The Fun in Innocence is Losing It

It’s around 11:30pm and I’m lost in the back streets on Chinatown. It’s hot, I’m sweaty and my phone is about to go flat. I was having drinks with some friends when the text flirting had reached it’s limit and he had grown restless with our text talk. I can honestly say I didn’t comprehend that meeting up with a man a 11:30pm was a booty call. Maybe a kiss and possibly some heavy petting but that was the extent of it.

My phone rings and then turns off. I collapse onto the gutter feeling utterly ridiculous and a little desperate. I’m wearing a silk jumpsuit covered in sweat patches and my sandals have gum on the bottom. I invade and destroy my bag looking for a pen and when I’m finally victorious, my enthusiasm (which is just a little too intense) causes my intimate lady products (tampons and lip balm) to fly all over the ground. I feel like a pathetic slapstick interpretation of spontaneity. I had imagined my first time meeting someone off the net would be at least a little sexier than this. Even with a hint of noir. How misguided I was.

I get my phone to turn on and am greeted with this charming message-

‘been waiting outside now for ½ hr. where are you?!?! ‘

If I had any sense I would turn back now. But I’m young and naïve and willingly nonsensical. I scribble his address from a text on my palm and hail a cab, making one last attempt to meet my mystery internet man.

As my cab slowly makes it’s way to the corner of his street, my eyes are locked on the reflection of the lights on Sydney Harbour. So many things in life are exactly what they seem, reflections of lights and just reflections and other things draw you into a kind of infinite depth that you didn’t even know what there. Some people are assholes and will always be assholes, sometimes the biggest jerk is the hardest to let go. My mini-trance breaks away before I get to the corner of his street, and I tell the cab driver to let me out. I look around and am relieved to find myself uptown (meeting a guy who lives in Chinatown would just not do). I slowly walk to the corner, trying to apply my lip balm and look inconspicuously busy on my phone, and then suddenly we are face to face. I’m nervous and a little shocked. He just jumped from my pseudo reality into my actual reality in less than a second. And in that second something transpired between us, some kind of carnal telepathy, because in that second we both knew we would fuck.

He is this bronzed Adonis in thongs, tight mid thigh length denim shorts and a plaid shirt that is only buttoned up twice. I can see the path of hair on his stomach. I appreciate the sartorial irony. I see a sleeve emerge from a rolled up arm on the plain. He has dark eyes. He is fucking hot. I did not expect the first (or any) guy I meet on the internet to be so hot. He smiles with his lips closed and says in his American French tainted growl I will learn to love and hate, “You must be Pearl. I’m Jean”

I manage to reply with a pitiable hi. I seem to have acquired lip-biting twitch in the last few minutes and I cannot bear to make eye contact. My vision is focused past the blur that is his face on the lit up marble concierge desk behind the clear glass doors from where he has emerged. “We could go get a drink?” I don’t reply. “Or we could go to up to my place?” I work up the courage to make eye contact. He touches my hand. I bite my lip. The deal is sealed.

I know three things about him and I’m not completely sure they are true.

1) He is French and American (cue the jokes about arrogance and self-contempt)

2) He is 24…I think

3) He is some young hot shot trainer for some football team and the institute of sport.

I really don’t remember even talking. I’m sure we did. But my memory takes us from outside of his apartment and into his bed. The in-between is a blank spot. Like the first time you take a pill on new years eve and “wake up” making out in Mercedes with an heir you thought was gay (either way, I didn’t make a difference) or the first time you get drunk at a friend house (parent’s away, of course) after school and you wake up in her bed in your undies with her older sister bringing you iced water.

He touches my hand. I bite my lip. He is holding my hips a good 12 inches in the air and I’m getting fucked. I had never been “fucked” before in my life. Before Jean, I had only been with one guy before. Avi. My Jewish summer fling. And it was awkward, magical and completely primal. Whereas Jean seems to be a porn star, in the best of ways. He moves me around like a feather and his grip is tight and gentle. He is greedy with me and a little rough, but when his tongue runs down my thighs and onto me…I feel like I can’t breathe. His floor to ceiling windows let in the light from the sky-highs and the city and his body in that aged florescent light looks….perfect. He is tattoo’s creep onto his chest and he is smooth. It wasn’t until I started sleeping with Jean that I realised that I could also be perceived as that “quintessential” hot. That I ‘fucked’ men like Jean, and they fucked me. I wasn’t some awkward little girl anymore.

Jean and I saw each other on and off for nearly a year. We even tried dating. He was apt to calling me to come over with no underwear and heels. I would strut, a A quick, short stepped, stumbling strut, through the foyer and past the concierge. All eyes on me, all of nothing. I was sex doing a balancing act on heels. It was his sex, and it was I who was struggling to balance. I would stand outside of his door always waiting a minute or two. Just staring at that beige door. I would only have to know once before he opened it, and he would hold me tight at the back of my neck and kiss me hard. He would lift me up onto a mirrored stand, kneel between my legs and pull my skirt up. I would hold his head, pull his hair and push his face into me. It always started like this. I wonder who else has sat and had Jean eat them out on that mirrored stand? I wonder if he still has it?

I remember a Sunday afternoon during a weekend holed up in his apartment fucking. When we only left for brunch, Pellegrino and to pick up dinner. I remember sitting in the plaid he wore when we met and no underwear, on one his horrible and completely uncomfortable Patricia Urquiola chair and having my eyes accidentally fall on him. It was just that. It was as if he hadn’t been in the room the entire time and my vision just stumbled across him. He was sitting up with his hands behind his head and I saw the tattoo’s around his arms and chest. One was meant to represent his father who was, from memory, a) murdered b) a murderer or c) in Mexico. I didn’t pay much attention. He opened those dark eyes and they darted around the room and latched onto me. Just like a shark. I don’t think I had, and I still don’t, any idea who Jean was and I wonder where he is now more than I care to admit.

Stars are Stars (The Model 1)

The last two weeks have been incredibly busy and my ability to engage with any human being, via net or not, has been pretty much diminished. Somehow, this week, I have found myself at fashion week not really knowing why. Previous years I have been involved in the most peripheral ways, and because you aren’t in the thick of it and aren’t some dull, starved bitch, these ways usually entail party invites.

This year, aside from having to bear all the hype from friends or having to put up with street style bloggers roaming the streets (some of them seem to embody that same sense of entitlement and ridiculous celebrity that is usually associated with the likes of Paris Hilton or a Kardashian), I have had nothing to do with fashion week. In fact I have been trying to avoid fashion week like the plague, but I’m like a fly drawn to shit.

So last night I found myself at some warehouse show, after the sacrament of the clothes, with a guy I had encountered this time last year. A total cliché, I know, but let’s call him The Model. He wasn’t always the The Model to me, I had first seen him in at lectures at uni. And then he was in my tutorial. He wore jeans that usually would have been skin tight on any other man but his skinny legs made them loose. They had holes and dirt and were remarkably ratty. He wore oversized sweaters and he would walk into class, sit in the corner and put his backpack (that, of course, was covered with scribbling and holes) on his desk and spend the entire class with his head buried in him arms that rested atop his backpack. He didn’t make any indication he was listening the entire class, sometimes just a mumble for attendance. Then in class one day, our tutor announced that he, The Model, had received the highest mark in the course for his paper. After class when everyone was leaving he picks up a pen I had dropped on the floor and smiles. After that he stopped coming.

A few weeks later I was at the show some new celebrated designer. At the after party I see him. The Model. He was standing near the bar and his hair was styled and his pants were clean and even knowing he had, at some point, make up one was just so pathetic. Pathetic and desirable. He gave me this sad movement of his lips (not a smile, but an acknowledgement.) Like he was totally aware of how pathetic and fake and dirty this world is. I wanted to mess his hair and take him away from here.

Then I see me through his eyes. How I must look to him. There I am, standing in that season’s Chloe docs and oversized sheer sweater. I don’t get paid to be here. I have no reason to be here except to “enjoy” the company and gratify my own sense of self.

Sure this place and I, these people and I have had some good times. Hot tubs, beach parties with no bottoms, cask wine in back alleys and hidden in dumpsters, punch ups with drag queens and more beautiful clothes than anyone deserves. But as I stare at him and he stares at me, I think about how eventually our breaths might meet and become one joint channel of air and we will depend on each other for life. This place, contrasted to light, to day time, to a class, to knowledge, to some attempt at learning, has tarnished something between us. Something that might exist soon.

I know that if I walk outside I will have to walk past him. This fact does not elude me. So I begin to walk. I am nearly past him without any acknowledgment when he softly, barely touches my arm. I scratch the back of my bare thigh pushing my sweater up so it barely covers my ass. He notices. Not that I thought he was gay, but now I didn’t need to make sure. “You going outside?” “Yeah”

Outside we stand away from the crowd and share a cigarette. He takes a drag and I purse my lips and he slips the cigarette into my mouth. “How’s class?” he asks. “Not as quiet without you” I reply. As I hand him the cigarette we turn to look at the disgustingly vain and beautiful crowd sprawling around the entrance of the bar. Our fingers are still touching. “Let’s not talk about that” I think he is referring to them. We stand, sharing our cigarette in silence. I want him. I ask “Do you want to walk me home? I’m a few streets away” He throws the smoke on the ground and we start walking. “So waht did you think of Schopenhauer?” He asks.

We lay on my bed and his hand moves further up my thigh and he grabs it, hard. His nail sink into my skin and it hurts a little but I think I like it. His lips are not just on mine but all over my face and neck. I pull off my sweater and he takes off his shirt. His not as skinny as I imagined and has slight muscle and it’s not a turn off but it’s not a turn on. For a second we stop and we stare at each other. Till I tilt my neck and he bites it. He is in me and asks me to scratch him. I do. Harder. I scratch harder. HARDER. This time I think I draw a little blood and I think he likes it. This totally isn’t what I expected, but I go with it. I push him down and spit in his face and slap and he moans. I try to make sense of what’s happening, how and why, but it’s a nonsensical exercise and I realize there is no room for ego here.

I wake up with his arm softly around my waist. It is a surprisingly gentle way to wake up next to him. I manage to roll around and I see his pasty skin covered in bruises and scratches. My bruises and scratches. I kiss two fingers and place them on a yellow-purple blood smudge. I close my eyes and he grabs my two fingers and he kisses me. I open my eyes and he tells me he doesn’t want to leave this room. And I know it’s not because of me, I know it’s because of what’s outside of this room (I also suss out if it's because he needs a place to crash, but alas, this boy has his own abode.) So for the rest of that week, he would come back to my room smelling of new clothes, cigarettes and hair product. Then he left to go work or model or whatever it is models do somewhere in Asia and then to Europe and I didn’t see him again. Till last night.

But my baby's so vain She is almost a mirror

I never intended to have sex from the internet. I don’t think I intended too. The reality of it was that I was incredibly naïve and new nothing about men. Having been a fat awkward teenager who survived high school by shutting her mouth, dulling her dramatic tendencies and blending into the middle. I was lucky I was a dreamer. I was lucky that osmosis hadn’t fully completed otherwise I may have ended up some heifer in suburbs who hid her emotional vulnerability and mental instability through middle class bitchiness and….well, whatever those women do.

I suppose now I am just an oversexed heifer. One of those things is a constant and the other changes. I’m going to let you guess (hint: it isn’t the verb.) Now, if you want to know, I am a university student. I come from a relatively upper middle class background. I am well travelled. I am an over-achiever. Those these days everyone my age is well travelled and an over-achiever so none of these things set me apart. In fact, they help me blend into a aimlessly determined tribe that is my generation. I intern. Most of my friends are "in fashion", musicians (we all know that term excludes employment), really "into" (aka employed by some money driven corporation who realize there is money to be made from us) pop culture and digital media or they study fine arts. We all own something cropped from Alex Wang or something, anything, by Rei. We all love Dolly Parton. The only thing that set's me apart, or may assimilate me more, is that I have something aggressive in me that can never be filled, and one of the only times this feeling goes away is when I can focus on someone's pupils and at least one of their digits (an not just fingers) inside me.

One day when I was still a teenager (legal, of course) when I made a profile on an internet dating site. There was nothing completely psychotic about me (I say this making no claim of any psychology knowledge) or remotely pitiful. I was a university student, living away from home and had never even had a boyfriend. A virgin I was not, but a virgin, I was close too. You could make the claim I was slightly bored and isolated but I think I just wanted to meet men. I did not realise what “meeting men” would entail. That it would entail sex.

And to be honest men love me. Despite my constant neurosis and insecurities men seem to love me. Or at least want me. Maybe they sense the deeply hidden insecurity, and everyone knows a girl with insecurity is a sure thing in bed. And they usually let you do anything you want. Maybe it's as basic as having nearly black eyes, smooth skin and red lips. Maybe it’s because I’m good at pretending. I have this uncanny ability to say the exact right thing in any given situation. I’m not talking about charm, I don’t ooze charisma. I realise people just want to be pleased, even if it’s not the truth. They hear and see what they want.

So for the last few years, I have been meeting men on the internet and sleeping with them. My fuck rate is about 98%. But don't get me wrong, I'm not limited to men just of the internet. It's just the starting point of nothingness with the internet makes the trajectory seem so much more. And I don't plan to sleep with all of them. Or any of them. It just happens and I am always surprised it does. And I think I like it. I like the adventure and the spontaneity. I like the anxiousness and I like danger. I like that clean (ironic) slate each time.

Despite everything I have done and somehow, continue to keep doing no matter how much I try not, I’m still naïve. I’m still never prepared for the heavy, lustful anxiousness that comes with a first kiss. I can still never rip off my clothes with an assured confidence when I’m first with a man. “With a man”…what a nice way to put it. Shall I just say fuck? And no matter how many times I throw around the words fuck, cunt, cock, pussy and pound, I still believe in love. That cliché, take your breath away, undying, forever and ever love.

Yet for now, until that love finds me or until I stumble upon it. Stumble upon it in some dirty alley at 3 am in the morning while I try to find somewhere to take a piss because the squatter party I’m at, filled with people who consider themselves outsiders and elite (my unfortunate peers), doesn’t have a toilet or even a bucket or even some carpet. Well till that love and I crash, collide and fuck I suppose I will continue with my somewhat nymphomaniac and polygamous leaning ways. And every night when that sweaty, sharp edged body collapses off me or slips out of me or all of the myriad of ways he could empty me, I will look out of my window. With my sticky thighs and pink lips and matted hair, I will furiously gaze out of that window onto the brightest and wish, every night, that maybe this man is it.

image via enfes kitirli

Username: Pearl

Username: Pearl89. I am the only girl for you. Internet ‘Dating’. The instant gratification of desires or maybe just another way technology is breaking into our lives.

Internet dating is not for the faint hearted, and that sense of remorse, pitifulness and considerate compassion for the like-minded souls reaching out on those pages quickly becomes replaced by a regime almost close to military.

Not physically appealing, from the west, from the south, too fat, too much of a poser, a loser, too short, too tall, too little….too much….It was all like a mathematical equation for LOVE. If love is math than I’m an imaginary number.

Basically, what can one do to grab someone’s attention long enough to entice them that doesn’t include a nipple tease or a face like Bridgette Bardot. Luckily I have a face that isn’t too below par of Bridgette Bardot and I make the promise of a love for skinny dips and all time funs. I also really love coffee and watching DVD’s on the couch. Translation: I might fuck you on the first date but you could take me home to mum. That’s me. Want me. Love me. Need Me. Please. Please?