October 2003 Archives
I'm going to cry I just deleted a really fantastic angry blog and all because I pressed a combination of start, alt, ctrl and space! arrgh! I really should start doing the saving thing. Damn I'm so pissed off.
I'm going to summise the blog again because I just don't have the energy to recreate - ah well, I'll call the original part of my aggression therapy.
Basically I had a phone call from my dad saying "yes we received your letter and we know how you feel about these things and we love you for who you are... we will have trouble with some of what you said and we are both planning on writing you letters. What are you up to now?"
If the 'things' that the idiots, I mean my parents, are going on about turn out to be about bringing a boyfriend (If I ever have one! grr.) home then they will have a hard time trying to get me "home" MANY INVERTED COMMAS.
I will not be shunned by STUPID, IDIOTIC, MORONIC, NEANDERTHAL, BACKWARDS, DUMB, ISSUE AVOIDING, CONSERVATIVE, VICTORIAN, UP THEIR OWN ASSES, IGNORANT, ARROGANT, SELF EFFACING, NARROW MINDED, INFACT NO MINDED, CROWD FOLLOWING, OLD FASHIONED - wait, how does that one work, homosexual (GAY, QUEER, FAGGOT, POOFTER, NANCY BOY, FRIEND OF DOROTHY (ha ha, love that one)) relations were normal in ANCIENT BLOODY GREECE, land of the great philosophers and inventors of theatre!)
BIGOTED HOMOPHOBES. a.k.a. my parents. a.k.a. every other bloody minded idiot on the planet.
Being gay is natural, normal and on the whole - a hell of a lot better than being straight!!! We dress better, We look better, We express feelings, We have bloody feelings, We have adventurous sex, We don't rely on watching footie down the local with a pint of lager (fosters probably ha ha - fairy liquid more like) in order to bond with human beings, We can talk to girls, We have communities, We don't have to insult each other to show we care - although when we do it takes the form of witty reparte (ok camp bitching) but it's not grunted swear words followed by a sulk.
We are not afraid of standing out from the crowd, We are proud of our individuality, We have personalities, We smash taboos, We don't get walked on, We actively fight for our politics, We make women's clothes look good (ok maybe going too far)
AND WE WON'T BE SIDELINED, SHUNNED OR SUPPRESSED BY ANYONE!!!!
STUPID PEOPLE DO YOU HEAR ME???
Excuse me while I go join Stonewall.
I've reached a milestone in my life. I've decided to properly come out to my parents. About 2 years ago I half heartedly told them I was bi-sexual (ha ha) but I wasn't willing to have a big discussion with them (I don't talk to them about my life at all) and it all got swept away. Since then there have been some awkward moments but nothing really important. However, there is some kind of atmosphere over the issue and there are only going to problems in the future if something doesn't get said now.
So i'm writing them a letter - maybe thats cowardly but I really don't have the ability to talk to my parents about anything to do with me. Especially not emotional stuff.
Here's the content of the letter...and just for reference - Jemma was a girl who I spent a year in a relationship with, we lived together and everything (shock horror!)
Dear Mum & Dad,
I’m sorry that I don’t talk to you very much about anything emotional that happens in my life. I do have very good friends who I confide in so I’m not anymore mentally unstable than anyone else my age. However, I think the biggest barrier that lies between us is my sexuality. I did try coming out to you before I moved back home during my National Diploma but your sitting down in the dining room trying to have a big discussion about it was not a situation I could deal with.
In hindsight I have always known that I was gay and Jemma was the first person I ever actually told. Although under the whole ‘bi-sexual’ pretence. The night Jemma and I split up was practically the start of a new life for me, through finally fully embracing my sexuality.
Being gay is one of the most positive things in my life. It allows me license to behave, think and feel in the way that is natural to me, while being at odds with the majority of the male population. It also gives me a colourful, diverse and fantastic community to be a part of and to be accepted in.
Since ‘coming out’ when I was seventeen, I have had two long term relationships. With one of those people I fell in love. Unfortunately for me I am currently single. I have had sex with many more people but I have regularly had S.T.I. check ups and I’m probably far more clued up about the dangers of sex than most people.
The reason that I’ve brought this up, is that while I do not want to have a huge discussion with you over this, I do not want to feel discriminated against at home. Last year when Mike and I went to France I remember Dad kicking up a big fuss about why he was staying over and that I ended up threatening that I would have no reason to go home during that holiday, unless Mike stayed over because we were going to France.
I want to be able to bring someone home as my boyfriend in the same way that Nicholas is able to bring Megan home as his girlfriend.
I understand that this may be a lot to think about for you, perhaps not. Either way there are many lines of support which are available to you. A good port of call would be the Isle of Wight Gay & Lesbian helpline on 01983 525123 (Wednesday & Saturday 19.30 – 22.00) who are very willing to talk to friends / family members coming to terms with someone close to them coming out. I also strongly recommend that you visit www.fflag.org.uk which is an association of friends and families of lesbian and gay people and while you may not wish to join them, they will be able to provide you with a lot of information and someone to talk to if you want to.
I don’t want this to be a big issue between us.
Lots of love
Lewis xxx
It looks quite short reading it back now. Ah well, pure and simple is generally a good plan. Let's just hope this doesn't all back fire on me!
And now for something completely different. (I watched my first Monty Python over half term - v.funny but personally, I wouldn't make a cult out of it).
I'm getting pretty annoyed with people whinging about how the people in class who aren't very good and aren't particularly motivated are bringing them down / their energy down. I do remember feeling like that at the very beginning of the term but I find that I can quite easily distance myself from everybody else in the class. You have to in order to really work with yourself. I can understand why having a really bad group in a drama class can be detrimental, because they have to work with and depend on each other so much. But in a dance class I take the advice of my first teacher and make it all about ME ME ME ME ME. Everyone else can go to hell.
There are even a couple of Joan of Arc's who are so disgusted at the people in the school that they are trying to form a Dance & Theatre society. The poster informs you that if you 'want to be inspired' then 'this could be the answer for you' come along at blah blah blah and '...bring your own ideas'. While on one hand the idea has some merit on the other - why don't they just get on with it? They could go and visit some art galleries (or whatever turns them on), do some choreography, have a lunchtime performance and congratulate themselves afterwards. They'd be so busy working that they wouldn't notice anybody else. It's the inner artist that counts darlings. I think Jesus had a parable about this actually, something along the lines of remove the log from your own eye before removing the speck of dust from someone else's. Be Martyr's if you must but please don't drag the rest of us down in your crusade.
Wow, honesty and bitchiness all in one day - must be the mini milk I had for lunch.
Dave had the flu today so Hamel gave us a sort of Northern Style release class. It was pants. Just thought I'd throw that in.
Thank you for the birthday messages!!!!!!!!!! I had a really fun time! Now all I need to do is adjust to the fact that I'm "not a teenager anymore" as so many people have told me!
Times are changing - on tuesday for the first time in my entire life I could actually move forwards while sitting in second! I don't know why, I haven't been doing anything extra special to make that happen. It's got to be something to with the bounces and contractions and brushes blah blah blah. And I've had some soreness around there recently, not the unsupported style ache I used to have before I knew anything about centres and core stability, but a soreness, which upon reflection, must be the type of thing when after three years your back actually decides that maybe it does want to co-operate!
There's still a little bit of my spine that sticks out funnily, but it looks like it's concentrated around maybe two or three vertebrae and I'm sure I can work on it.
Maybe you remember that very 'contemporary' RIVAS exercise thing I wrote up here a while ago - anyway, I've more than achieved the parallel forwards pelvis tilt thing, I can get right over even without warming up! I discovered this tonight when Tom was saying that he was better than me at it. Ooh the competition. And the tilt in second is definately on the 45degree mark but I'll have to sort out that funny bit before I am truly happy. At least it has given me the encouragement to keep pushing myself in these kind of exercises. It's not so long ago (the start of term in fact) when I could not move forwards to save my life in either of these positions! So thank you Martha. Infact since coming back from half term (soo good) and we've started doing floorwork properly (listen to me with all my Graham terminology - ha ha not) I'm almost enjoying our daily sit, bounce, contract, plie, tendu, rise and finish (technique) class.
Thank Cecchetti for Ballet (no historical reason for that, I just like him). Ballet is really the thing I wake up for in the mornings (except I don't really wake up, I just press snooze until I have 25 minutes (if that) until I have to leave the flat - but don't worry, I still shower!). To be completely honest (as is the inherent nature of my personality lol) I've written a letter to Rambert School of Classical Ballet and Dance applying for next year...hmm. This came about because there is a new girl (very nice and friendly with an overactive imagination but for fantasy not dirty things like some of the other students (me cough cough)) and she told me about the Rambert School and that she was going to be applying around loads of schools at the end of the year and I thought, hey - why not. Plus to be honest, its been so long since I've seen any Contemporary Dance that I was really amazingly excited to watch (except a DVD of Nederlands Dans Theater, but they are really exceptional) that I would seriously prefer to be a Ballet Dancer. I love to dance RELEASE based contemporary but I don't get nearly the same amount of excitement from watching it.
P.S. - for people who know this blog, I've been feeling really stupid for ages about what I wrote about Scottish Ballet - I know that they are a contemporary company now (there's lots of interesting stuff on the internet, including lots of protesting in support of the BALLET dancers in the company - a heated article from Mr Peter Royston (principal of Scottish School of Contemporary Dance - ex choreographer etc for Scottish Ballet) nonetheless, exists somewhere! It was just the fact they had my favourite B word in the title that got me all over excited. Anyway, I think there is a Russian Ballet Company performing Nutcracker in Dundee sometime soon and I will be there!
I don't quite have the energy to go into detail (I had a very fat lazy half term and being back at school is making me very very tired) but we had a workshop with Scottish Ballet today. Sort of. It was actually the producer (and an exdancer) of Siobhan Davies Dance Company, she had spent a lot of time recently teaching White Man Sleeps to Scottish Ballet. We had a fun RELEASE technique class and then we learnt most of one of the male solo's from WMSleeps. Again, much more interesting to dance than watch but I'm going to put a lot of the blame into video recordings of dance/live performance. Absolutely worthless in trying to recreate any of the energy/wonder/spectacle (lol-I used that word as such a derogatory term in a some of my essays at Coventry-for people who are easily confused like me, I'm not using it in a derogatory way here!) of a live performance.
It's eleven o'clock and bedtime for me. I will rebuild my strength (but not at the cost of my new found flexibility lol) Yesterday I was in bed at half nine because I had been swimming and then cooking. And I still couldn't get out of bed in the morning. It's extremely irritating because I used to be a morning person and as soon as I actually get out of bed (and definately when I'm out of the shower) I'm wide awake and a friendly happy person. Something's going wrong somewhere.
Finally a funny story to finish this off - On Sunday I was waxing my legs (I'm not a fan of body hair at all) but I had only finished the calf and a bit beyond the knee of my right leg when I got distracted by cooking a meal for a friend (something I do quite a lot - I'll even spend a couple of hours preparing and cooking a meal just for myself!) and I decided to finish my self inflicted pain schedule for the day.
As these things have a habit of doing, I didn't feel like carrying on with the game on Monday or Tuesday for that matter. I really was going to do it on Wednesday - baring in mind (excuse the bad bad pun) that I had been walking around in a very uneven state for a few days by then. When Tom haphazardly invited me swimming - yey I said (thinking of Tom in little swimming trunks!! lol) but then the state of my legs dawned on me. Being the resourceful person that I am I find a blunt razor and a bar of shaving soap (a disposal Gillette BlueII plus and Gillette Venus for women (my flatmate's, not mine) shaving gel) I set to work.
However, the slight problem of limited time struck me as well, so now I have smooth but for very different reasons, lower legs and an odd change in texture just a bit above where the line where my swimming trunks come to - and I don't have small swimming trunks!!!
I hope you are laughing as much as I am feeling dumb!!!
Good night xxx
P.S. Title comes from a quote I read about Germaine Greer which says she finds the male body most erotic when it is young, muscular and free of hair! And she objects to women being seen as sex objects!!! (I forgive her, because we have very similar tastes!) x
The week turned out to be a pretty good one! Wednesday night was very fun I definately have a good friend in that guy!
And I might have found a real person to see more often. Kind of. Emma and I (a friend/faghag (is that one or two words?)) were supposed to have a girly night in watching queer as folk videos, using face packs, hair dye and making cakes. But we went to Asda during the day - which was a brand new experience for me, I'm proud that I retained my Asda virginity until I was nearly twenty though!! I'm twenty next week!! I think i'll be twenty on tuesday, it will be the fourteenth of october anyway!
I'm getting two tickets to see Fosse at the Edinburgh playhouse from mummy and daddy. I'm not sure who the special person I choose to go with will be, probably Tom but maybe Anna or Lynsay or stop trying to prove you have friends Lewis!!!
Anyway - Emma and I went mad at Asda and spent about £50 or so between us (Emma did buy two cameras though, one of which was a funky izone camera) so we decided that we had to have more people over, two of whom were Sean and a person I'd never met called Rich. Sean is someone who I'd had a one night stand with sometime in the first term at Uni.
The evening started well, I got involved in a complicated game of chess (complicated because I was drinking vodka) and Rich (mmm) was technically better than me but he was worse for wear than I was lol. Thanks to a lucky streak during the game I wiped out most of his good pieces in a short space of time and about half an hour of chasing his king and one remaining castle around (that and his three pawns lol) I finally got him into checkmate. But seeing as I had my queen, a knight, a castle, a bishop and some pawns - half an hour is a pretty long time! Probably didn't help that for some reason I had to execute all my strategic moves with my king!!!!! However, a strategy for me was only ever about 3 moves long because my brain was not processing information well and the pieces were all made of glass - clear and frosted - which did not provide good visual information.
After these pleasant ramblings I was planning on writing a (melancholy) serious blogg but I have been at a party tonight, smoked too many cigarettes (I only smoke socially - but I have a good social life at the moment, sad I know) consumed brandy and beer and have gorged down a half a 12" pepperoni pizza - for some reason I'm feeling a little worse for wear all of a sudden and the computer screen is not helping matters so I'm going to have to return to this blogg later - hopefully in the same kind of frame of mind because I have thoughts I need to purge.
Anyway - I'm going to have to lie down or throw up or something.
I'll be back soon I promise!
xxx
Quick update: I've found somewhere to stay tonight! I've got my old fone with me (for some bizarre reason) and I found an old f***buddy's number in it. I'm staying at his tonight (3month dryspell could soon be over!!! wahey!!!) but he's 'got caught up' in leamington spa and is waiting for friends to drive him home. And it's midnight now! He doesn't "do" public transport - at least he's v.good looking!
I had the pleasure of dining alone in wetherspoons (before it closed). The waiting staff found me quite amusing. ha.
Contemporary was fun, but I felt very strange not being in unitard. And softness was a problem too, but at least my feet are better behaved and I was more flexible. And I was nearly able to count!!!
If anyone is under 23, living in Dundee, single - good looking and gay please leave me a message! - am getting quite desperate, I hate moving to new places, it seems to take time to integrate with locals before you can start dating them!!!
Two blogs in one day....what am I coming to?
Am currently not enjoying my half term. I'm supposed to be staying with one of my friends in Coventry whose managed to land herself in hospital. It's quarter to five and I still haven't confirmed anywhere to sleep tonight!! ARGH!!!!!
Am consoling myself on the fact that I'm going to Dance Xchange tonight for contemporary. Not modern, not technique, but release based contemporary dance!! Yippee!!! It was either that or jazz, yawn. It will be interesting to see whether I can get into it but heres hoping.
I'm also going to chance intermediate ballet tomorrow with a live pianist mmmm. It must be a whole pain/pleasure complex I've got going.
Freshers look funny - I've managed to get into all the Uni facilities, my access card still works (maybe they were hoping to get me back lol) and there's lots of brand new faces struggling with the computer system etc. How up yourself you can get after only a year! he he he.
Coventry actually feels colder than scotland bizarrely! I think its because its one of the most miserable cities (if you can call that) which exists! I (almost) start laughing when people tell me that Dundee is the backend of Scotland or whatever term they choose to express that feeling. Those people have never been to this product of a cement mixer vomiting over a landfill refuse site.
I've just spotted one of my disgusting housemates from last year. This was a person who would go away for the 4 week break at Easter leaving the kitchen full of their washing up, and then when I put the wasing up in their FOOD CUPBOARD.
They proceeded to leave it there for the next term. And that was just the tip of the iceberg!! Apologies for the cliche, but it's the name of a particularly appalling first year collaborative module here and a running joke that you fall into whenever you're around. Which if you're lucky, you won't ever be!
Am going off to dance (after drinking tea, travelling to Birmingham and waiting around somewhere - happy holiday!).
Until next time
