Desperately seeking Deb

Last year I endured a brief obsession with my fitness. Needless to say this was a very inconvenient addition to what was an otherwise busy schedule of avoidance, procrastination and sitting around. This meant that at least one to two mornings per week (because I’m too lazy to truly commit myself wholly to anything - even my obsessions) you could find me running around near my house, my course including a tour through a nearby park overlooking the harbour. It was here that my next obsession was born.
In the park was a fence and on the fence were hundreds of padlocks, each with names of couples locking up their love and throwing away the key (combination locks were also present, but don’t have the same romantic sentiment). There was one lonely lock that caught my attention. Her name was Deb* and she was locked to no one but herself. Immediately I saw her in my mind: a butch lesbian not unlike Chastity Bono (Cher’s daughter) or Miranda off Sex and the City’s "wisband" (wife + husband). There were no men in her past, only failed relationships with women seeking someone that Deb could never be. That’s when she realised that she didn’t need another person to love her. She was enough. She loved herself.

Cue Whitney Houston’s “Greatest love”.

Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

Deb became a sort of hero to me. A pioneer of satisfied solitude. I would bid her good morning each time I ran (which was increasingly less as winter set in), but soon the obsession with early morning fitness and, in turn, her, died.

It wasn’t until this weekend that I remembered her. Her short hair and kind eyes sprung into my mind and I longed to see her once more. I took a little trip out to the park, back to the fence, back to Deb. But to my horror and disbelief, Deb was gone. Unlocked and deleted from her monument of personal love. I can only assume that Deb found love, or died (along with Whitney), her little gold padlock dissolving on the wind with a whisper. Or perhaps she took the lock down when she realised self love doesn’t get you laid and maybe the padlock was sending out the wrong messages to the universe. After all, nothing says chastity like a pad lock…or Cher’s daughter.

But Deb, if you’re reading this, I just want you to know I love you. Padlock or not.



*As I said, even my obsessions are tarnished with laziness and over the year since seeing her I have actually forgotten her name - Deb is just a filler. All I know is it has a very butch ring to it. Something like Myrtle, or Cheryl, or Pauline, or Gertrude etc. I tried Googling “lesbian names” to jog my memory, but it just came up with a string of well known lesbians. Then I typed in “dykey names”, which brought up a selection of derogatory labels. Then I typed in “butch girls names” but it came up with butch boys names and girly girls’ names. It astounds me that the following are considered butch boys names:

Constantine (seriously?)
Sam (androgynous)
Waylon (Smithers)
Santiago (wussy)
Lou (off Neighbours)
Juan Carlos (anyone with two first names is never butch)
Lance (off Neighbours, now on St George and Hungry Jacks ads)
Nicky (girls name)

Or that the following are considered boys names full stop:

Bucko
Butch
Duke
Hud
Jock
Ram
Rebel
Reem
Rip
Stone
Titan

Please, people…these are children, not dogs.





What a tangent. How did we end up here?

My vicarious love life

As I creep ever closer to 28 (Thanks! Just a balanced diet and lots of water) more of my friends are getting married and having children meaning their ‘gossip’ is more about breastfeeding and wedding centerpieces than one night stands and STIs (or STDs as they were called back then). It’s a sad reality.

So it brings me great joy that three of my close friends have recently joined RSVP, and another is putting in some serious dating legwork. My vicarious love life is as entertaining as ever.

When it comes to online dating, what could be better than to be able to sit and judge people in the comfort of your own home, without the noise and drunken idiots of clubs and pubs? You just can’t ask for more than that.

Although being in a relationship is the goal and the ultimate happiness of their activities, it’s certainly entertaining to be there for the journey. Although I always loved telling stories of failed dates with failed guys, it was a comparatively small satisfaction in relation to the hours spent actually living the experiences from which the stories would stem.  Not worth it.

But to hear about it from someone else is a joy. Sure, I want my friends to be happy, but I truly feel like the failed dates are as important as the good ones simply for the wealth of character building stories they will acquire and be able to share…with me.

So far, there are guys who wear sneakers with jeans and others who can barely speak a word of English. Some own Chihuahuas, some invite you round the night their mum dies, and others are just great big perverts (well, most are but some are very open about it…and they’re bald on top with a ponytail at the back. No!)

And then there’s me - the backseat driver and engaged spectator avoiding as long as I can conversations that will be peppered with marriage, mortgage and kids, not to mention divorces, menopause and death.

One in eight marriages these days stems from an online meeting. So please...become a statistic, then tell me all about it.

Happily humble

Ironically, I learnt a valuable lesson about valuing nothing, today.

I came home and just figured I was a messy bitch before I left the house this morning and why was my crap all out of place. I quickly realised I wasn't as messy as I'd thought (today anyway) and that my house had been robbed. Five laptops, two mine - gone.

My first thought - I'm going to be late to dinner. My second thought - I hope they didn't lay on my bed. My third thought - those pricks took my charger...fuck.

I have always had a skewed perception of valuables.

When my first car was stolen back in 2008, I was most disappointed about my $15 dollar pair of silver sandals that went with everything. They had been under the front seat. Other than that, I was kind of relieved - it was due for a clean and that was a job for the whole weekend. Dodged that bullet.

My mum once grounded me because I accidentally threw away a gold bracelet she'd given me for Christmas, and she'd intercepted it in the garbage before it made it to the big bins. I'd never seen it before in my life.

I've never had a dress or a pair of shoes that I truly cared about spilling stuff on and my car is almost literally a piece of shit.

I don't take photos - all my memories are stored up here (points to head). Mum asks me what I want her to leave me when she dies, but I can't really think of anything.

My top five most valuable things are as follows:

1. An old rusted birdcage with a music box in it that no longer works but used to sing "Yellow
Bird"

2. A Christmas card that my boyfriend made me with a pop up Santa smoking a cigarette and giving me the finger.

3. A small silver slinkie that I once found in the middle of my parents' living room proving
 to me that we can get anything we visualise. (There's a back story, but that's for another day.)

 4. My I heart New York mug that's as big as my head.



5. My juggling balls of which my brother lost one and I'm yet to make him pay.

If any of that stuff got stolen I'd be unhappy, but I'd get by. Look, I'm writing this on my phone and my hand is cold and numb now but what I'm trying to say is, no one can steal from you if you have nothing, or, more profoundly, everything you need you already have. Except my phone. If those f*ckers took my phone I'd be pissed.


Excuse any spelling mistakes!

Scientology isn't a dirty word

I love telling people that I grew up a fourth generation Scientologist. I especially love it in social situations where someone has launched into a diatribe against Scientology in front of a big group. Just the look on their faces after I tell them is like chocolate for my soul. I definitely don’t take personal offence to their ignorance; I just love their awkward stumbling to save face when I pretend I do and test how much they really know.

This is not to say I am not ignorant of other religions. I don’t understand Ramadan or Lent (I don’t even know if they are meant to be capitalised). I’ll never understand why it truly matters if the Sabbath is on a Saturday or a Sunday. I think that if there were a God, surely he’d just be happy that they’re dedicating a full day to Him. Of course I question Mary’s virginity and wonder how others can’t. I don’t know what makes Good Friday, Good Friday and why you aren’t supposed to eat meat, or the difference between Easter Sunday or Easter Monday – except that on Sunday mum used to hide eggs in the garden for us to find. As for Pancake Day, I can definitely understand Pancake Day. Why shouldn’t a whole day be dedicated to pancakes? In fact, why shouldn’t a whole religion be dedicated to pancakes? Now that makes sense to me, but I have no idea what it has to do with Christianity. Come to think of it, I don’t even know exactly what Christianity is (does it encompass all religions that believe in Jesus?). Having said all that, I would never disbelieve a religion based on things I’ve seen on Today Tonight or read in magazines. I actually don’t believe any information I gain from those sources. Brad and Angelina had had their first biological daughter before I believed they were together.

Some people might find the way I grew up a little odd. My first school was a Scientology school and I was there until year three. The Athena School was K – 10 with 99 students in total and now all that’s left of it is a sandstone shopfront in Sydney suburb, Tempe. Many classrooms were adjoining so we would have to walk through others’ lessons to get to our own. We weren’t allowed chocolate (forward thinking considering how fat we are all getting these days), we called our teachers by their first names and the best class for each week received a framed photo of L. Ron. Hubbard to hang in their classroom. Each week we wrote and decorated our very own “Success stories” based on the great things we had done that week.

When it came to practicing Scientology, I didn’t go to church; I went to events - massive galas announcing ‘wins’ for scientology. The one that stands out most was the 1993 event in which it was announced that Scientology had been officially made a religion. To this day people still wonder how it is a religion when it doesn’t have a God, per se. Worse still, many believe L. Ron. Hubbard claimed to be God Himself. The thing that I find most inspiring about this religion is that it accepts people of any denomination. Scientology’s focus is on the self. In essence, we are our own Gods. Just as in Buddhism - which I find to be the closest linked belief system to Scientology – we are all God. Everything has a life force; everyone is someone; everyone is connected.

Scientology does not threaten a fiery hell, though it does have Karmic principles. There are no commandments, just 21 moral suggestions for being the best person you can be, called The Way To Happiness:

11.     Take care of yourself

22.     Be temperate

33.     Don’t be promiscuous

44.     Love and help children

55.     Honour and help your parents

66.     Set a good example

77.     Seek to live with the truth

88.     Do not murder

99.     Don’t do anything illegal

110. Support a government designed and run for all the people

111. Do not harm a person of good will

112. Safeguard and improve your environment

113. Do not steal

114. Be worthy of trust

115. Fulfil your obligations

116. Be industrious

117. Be competent

118. Respect the religious beliefs of others

119. Try not to do things to others that you would not like them to do to you

220. Try to treat others as you would want to be treated

221. Flourish and prosper

So basically, everything that your parents, grandparents, bosses and teachers told or encouraged you to do. (Little fact: written in 1980, The Way To Happiness has been distributed in over 2,250 prisons worldwide.)

When I was young, I didn’t say prayers; I said postulates. I was taught to picture what I wanted with my day, with my year, with my life, for dinner, and just have faith it would eventually come. It’s funny that 16 years before the bestselling book The Secret was released in 2006, I was a six year old already practicing what this book suggests – you are a product of your thinking – because that is the foundation of Scientology. It’s about owning your situation. It’s about changing your thinking and changing your situation for the better, as well as helping those around you. After all, a planet packed with people who think and act negatively will negatively affect all of us. On a small scale, have you ever noticed how a mood can change in a room with a negative or resentful person? Put this on a larger scale and multiply it by seven billion. Scientific experiments continue to move closer to proving that global awareness shifts affect our planet’s magnetic fields with particular attention paid to the week post-9/11.

I no longer call myself a Scientologist. Not because I don’t agree with the belief system, but because I don’t feel that religious labels are necessary. I meditate like a Buddhist, I exclaim to ‘My God’ when I am surprised and I am one of the best Christmas present wrappers in the world. I eat organic and clean food like a Seventh Day Adventist, I don’t do anything on Sundays (because I don’t want to) and I treat others how I would like to be treated. I like the idea of taking my kids to church on Christmas, and they will get their Easter egg hunts, too. I don’t need to label myself because there are so many good ideas out there that I don’t need to say I belong to any of them but I definitely give thanks for many of them - especially Scientology. They used to think the world was flat until it was proved round - I feel the same way about religion.

PS. Tom Cruise makes me cringe. 

Making peace with anxiety

I was always a worrier from as far back as I can remember. My first fear was the wind. I blame The Wizard of Oz.

As a pre-schooler I would wake up and run to the living room to look out the window at my ‘fear tree’, as I called it. It was a big tree across the road from my house and its sole purpose was to alert me of how afraid I was to be that day. Some days it was still as could be – those were the good days. Other days it only confirmed what I could already hear without even looking out the window: it was going to be a very bad day.

My fear didn’t just stop at wind. I was afraid of death, ghosts, spiders, chicken pox, bushfires and men with chin dimples. When I was eight I choked on a piece of meat and that set off almost 20 years of throat clearing and an obsession with my breathing.

As I grew older and more complex, so did my fears, so when I had my first panic attack five years ago at the age of 22, I wasn’t surprised, it was more a case of: “What took you so long?”

Of all places in the world, it came while I was at Disneyworld. I suddenly developed a terrifying and insatiable thirst, partnered with a racing heart and tingly feet, hands and mouth. At the time I thought nothing of it. My second came the next day while waiting for a ride. I buckled at the knees and had to be fed water by a stranger. The third lasted hours and arrived as I was waiting for a connecting flight home from LA airport, and the fourth came at a family barbecue. I ordered that I be rushed to hospital where I waited for hours to be seen before leaving and visiting a nearby medical centre. Here I was diagnosed with ‘panic disorder’ and prescribed Valium.

That was the day my whole life changed. I might have been riddled with a lifetime of various fears, but I had always been a happy, vibrant person who could see the good in most people and situations. This stripped me of those qualities.

I woke each morning with invisible hands around my throat. I would need someone to be with me at all times. I was terrified to even shower for fear of being alone with my thoughts, or that the heat of the water might increase my heart rate causing an attack. I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t swallow, I couldn’t sleep, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find anything to be happy about.

I took a while off work but I was so scared of being alone that I returned. Traffic terrified me so I would leave early or come in late. After a few months my boss brought me into her office with a question: “How long do you think until you’ll be better?”

I had been asking myself the same thing.

I organised to see a counsellor. He gave me an interesting analogy.

“Pretend your life is a metaphorical party. You’ve invited everyone on your street and you’re having a great time but suddenly Bob turns up. Nobody likes him and you didn’t want him to come. Because you spend all night worrying about Bob being there, you miss all the fun. That Bob is your anxiety and you can’t let him ruin your fun at the party now, can you?”

I didn’t go back to see him after that. What he didn’t realise was that, at my party, Bob was the only one who showed up and he ate all the food, drank a bottle of tequila, pissed in my wardrobe and passed out on my couch. What a shit party.

As I write this now, I look back on these times and think about how important they are in my story. Not just this story I am writing right now, but also the story of who and where I am today. I wouldn’t change it even if I could.

Because of my anxiety I stopped taking drugs, I gave up cigarettes and caffeine and I stopped putting others before myself. Because of my anxiety I learned to recognise and rationalise my fears and I started investing my time and money into my health.

I look back on the past five years and I can actually see that every single thing in my life today has come to me because of this situation. Where I live, who I am with, where I work, what I eat, what I think and how I treat others have all been directly influenced by my journey to overcome what I once thought was a terrifying misfortune, but I now consider the best thing that ever happened to me.

Many people don’t hear their thoughts and their bodies telling them they need to change and then they end up with cancer or any other number of diseases that give them the ultimatum: change or die.

I am lucky. Like my own, my body’s voice is a loud one and it just so happens that if I don’t give it the positive thoughts or the right food or sleep that it needs, it floors me until it’s satisfied I’ve heard what it has to say and actioned its request.

I don’t try to overcome my anxiety anymore, as much as it can frustrate me at times. Now I love and embrace it. I was once told never to label it as ‘my anxiety’ because that gives it power, but I am happy to give it power. It’s only ever brought me amazing things.

I once read somewhere that the key to staying calm in each situation is to think to yourself: “In five years, will this matter?” If the answer is no, forget about it. What’s funny is, I always knew that this would matter; I just never thought it’d be for the better. 

Top 20 annoying things about movies and TV

I am lazy at the best of times and winter only adds to this sluggishness. Why would I want to go anywhere when it’s warm right here on my couch? Thus, I have put in long (not-so) hard hours to put this list together. 

The top 20 annoying things about movies and TV: 

1. When they sleep next to someone (especially when it’s a new lover) and wake up in the morning in the exact same spot under their arm. That doesn’t happen.
2. Two words: Morning breath. Doesn’t seem to exist in Hollywood.
3. Why does no one drive manual cars unless the movie is about cars?
4. When they brush their teeth it never gets foamy and they don't rinse.
5. The way when they have sex they just seem to finish at the same time. Then then the angle at which the guy rolls off seems like it would cause some sort of penis breakage.
6. Oh, and they keep their bra on while doing it. If they don’t want to show the world their boobs, fine, but just angle the camera differently or something because the bras come off. Has no one in LA land had sex before? Do they just have Barbie and Ken bits down there?
7. No one steers the steering wheel like that, you psychopath. 
8. The way they just let people run away after an argument. Like…they’re not gone. THEY’RE RIGHT THERE! You CAN catch them. (My poor flatmates have to deal with me practically screaming at the television all the time.)
9. At the end of a phone conversation they all seem to just hang up without saying goodbye. Or if they’ve made plans, they don’t say where they’ll meet or what time or anything like that. What the hell? 
10. Farts are only ever a part of the plot or helping to define a character. Sometimes farts just happen. I think movies need to explore that in a really relaxed way.
11. What’s with the way they shower? Is it just me or do people not shower like that? And thanks to scary movies, I am an adult who is too afraid to close my eyes in the shower now.
12. Turn the lights on when you get home, idiot. No one walks through the house when it’s dark like that. What are you, a cat? If only you could hear the tension building background music.
13. Spontaneous song and dance. I’ll believe a War of the Worlds-esque situation before I’ll ever believe that people will just start randomly singing a song and completing a choreographed dance at the same time. Musicals annoy me now that I’m older. I just can’t see past it.
14. Empty coffee cups. Nothing, I repeat, nothing annoys me more than when people are supposed to be drinking or carrying hot tea or coffee, yet the cups are quite clearly, even visibly, empty. Come on guys. Seriously. No…seriously. To quote Friday: “Use water. It won’t hurt.”
15. When the camera is shooting someone from the front, and then it cuts to their back - and so on, and so forth – and their hair is different from both angles. 
16. When you see the microphone at the top of the screen.
17. When people in high school look like they are around 30.
18. How big kids’ rooms are. No kid has ever had a room that big, ever. What’s with this little jerks and big rooms?
19. No-tongue kisses.
20. Sarah Jessica Parker's hands.

I'm back in the Bloggersphere!

In case you hadn’t had enough of my incessant status updates, sarcastic comments and annoying commentary, I’ve decided to become a more frequent blogger. Lucky you! There are lots of reasons for this and I’ll share them with you now:

1. I just really want to be that person who says: “This is SO going in my blog!”

2. Well, I’m a writer, so why not have something to show for it?

3. I’ve been told (countless times) that I talk too much at work (sorry people I work with), so now I'll redirect some of my meaningless chatter into typed word and immortalise my nonsense… forever.

4. I always lose pens meaning keeping a physical journal is not an option for me right now.

5. I do everything in the hope that I’ll someday be ‘discovered’. Surely someone with lots of money will stumble upon my blog and hail me the voice of my generation, catapulting me into stardom, or at least, like, want me to help them ghost write their autobiography.

So there you go. There are now even more places where you can laugh at my expense and if I win this freelance erotic short story writer deal on freelancer.com, I’ll be sure to post the link to that as well.

But seriously now. Not that I couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t/won’t/don’t write that sort of stuff, but how do people do it, publish it and then attempt to carry on professional/familial relationships of any kind?

Unlike most people in the world, I have not yet read Fifty Shades of Grey (I just feel that I can gain the same experience from five minutes on Redtube as I would for the hours that reading this book – not to mention its two sequels – requires).

Having said that, I have read excerpts and I can’t help but wonder (excuse my Carrie Bradshaw-esque rhetoric) - how the hell does this woman present this book to her parents? How does she show up at the office or meet up with friends without every single one of them wondering if she has copped it like her character? And her poor husband. He has just released his very own book and is currently on a worldwide media dash, yet surely each and every person who speaks to him will be wondering, if not flat out asking, if this sadomasochistic Christian Grey fella is inspired by his sickening bedroom misbehaviours. If not, what is his wife getting/not getting that is inspiring this sort of erotic offering to the world? (The more I type, the more I realise that I absolutely need to read this book.)

Not that there is anything wrong with writing erotic tails, I mean, 'sex sells' as the old adage goes, and of course the research would be enjoyable, but I’d really like to meet this person who made her fortune by trying and succeeding in avoiding using the word penis or cock too many times in a sentence, and who singlehandedly increased US infidelity rates by 50 per cent – according to statisticsoninfidelity.com, if you can even believe that such a website exists. Apparently this is the go-to book for women wanting to turn their vanilla sex lives into triple-choc-chip-with-a-tobasco-swirl-and-a-shot-of-tequila-on-the-side sex lives. Well I don’t know about you, but I always do my tequila shots near the bathroom in case they make me sick. You can take whatever you want from that.

What's with people?

Yeah I pee in the shower...
Quite frankly I take personal offence to those who don’t.
To me, these “people” are on the same level as those who don’t laugh at the laddergoat youtube clip (haven’t seen it? watch here), don’t believe in ghosts or aliens, don’t like the Ace Ventura movies and “prefer a cheeseboard over dessert any day of the week”. My blood boils.

Firstly, how can anyone honestly say that they haven’t/don’t/can’t/won’t pee in the shower? It’s economical, practical, and to be perfectly honest, enjoyable. I mean, you save on flush water, ladies save on toilet paper and you save on time and since time is money and since you’re saving money on water and toilet paper you could take your shower pee savings and buy something quite nice. You could even take the money and go out drinking. After all, the more you drink, the more you pee, the more you save...or something like that. I’m not a numbers person - don’t even get me started on them.

As a child I was always taught to respect other people’s opinions, but when other people’s opinions are stupid I tend to forget all that I was taught and resent them instead.

I can handle people from all religions and belief systems. We were all raised a certain way and have different views when it comes to God. I don’t have a strong opinion on the big bang theory (the actual big bang theory, not the show. I definitely have an opinion of the show...HATE it and yet watch it because it’s the only thing on and laugh reluctantly then end up hating myself) versus the Bible. I don’t judge the goths and the hippies and the drag queens and the whores - wear what you like, do who you like. But when you tell me that you can’t stand the Ace Ventura movies, you had better be ready for some serious personal questioning. Worship who you will, wear what you like, sleep with whomever you please, but when I suggest you watch laddergoat on youtube, you had better laugh or you are dead to me. There are some things I just can’t accept.

People who don’t believe in aliens. I mean, come on! You honestly think that we are the only planet in the universe with life? Really? You think there is not another planet much smarter than us just popping in for shits and giggles? Considering there are millions of demonic looking little creatures in our clothes and bedsheets that can’t even be seen with the human eye, then think what there is in the rest of the universe. There have been countless alien spotting - pictures, videos, audio - and yet people still say ‘No...can’t be”. No one has ever taken a photo of God and yet billions of people still believe in Him.

This rant was never going anywhere really, except to say that sometimes people are just so unbelievable that it makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with them.