s call her Lynne*asked me lots of questions about my childhood, and why I’d come to find myself there, in her front room, with its battered sofa with crocheted throws, incense sticks, and bookshelves full of Terry Pratchett novels. During that first session I cried a lot. I started about 15 minutes in and powered through until the very end. At some point, tears running down my cheeks and snotty nosed, I asked “Does everybody cry?”, “It doesn’t matter what everybody else does, Alice” Lynne replied, “That means no” I said, and burst into tears with renewed vigour.

The truth is I was glad to be able to fall apart in that contained time and space, in the hope that I wouldn’t fall apart in my actual real life. Lynne let me moan and cry, she asked me questions like “how does that make you feel?”, and she empathised like “that sounds hard”, in her slow, calm voice. It feels so good to have somebody acknowledge the things you’ve felt and the things that you’ve found difficult. And just to have somebody listen to you, really listen, for an hour straight. And you can whinge away without contrition because, as I said to her at the end of my second session, “I don’t feel guilty because I pay you”. Let’s refrain from drawing the obvious analogy there.

After the firsts two sessions, I was pretty happy with how it was going, but I was a bit curious about Lynne. This woman was lowering herself into the sewers of my mind, sloshing about in my emotional effluent, attempting to dissolve the fatbergs of my bad behaviours. What’s Lynne’s deal, I thought. Who is Lynne? Then I did something that I strongly recommend none of you ever do: I googled my therapist. Pause here for a deep breath.

I’m not sure what I was hoping for. Maybe an account on The Twitter, where I could see Lynne cracking a few therapist jokes with her chums – ‘you don’t have to be mad to work here, but it’s actually quite helpful if you used to be quite mad because it gives you more empathy, amirite guys?’ – you know, just so I could know she had a sense of humour and some friends. The first couple of links were a counselling directory and her own personal website, and then underneath that, a link to an article written for Therapy Today. Obviously this was the link I clicked on. The article was about offering therapy to clients who were into kink, or BDSM, or sado-masochistic sex or whatever you wanna call it. In the article, my therapist says that she practises this stuff. She’s a BDSM participant, an SMer, a kinkster. And suddenly my hippy, gentle-voiced therapist is a sex-perv. My mind sweeps down from the beaten up sofa in her front room, and into her basement. Is there someone tied up down there with an orange in their mouth whilst I’m crying about my mother? Is that why she’s in a hurry to get me out at the end of a session? Because she has to go and check that Colin is still breathing? My mind explodes.

Here are the main reasons I was freaked out by my discovery. First, because it was a paradigm shift in the way I thought about Lynne, who I’d never thought about in a remotely sexual context until that moment. It also forced me to think about her as a real, whole human being. She was no longer a neutral pool in which I could bathe away all my problems. She was now a real woman, with thoughts and feelings, and well, probably a rubber catsuit and a whip. I did also worry that she’d think I was extremely vanilla if I ever brought up my own sex life. Instead of worrying about whether she’d think I was weird, I started to worry that she’d just think I was dull.

After my initial freak out, I thought more about my therapist’s kinky identity. What she does in her private life is no concern of mine. I’m not opposed to the idea of BDSM as a thing. It’s a practise that takes place between consenting adults, after all. In fact, the article talked about how participants often had an in depth discussions about boundaries and always had a safe word in order that they could stop anything they felt uncomfortable with. Plus, I’d much rather somebody was open-minded about sexuality than be a closed-minded bigot. I made the decision that I would have to tell Lynne what I’d found out, otherwise I knew I’d be sitting there every session, wondering about Colin in the basement. Therapy is all about trying to be as honest about your feelings as you can, and I thought if I didn’t own up to this, somehow it would put a spanner in the works. Therapy is really pricey. You don’t want to go and not be getting anything done. And maybe a tiny part of this all was a test for Lynne, because she already knows most of my secrets.

Here follows a transcript of our conversation, to the best of my memory:

Lynne: Hello Alice.

Me: Hi… So do I have to start then?

Lynne: Yes, but it sounds like you don’t want to.

Me: Well, it’s just more responsibility, isn’t it? Anyway, I feel like I should confess something to you.

Lynne: Okay.

Me: Obviously you know lots about me and I don’t know anything about you.

Lynne: That’s not true, you see my rickety old house with the door handles falling off, and you see the books on my shelves.

Me: Yeah, I guess, but the relationship is imbalanced. I don’t say “so, how are you?”.

*We laugh*

Lynne: No, but you don’t have to. It  took me a long time to realise that in life people often ask you how you are but don’t really want to know the answer.

Me: I normally tell them anyway.

Lynne: Me too.

Me: If you’re trying to form a real connection with somebody it’s important to be honest, isn’t it? Not if it’s just the newsagent, sure, but if you want a proper bond with someone you should tell them how you really are.

Lynne: Honesty is important, then?

Me: Yes, if you want to form a real bond with somebody. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

Lynne: Yes.

Me: Anyway, I googled you, because I don’t know anything about you.

Lynne: Okay.

Me: And I read your article on BDSM.

Lynne: And how did it make you feel?

Me: Well, it freaked me out because I don’t think of you in that context.

Lynne: Sure.

Me: Then I though more about it and I thought it doesn’t affect our sessions, and part of the reason I chose you in the first place is because I saw you had some kind of sexuality training and weren’t a prejudiced person.

Lynne: Part of the reason I wrote that article is because I thought more therapists should be out about their sexuality particularly for any kind of queer client… I didn’t realise quite so many people would read the article. But I’m glad you did, because now you know something real and honest about me.

 

And that’s Lynne, smashing it outta the park, reaction-wise. What a woman. I’m so glad I found her. I just really hope that she never googles me.

 

*Lynne is not her real name, but it seems therapisty enough.

Bikinis, The Buffet, and Me

Recommended Sanderwich: Belgian waffle sandwich with chocolate sauce and sliced banana.

What’s the worst thing you can do to a slightly chubby woman? Send her on an all inclusive beach holiday where she is faced with three all-you-can-eat buffets every day, but also has brought a bikini to wear poolside. Stand back and watch the conflicting parts of her psyche battle it out in a fight to the death. Add her mother into the mix and watch her self-esteem vanish faster than her dessert course. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my own personal hell.

I’m a bit of a compulsive eater, if that statement isn’t a contradiction in terms. Early on in the holiday, my mother, who is a trained therapist (but don’t let that fool you) says to me “the more you eat, Alice, the more unconscious you get”. By this logic, anorexics are presumably all brittle-boned buddhas. The effect of this statement on me was that it made me want to stuff my face all day long. Well, fatty’s gotta eat.

As this whole piece centres around the buffet, I feel like it’s only polite to introduce you to it. As we are all aware, a hotel buffet is never perfect, but you find your way around it and get to know which are going to be the good dishes. For example, for lunch and dinner there was always a plentiful salad bar. I learnt to stay clear of the dubious dishes, meats that weren’t stewed or casseroled were dry and rubbery unless you got them from the specials bar, pastas were too soggy. The rice dishes were invariably delicious, lots of good fried or baked vegetable dishes, and my favourite game – ‘find the artichokes’. The saving grace for me, was that the desserts were terrible, tiny pastries that tasted of stale freezer and sugar, or creamy desserts that looked like they had been made up with powder, UHT cream, and a bicycle pump. To compensate for the lack of desserts I ate two Belgian waffles every morning for breakfast. One with a baked apple and one with sliced banana and the thick hot chocolate meant for churros. And, fuck, it was good.  My mother ended up telling me just to eat the waffles, with a weary pain behind her eyes. I think she thought if she told me not to I’d do it anyway, and the proceeding self-flagellation would be even worse than it already was. It wasn’t that bad at all, it was just swimming in a freezing cold pool.

The thing is, I’m not a teenager anymore and I don’t feel bad about the way I look. When I was a teenager I felt really awful about the way I looked and myself in general. Not helped by the fact that my mother did things like point at the stretch marks on my thighs in a changing room and shout “Oh my god, what are they? What’s wrong with you?”. I don’t just feel good about the way I look, I feel good about who I am, and I don’t judge myself purely based on my physical appearance. There are plenty of other things that give me value. In fact, to get all hippy on yo asses, existing is number one. We all have value; we all have a right to be here.

As a woman it is nearly impossible to not to have been self-conscious about your body at some point. Truth be told, I still sometimes look sadly in the mirror and pat down my saddle-bags, seeing what I would look like if the contours were smoother. We live in a society that judges people by their appearance, women most of all. From when we are little girls we learn that being ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ is the highest compliment of all. And we learn that being called ‘fat’ or ‘ugly’ is not just making a judgement on our appearance, but is often meant to undermine us completely.

I refuse to go on a diet. Not because I don’t want to be healthy but because I think the whole concept of dieting is destructive. It’s socially isolating “oh, no I can’t eat that, I can’t go there”, calorie counting at best is dull and at worst can lead to obsessive compulsive behaviour and anxiety, it locks you in a weird cycle of punishment and reward, and some diets propose that you should eat so few calories that you would be technically classed by the UN at famine level (yes, I’ve read The Beauty Myth), which is weakening, not just to your body but to your mind and your spirit. It totally feeds (haha) into a negative way of looking at yourself.

I’m also tired of having conversations about weight and dieting. We could be discussing Plato, or Jeanette Winterson, the latest Sex Art Prints I’ve been to see (David Hockney), Mad Men, or even your favourite sandwich filling. I don’t care how much weight you’ve lost, and I don’t care about your stupid diet. I have rarely, if ever, seen two men friends out for dinner ordering only salad and discussing how many calories they’ve consumed that day and their trouser size. And if men don’t do it, I’m not doing it either. (I staunchly refuse to menstruate). Can we just agree that we won’t talk about it anymore? I’m including myself in this plea, I do it too. And any time it happens we’ll know the patriarchy has possessed you and we need to perform a feminist exorcism, which involves a group of your best lady-friends reading out passages from Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman and splashing you with hot cheese until you vomit up all the diet coke you’ve consumed and the patriarchy leaves your brain.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that it’s really hard, particularly as a woman to have a simple and good relationship to food and your body. We are given a homogenised version of beauty as a yardstick with which we can beat ourselves, or perhaps shove down our throats. But of course there are many ways to be beautiful and attractive. Personally, I judge a sexual partner like I judge a horse, and wonder how fast that person could really go if I were riding them. More and more woman are voluntarily getting their tits sliced open and little sacks of inorganic material placed in their body. That is fucked up. It’s hard to escape the weight of the whole of society, and that’s what a woman is doing when she chooses to stop valuing herself on her physical appearance, and when she stops seeking the approval of others about the way that she looks. What incenses me the most when somebody else judges my physical appearance, is not that they are insulting me (if indeed they are), but the arrogance with which they assume that their opinion about the way I look will matter to me. I’m not here to please you.

All of this battled long and hard against my deep and pure love of food, and I like to think that the righteous feminist part of my brain won in the end. And this despite my mother saying to me whilst looking at me in a bikini “it’s not really that you’re fat, Alice, you’re just big”. But you know what, it was the waffles. Next time I go on holiday, I’m going to have three every morning.

Speed-dating II: The Revenge OR How To Meet Someone When You’re Over Thirty

Recommended sanderwich: It’s halloumi and balsamic vinegar fried peppers with rocket, because you’re dating and you’re trying to look sophisticated.

I went speed-dating again. If you know me or you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that I’m very bad at it and that last time I did it was a disaster. I must confess that part of the reason I did it this time is because I thought it would make a funny blog. On the day of the event I realised that I’d actually have to go through it again, because I’m not detached from myself just watching my own life like a movie. On that day, I hated myself. Oh, how I deeply despised myself. However, as I’ve also previously mentioned, I’ve been doing lots of things that scare me in recent times in an effort to ‘grow’ and ‘become a better person’. I am a woman of constant terror – stick that in your harmonica, Bobby D. Pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone is truly when we learn the most about ourselves, and I’d signed up to another bout of self-knowledge.

The event I tried this time was called Compatibility Cabaret, and it was much more fun than the speed-dating event I tried before. A group of musical comedians were hosting it. They performed songs in between the more date-y bits, and it took the focus off the MEET SOMEONE pressure. On top of this, it was done as a series of games and questions; there were no one-to-one dates. I found this much less stressful as a process. The questions ranged from the factual to the personal and depending on your answer you went to stand at a particular colour of table. You were supposed to look out for other people who stood at your table a lot, because those would be the ones you had lots in common with. Every five or so questions there was a kind of discussion round with whoever was at the table with you. I was surprised to find out how few people had kissed somebody at a work party during a game of I Have Never, but they were a fun bunch in general.

I don’t feel like I was amazing at it this time, nor I think, will I ever be. But, I left a note for a person who left a note for me. We swapped Twitter handles. I know! How modern! I am a very modern woman. In the end, it didn’t come to much, but it was nice to make a friend. How then, does a woman of a certain age (thirty-one) meet a lover in London? It’s something that crosses my mind between one and twenty-seven times a day. Here are the five best ways to meet someone in London if you’re over thirty.

1)      Regular Internet Dating.

Whenever I get a message from someone these days from the dating site that I am signed up to, I just feel irritated. Yes, I am an irritable person in general, but I just can’t be bothered with this anymore. You have to go out into the cold to meet a stranger who will only disappoint you. I wish the disappointment came in a big, catastrophic way. If the person you went on a date with was truly awful, or verging on the psychopathic it makes a great story. But usually, they disappoint you because they’re just fucking dull, they’ve never even heard of Twin Peaks (?!), and at some point during the date you realise that they are the kind of person that kisses their dogs on the mouth. Ergo, they will never kiss you on the mouth. I’d rather stay in with my electric blanket and a good book.

2)      Irregular Internet Dating, or those apps like Tinder, Grindr, and Brenda. Yes, the lesbian one is called Brenda. I know.

Oh, I’ve been on them. I’ve been on them alright, and they are fun. On Tinder you get to throw people away and they get a big ‘nope’ stamped across them! It is with fervour that I play the best misanthropist card game in existence! Nope, nope, NOPE! For hours. I realise that it might be something in my attitude that needs to change, but honestly, could you resist? Then you are a bigger man than I. These apps were designed more for hook-ups than dating, although people use them for both. Personally, I’d be too frightened to invite a stranger over to my house based merely on two exceedingly flattering photos of them. They could turn out to be a psychopath! Or smell really bad! They could steal your crockery! Of course, equally they can turn out to be a psychopath if you know them in real life first, and more often than not you only realise several years into the relationship. We all know that most people are murdered by somebody they already know. We’ve all watched the crime dramas and detective stories. But, I feel like you’re really decreasing your odds of getting a heads-up on the axe murderer front by inviting someone over straight off The Tinder. Plus, similarly to the other kind of internet dating, there is no predicting chemistry. And British people are so polite/repressed I think that if I invited someone over for a dirty bang and we didn’t fancy each other, we’d probably end up having a stilted, uncomfortable courtesy fuck anyway. And I’m not that desperate. Yet.

3)      IRL, at a club, bar or pub.

Haha, I said club. I’m over thirty! I don’t go to clubs! I’m old, my joints hurt, and I have an electric blanket, why would I go to a club?! People my age have dinner at each other’s houses because they’ve got huge mortgages or barbeques with the same old couples you yourself set up years ago. Side note – I work extremely effectively as an aphrodisiac for others, but it doesn’t work for me. It’s like an Ancient Greek punishment – Sisyphus has nothing on me. My punishment that continues forever in Tartarus is that I cause other people to get together, yet I am destined to be eternally alone. I’m thinking of hiring out my services for some dollar, though. Anyway, that leaves us with bars and pubs. It’s hard to approach strangers in a bar. The idea of chat up lines makes me want to die. And my friends are probably better company than that person over there, sobbing into their pint.

4)      At a house party.

This is really the  only feasible way to hook up with someone I fancy because a) I invited them to the party, b) they have been invited by one of my friends, or c) I might actually fancy a stranger because it’ll be a friend of a friend and we’re more likely to actually have something in common. Sure, obvs most people will be in a couple. But there will be some singles, there will be a tiny mouse-hole of hope. The problem for me here is that after the initial jokez and piss-taking bit of flirting, I can’t take it to the next level. I become so self-conscious I’m rendered almost entirely immobile. And I probably have a lot of guacamole on my face. Before in this blog, I gave the advice ‘Life is like a sandwich, you get out of it what you put into it, so stuff it full of all the things you love’. The original phrase comes from an ex’s grandmother and was actually about soup, not sandwiches. Having a conversation with a friend recently, she told me that I had to show someone if I fancied them, for it ever to move into a sexual context. I replied “you mean I need to put sex in the soup?”, “yes” she replied, “yes you do”. Anyone want to come over to mine for soup?

5)      At a class or place of mutual interest.

This is the perfect way to meet someone! I’ve seen the rom coms, we meet in writing class. We disagree about everything. Then we meet in a social situation and get on like a house on fire. We go back to mine for soup. Does it really work like that? Well, I took a fuck-tonne of classes last year. I met lots of wonderful, funny, interesting, talented people, people that I genuinely cherish. But did I meet anybody with whom I could make a mutual agreement involving the tessellation of body parts? Hells no. Not a single one (geddit). Maybe I’m going to the wrong classes. Life drawing, anyone? Embroidery?

The truth is I don’t want to actively look for love or sex or whatever. I want to find it organically. I do loads of stuff, and I have a lot of friends, surely it is statistically likely that I’ll meet someone I like? That’s taking the Ancient Greek curse out of the equation. However grumpy or stand-offish I seem at first I actually love people. Not just in a ‘I find them fascinating’ way, but in a connecting with someone, really connecting is the whole sodding reason for existence. Whether it’s just in one specific way, a transient moment, or whether it’s someone you feel like you really get along with in almost every way. I just fall down on the boning element. Soup anyone?

Crushes and How to Avoid Doing Them Like The Phantom of the Opera

Recommended Sanderwich: Eat with a salt beef sandwich, the sandwich of salty crush tears and pent up lust.

 I’m a person who is prone to having a crush. Over the years my crushes have been many and varied, blind to gender and the concept of ‘too old for you’. I’ve crushed on people I know, people I don’t, famous people, and fictional characters. Some have been so intense I’ve woken up and gone to sleep thinking about the person, and some have been more for sport – having a crush makes things a bit more interesting. They last from a matter of moments to a number of years. If you are very clever, pretty odd, strong-willed, curly-haired, sturdily built, and foreign, then I’ve definitely had a crush on you. If you are four of those things or above, your chances are pretty high. Sorry about that. I really do love a foreigner. Contrary to most people, I enjoy having no shared references to childhood television programmes. Yes, I remember Rainbow, yes I’ve seen that video clip on YouTube that’s the puppets making all those double entendres, can we please move on now? And since we’re sharing so much embarrassing information with each other, I’m also going to confess that I went to see Phantom of the Opera this week. Moments of the musical made me full on LOL because it is so over-the-top ridiculous. This is particularly true of the part of the Phantom. So here are some rules – nine easy steps to follow to make sure that you don’t crush like the Phantom.

1)      Avoid subjugating your crush. The audience first meets the Phantom when Christine, the leading lady says “enter, master”. Not cool! I know that sometimes you can feel so strongly for someone, so under their thrall that you feel subjugated by them. This is false though, they probably are completely unaware you even fancy them so don’t start trying to boss your crush to make yourself feel better.

2)     Avoid abusing your position of power to seduce your crush. The Phantom is Christine’s singing teacher. In their first song together he calls her ‘child’. There is a lot throughout about how he guides her – clearly he is trying to guide her right into his pants. In the titular song Phantom of the Opera he sings “My power over you grows stronger yet” and in his seduction song Music of the Night he sings “And let music set you free,
only then can you belong to me”. This is ten out of ten for creepy behaviour. I have never used a position of power to seduce a crush, partly because I have never held a position of power. But I’ve had it done to me, and it really isn’t very nice.

3)      Don’t put a wedding dress on a mannequin that looks like your crush. I mean, that’s really pushing it, isn’t it? How do you get a mannequin made to look like a certain person? (Asking for a friend). And did the Phantom go out in his mask and buy the dress? Did he get a second-hand one? Or did he go to one of those fancy bridal shops by himself and spend thousands of francs on a dress? Did he take measurements of the mannequin’s vital statistics? The mind boggles. The weirdest thing I’ve ever done crush-wise is steal a t-shirt of the person’s to sniff.

4)       Don’t have a messy room or a crazy weird lair. Particularly don’t leave ephemera relating to the object of your obsession lying around, because you never know, they might one day come home with you. Of course you don’t have a mannequin in a wedding dress lying around, but if you’ve been on their Facebook page seventeen times that day, clear your internet history. Put away the tear-stained photos. Tidy up. Also, don’t have a music box with a dead monkey playing the cymbals on it, don’t have an organ, and, well don’t live in a subterranean cave! No wonder you never pull, Phantom.

5      If you are going to a party where your crush will be, don’t dress up as disease personified. The Phantom turns up at the masquerade ball as Red Death, with a kind of grinning skull mask and a garish, sequinned red suit. It’s an uncomfortable mixture of sinister and comical. I imagine this was his thought process: “Oh, Christine doesn’t love me even after I showed her my special mannequin, but after she sees me in this number, something’s just going to click in her head sexy-wise. WOW, she’ll say. Oh, there she is, I’m doing my special swanky walk to impress her. I’m waving, I’m waving. Oh, she’s crying. Have I done it wrong again? I’m always getting it wrong.” I did once dress up as Special Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks to impress a crush, but what’s a bit of gender-bending in comparison to embodying pestilence?

6)       Don’t write poetry/prose/a play/a film/a musical/an opera about your crush, and if you do don’t show it to them. Don’t, like the Phantom, write a wish-fulfilment opera entitled Don Juan Triumphant where you get the girl when really you are the type of creepy freak that has a mannequin girlfriend in your lair. Also don’t, as I did when I was sixteen, write a poem about a teacher you have a crush on, and read it aloud at an evening where said teacher is, thinking they won’t know it’s about them. Because they will, and they will tell you, and you will wish you were dead. Yep, I’m pretty cool guys, pretty cool. I bet you’re all developing crushes on me right now.

7)       Don’t shoot fiery missiles at your crush’s partner. You can secretly think your crush’s partner isn’t good enough for them. You can secretly hate your crush’s partner. You can secretly give your crush’s partner a nickname like ‘the ginger smurf’, for example. But if you meet your crush’s partner smile, be polite, and don’t do anything that will get you arrested.

8)       Don’t do any murders. This is generally a good life rule, not just for when you have a crush. Even if you only murder that guy we only saw for about two minutes, who was miming a hanging to the ballerinas, we’ll still know you’ve done a murder. Please don’t murder someone acting in your own wish-fulfilment opera Don Juan Triumphant so you can take over the lead role with the object of your obsession playing the leading lady where you sing a song together called ‘The Point of No Return’. That’s really rapey. Now I’ll admit, there have been times when I’ve wanted to do a murder. Well, one time. I wanted to murder an ex-crush who was a very bad person, a serial cheater and compulsive liar. But as I once heard Peter Andre say on Saturday night television, hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.

9)       After your litany of bad behaviour, don’t tell your crush that he or she doesn’t love you because you’re ugly. It’s because you’ve ignored rules 1 through 8 (and maybe other reasons on top). In The Phantom of the Opera, after the Phantom sings “That fate which condemns me to wallow in blood/has also denied me the joys of the flesh/this face – the infection which poisons our love”, Christine performs the most successful reverse compliment sandwich (neg-compliment-neg) of all time. She tells the Phantom that his face isn’t the problem, but that it’s his soul that’s deformed, then she pashes him, that’s right SHE KISSES HIM, then he’s so shocked she manages to rescue her hot boyfriend (who he’s threatening to kill) and escape from the Phantom forever. As everyone else is on the hunt for Phantom, he hides under his cloak using the ‘if I can’t see them, they can’t see me’ principle. What a guy. The proper, dignified way to deal with your crush rejecting you is this: go home, sob into a pillow, watch When Harry Met Sally, eat a whole family sized packet of Doritos, and repeat over and over to yourself that nobody will ever love you again. After this process is complete, put your crush to bed (oh, the irony) and start all over again.

The Stage Is Just Another Place To Stand

Recommended Sanderwich: Take two big bits of bread and stuff it with everything you love (this might make more sense after you’ve read the blog).

 

The final eighteen months of my twenties was a horrible time. I won’t bore you with the details, but it involved serious illness of people very dear to me, combined with heartbreak. I was so sad I couldn’t remember what it was like to be happy. I couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy again. As well as the unfortunate life circumstances, I was approaching Thirty, and wondering what I’d done with my life. I find birthdays hard, but Thirty hit me real bad. I realised that even before the tragedy, I was feeling a low-grade misery all of the time. When the tragedy hit, I came out in a case of fully-blown Raging Misery. I had no misery antibodies, no reserves. All of this led me to the conclusion that I must change my life. And to do that, I must change myself.

For a long time, I’d wanted to be a writer. I worked as an Audio Describer, describing TV programmes and films for the visually impaired. I wrote and recorded the scripts, so I was writing everyday, but I wasn’t writing my stuff. Over the years, I’d written on and off, but I’d never really sunk my teeth in. I was afraid of failure. On my thirtieth birthday, my housemate at the time told me she’d bought me some writing lessons. After that, she never mentioned it again and I forgot about it. During these dark days too, another friend of mine did an improvisation class. She kept telling me I should do it, that I would love it, and she even put my name on the waiting list. I kept claiming I would do it when I could, but I was scared, and I never had any real intention of doing so.

About this time last year, I was suffering a particularly awful hangover. The kind that not only makes your gums stick to your teeth and your head pound, but also sends you into a spiralling into existential crisis. What is the meaning of all of this? Surely, there is more than just gin. At school I’d acted, and I wrote and performed sketches with a friend. I’d missed being on stage for twelve long years. But I’d told myself I wasn’t supposed to be a performer because if I were, I wouldn’t have so much fear surrounding it. But I’d missed it, I’d yearned for it like a skilful, long-lost lover. I was the wang at a comedy night sitting in the audience not laughing thinking ‘I could do this’. But I never got off my tubby arse and tried. It’s much easier to sit in the audience and be a critic than it is to stand up on the stage and be judged. So, on that day, I signed up for the improv class, desperate for something, anything else.

The week I was due to start my improv class, in January this year, I got a call from the housemate (who I no longer lived with). She told me that the writing class she’d bought me started that week too. I was so anxious, I couldn’t look at a sandwich without getting severe indigestion. If writing class was as scary as jumping off a cliff into the sea far below, then improv was like doing it after you’d spotted a dorsal fin poking out of the water. Going to my first improv class I repeated this mantra in my head: One day, Alice, you will have to face death alone, how are you going to do that if you can’t face an improv class. A friend also gave me these precious words – ‘doubt before the divine’. And so I went, doubting hard, and desperately hoping for the divine.

I have so much gratitude for those two friends who signed me up for writing and improv. It was exactly the right amount of endorsement and kick-up-the-ass I needed. Those two things changed my life for the better in more ways than I can ever tell you. Improv was the perfect way for me to get back into performing, because as terrifying as it is not knowing what’s going to happen, you’re never alone on stage. The basic building block of improve is saying “yes, AND”. Sometimes you think the idea you go out with doesn’t have any legs. But something happens – maybe your scene partner takes it to a place you never would’ve imagined, maybe just through the yes, AND principle, you do. Sometimes magic happens. Sometimes you leap off the cliff, grow wings, and fly. Sometimes, it’s not so great. And so you learn to fail, and be okay with it, because the world doesn’t stop turning after a shit scene, and everybody doesn’t hate you, and actually everything is pretty much the same as before you did the shit scene. It helped me so much with writing because it gave me the sweet freedom to just try something without knowing where it was going, without knowing whether it would fly or be eaten by a shark, and feeling kinda okay with that.

I did the whole novel writing course. I read out my stuff at the open mic night at the end. I might have cried and trembled at work before I did it, but a colleague persuaded me to go. What I read got a good reception, but what brought me the most pride was that I had done it. I had been brave, and said yes. I did three levels of the improv class. At the end we had a class show. That day, I wept. I told myself that it was easier for other people because they had partners to tell them everything would be fine. The real reason I was terrified is because I thought I wasn’t good enough. I went to a school that was obsessed with academic achievement, getting a B grade was a failure, and saying the wrong answer was an embarrassment. This is so contrary to the creative process, where you must fail, and the most important thing is to keep going, allow yourself to play, find your voice, and hopefully, eventually, hit upon something that works. Before I left the house for my first show, I vomited prolifically. Twelve years of fear and self-reprisal shot up from my guts and into the toilet bowl. I went to my show with a toothbrush in my pocket.

I did the show with my team. It wasn’t flawless, but people laughed. That feeling of being on stage and people laughing at something I said was incredible. When I came off stage, I felt amazing. The fear had dissipated because I’d confronted it. That’s the thing about fear. If you ignore it for twelve years, it still lingers. It won’t go away until you look it in the eye and do battle with it. If I could pass on two pieces of advice to my younger self it would be these two things:

1) Life is like a sandwich, you get out of it what you put into it. So stuff it full of everything you love.

2) You might think that one day you’ll feel ready to confront your fear. You won’t. You just have to do it.

Now I feel like I have some misery antibodies. I have reserves. The thing with your own creative pursuits is that they don’t rely on other people, or circumstance to some extent. Whatever life throws at me, I have my writing and my improv. Nobody can stop it, nobody can take it away. It’s all mine.

I am really grateful to all the people who have supported me in my new ventures this year, the new friends and the old. I’ve done so many things I never dreamed I’d do before: I’ve gone to a party alone, I’ve started a blog, I’m trying a new career, I’ve read my work out loud, I’ve pitched my novel to an agent,  and I’ve stood on the stage and performed. As it turns out, the stage is just another place to stand. So be brave people, say “yes, AND”!

If anyone is interested in trying either of the courses that changed my life, I did two different courses with Anne Aylor who is a wonderful writing teacher, just click on the link. And I did my improv classes with Monkey Toast UK, run by David Shore and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Japanese Sex Art

Recommended Sanderwich: Katsu Sando – a Japanese pork cutlet sandwich. Here is a link if you want to make one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTkyOjRUy6c

 

At the moment, I’m a bit like a public schoolboy who constantly makes crude jokes about fucking, when really all of his great sexual endeavours so far have ended up on a digestive¹. What I mean is, I’m a bit obsessed with sex at the moment, because, you know, I’m not having any. The results of this are as follows: in the past two weeks alone I have been to two Japanese Sex Art exhibitions, and I’ve been to see Blue is the Warmest Colour at the flicks². I may well be a sex-pervert, but by god, I’m a classy one.

            I went to the first Japanese Sex Art Exhibition by accident. I was in Cambridge and I had some time to kill. I’d heard that the FitzwilliamMuseum was worth a gander, so I went to check it out³.The museum is packed with a plethora of objects of interest, including paintings, furniture, crockery, pottery, armour, manuscripts and coins. I wandered around the rooms of paintings, and after finding the French Expressionist room (round which I spoke to myself in a French accent because I know how to have a good time), I started to leaf through the booklet they’d given me when I came in. One page advertised ‘The Night of Longing: Love and desire in Japanese prints’. Now this is an exhibition I can get behind⁴, I thought. The booklet told me that the exhibition was on in the Shiba Gallery, corresponding to room number 14 on my floor plan. But, try as I might I couldn’t find it; the Shiba Gallery was as elusive as the clitoris⁵. In the end I had to ask a lady where the (dramatic pause) Shiba Gallery was and as it turned out, you had to access it via another floor⁶. By the time I finally reached the room, which was modestly covered so one couldn’t see inside, I was absolutely gagging for it⁷.

            There are two kinds of Japanese Sex Art: the kind that turns you on, and the kind that doesn’t. No, there really are two types. There is abuna-e, pictures that are risqué or erotic, and then there are shunga or ‘spring pictures’, which are your more full on porny kind of picture. In the small room at the Fitzwilliam, there were more of the former, and also some scenery pictures of the floating world. The floating world is a term that describes the culture of the state-sanctioned and licensed red-light district in some Japanese cities during the Edo period (1600-1867), where there were Geisha and courtesans in brothels, and there were tea-houses, and theatres. The woodblock prints are very beautiful things, designed by great artists and cut by skilled carvers. The floating world is very theatrical, with a touch of the illicit, so the prints are really thrilling to behold. In the erotic pictures the figures, especially the ladies are dressed in sumptuous fabrics that are billowing open here and there. They are very sensual. There were a few of the more hardcore shunga, and I left a very satisfied customer⁸.

            It wasn’t until later that day when I was chatting to my Step-mum, that I found out that there was a whole other exhibition of Japanese Sex Art at the BritishMuseum. About a week later, curious to see what a bigger one would be like⁹, I went. It was extensive, even including some Chinese Sex Art. There were many more explicit pictures in this one, both woodblock prints and some hand-painted on scrolls. In the pictures, the gentials, both male and female, are often exaggerated and show everything including full penetration. In most instances, both the men and women are shown as experiencing pleasure. The fabrics and flora are depicted in intricate detail and often with amazing colours, and in contrast the bodies, particularly the female bodies, as they are the palest are notable for their absence of colour. The female bodies are often drawn with sweeping, curvaceous outlines, the only detailing appearing on their faces and vaginas. Many of them were made by famous artists, because during this period sex pictures were not seen as taboo. Sex was seen as a normal, natural part of life. These pictures were aids for arousal as well as art – there was no art/porn distinction. As well as this, many of them were comedic, and have stories and captions. Later on, shunga became more controversial with the influence of Western ideas as sex for pleasure as shameful or sinful¹⁰.

            I will now give you some brief descriptions of the funniest/weirdest shunga I saw at the BritishMuseum:

1) A picture of Buddha as a massive cock.

2) A series of pictures on a scroll of a shaven-headed nun having sex with a priest. As I ‘read’ it left to right first time, it went – nun and priest do it, nun and priest do it whilst he is half in a sack, nun and priest still kinda doing it with priest now fully enveloped by sack. I don’t know how much more sense it makes reading it the right way round.  

3) A man shrunk to the size of a tiny man who is farting in disapproval on an old man trying to have sex with a much younger woman.

4) A man trying to go down on a woman as she says “That’s dirty” and he says “What are you talking about?! That’s where you’re born from!”. Well said, sir.

5) A picture of a giant octopus going down on a woman, its giant tentacles caressing her. Another octopus is kissing her. It’s seriously weird, but I have to admit, I find it quite erotic.

            I highly recommend both exhibitions. The images of sex are tender, striking, disturbing, comical and extremely beautiful. As somebody who sometimes worries that she may never do it again in her life, who looks into a bleak future bereft of the intimacies and pleasures of banging hard, it reminded me that sex is not something to feel ashamed of or fraught about, that though it may well be ridiculous, it is a natural joy, whether it’s a moment of lust or in a long-lasting, loving relationship. But most of all, it taught me that I should definitely go to an aquarium on my next outing¹¹.

 

Sex Joke Count

1. Soggy biscuit joke.

2. Yes, that was a wank joke.

3. Check it out, like in a sexy way.

4. Get behind, and do it with, doggy style!

5. Not that elusive at all.

6. This is actually not a joke about some weird sex position or anything.

7. Straightforward sex joke.

8. Orgasm joke.

9. Knob gag.

10. Because it is. It’s totally disgusting.

11. Japanese Sex Art octopus cunnilingus joke.

 

Speed-Dating: The Dangers

 

Recommended Sanderwich: I’m afraid this week you’re going to need something very comforting. Get out your old Breville, it’s time to make a cheese toastie. I like mine with tomatoes and lots of black pepper. I dip it in mayonnaise for extra fat. But go nuts, ham, beans, whatever you like. Nothing fancy, mind.

 

My name is Alice, and I’m really bad at dating. I’m a romantic disaster. I’m an amour-on. I’m single and have been for quite a while. Recently, I tried speed-dating. I’m sure this seems like a vaguely reasonable thing to do for somebody who’s looking for love. Or for somebody who’s at least looking for some physical human contact (hold me). Signing up for speed-dating is a bit less reasonable if you’re me, and I’ll tell you for why. I am notorious amongst my friends for making a terrible first impression. People tend to think I’m grumpy, miserable or stand-offish. I have trouty lips that naturally turn down at the corners. I can’t help it, that’s just my face. Also, I am grumpy and miserable, but there’s so much more to me than that.

            I think I come across as grumpy or mean because I’m shy. When I was a kid, I wouldn’t even go into a shop and ask for a can of coke. My shyness leads me to behave in inappropriate ways in social situations. For example, I have been known to not take my coat off for an entire party. The other week I went for a coffee with someone I don’t know very well at all. I felt a bit shy about the whole thing, so I over compensated by making a joke about the person being selfish. In retrospect, that is not something you should really say, even as a joke, to somebody you don’t know very well. I used to work in a cinema with one of my current housemates. The first time we met on shift, I thought we got on really well, and that we’d had a great laugh. I thought “I’m doing really well! I’ve made a friend!”. He’s since told me that he went home and cried that evening because I was so scary. What a total numpty I am.

            Another reason that speed-dating is a really bad idea for me is because I almost never fancy somebody immediately. It’s like there’s a faulty connection between my bits and my brain. The signals take a really long time to travel up. The first clue that I fancy someone is usually when I’ unwarrantedly mean to them. Then I have a thought process that goes like this:

Me:  Why are you being so mean to X, Alice?

Me: Oh, no, I think I have the hots for X.

Like a tiny, stupid child in a playground pulling your hair. That’s me, if I’ve got the hots for you. I’m very awkward about flirting. I like the jokes part, but I’m not good at moving it beyond that. The whole thing makes me feel like a massive creep.

            Brazenly ignoring all of these robust reasons not to do it, I signed myself up for speed-dating. This time the voice in my head said “It’ll be fun! You’ll meet new people!”. If only I’d shot my brains out there and then.

            The speed-dating event was in a small, hot room. There were at least thirty people there. The way it works is – half of the daters sit in a fixed position, and the other half travel round, like raw tuna on a conveyor belt. I’d just had a kidney infection, so I had to do it completely stone-cold sober. You get around 3 minutes to shout at the person sitting opposite you (it was very noisy), then a whistle is blown, and you traipse off the pitch defeated and broken. Oh no, sorry, then you do it about another 20 times.

            When I get nervous, my hands shake, so I had to sit on them to hide this fact. I was sitting right next to the toilet and when every single one of my dates sat down, they would say “ooooh, I really need the loo”. I had to stop myself from telling them to just fucking go, and instead had to sit there knowing they were bracing for the whole three minutes, and not concentrating on my hilarious jokes. I asked some of them to bear in mind the toilet thing when marking me, like a handicap.

            I pushed through, and by the end of the evening, though I was relieved it was over, I thought it’d gone pretty well. I thought I’d been fairly charming, and I’d worn a pretty frock too. I was proud of myself. I went home wearing a smile.

            The next day when I checked online to see if anyone had ticked me for dating, I found that nobody had. Not. One. Person. As the deep depression set in, I had the following series of thoughts:

1)      If I had not washed all week I wouldn’t have got any fewer ticks.

2)      If I had had gone dressed in a onesie I wouldn’t have got any fewer ticks.

3)      If I had made racist comments all evening I wouldn’t have got any fewer ticks.

4)      If I had gone in a Disney princess onesie, filthy and stinking, my hair matted, and declared my allegiance to the BNP, I wouldn’t have got any fewer ticks.

One person ticked that they’d like to be friends with me. They must’ve been desperate. 

After Reading This, You’ll Never Go In The Water Again!

Recommended Sanderwich: Please read this post with a tuna melt, made with dolphin friendly tuna, because we all respect the sea and the creatures that live in her. I like mine with a bit of finely chopped red onion for extra stink.

I love shark films. I love them all, but I particularly love bad shark films. The original Jaws released in 1975 and directed by Steven Spielberg is a good, tense horror movie. Thus, is way down on my list of preferred shark movies. On the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, Jaws has an extremely high 98% rating, whilst Jaws 4 as an extremely rare 0%, drawing a good line from best to worst films through a single franchise. Maybe one of the reasons I love shark films is because they are cathartic in the way that the Final Destination franchise is – the viewer gets to laugh at death, diminishing the ever looming grim reaper to a laughable fool. Also, sharks are not a real threat in our lives, not something we have to worry about on a daily basis. Sharks are killed by people thirteen million times more often than people are killed by sharks. So just remember, they’re much more scared of you than you are of them.

My personal favourites are Jaws 4: The Revenge and Deep Blue Sea. These films fall into a category I’ve termed ‘brainy sharks’. In Deep Blue Sea there is some plot explanation for why the sharks have gotten smart. In Deep Blue Sea mad scientist Dr Susan McAlester is genetically engineering those bad boys to be brainier because she’s harvesting their shark brains to cure Alzheimer’s. They get so brainy, they hatch an escape plan, systematically attacking the electric fences, and using one of their victim’s bodies as a battering ram to smash a window. Cheeky monsters! The plot of Jaws 4 is a little bit more far-fetched. So, the exact same shark that eats Sheriff Brody and Ellen Brody’s son Sean in New England follows Ellen to Barbados to open up a can of bite-ass on her and her other son. This shark has a vendetta against the Brody family. Sheriff Brody is dead at this point in the franchise. And obviously it’s a different shark from the first three films because those sharks are ALL DEAD. I like to imagine that this shark is the progeny of the original Jaws shark, hell bent on avenging his father, in the style of a Greek tragedy or the Mafia. Ellen’s other son, Michael, is a marine biologist, so conveniently, he can’t just not go in the water, like you or I wouldn’t if a great white happened to take a disliking to us. Also, there’s a scene where they go banana boating, and Michael Caine is in it. I can’t sell this film to you any more. “You were only suppose to blow the bloody fins off”! Or, if you want a real Michael Caine quotation on the subject:

“I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific”

To get the utmost enjoyment from a shark film, you must watch it on the side of the shark. It is easiest to do this if the characters in the film are really annoying. If you want an easy route into getting into this way of thinking whilst watching a shark film, watch Open Water, a film about a couple who get left behind in the sea after a scuba diving trip. By the end of that film any sane viewer is positively willing those sharks to get pretty bite-y on that annoying couple. Die already!

In most shark films, sharks are portrayed as dead-eyed psychopaths, nature’s killing machines, and there’s absolutely no reasoning with them (not even the brainy ones). I, however, have developed another perspective through which to view shark films. To understand this perspective, we must yet again hark back to Classical Philosophy. In the Pheado, Plato talks about his belief in reincarnation, or metempyschosis, as the Greeks would have it. This is the theory that after death your eternal soul is reborn in another living thing. Plato reckons that it depends how well you did in this life, as to what you will come back as in the next life. If you’re a bad man you can be reborn as a woman [sic], a wolf, or maybe a shark…? Plato gets a bit murky on how you can be a good wolf or shark. I don’t think he can extend morality to the animal kingdom. Therefore, being a ‘good’ shark can only relate to how sharkey you are, or how many shark goals you achieve. To partake in the form of shark, to be a good shark, you must have to be pretty bite-y. And if you’re a good shark, are you a human in the next life? I could have been a great white last time. I am shark, hear me roar. (For a roaring shark watch Jaws 3, the one with the CGI shark). This way of viewing a shark film helps us to be on the shark’s side. The shark is just trying to be a good shark, so he can come back next time and eat sandwiches instead of surfers.

Now there are purposely bad shark films. The Asylum is the film studio and distributor responsible for Sharknado. The Asylum intentionally make low-budget, tacky, B-movies in the hope that they will become cult hits. They are also the people responsible for the film Titanic 2, FYI. I enjoyed Sharknado as much as the next guy, but I can’t help but feel it was a bit of a one-trick pony. A film made to be bad is never as satisfying as one that’s unintentionally terrible. It’s like a bumbling, clumsy friend, versus an outright douche-bag. I can only the assume the sequel will be Nazisharknado, where Nazis ride sharks that are spewed out of a giant spurt of swirling water. Tagline: ‘You’ll Never Go In The Cinema Again’.

TETRIS

Recommended Sanderwich: Read this post with a Club Sanderwich on white bread, with everything thinly sliced. Cut into at least four tessellating triangles.

 

A week ago I downloaded the Tetris app. As a kid, it was one of the few computer games I enjoyed, and played endlessly. Since I downloaded it, I’ve been playing it at every opportunity I get: in the canteen during my lunch-break, on tubes and trains to and from work, and in bed before I go to sleep at night. At work, I’ve ignored colleagues. On the tube, I’ve very nearly missed my stop on several occasions. Late at night when I get home, I change into my pyjamas, slip under the duvet in my cold, lonely bed. Already exhausted from work/football/rehearsals, I get out my phone and start playing. A game can take up to fifty minutes. When I finally put down my phone and close my eyes, I see shapes. In good dreams, they all fit together, but nightmares are interminable hours where nothing will tessellate.

 

I’ve started to see those shapes, or tetrominos, to call them by their official term, even during the day. Conversing with someone, I’ll realise that I’ve stopped listening to what they’re saying, and all I can see is the rotating shapes. I can feel them moving in space, slotting them in just in time. I’ve realised I’m playing it my mindbrain while I’m doing my work as well. Tetris is eternal.

 

In real life, I want to make objects and people and everything tessellate neatly. This is so common, it’s known as the ‘Tetris Effect’ or ‘Tetris Syndrome’. This describes a syndrome in which a certain activity begins to pattern a person’s thoughts, mental images, and dreams because of the amount of time and level of attention lavished on it. Tetris has also been described as a pharmatronic – an electronic drug. It has been shown to lessen the effect of traumatic memories, so if ever find yourself in a hurricane, or a car crash, get out your gameboy. Tetris is so addictive, the inventor of the game, Alexey Pajitnov was delayed in finishing the prototype because he was too busy playing it. I think I’ve made my point.

 

 

While Tetris might have a very catchy theme tune, it’s an incredibly simple game, and yet it has consumed me, eyes, fingers, and soul. I am Tetris! I am Tetris! My theory is that Tetris taps into a deep-seated human desire, instinct even. This is the desire for order, control, and for things to fit just-so.

 

I’m a naturally untidy person, my room is often messy (read: always). When I’m in my room, I don’t enjoy the mess, it infuriates me. I wish it were beautifully ordered, I wish I had secret storage compartments, a colour co-ordinated bookshelf, and a sense of minimalism. Instead, I have knickers on the floor. It’s not that I don’t want for things to be ordered, it’s that I’ve failed to put in place a good and reliable system for order. Also, I bloody hate tidying.

 

I love to build a sandwich. There are many reasons for this, and one of them is because I feel like an architect, making component parts fit together, tessellating neatly into a delicious temple. It’s so delightfully convenient. It’s not just physical spaces we want to find order in. When we tell a story, we impose an order on events and characters. Don’t we just love it when all the strands are neatly tied together, and somehow at the end we find ourselves at the beginning again. And what are themes, if not reoccurring shapes throughout a narrative, a pattern, which pleases our brain, and helps it to process the story.  

 

There is a human desire to want people to ‘fit’ as well – we want them to ‘fit in’ or be ‘the right fit’, whether it’s in the workplace or in a social group. When we look for love, we want somebody who fits with us, somebody who has the same interests and habits. Or at least somebody whose neuroses are conveniently the inverse of our own: “I’m shy, but he’s very outgoing”, “She’s always upbeat, which balances out my eternal pessimism”, “I’m an angry, control freak, but it’s ok, because my wife is very easy going and does everything the way I want” etc. etc. In Plato’s Symposium Aristophanes tells a story in which every human is one half of what was once an original whole. I imagine this is a story based on taking the phrase ‘my other half’ very literally. Yes, it was an Ancient Greek phrase. Anyway, there were three kinds of whole human: your basic hetero couple man/woman, then the lesbians and gays, woman/woman and man/man. In the story, I believe Aristophanes claims they’re joined back to back, forming a circle, and they roll around. With such a mighty fine design, they were too much for the gods:

‘Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great’.

So instead of destroying them, the gods split them in half. And for the rest of time humans were doomed to roam the earth in search of finding their other half. And lo, internet dating was born.

 

Sex is the ultimate tessellation. I’m going to get a little raunchy here, but I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that some parts seem to be made to fit into other parts. The next time I’m having sex in my shambolic room, I will let my orgasmic cry ring loud: “TESSELLATION!!!”. It can’t be any more embarrassing than the time I shouted out the answer to a question on 15 to 1 during coitus.