F Is For Friends
So, just to start this story off on the right note, I'm bi. In general it's completely irrelevant, except that it's touched upon in the next story. As I belong to a culture that is both heteronormative and polarising, and I am easily irritated by this fact, I normally don't clarify unless people have the perspicacity to ask. However in this case I think the only response to that attitude is: Hello? Internet! It's fairer not to play games.
Anyway, Work S gave me a lift home last night, which was lovely and kind of her, and we got to talking, and this came up: 'I've been in a relationship with a female by the way. I don't mention it in the workplace...'
I had to grin. 'Me too.'
Then it all came came tumbling out, very quickly. We're both bi, we've both experienced the same attitudes, and we both seem to have the same natural viewpoint on the topic.
'People don't ever think that it even exists, they assume you're one or the other...'
'Yeah! They want to know when you'll choose! Then they assume that it means you can't stay in a monogamous relationship...'
'...because obviously you're always wanting sex from both genders. And when women find out...'
'THEY ALWAYS ASSUME YOU'RE ATTRACTED TO THEM!!!'
That last bit was half-shouted by both of us.
And that was it really, what I loved. The topic is one I have fairly firm views on, and I've discussed it a number of times with various people. That wasn't what made my heart leap. What caused that was that sudden sense of having found someone you can get along with, and that you share so many experiences and opinions with straight off the bat. The experience of meeting someone who you just know that even when you differ you share enough of similarity that it'll not sink you. I'm not trying to say we're BFF, but ever since I've left school I've found that ease of making friends has gone. I have made friends since then, often good ones, but they have been more the 'awkward chatting, feeling each other out, then discovering mutual interests, forcing more conversation and eventually bonding' than this was.
And I should note, as a caveat, that I am not trying to push the idea that school was a paradise of friends and the people I met there immediately bonded and we have never parted since, oh my! However my own experience of school was that when large groups of people are forced to be around each other all day every day, you bond better and quicker than you do out in the 'real world' where encounters are a choice. I also belonged to one of those families who moved a great deal, and so every other school year I was forced to reach out and open up to complete strangers if I was to have any friends at all.
So yes. Today's letter is F. F - Friend. ^^
F is also for Fire, which is still a massive threat at the moment. (We've finally gotten rain here in Newcastle, which calmed one of my fears for a while, but ironically its now tipped over the opposite difficulty, and many of the surrounding areas (Port Stephens, Singleton, Muswellbrook, Upper Hunter) are flooding. Have I mentioned my country is making a concerted effort to kill us? I blame Western Australia. It hates us East Coasters. (Kidding BB! U no I love u!) Also I am going to try not to use the phrase 'East Coasters' in reference to Australian geography again.)
I digress. It's absolutely terrible what's going on down there. And I urge anyone and everyone who doesn't read this blog to donate to the Red Cross. (I reason that that is the entire earth's population bar me, and therefore should be quite useful if fulfilled. And I am already donating, so that's the one misfit dealt with. ^^)
In other news, and touching upon the first topic, I love musicals. And whilst listening to Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, I again pondered the myth that a gay man can't play a rockin' sexy straight man, god forbid a straight lead. Which is just silly. I'd do Neil Patrick Harris. Not that, of course, that's the important thing. *coughs* Anyway, I compared it to the inverse - that of course a straight man can play a gay (lead or otherwise), assuming he is willing to take the risk to his marketability. And now I'm wondering if it's because it's assumed that playing a gay man is just acting, where as to play a straight man you have to actually know what it feels like to lust for a woman! YOU MUST HAVE EXPERIENCED THE UNCONTROLLABLE BURNING IN YOUR LOINS!!!! (At which point I'd say, uh, see a doctor.)
If this is the case, though, it's terribly unfair, not just for the obvious but also because it cuts both ways, and in both cases it's the homosexuals at the sharp end of the knife. Firstly, it presupposes that gay love is so meaningless, so lacking authenticity, that anyone can parse it without having experienced it, because there's nothing really there to experience. It's all fake anyway, so anyone can fake it. (See the 'you can be cured of your homosexuality! Ask me how!' camp.)
This is based on and linked to the second edge of the nasty slicing knife, which is that gay men are unable to act. Because if you've never loved the fleshy thighs of a woman, you just don't know what love feels like. And obviously if you don't know what love feels like from experience, you certainly can't act it. That's why we don't have any movies set in space or in other worlds or before 1898 .... Oh, wait.
I don't agree with either of these viewpoints. I don't believe you need to have experienced love in any form to act it, and I don't believe being able to fake something makes that thing fake in and of itself. But who am I to say? I'm just pondering to the wind.
In final thoughts, I was listening to Maximo Park today, and I remembered that they are one of two bands my sister introduced me to. In both cases she was terribly excited about one song, which I inevitably dissed (letting her down horribly) and then came back later loving an entirely different song, by which time she had moved on and was no longer interested. She was always the more musically up-to-speed of us.
And here are the songs, for your listening comparison.
She showed me Move Along by the All-American Rejects.
I liked Dirty Little Secret.
She showed me Our Velocity by Maximo Park.
I liked Books From Boxes.
So there you go.
Anyway, Work S gave me a lift home last night, which was lovely and kind of her, and we got to talking, and this came up: 'I've been in a relationship with a female by the way. I don't mention it in the workplace...'
I had to grin. 'Me too.'
Then it all came came tumbling out, very quickly. We're both bi, we've both experienced the same attitudes, and we both seem to have the same natural viewpoint on the topic.
'People don't ever think that it even exists, they assume you're one or the other...'
'Yeah! They want to know when you'll choose! Then they assume that it means you can't stay in a monogamous relationship...'
'...because obviously you're always wanting sex from both genders. And when women find out...'
'THEY ALWAYS ASSUME YOU'RE ATTRACTED TO THEM!!!'
That last bit was half-shouted by both of us.
And that was it really, what I loved. The topic is one I have fairly firm views on, and I've discussed it a number of times with various people. That wasn't what made my heart leap. What caused that was that sudden sense of having found someone you can get along with, and that you share so many experiences and opinions with straight off the bat. The experience of meeting someone who you just know that even when you differ you share enough of similarity that it'll not sink you. I'm not trying to say we're BFF, but ever since I've left school I've found that ease of making friends has gone. I have made friends since then, often good ones, but they have been more the 'awkward chatting, feeling each other out, then discovering mutual interests, forcing more conversation and eventually bonding' than this was.
And I should note, as a caveat, that I am not trying to push the idea that school was a paradise of friends and the people I met there immediately bonded and we have never parted since, oh my! However my own experience of school was that when large groups of people are forced to be around each other all day every day, you bond better and quicker than you do out in the 'real world' where encounters are a choice. I also belonged to one of those families who moved a great deal, and so every other school year I was forced to reach out and open up to complete strangers if I was to have any friends at all.
So yes. Today's letter is F. F - Friend. ^^
F is also for Fire, which is still a massive threat at the moment. (We've finally gotten rain here in Newcastle, which calmed one of my fears for a while, but ironically its now tipped over the opposite difficulty, and many of the surrounding areas (Port Stephens, Singleton, Muswellbrook, Upper Hunter) are flooding. Have I mentioned my country is making a concerted effort to kill us? I blame Western Australia. It hates us East Coasters. (Kidding BB! U no I love u!) Also I am going to try not to use the phrase 'East Coasters' in reference to Australian geography again.)
I digress. It's absolutely terrible what's going on down there. And I urge anyone and everyone who doesn't read this blog to donate to the Red Cross. (I reason that that is the entire earth's population bar me, and therefore should be quite useful if fulfilled. And I am already donating, so that's the one misfit dealt with. ^^)
In other news, and touching upon the first topic, I love musicals. And whilst listening to Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, I again pondered the myth that a gay man can't play a rockin' sexy straight man, god forbid a straight lead. Which is just silly. I'd do Neil Patrick Harris. Not that, of course, that's the important thing. *coughs* Anyway, I compared it to the inverse - that of course a straight man can play a gay (lead or otherwise), assuming he is willing to take the risk to his marketability. And now I'm wondering if it's because it's assumed that playing a gay man is just acting, where as to play a straight man you have to actually know what it feels like to lust for a woman! YOU MUST HAVE EXPERIENCED THE UNCONTROLLABLE BURNING IN YOUR LOINS!!!! (At which point I'd say, uh, see a doctor.)
If this is the case, though, it's terribly unfair, not just for the obvious but also because it cuts both ways, and in both cases it's the homosexuals at the sharp end of the knife. Firstly, it presupposes that gay love is so meaningless, so lacking authenticity, that anyone can parse it without having experienced it, because there's nothing really there to experience. It's all fake anyway, so anyone can fake it. (See the 'you can be cured of your homosexuality! Ask me how!' camp.)
This is based on and linked to the second edge of the nasty slicing knife, which is that gay men are unable to act. Because if you've never loved the fleshy thighs of a woman, you just don't know what love feels like. And obviously if you don't know what love feels like from experience, you certainly can't act it. That's why we don't have any movies set in space or in other worlds or before 1898 .... Oh, wait.
I don't agree with either of these viewpoints. I don't believe you need to have experienced love in any form to act it, and I don't believe being able to fake something makes that thing fake in and of itself. But who am I to say? I'm just pondering to the wind.
In final thoughts, I was listening to Maximo Park today, and I remembered that they are one of two bands my sister introduced me to. In both cases she was terribly excited about one song, which I inevitably dissed (letting her down horribly) and then came back later loving an entirely different song, by which time she had moved on and was no longer interested. She was always the more musically up-to-speed of us.
And here are the songs, for your listening comparison.
She showed me Move Along by the All-American Rejects.
I liked Dirty Little Secret.
She showed me Our Velocity by Maximo Park.
I liked Books From Boxes.
So there you go.