Fabulous Things with Eggs

A few years ago, like maybe new year’s day 2005 I was having breakfast with Mr_Anu after a big NYE all over Sydney, when we decided we would go to Bill’s on Crown Street as it was right near my house.  For some reason I was driving and I don’t think I should have been as I was driving a large Volvo at the time with a tow bar and every time I tried to park I ended up hitting the car behind and bending it’s number plate with my tow bar.  I did this to 3 separate Audi’s so I guess my Volvo had a thing in for Audi’s because it just went round beating them up that day.  Anyway Mr_anu had had enough my half arsed driving attempts, spat the dummy and demanded that I pull over.  When we sat down and looked at the menu, I noticed how plain everything was.  It read like toast, eggs, jam.  That was it, nothing special at all.  I know this guy Bill Granger in on TV, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why, his menu was plain and boring.  So when the waitress came for our order, and after Mr_ANU hadn’t been able to explain this café’s popularity and fame to my satisfaction I asked the waitress “Why is Bill’s famous? What is it about the food that people love?” and she answered “He just does fabulous things with eggs” I couldn’t believe it.  “Fabulous things with eggs?” I asked “like what cook them? Boil them?”  It seemed like such a trite answer.  The girl was not particularly posh in fact she was pretty rough really with a fake cultivated accent, not that I cared I was appreciative to be served by any one on New Year’s Day.  But I couldn’t let It go, “What do you mean he does fabulous things with eggs?  What can one possibly do to a poached or boiled egg?”  “Oh it just the way he does them, it’s clean, simple food, and people just love it”. I decided I wasn’t going to get any more out of her, so I let it drop and ordered, but I was right, there is not more you can do to a poached egg then poach it, and toast is just toast, for $16, nice thanks for the privilege.

Once the Fight is Over, Then What?

I used today, Australia day to watch some TV as I am still feeling sick and I own the final season of Queer as Folk and I made myself watch the final disc because I never watch it anymore, and the final episode fascinates me. 

It’s been 5 or 6 year now since that show finish and there hasn’t been a gay dedicate program since.  Strange, there is a huge dedicate demographic that would follow gay specific programming.  In the final episode the writers had to set the tone for finishing up the TV series and what the gay movement and the gay experience means moving forward.  They chose to go down the gay oppression avenue with the bomb blast at the gay club by anti gay extremists.  A little melodramatic, but then again the show had always walked the melodramatic line sometimes, and then been brutally realistic and chillingly cool the very next scene.   The lesbians were running away to live a better life in the Utopia of Canada where gay people are valued and loved, Brian and Justin decided not to get married, as they felt it was more loving to not live compromised lives by trying to be together, they thought it was more loving to set each other free to live lives as singles, even though they loved each other enough to want to marry.  I liked that writing a lot, because it was original.  The shows final statement on being gay was “Can you feel that thumper thumper pulsing through your body, that will always continue” Not very deep or insightful, a bit weak really.  I think the future direction of the gay movement will go like this.

1.       The final hurdles of equality will be reached, marriage and adoption.

2.       Once the fight if over there will be a strange lag and people who remember having to hide who they were will feel very uneasy with the new calm, as they miss the adrenaline from always being on edge.

3.       Children who have been brought up loved as who they are, with no silly expectation to fit a heterosexual ideal will not understand the issues to the older gay community as they won’t know what it’s like to feel devalued and second rate.

4.       People are already saying the gay scene is dyeing, and they think it’s because with acceptance, the need to stick together dwindles.  The oppression that gave us something to fight against has nearly all gone, so we just go to any night club now.

I think that nearly anyone who thinks or knows they are gay has a lot of drama to go through on their life journey.  I think that’s why it becomes so consuming, because it generates such stomach flips for as all.  From the fear of being found out, to the rejection from people we love but don’t love us back, to the thrill of finally acting out burning fantasies.   Then come the good things that we didn’t know existed like huge amounts of random sex and finding unconditional love from someone special.  And the problems we didn’t know would come, like sex and substance addiction, and unrequited love, and trying to make a monogamous relationship work in transitory society.  And on top of all this we are the first generation to be writing the rules, no one has lived openly to set an example before us, we are having to do the best we can with no role models to follow.  No wonder we make mistakes, we’re just doing the best we can.

As Good As It Gets?

I haven’t written about anything from over the Christmas New Years period because I have been working on something which fascinates me.  When I went home to the City I’m from I finally worked a big issue out, well if not out completely at least along.

There is a line in “Eat Pray Love” where Julia asks her mother “what age were you when you accept the life you had as the life you were going to have?”  Scary thought for me.  I’ve always strived for something better, the thought that one day I will just accept what my life is, is very confronting for me, but I have been practicing it, anyway to see what it feels like to just accept things.

When I used to live in my old city I would always have this feeling that life was wonderful and that wonderful great impressive things were about to happen, just around the corner.  Then I moved to Sydney and this awe and wonder gradually left.  I was very happy and excited to be in Sydney but things started not working out the way I hoped they would and I found myself needing to get away every weekend just to regenerate and de-stress from the busyness of the city.  Admittedly I was living in Kings Cross in a shitty little dark apartment, so that was a big part of needing to get away from the agro and constant stimulation.   When I was back in my home city for Christmas I felt that same wonderful “life is great” feeling but for the first time I saw through it.  It always feels as though something is going to happen because it’s so quiet, nothing is happening.  It’s easy to feel something great is about to happen when there is nothing going on, the only way is up.  If I hadn’t been careful I could have gotten trapped there like other people do.  It’s fine if you’re happy there, but to think that one day things are going to happen and change in a small city, it has taken me to now, age 30 to see that it probably never will.  The economy is so much smaller there are just so few opportunities compared to a big city.

I had so many good memories from my home town, and great friends, much nicer people than I have met in Sydney, that I always felt I had a dual identity, I couldn’t let go of my past home easily, because I never ran away, I moved to Sydney for a better life, not because life was bad were I was leaving.  I now live in Newtown which is about 6km out of Sydney CBD and just far enough to have the perfect level of stimulation and peace and quiet for me.  I live most of my life in Bondi, Paddington, Surry Hills and I work in Mosman, so as I read somewhere, we need thresholds in our life every day, so it’s good not to live one’s life all in one area, but to travel around, so that when we come home, our mind switches to “home time”.  I have never once felt that “my life will begin sometime” since I moved to Sydney because I have felt like I was living from the time I got here.  It’s really wonderful to not feel like I’m waiting for my life to begin.

Down With Love: The Saunas

Take away the fear of catching something from sleeping with randoms, which is a legitimate fear in my mind, and the other negative feeling I had about going to Saunas was guilt.  Guilty about what I’m not so sure, of being caught? By who though? Who am I afraid of seeing me there or coming or going?  No one really.  The_open has a fear that he will meet someone who will judge and not date someone who goes or used to go to them, but that isn’t really a fear of mine, if they are that closed minded about sex, then we would get along anyway. 

I had a new fear in late 2009 that while I was spending all this time staring at ceilings in saunas that other boys and girls were out in the sunshine building support networks and a life together.  This paranoia that I was falling behind was highlighted one evening while I was sitting at the Five Ways chicken shop in Paddington watching all these tall, Anglo-Saxon, beautiful couples driving their beautiful European Cars, walking their designer Labra-doodle dogs, some with their Polo Ralph Lauren clad children walk and drive by.  These couples where only few years older than me, and they had their shit together, they could afford to either rent or buy a Terrace in Paddington.  I took the_open there a week latter and he had the exact same reaction that I had had the week before;  Holy shit we are falling behind and fast!  His reaction was to not go to saunas any more, well I wasn’t convinced that I could stop going, but the funny thing was that I was the one who stopped for 6 months and the_open couldn’t.  But the final 6 months of 2010 were the complete opposite, I fucked and fucked and fucked and had the most mind blowing sex of my life.  So where do I stand now? Somewhere in the middle.  I wish I put more effort into meeting new people socially, but I think sexual adventures are important as well, not that I remember them soon after they have happened.

If memories fade than building a life that is heading somewhere good is more important.  The part I hate about going to saunas now is it confirms in my mind that romance and love is dead.  That sex and orgasms are all that there is left.  I hate that.  The_open is now in a relationship that looks healthy and functional, hell has frozen over and I’m back to being living a chase life again, but not because I am trying, because I am too busy and fat, its busy fat celibacy.  I am writing this trying to gather my thoughts so I don’t go, but I can’t seem to find a good enough reason or something better to do.  May be I will go get my hair washed by the Arab hairdresser again maybe that will be enough intimacy to hold me off going.

Single & Fabulous, Queastion Mark?

When I agreed to do this photo shoot I was told it would be “Single and Fabulous” statement, not “Single and Fabulous?”  That question mark is hostile.  I love that line and the whole episode of Sex and the City, because the confidence of these 4 confident 30 something women is shaken to their collective core when an article attached to a magazine shoot that Carrie agrees to do questions just how fabulous it is to be single forever.

I never presume that I am fabulous, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and apparently compared to a lot of people in my life I am quite fabulous, as I found last year when I became very sick.  My friends tell me that I am fabulous to my face, regularly, supportively, mean it and say it with enthusiastic kindness.  So am a little weary of taking compliments too seriously.  But when I was ill and at my lowest I became just how many people are envious on me.  Not my friends they were wonderful as always, but family and people who popular culture says will be there for you, took the chance when I was at my lowest to let it slip just how much they were jealous of me.  Of course they never said jealous, but their real feeling managed to slip around the edges as I was laying sick in bed in hospitable .  Not much to be jealous of I would have thought, when I was sick, unemployed, nearly homeless and overweight, but apparently people worth millions of dollars can still be jealous of me.  They look to have it all on the outside, but on the inside they are as hollow as a doughnut.  And as unhappy as I had guessed they were.  Society rewards the strangest people; those who are selfish and live only for themselves and live totally unbalanced lives seem to end up with everything materially.  I would have thought the universe would have a better way of leveling unbalance selfish behavior but, not they seem to get away with it.

While watching Bridget Jones 2, the Edge of Reason, one of my favorite lines is “So as you can see the incredible truth is the wildness years are over, Bridget Jones is a love prior no more”   What a wonderful way of describing single dome.  Lost in the wilderness, searching for your way back to civilization, like Dr. Livingstone, wondering around Africa searching for Stanley.  And love is like civilization, calming, nurturing, exciting, not lonely and civilizing.  And bad dates and relationships would be the wild beasts of the jungle and the sense of loneliness that comes from being single, would leave, like finding a town in the middle of nowhere.  

My other favorite line is when she gets back to England after to being locked up in jail for over a month in Thailand, and she arrives back to meet the press and her parents at the airport and her mother says “Terribly sorry for not writing dear, it’s just I’ve been so terribly busy lately.”  How funny, your only daughter is in jail on drugs charges and her mother is so wrapped up in her own life she can’t even find time to write to her let alone visit her.  Sounds like my family. 

Envious, Delusional, Fabulous, Whatever

While over at a friend’s house having dinner cooked for me, I asked the audience of 2, is it ok to be down on a person when every relationship they get into its “the one”  I’m talking about serial daters that have about 6 relationships a year that last about a month each and every time, they take themselves and their relationship extremely seriously to the point of being completely humorless about their  past dating habits, and they expect you to be as serious and delusional about their past dating history  and their prospects of making this one work, as they are.  If your dating history denotes that you jump from relationship to relationship, and every time you’re in one, you have no ability to be introspective, why as a loyal friend who wants the best for your friends should I have to go along with your delusions?  I was told that I was being envious, because delusional daters are having a fabulous time.  Imagine that, every time you headed down the dating track you really believed you were dating the one, and everything was going to work out and be wonderful?  It would be like being on Prozac or living in a fairy tale.  No wonder they do it.  I can’t believe I hadn’t figured that out before.  But am I wrong or right to hang onto reality?  I would have thought I was in the right to not go down delusion lane.  But maybe what I should be doing is indulging in hopeless romantic behavior.   If no harm comes from these trysts, then perhaps I should join them?

To Market, To Market, To Meet The Meat Market

Meeting the Market, whether in business or dating is not the easiest thing to do.  In business you are selling a product or service and in life you are selling yourself, who you are, what you look like, what your values are.  When dating, if you’re on a bad one, it can feel as though your soul is for sale.  When it comes to buying a house, we all know what we can afford and we look for the best we can afford in our budget.  Different Houses suit different people in the same price bracket.  Unlike house hunting, my expectation when it comes to dating has not stayed realistic.  I need a house to live in but I do not need to be in a relationship.  Some people dream about their dream home and wait until they can afford it if they ever can.  I dream about the perfect person and stay out of the relationship market until I can have my expectations met.  To have a nice home you have to wealthy.  To date a pretty person, or anyone who is a catch or popular, you need to have skills in holding their attention.  Sight is the first sense we use when evaluation someone else.  Hence looks play a big part at the start.  If one is trying to promote features other than appearance, than one needs to be skillful at getting these noticed quickly before the attention from others fade.  I am neither overly skillful nor pretty to look at so having ambitions with popular, attractive people is not a recipe for success.  But neither is my drive to be noticed, date, be in a relationship or have random sex, so the need for me to change my parameters is weak.  The two parameters I would most like to change are my own appearance and ability to charm and partake in witty repartee.  This may be the year that my appearance finally falls into line with my own vision of myself. 

When I see other people delusions about themselves, it is painful and funny to watch.  I am only just accepting a few of my own delusions, so I must be growing to be able to meet the pain of acknowledging them.  This year should play out to be quite an interesting year; to see if I can finally become that person that everyone who knows me knows I can be.

Who Will Be Next Out - In the NRL or AFL

Sure they are sexy men with high salaries and public profiles, but that isn’t the only reason I’m thinking about who’s gay or Bi in the NRL or AFL, its sheer statistics, 200 plus men in each code at the top leave, I think gay in the population runs at 5% to 10 % depending on where you see stats, and I think same sex experimentation runs much higher, like 50 % plus.  So I know it’s hard for them to out when their public image declares that they be big tough men, and if they sneak round they could be outed.  Other than Ian Roberts no one has done it.  I think people were suspecting a flood after he did but it never happened.  And I think that people are shocked as still don’t know why more haven’t, even if was outed in a scandal or waiting until they had retired and then coming out.  Eddie McGuire has gone on record as saying he knows of several in the AFL that had indicated to him that they are, but he will obviously never say anything unless they chose to come out.

So I have no insider info, but what I would like to do is run sweep to see who people think will be next.  You can nominate who you want to be next out, in two ways, the person you think is gay will be outed or the footballer that you would most like to be gay, but please indicate whether it’s just a wish or based on suspicions or facts.

My nomination is Paul Licuria, he is on my wish list because he is so dreamy, do I think he is? No proof but my gaydar says yeah maybe, but I doubt he would ever go public.  In my fantasy he has to be in the closet and do it with his friends or team mates who also have to be discreet.  Someone like Brody Holland…. Mmmm that would be nice.

Oh and another nomination, Ben Cusins, what was all that drug use about? I’m thinking he was trying to repress the fact that he’s a blatant homosexual… haha, well I recon he would be brave enough to come out after all his other public trouble, let’s see if I’m right.

And A Shitty 2010 Was Had By All

Appologises to anyone who's had a stella year, good on you, but just about everybody I know is looking forward to 2011 and it’s not from a love of life and all things good in this world, it’s from a place of shear desperation, exasperation and hope -that things can only get better from here.  I am absolutely in that boat.  Toot toot.  Not to recap the last disastrous 12 months, but if I was to provide you with some high lights, they would include, 4 months of bad health ending up in hospital, my mother got herself involved in some legal trouble, was sued, lost, and is now selling the family home and business to cover her losses, and to round it off, unemployment due to months of bad health leading to near homelessness, and no help from family or a particular friend who should have been there considering the things I have been through with him.  But if I’m going to be a negative Nelly then I had better balance it with the good things. Mmmm.  Well I started writing this blog and it’s been heaps of fun.  I turned 30 and had an amazing party on the beach with friends from Melbourne and Sydney, and I started a building business which is going well and I’m liking the work and finally I have a new Jeep with leather seats and air-condition after 2 years of not having a car with aircon…..it’s amazing the difference a nice car make to my life.

2011……. What are my thoughts?    ?     ?????? mmmmm.  Well most of me is still traumatized by last year and thinks it will all happen again.  I have been reading about emotional trauma and the scares bad relationships leave on people, can take years to get over.  Well I’m not a sucker for getting into bad relationships, never had a bad one, doubt I ever will, I’m just not the type of person who gets into things quickly, and I guess it’s my strength that I don’t need anyone else to feel happy so I don’t hang about for the bad times, if I see storm clouds on the horizon I’m out of there, with me and relationships, it’s got to be smooth sailing or I’m not interested, and my radar for potential trouble seems to be very very accurate.  So I’m hoping I will get over the trauma of the last year before January has ended and move onto better things.

So I am about to do something very brave and put my goals out here in public to be seen, and held accountable by all who read this.

1         I have already joined fitness first and I am eager to see what better shape I can get myself into, so far it’s going well.

2         I have my eye on a new Mercedes M class 4wd, so maybe I can upgrade soon.

3         An overseas holiday, Fiji in May and maybe the Middle East and Europe and LA as well.

4         Grow my building business a lot, and get it to a very good place by the end of the year.

5         Build a better support network around me… very important.

6         Financially get myself back on my feet and have a lot of money put away.

I feel so silly putting my New Years goals out there like this, I am a big believer in New Years resolutions and have been known in the past to plan them from as early as November, a few times I have even taken myself out to dinner to a nice restaurant with my new diary and written them down ready to be reminded about them every time I use my diary, but in the end it made very little difference in being able to achieve them.  So in the grand tradition that is the hope we all carry for the New Year here’s hoping we can all reach out goals for this year.  Hope must be the ability to believe that things will get better even though out life experiences have taught us they won’t.  I guess if we knew that they were going to get better, that it’s a sure thing, then hope isn’t needed.  Hope and faith must be the ability to bend the facts in our mind that tell us that we should be pessimistic.  I’m hoping I can get over the trauma of the past year and believe that things will be better this year.