back up blog

The metre-and-a-half wide frame has hung empty above my bed since July. I paid a man to hang it. I'd harboured, to begin with, reservations about how my feminism and my employment of somebody else to execute the job dovetailed awkwardly, but after I hit myself in the face with a hammer one night, not understanding the difference between a nail at 45 degrees into a diving wall and a drill with a spiral anchor into a brick wall, I decided the most feminist act would be, in fact, to use my hard-earned feminist money to feministly delegate somebody better qualified to help me out - who yes, just so happened to be a man. I have never looked back.  The room needed something above the bed - that's why I got the frame and had it hung - but I couldn't rush to fill it. It needed to be right. I didn't want a generic Ikea print: they can satisfy the dead area behind the door in the living room because that is a neutral space. Bedrooms - bedrooms must be ...

I watch them at the bar together, her hand on his knee and his foot between hers and the look that I have worn so very many times that the truth of it shocks me, that another woman owns it too – the look that says, “Please consume me.”

The thing is, is that she is so flawed. And that is… appealing, to me. I’m talking about Mickey, in the Netflix show LOVE – a series I finished last night. I started to write a Tweet about it, to talk out all the wild, enthusiastic, confused thoughts I had on watching the final credits roll, but knew it would become twelve Tweets. Then I thought, yeah but Laura, why do you care so much? So I figured I’d do what I do: blog it out. My neurons are firing at a million miles per hour over this show. The premise is insanely simple: over ten episodes, two imperfect, normal characters meet in a weird, totally plausible way, struggle to get together in a straightforward manner, do a bit of back and forth, and then come clean about being into each other. We’re left wondering what will happen next, if anything at all. It is messy and complicated and exactly like real life. I’m working on a couple of scripts myself. I’m so terribly, terribly bored of writing about me and ~my feelings~, but I am ...

He kissed my neck before he kissed anywhere else. Loitered – lingered – close, beside my ear, so that I could feel his breath warm my ear against January cold on the meander home. That takes confidence, lingering. Teasing. This was before I learned that the ones who get a bit tongue-tied, the ones who are a bit unsure, are actually the ones with the biggest hearts. The kindest thoughts. The most honourable intentions. But on this afternoon at half past six, I hadn’t learned that yet. I kissed him back, the part-time rapper. We’d sat opposite each other for five hours, talking over red wine and pale ale from the bottle, and the Saturday afternoon passed. I’d almost cancelled. I almost cancel every date I eventually go on. Last week I had a horrendous break out across my chin, angry red boils in competition with each other for attention, PMS at its ugliest, and it made me want to cancel the 4 p.m. coffee with the twinkly-eyed actor. But I didn’t. It felt important not to. It felt importa...

“You’re being a snob!” she exclaimed to me - genuinely flummoxed, I suddenly understood. “You’re really telling me that any man without a university degree isn’t in the running to date you? That’s horrible.” I hadn’t meant it horribly, but then maybe that makes it worse. I didn’t give my long list of criteria a second thought, because some stuff is just obvious, isn’t it? Education: preferably an M.A. Career prospects: makes more money than me. Relationship with mother: calls every Sunday. Without realising it my list also included the ability to dress well without supervision, lives preferably alone, capable of sitting through a four-course meal, would get on with my cousin Paul at a family wedding, speaks a second language if not two, understands wine, will give me the password to his Netflix account. Is it any wonder my one eludes me when THE MAN WHO FITS THAT LIST DOES NOT EXIST. The person who fits that list does not exist. I DO NOT FIT THAT LIST. My friend, the one who was takin...

“I’ll pray for you.” The words tumbled from my mouth before I could think about what they meant. He said: “You pray?” It was as much of a shock to me as it was to him. “Sure,” I said, out loud.  Wait. You do ? I said, in my mind. He sighed, worry etched into his brow, which was understandable, given his circumstance. Circumstance that isn’t mine to talk about, but understandable all the same. “I don’t know if I could do that,” he said. “It feels wrong. I can’t go to him now, because I need something. I can’t introduce myself for a favour.”   Opia: the ambiguous intensity of looking somebody in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable. I didn’t know it was true until after, but I meant it as much as I’ve ever meant anything. I’d been waiting quite some time, I realised, to have the chance to say, uninterrupted and heartfelt and full of every hurt and pain and hope the years have gifted me and punished me with and made of me: Oh boy, don’t over think it. Y...

I love you, he’d written to me, a few days before. And I will see you soon. I promise you. I wondered if she was lay in his lap as he typed to me, or if maybe she was in the bathroom. Perhaps she had a class to go to, or had already passed through town. I hadn’t been surprised to hear via a friend from yoga school that she’d seen him around, with a blonde girl who clung to his arm through the café he’d taken me to. “I don’t think they’re just friends,” she said. “Well no, I’d imagine not,” I replied. You see: I’m no different. I was distracting myself too. We weren’t together . We were not together. I’d stopped leaping every time my phone beeped or email pinged or screen lit up. I knew it wasn’t him. It wasn’t my first rodeo – I’ve played this league before. Long distance love never interested me. Promises did not interest me. Words, as delicious as they are when they tumbled freely in his lilted accent, did not interest me. And yet, like I said, I needed a distraction as well. * With ...