Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy

Soon I'll be 29. On Sunday, to be exact. From the way people go on you'd think it wasn't a birthday at all because it's not my 30th yet. 29 is plenty for the moment, thank you. As I get older I realize it's not getting older that bothers me, so much as feeling more and more unactualized as time passes. 'Unactualized' - I think I made that word up. It's a very late November sort of word. Long, ugly, and meaningless. What I mean when I say it is that I feel I've painted myself into a living corner that bars me from doing the things that I'm best at and enjoy the most, while at the same time confuses me as to whether what I really want is to contribute something that helps celebrate the beauty of existence (good!), have everybody love me for my contributions (weak!), or not get sent to hell when I die because I've squandered my God-given talents (craaaaazy!).

I think I stopped analysis too soon, but my lifestyle right now has no point besides accumulating money so I can change my lifestyle as soon as possible. Money is dominant at the moment; I can't look at money-on-analysis as an investment because it looks like a siphon on my investments. And just because I think I need analysis doesn't mean I'm not still racked with doubts as to whether it's a big global scam or not. But the fact is even the people who love me the most can't give me the sort of help and encouragement I need right now. I suppose loving someone makes you want the best for them - not necessarily the happiest for them - for my parents, the way things are going for me now is just about the best way possible because I'm making the big bucks in a white collar job that 'goes somewhere' and enjoying a stable relationship. For the F-word, I'm squirreling away the acorns for an as yet undefined future period when we can let our artsiness burst out once more and leave this rat race behind. But for me, well, things are a pisser today and I'm sick of living for the future when I might get hit by a bus or a terminal illness. It makes me nervous and cranky.

Anyways. Speaking of money, yesterday my financial advisor asked me out. I think his intentions were honourable because he told me to bring someone else along too if I wanted. I said no anyways, because the place he asked me out to had a dress code and I don't believe in that. But I invited him and some other people along tonight to a soiree a guy from work who promotes on the side has organized - should be good - the music looks fantastic and I figure I can dance all the tedious concerns about 'unactualization' out of my head for the weekend, which will see various celebrations of my success in not getting hit by a bus or a terminal disease over the past little while.

My body shall be crushed out of the very form of humanity ere it become the victim of thy brutality

Had a vampire dream the other night that turned out to be remarkable. The vampire in question was decadent looking young man, that real fainting feathery cynical romantic Baudelaire-Jude Law type who look like they express erotic affection by tying you up and kicking your ass. Not really my type anymore, and in the dream certainly not my type because I was half-conscious I bore a faint resemblance to that poor murdered British student in Perugia. She's been playing on my mind because there but for the grace of God, but I mustn't keep thinking this way or I'll deny my kids the chance to do all the stupid and educational things I did.

So. I was sitting in some school building studying industriously away. The vampire came along and decided he would drink all my blood, and set about seducing me to smooth his way to do so. While my interest was piqued, I smiled and said "I'm not that kind of a girl", which is a line I'd never use in real life, because let's face it, we're ALL that kind of girl and we're just not interested - shouldn't blame ourselves. But it had an odd effect on the vampire. It became very "Ivanhoe", very Rebecca-the-Jewess-and-Brian-Bois-de-Guilbert; my refusal of his advances inspired him with an adoration of my moral fibre et cetera, and he went from wanting to drain my heart dry to wanting to make me into a vampire too, so we could both traipse about an immortal existence in our feathery cynical romantic way, probably staring dully at waterfalls a lot and writing poetry about decay - you know how it is.

As the love blossomed on his face I realized something was wrong, much more wrong than a persistent young man bothering me, something even more wrong than the prospect of assault. I seemed to smell carrion, and I realized he was dead and would somehow make me dead forever, so I freaked. Got up and ran, which of course you're not supposed to do with a vampire because they can run faster. I realized that and started freaking more freakily. Ran up some flights of stairs with him gaining on my heels, saw an open french window on the fifth floor, and ran full tilt into the void with a grateful heart.

He screamed in despair. "That'll show him," I thought I as I plummeted. And then Batman saved me and took me away from all this.

True story.

They ain't heavy, they're just big-boned

Hilts went on beautifully on a blog entry I can't link because of the ancient nature of my Safari about how he came to love the Rolling Stones. It made me think, even made me a little misty. My brothers are separate but equal. I love them all. Like I love chocolate, marijuana, and coffee. Separate but equal, and non-carcinogenic into the mix; very different boys, men, brothers, but the best a human female could have.

Anyways, one thing they more or less agreed upon as I meandered my way through childhood and they erupted into oversized zitfarms is that music worked like this:

1. The Beatles
2. The Rolling Stones
3. Other bands

When I was ten I went through a antepubescent pseudoerotic obsession with the New Kids on the Block. It lasted five minutes because my brothers found out. They mocked me until I cried and then we went on vacation in the Laurentian Mountains for two weeks. They would not allow any music to join us except the White Album and Some Girls. The cassettes were on constant rotation as we drove and drove and drove and canoed and barbequed and swam and sailed and ate and dozed. I was cured, or brainwashed, or what have you.

Then my brothers all moved out at once what seemed like just a couple of weeks later, as they're all much older than me. Well, Elvis didn't move out right away but he did enter his acid years and as far as I was concerned all it did for him was make him either unbearably cranky or totally incomprehensible. He did bring home some better looking friends, though. Anyways, I was suddenly an isolated ten year old kid who only listened to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and I despised my peers for listening to tinkly synthesized crap and dressing like idiots.

It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with looking down my nose at people, today extending to Justin Timberlake fans and women who get cutesy tattoos. It's a fucking tattoo, for god's sake, get something cool instead of a twee little star or such bullshit. Someday you're going to be burning your way through menopause, and you'll look at your fancy girly wrist rosebud, and want to punch yourself in the face. And Justin Fucking Timberlake is a joke music producers are playing on the listening public. 'I know, let's buy some crap boyband dancer with a smurf voice and park him in front of some good beats. People will think he's not total shit and buy all his albums. It'll be hilarious!' And it is.

My point is that even now, nearly eighteen years after the trip to the Laurentians and with us all living as far apart as we can manage without moving to continents where we'd be an ethnic minority, I can't hear even the briefest excerpt from the White Album or Some Girls without feeling profoundly safe and loved.

What, am I here for your amusement?

Swingers on the brain, as we were wondering if a couple of new friends here are. It got me reminiscing about how stupidly people have approached me about group work in the past. One of my great regrets is that they were all offering absolutely unattractive situations, situations they really should have understood were absolutely unattractive, by which I mean they never involved two gorgeous men who were all about me, me, me, and often didn't involve any gorgeous men at all.

The two hardest ones to put off - not because they were tempting, but because of the men's insistence and my deferential manners - involved my best friends at the time, and as if I want to mess around with my best friends. Gross. One incident made me pretty mad at one of those friends, whose response to the situation - her boyf begging, me repeating negative platitudes I'd never have the patience to produce now when I could just do some slapping and storming out - was minutes of asinine wordless giggling. "My dream has always been to be with two beautiful women at once." Dream on, motherfucker. My dream at the time was to smoke a joint and fall asleep alone, which I believe I did that night. They're divorced now. Hah.

The other, while awkward, was much funnier, because the friend of mine involved also thought it was a stupid idea, and we passed a merry half hour making fun of her pleading hornbag ex-boyfriend. That was much less infuriating, because he was funny. Also because the nature of his begging made it seem like he wasn't so interested in having two women cater to his every whim, but more like he was interested in directing a grand sexual set piece. So less annoying, but still not tempting. Because the thing is, I'm not here for anybody's amusement or edification. I'm a herculean colossus of self-absorption. And the idea of sharing the set with that many people when I'm not the lead/writer/director/producer holds no charm at all.

My experience has been that lots of the men who have the balls to ask for weird sexual combinations don't understand the concept of me being all about me at all, and it makes me wonder if women are generally much more deferential and much less self-obsessed than I am. I was unimpressed when my friend's boyfriend used "it's always been my dream blah blah blah" as an argument that would make me more likely to go for them, but it's not like I hadn't heard it before and didn't hear it again. Do chicks go for that? I'm all for catering to partners and making dreams come true and all - but bringing in a new partner to help those dreams come true? What's wrong with good old fashioned adultery?

Let me save you and so doing save myself

We tried to go to Paris this weekend and didn't get close. Taking the coach in to circumnavigate the strike - clever, no? But because the traffic had been so built up around that city due to all the car commuters, the coaches were departing from Brussels about two hours late, and we got cranky, cold and drunk waiting. Finally I insisted on a refund and a retreat, which the F-word was fine with; his motives for wanting to go to Paris this weekend were ulterior and satisfied by the 1.5 hours we spent waiting at the Gare du Nord.

Paris during a strike was alright, if you lived downtown, weren't scared of biking, and knew the city well enough to be able to plan alternate routes every time a bunch of brat civil servants demonstrated in your path; even ideal, because it cuts down on some of the crowding. The real problem was the anger. The special regime types promote themselves as a bulwark against a slippery slope - we'll nip the reforms that are geared towards making you die in the saddle in the bud, they tell France, by boldly bringing the country to a standstill with our strikes - the problem being they're doing this as a fair proportion of the French are haemmorageing money because they can't make it to their jobs where they get paid by the hour because it's too hard to get a permanent contract because there have been no successful reforms of the permanent contracts that employers shy away from giving. A bunch of fuckwit Don Joses singing about saving her right before they stab ol' Carmen to death. The consequence, of course, is a reciprocal anger, an anger I remember well from back when I was an hourly worker, and if this round of strikes lasts much longer we shall see some blood on the streets. For an ethnic group that sings about fertilizing their fields with the impure blood of the enemy in their absolutely dreadful national anthem, they've always been quick enough on the draw when it comes to attacking each other, or at least each other's cars.

Anyways, this is a shitty time of the year for confrontation and everything else, it seems. Marriages ending, seniors dying - Grandpa died a bit more than a year ago - carping, endless carping, and eternal swinging between being too hot and too cold. Can't get over how pissy EVERYONE is and of course I'm keeping up nicely. Cannot believe, no doubt because of missing summer, that there will ever be summer again; gaping at my Tevas in the disbelief that they were ever practical. SAD is a bitch. Nonetheless we had a nice weekend here, getting high, trying to shake our eternal goddamn colds and watching Terry Jones' "Barbarian" series. That man could do a documentary about reading phonebooks and I'd be into it.

I'm also blowing through Paul Theroux's magical 'The Great Railway Bazaar'. I think I have a crush on him. He makes himself sound like a bit of a dick with 'modern' and, to me, unpleasant ideas about marital fidelity, though those stay in the elliptical realm; every encounter with prostitutes he writes about is always one where he doesn't go for it, and yet he takes the trouble to point out that he didn't experience the impotency associated with Indian tummy viruses during his journey through the sub-continent. In another sense, the way he notices,, complains and enthuses about things makes me imagine his son Louis Theroux with a harder edge and some nice alcoholic angles to his face instead of the air of good natured incomprehension that helped him build his career as a documentarian. That's, to coin a phrase, hot.