(no subject)
geshmally being basically amazing, I got to go to the Clapham Common festival yesterday. It was lovely and so were Gogol and all the Gogol girlies and boys who I only sometimes get to hang out with.
They were lovely, though I had a drunk tosser next to me - why do I always get the drunk tosser at gigs? - who stared at me for the entire set, like this: LOOOMM. That combination of belligerent, intimidating, and sleazy. What they don't know is that I generally have more violent urges than they can possibly imagine, and that I dearly wish that I could stab them in their fat kidneys.
Actually, just to go off on one for a minute on this theme... right, for sure I can cope with twats, because there will always be twats and we have to share the planet with them. But what fucks me off is that it's a gendered privilege, being that sort of twat. There is not an acceptable female stereotype that allows me, for example, to get drunk and passive-aggressive intimidate a man all the way through a gig (or whatever).
[...] this little ellipsis is the 'dear god what about the men' vacuum. A safe space for any blokes now to say 'Oh but I've seen drunk overbearing women and it's not just men oh yes the girls do it too.' Got that off your chest? Ok. [...]
Because unless you are in Blackpool or somewhere, women don't act like that on a regular basis. They're socialised to give men their space and not use any form of physical or psychological intimidation. In fact Blackpool is only considered a horror story because it's the women who can be (I'm told) equally drunk, dehumanisingly aggressive as the men and as such could exist as the only gender-equal social space in the country - but this, to paraphrase Dworkin, is not the kind of equality we are looking for, where everyone is as unpleasant as possible on an equal basis.
That shit who sleazed on me all the way through a gig didn't lay a finger on me. Yet I was distracted and intimidated when I should have been enjoying myself. This is the kind of gig behaviour that causes everyone in the immediate vicinity to leave a little space for the lumbering cunt to cannon into people, and it's the kind of leering that causes your friends and strangers to mouth 'are you ok?' at you. The power of his gesture depends on the fact that he's drunk, he's big, and at any moment he could turn nasty. This kind of intimidation basically works on a contract of: it's 'nice' while it's nice - ie while noone is physically touching you - but when you object to the 'nice' you can expect nasty. In his drunk brain he's just!being!friendly! and that's what gets him so very upset when you point out that that sort of thinking is a privilege that doesn't allow for the perspective of the person who just wants him out of her fucking face. And this is exactly why the nice is not nice. It's the threat of violence the moment you break the contract and so in itself is a form of violence.
It's dehumanising and today he's going to wake up - possibly in his vomit - and he's going to declaim to his flatmates what a 'heavy one' that was, and it'll be all 'good times' with the lads, and he probably won't act like that for another couple of weeks. He may not remember. What I'm going on about is the normalising of something which men and women alike come to expect as a normal encounter in social life. Sure, it's normal and I can cope with it. But when you get thinking about it, I get my WHAT THE FUCK head on.
Others probably call it the OVERREACTION head on, and they can fuck off. Because I've fended men like him off all my adult life and not overreacted and today I've decided to. Collectively women fend off - and get raped and abused by (whole other post)- these same gestures on a daily basis, and it's all the same problem. It's not just 'oh, just another drunk cock' on another night out. It's the social acceptance of regular, gendered, embedded dehumanising behaviour that we've somehow found a place for in our social lexicon.
Otherwise I'm been in Bristol with N, and babysitting again (this time Jojo was in high dudgeon, not impressed at being left with his OMG wicked witch of an auntie, but he'd been gripy all day so I didn't take it personally).
Occasionally I talk about N's glamorous friend Tirdad, who he works with on an ongoing project, and who I try to avoid fancying because of how predictable it would be, and because he's not my type. In fact it's only the predictability of it that makes me kind of fancy him, because potential intrigue makes people attractive to me. ANYWAY. Because I am vain and insecure, you can guarantee that poetic justice will make sure that the most impossibly insecurity-making thing will actually happen to punish me. Tirdad has started going out with Diana. NOW. Diana is the girl who N was all moony-eyed over - to the point that it was an office joke - long before we started going out. She's eye-poppingly beautiful, and nice in that way that beautiful people have to be in order to make sure the whole world doesn't hate them. The day I actually met her I actually identified her purely on the basis that she was that beautiful and therefore it had to be the girl that N used to go all gooey about. 'You're Diana, aren't you?'
'Yes! How did you know?'
'...'
This new development means trouble for poor N, who as far as I'm aware doesn't really give a shit. The official, normal-world narrative goes that basically N fancied me forever too, fell in love with me, and forgot all about Diana other than perhaps in some faraway vague sort of fancying, the way you do about Jude Law or something. But of course I'm a complete cow about the whole thing. 'I bet you're jealous of Tirdad, aren't you?' N is pretty imperturbable, which is the perfect way to deal with me when I'm like this, and just shrugs. 'No, I've got you. Anyway, you fancy Tirdad, so you're probably the jealous one here.' I obviously go in to a paroxysm of denial over that. 'I bet you think you've got second prize with me,' which makes him laugh. 'You still fancy her, don't you?' N denies it ineffectually. He is nice, and we've had troubles lately, so he tells me I'm beautiful without pandering to me when I'm really acting stupid.
N is basically incapable of being jealous, so isn't jealous of Tirdad, which is the only thing that makes it not unendurably humiliating. Anyway, Tirdad and Diana are uber-people. His ex-girlfriend was an Arabian princess, and her ex-boyfriend was a famous novelist by his twenties, and they both look like they're in that Asti Spumanti advert from the eighties. My ex-boyfriend is a small businessman from Portsmouth, and I look like I live in an advert for car insurance.
Sometimes I just want to be one of those Zuleika Dobson women who only ever has really amazing bohemian talented boyfriends. Take Janek's girlfriend. She's seeing Janek, who is easily Poland's hottest contemporary artist; but he's content to share her with her other boyfriend, who is a famous poet. It always makes me think wow, these women must be amazing, hopping from one intelligentsia-leading man to another.
Then I realise I'd prefer to lead the intelligentsia myself, and have the pick of the amazing men, rather than the other way round, and have people think wow, N must be amazing, getting to go out with such an intelligentsia-leading woman like her.
Hmm.