Mounting Mr Darcy

Not the title of a spoof Mills & Boon novel; this is what we got up to on Saturday night at a highly successful 'bachelorette' party. See, we had an outfit called Miss Behaviour come and show us how to pole dance. Yes! Fun! Oh, and you have to name the pole, so we decided it had to be called Mr Darcy. Despite the plethora of young hotties currently on the big screen, this just goes to show what women want, not so? Darcy is the original stud muffin. Also speaks of the enduring genius of Jane Austen, for creating same.

Right, now for some trivia.
Fact #1: Boys can in fact pole dance, if they have a mind to. Though they must participate in all moves and must take a stage name for the evening (I was little-known male Spice Girl member Skanky Spice).
Fact #2: It's not remotely sexy when boys do this, not even slightly, because:
Fact #3: Unless you're some wiry yoga instructor, if you are a boy you will be *nowhere near* as bendy as a girl. Not even if that girl is a couch potato. And being a pole dancer requires being bendy, as our lithe instructors in hot pants showed us.
Fact #4: Britney makes for, oddly, bad pole-dancing music. Justin Timberlake is much easier to dance to.

Fie, fie on L.H. for having a cellphone with her wot did take video clips. My stiff cavorting around Mr Darcy has probably been spread around the world by this stage.

Outed!

So there I am, waiting for my turn at the till at Dischem*. I am holding a large tub of USN's Diet Fuel (a low-calorie protein shake thingie that really is quite delicious in chocolate mint flavour) that bears a picture of a six-packed torso and I am wearing designer jeans, GAP sandals a light pink golf-shirt.

I am obviously a HOMOSEXUAL ON THE MAKE.

In front of me is a straight old Jewish gent** who is waiting for the tellar to ring up his purchases. Behind me is an older straight Jewish gent who has a fidgety energy, and, I find out, a loud voice. Let's call them SOJGI and SOJGII. Please note there are lots of free tellars around us.

SOJGII: Are you guys moving, hey?
Me [turning round]: Yes, we are.
SOJGI: [starts taking out credit card to pay for purchases, sees my tub of Diet Fuel] Does that stuff work, hey?
Me: Yes, it actually does.
SOJGI: [pauses momentarily in his extraction of credit card from wallet] Like, how much do you have to take, hmm?
Me: Um, you just make yourself a milkshake after you've been to the gym.
SOJGII: [loudly] HEY! Are you guys moving, hey?
SOJGI: [still to me, finally handing his card to the tellar] So, like, have you lost weight with this stuff?
Me: Ja, a bit. But you've got to go exercise as well-
SOJGII: [really surprisingly loudly for a skinny old man] HEY! WHY DON'T YOU GUYS GO AND GRAB YOURSELVES A NICE COFFEE SOMEWHERE, HEY?
SOJGI: [to him] Pipe down! [back to me] Coz I was thinking I should get myself some-
SOJGII: REALLY, COZ YOU'RE INCONVENIENCING EVERYBODY ELSE IN THIS WHOLE SHOP. NOW WHY DON'T YOU BOYS GO AND HAVE CHAT AT A COFFEE SHOP SOMEWHERE WHERE THE TWO OF YOU CAN SIT AND HAVE A NICE TIME-
SOJGI: [finally signing his credit card slip] WHY DON'T YOU JUST FUCK OFF, HEY? USE ANOTHER BLADDY QUEUE WHY DON'T YOU?

And it went on a bit more until SOJGI left the shop and SOGJII got tired of shouting and went to an empty tellar. Really, you give up looking for love and random strangers think you're soliciting sex from seniors in the middle of a discount drug store.

Also: do these things only happen to me? I ask those of you who know my romantic history to cast your minds back to the 'AwwbabyIloveyoooooouuu' tale. I really should write that up. I shall. But right now I have to get back to describing some Baroque nobbing!


*Wondrous shop of plenty, and of cheapness. Want moisturiser? Try a whole aisle of cheap moisturisers, and another whole aisle of designer ones.
**Not anti-Semitic, a necessary observation if you are to imagine the accent and style of repartee that follows. You need to imagine a broad accent from Linksfield, Johannesburg. And, yes, I have enough of a gaydar to tell that these two were not FELLOW HOMOSEXUALS ON THE MAKE.

Your attention, please

The prologue to The Historical Novel is written!

A baby step, I know, but [dun-dun-duuuuun] it has begun.

Now I just have to remember to introduce characters and develop them and such, and not rush straight into the first juicy sex scene. (It's in the Baroque era. It's likely to have a lot of sex.)

Oh, and unfortunately, I am stuck on the sonata. Fugues are very, very, very difficult indeed. I suppose that's why it was generally left up to really, really smart people like Alessandro Scarlatti, JS Bach and Haendel to write them. Or in fact, anyone who actually studied composition rather than music history.

But hey, if I'd done that, you wouldn't have a Historical Novel in the pipeline, would you?

Freckly dervish

I have beautiful skin. Sure, it's taken a while to get over adolescent breakouts and such, but yes: I have the kind of skin people have written about. Pale, sometimes English Rose-y, translucent skin. Which works well if you're the very lovely Kate Winslet, or if Shakespeare is writing a sonnet about a girl but is not only dangerously impractical in such a sunny place as South Africa but is also something of a rarity even among Pomeranian boy imports such as myself. I suppose if I wore shorts and a 'muscle tee' and forgoed- forwent- for- stopped using sunblock, I too would be more tanned.

But, see, the use of sunblock is twofold. It is:
1. To prevent sun-induced ageing. Goddess, but I'm ageing fast enough as it is. And, mostly,
2. To prevent sun-induced freckling.

Yes people, put me in the sun and I freckle. Or I did. Years of careful choice of SPF moisturiser and general covering up while outside mean that I no longer have the band of freckles across my nose and under my eyes that I sported as a child, and I am much relieved. I never found it cute, and I always coveted my friends' even, olive skin that would soak up all manner of solar rays and do nothing more than look even healthier afterwards. Not me. Freckle City.

However, one teensy-tiny recent lapse of judgment, and the freckles are back in force. Not on my face, thankfully - I could never be so rash as to spend even an hour without quality moisturiser on - but on my arm. Yes, just the one that happened to be sticking out of the shade of a tree at a picnic. Wasn't a hot day*, you see, so I didn't think about sunblock. You can see where my T-shirt began and ended not by the sunburn - which has since faded - but by the freckling. Never mind being an irritation when you've spent years applying sunblock to attain even skin in this brilliantly sunny yet ozone-deficient land; is this even normal, I ask you?

Oh, and as for the dervish reference, I am reading the wonderful The Time Traveler's Wife and came across a reference to the members of a jazz trio who were playing with such abandon that they were described as 'sonic dervishes'. Wouldn't that be the most fantastic name for a band? I want to be a Sonic Dervish. You'd buy our album, I bet you would. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the Sonic Dervishes! [insert sounds of screaming fans]


*I shamefully admit to having been a science major at university, and I do, deep down, understand that it is infra-red rays wot make you feel hot. You can't sense ultra-violet at all until you're burnt and it's too late. But you think, 'Oh, I'll just for once enjoy the feeling of being outside and having warm sunshine on my skin, and it won't be for very long anyway, it's sooooo nice!' Humph.

Great singles, singleness and single-lessness

I'm really starting to lose patience with Amazon. After keeping me waiting for, oh, two months for the single Opportunity Nox - a truly catchy piece of music, though like many good pop songs the lyrics seem to make very little sense - now they tell me that this item will take a wee bit longer to deliver.

I know what will happen next. I do.

They'll be very sorry, but actually they won't be able to sell me what I asked for, because it's not available even though they have it listed on their website thus.

On the other hand, I am suddenly have endless patience for the concept of beng single. After pretty much a full decade of thinking I wanted to have a boyfriend and not much less than a full decade of searching for same - including a short but particularly exhilirating period of discovering that one can have friendly, no strings, meaningless sex (really, who knew? They don't show this kind of thing in Disney-style movies) - I have, overnight, decided that I simply don't want the hassle. I literally don't have time.

No thanks, you can keep it. I have lots - really - of amazing friends (who are mostly unfortunately quite concerned that I remain single while they are all getting married and making babies) who I love very much. And I'm writing a sonata for flute and cello, and I've promised myself I'll record my 'antique' arias soon, and I want to learn to play the violin and let's not forget that I'm pretty far down the road towards getting a new, rather well-paying job.

Oh, and I've got a novel in my head that really needs to be written.

When would I find time for romance? Well, I would find the time if it was someone complementary who is heading the same way I happen to be going. Otherwise, it'll just be a temporary distraction.

And it's an exhilirating feeling. I'm quite looking forward to the rest of my life, feeling completely cool with being a single person in a coupled world.

Semi-interesting observations

1. I can skate. Yes, finally. Not well, but well enough.
2. Fat Boy Slim can be a dangerous force on the ice. Oh yes. There I was, swooshing along from left to right, behind a lad swooshing on ahead of me, when the beat starts - and it's just too fast to swoosh to - and next thing you know, I'm flailing about. Swooshy Lad ahead of me finds himself out of tempo with the song, lands on the ice at great speed.

I do think that if you're at all inclined to use your ears in the world, rather than merely your eyes, you will find Fat Boy Slim a delight to drive to and a menace to skate to.