Thursday 1 December 2011

LIFE: Lodging


I didn’t want to be a lodger. I wanted my own soulless apartment, one where I could bring back men in suits that I’d met in cocktail bars. But life’s a bitch, you don’t always get what you want, and so instead I’m living with a middle-aged divorcee who has a tea-bag holder on the kitchen sideboard.

On the bright side, I’m paying a fraction of what I’ve ever paid in rent before. So, what do I get for my money?

The answer, the strange dichotomy of ‘my own room’ but in someone else’s (heavily stencilled) house. Mainly what I get for my money is a sense of uncertainty.  I find it difficult to define exactly what our relationship is. We’re bound by a financial transaction at the start of each month, yet our relationship amounts to more than tenant and landlord- she often gives me lifts to work, on occasion confides in me like a friend, but we both know we’d never socialise outside the confines of the house.

In some ways, we’re not all that different, penchant for Marilyn Monroe/James Dean memorabilia aside; we’re both going through a period of transition. I’m starting a new job in a new city, life as a young professional stretching ahead. She’s recently got divorced after thirty years of marriage having discovered her husband knocked up a waitress, and is facing redundancy.

Yes, okay, it’s fair to say her ‘period of transition’ is also a personal catastrophe, and even people who know me very well and dare to love me would readily admit I am not the person you want around in the middle of a catastrophe. When something bad is going down, I’m always the person entrusted with ‘minding the bags.’ In a way I can understand it, I’ve never lost a bag to date, except that time I was in Cineworld and two boys came over and I was so flattered that they were chatting me up I failed to notice one of them had swiped my mate’s Hooch drawstring. Dark days, but valuable lessons learnt.

So having me pottering around is not what this woman needs right now; she doesn’t need the stress of coming home every evening and finding me there ironing my shirt on the dining table having been beaten YET AGAIN by the ironing board’s opening mechanism. She doesn’t need me spilling Ribena on her stair runner and hurriedly trying to mop it up with a soaked bath towel and hand moisturiser. She doesn’t need me yanking open the front door THAT ALWAYS STICKS and then finding the letterbox in my hand.

But I can be a source of comfort as well as irritation. She was embroiled in a love triangle involving, and this is absolutely not a lie, ‘Kev and Trev’, a situation anyone would recognise hangs on a proverbial knife edge, one slip of the tongue and all goes up in smoke. In this instance I was helpful: I listened and I backed Kev, as any sensible person would. I saved her a lifetime of Gok Wan’s Fashion Roadshow by demystifying his expertise: put simply, add a waist belt.

So I have my uses, but ultimately it isn’t ideal for either of us. I’m too neurotic to handle a lodging situation; every night I’m torn between watching what I really want to watch in my bedroom, or joining her downstairs and sitting through another episode of Masterchef: The Professionals. I’m incapable of ending a conversation or leaving the room without the sign-off, ‘would you like a warm drink?’ Then I can be wildly inconsiderate in other ways, like leaving the cardboard end of the loo roll on the holder.

Am I alone in finding the lodger/lodgee relationship a stressful dance between two slightly disorientated partners?
AW

Tuesday 30 August 2011

ART: Graffiti for Girls

I think I surprised our cute work-experience boy by showing proper interest in his latest bit of street-art. Men always seemed surprised when I say I'm into graffiti, as though I’ve confessed a love for amateur porn, or membership to the dead-hand-gang; apparently the graff-world is for men only. We might catch street-art in the “womanisphere” on rare occasions-French Vogue's sick 2009 graff photo-shoot for example- but rarely do I expect to hear about female fans or ‘writers’. Why does graffiti seemingly come with a 'not for girls' tag-line?
French Vogue - Mario Sorrenti - 2009
Is graff-‘writing’ some sort of male-only ritual? The dude’s spray-can being a kind of phallic symbol, with his finished work - part territorial piss-marking, part artistic spunk – being such a god damn manly end-product that us girlies wont ‘get it’ without bulking up our inner-male and investing in some huge, metallic, strap-on substitute..?
Recently I worked with Australian graffiti artist Anthony Lister. His ‘fanboy’ prints and latest book – littered with photos of him and his mates with their balls poking out etc. – showed how typically ‘laddy’ graff can be. But away from the testosterone-filled feuds, macho bragging and teenage high-jinx, I reckon street art has a different, feminine edge.
Anthony Lister - Finishing off some graff.
I’ve just got into the American (female) street-artist Swoon. Her work is totally amazing – and she makes me re-consider graffiti’s message. Swoon doesn’t need to accessorise-up a Balaklava, or keep a shank in her knickers. She works in broad daylight, often alongside her fans, pasting whimsical paper creations onto uninhabited buildings; even non-believers struggle to define it as vandalism. Rather than a spray-paint flex of the artist’s muscles, her works are softer, delicate, word-shy and often striking in their silence.
Swoon - NY
That’s not to say her art lacks meaning or drive - after all, isn’t that what graff is all about? For example, Swoon’s latest creations saw her working in association with the Konbit Shelter to help rebuild Haiti  in a way which ‘acknowledge[d] the importance of soulfulness and beauty in people’s daily lives.’ The girl has a message just like any other graff-writer, but perhaps it’s in a different language to what we expect?
Swoon - Konbit screen print

Of course I don’t want to say that hard graffiti is purely the domain of men, or that sensitive street-art is “women’s stuff”. In fact, when Lister showed me through the pages of his book – the one I’d thought was just men and cocks – he pointed to the beautiful graff-work he’d done to transform his family home. He too appreciated a side to graffiti that was beautiful, domestic even.

And just glancing at my Terry Lynn Kingstonlogic album reminds me that women too can look fierce with a spray can.
Terry Lynn
I hope women continue to get involved in street-art, above-and-beyond buying some Vivienne Westwood graff-print threads. Female graffiti-artists such as Swoon may have been the quieter voice of the streets, but they are no less striking.
And hopefully, one day, my love of graffiti won’t have to be my dirty little secret. 


GC

Friday 19 August 2011

DATING: Textual Intercourse


I feel like some sort of Sex and the City/ Absolutely Fabulous hybrid right now.  Sat at my desk (I work in PR), surrounded by rose quartz (brings love apparently – I have a very handy spirit guide one desk down from me), willing my phone to go.  I hate to be a cliché, and I hate waiting for men, but here I am indulging in “The Game”. It p***es me off for a number of reasons. Firstly I can’t stand the artifice of being all nonchalant when it comes to flirting; why do we have to spend so much of it pretending like we don’t find the object of attraction, attractive? Secondly, it’s a dull waste of my time to be willing my phone to go off – a text is rarely that thrilling and I’d told the guy to ring me if he was interested – instead he’s persisted in the random odd message.

I pulled said guy in the Haunt Saturday night. After years of finding him insanely sexually attractive from afar, it took me 3 of their £3 G&T’s and a couple of seconds to subtley go over to him and whisper (/shout):  ‘I find you really attractive!’. After declining a bit of ‘smirting’ with him outside (I don’t smoke) and pulling off a bit of sexy dancing – my life long obsession with music videos has taught me well, ask my friends – I pulled the guy all night.

Well all night until he decided to dramatically leave, telling me to take his number. Another thing I hate, because it usually leads to the above problems…
I gave in because he has a pretty face and reckoned I’d give him a call later that week. Then on the drunken taxi ride home, mid Southern Fried Chicken wing, he text my mate for my number. I then got some kind of badly disguised booty call, followed by two (hardly verbose) texts, and a Facebook add (gah). I’d kind of be excited, except that he clearly did it all in some kind of drunken furore. When I finally replied to his late night (early morning?) messages – no reply, nada, for 3 whole days, so I left it. Now, last night he’s text me to ask if I’m out at the weekend – ok, unoriginal, but fine. On the advice of my desk-next-door-neighbour I text back WITH a question; again no reply.   

It’s not a big deal by any means; it’s just frustrating because if he’s decided now, in the cold light of sobriety that he doesn’t fancy me, then I just don’t need the random (non)messages. It’s not like he’s rejected my winning personality or blinding intelligence after one night pulling.  But if he does fancy me (god I sound like a teenage girl) – why the games? I’ve never got the reluctance to tell some one you think they’re hot. Sexual attraction is good right? Requited, or un-requited. Plus by doing so I PROMISE I won’t run out to plan a wedding, or even hope that we fall in love etc etc. Again, I barely know you – I just think you’re VERY fit. I might book in for my next Brazillian, fuck it – if I’m really keen I might invest in some underwear – but its really not going to unhinge my female brain. Cryptic texting does though. And it kinda makes me lose interest…

So why this textual intercourse? Its about as thrilling as foreplay without the tongues: answers on the back of a postcard please.

Or you could just wait a couple of days, till you’ve had a drink, and send me a half-assed text. Either is fine.


GC