tout doucement

Something should be said for Monday mornings warmly snuggled in a furry blanket sipping hot Crème Brulée Godiva coffee as Serge Gainsbourg, Barbara & the rest of the 1950's Paris gang serenade me in the background. It feels so decadent i can barely keep my phlegm & snot in. Oh no, wait. That's because my sexy cold refuses to FUCKING. SOD. OFF.

It seems that copious amounts of water, chicken soup, rice porridge, orange juice, vitamin C, Chinese oils, Tequilà, Grand Marnier, Crème de Menthe & the rest of my sister's entire liquor cabinet (mine has somehow been emptied...*look innocent*), there is still a family of goo comfortably embedded in my respiratory system (yes, it's the attention to details that make me so delightful to read, i know). I've managed to narrow this all down to either a case of bad karma (which doesn't really make any logical sense for i am the picture of niceness, you see) or - *gasp* - old age. Seriously. My body, at only near a quarter of a century old, can't seem to cure a simple little cold in less than ten bastard days while Mr. K-Fed has managed to father a small country in that amount of time!

There are some obvious upsides to this, of course. Added to the aforementioned morning (although frankly, for the pure principle of whining, previous mornings were rather spent being completely unconscious - a rather good thing, some might argue), i also get to spend the last few nights in resting (with a better excuse than I Am An Anti Social Bitch) and watching the entire last season of Sex & the City. After the insane amount of socializing the past holiday schedules have found me in, i am happy to report that all this has restored my indulgence towards Human Beings once again. Somewhat.

You see, watching odd social antics on the telly is one thing but actually experiencing them out on my own is a whole other ordeal, let me tell you. It's utterly strange to me in fact. It's not because i am completely unaware of what & how things work Out There, or that i am a hopeless hermit, but it just seems that i've always experienced these things on two levels simultaneously & rather paradoxically. There's the one where i am actually living it, obviously, where i'm in my body, receiving external inputs & giving out internal outputs (sometimes even 'normally', if you can imagine!). And then there is this other level - this out of body experience, or rather a deeper inner body experience - where i witness everything, myself included, from my Seventeen-Year-Old Self's perspective, and it all seems so... weird, man... E.g.:

• Studying in a coffee shop, and then suddenly stop to note that there is this stranger staring at me. After checking if i have zipped my trousers, have coffee dripping down the front of my shirt and/or stained my face with ink dipped in chocolate - all feasible possibilities - i realize, perhaps, he is 'eyeing me' (having to look something like one of those 'trendy slash together' uni student i so often see, i suppose) and wonder how in the world this ever happened? And if this is so, why doesn't this stranger say or do anything to indicate that i am not, in fact, a self-conscious clumsy dirthead but instead a hot self-conscious clumsy dirthead that asks inane questions & gets to study diddly squat? Seriously, some of us can do with a little compliment instead of a scary stare!
  
  
• Flirting at a bar, and realising that i can, actually, flirt! With a guy! In a bar! ME! Which thereafter has the unfortunate result of the most bizarre things coming out of my mouth, such as "I'm sorry, i didn't mean to flirt with you, or act like this bc i'm drunk in any way - it seems that i tend to be naturally like this as well, i'm afraid. I blame it on my fag." Whahhh?!?
  
  
• Shagging on a kitchen table for the first time. All that ran through my mind was 'OhmygawdiamhavingSEXonakitchentable!' . (If you looked up 'smooth', my picture would be right under it.)
  
  
• Having lunch with a once Particular Gentleman who, out of the blue - and really off any topic - decided to talk in detail about a stranger lady he would want to score while carefully pausing AND oddly looking right at me whenever he mentions how hot she is. Me PICKING UP on the possibility that he might be trying to get me jealous - dear lord, why? Do people really do this? And with ME of all people?! And if they don't, why would i even think they would? Weirdness....

Not to mention countless other freaky social phenomena that humbly throw me a little out of the loop, thank you very much. It's as if i'm a lab mouse watching how humans function, and try as i might, study as i can, watch as i do, i will never quite understand the human mating game. Or at least, i will never understand how i could comfortably fit in it (discounting that i could be a pathological case of dysfunctionality, of course). I know humans are social creatures. Their Our urge to couple & mate, to form lasting & secure relationships is a fundamental evolutionary remnant in human psychology. It's normal functional stuff, really. Stuff that makes sense. If their our ancestors didn't bond and huddle together in order to run mammoths off a cliff and drive the Neanderthals into extinction, well, they we wouldn't be here now, would they we? But, to my Seventeen-Year-Old Self, that still doesn't explain why it is normal for one to wait 2 days after a first date to call the other person up, or why it is acceptable to make the other person jealous, play 'hard to get', be rude or patronizing, make the other person feel guilty for not liking you and/or connive the other into liking you only to discover you don't really like them that much in the end (!?!). I mean, really, as if everyday socialising isn't hard enough as it is without having to worry about if you could fall in love with one another.

...That's the ick factor, isn't it? The 'love' part of it all. All this mental hoo-ha & yodelay-hee-haw is because most of us believe that it would - it should - bring us, in the end, this fabulous, coveted, infamous 'Holy Grail of Love'. That it would be all worth it - all the disappointments, all the awkwardness, all the heartbreaks, all the crapiness, craziness & crassness. Because if - and when! - we survive all that, just like Cinderella, Pinocchio or Elisa Dolittle, we somehow get to become more. It's our constant drive to be above & beyond, to self-actualize & better ourselves - that's the ultimate promise of Love, isn't it? But you know what? Love, as far as anyone is concerned, as objective as it can be (because if we cannot count on Science, what can we count on, right?), can basically be broken down into two things: Desire + Intimacy; Desire = Sex, Intimacy = Attachment + Trust.

That's it, folks! Humans are social creatures who need strong social bonds to exist. In other words, it's all a survival thing. Our brains have just wired it somehow to translate 'survival' into 'love', and because we are indeed a tad more complex than your ordinary worm, we create these intricate social schema and rules and norms and concepts for one another to jump through (if for no other reason than because it is admittedly quite amusing to watch sometimes - like going to the circus). And as if that's not enough, throw in some hormones, pheromones and neurotransmitters to the mix, shake it well, let it cool, pour, serve, and voilà! You have your very own Friday Nights Out and 'Til Death Do Us Parts, babies!

Hm.

Maybe i've been watching too much Sex & the City after all (minus the puns & very enviable wardrobe, though i am working on that last point). I was never a die hard fan of the show, i must say. It just doesn't move me, or trouble and rile me up like some of my favorite shows can. Still... every time i get to watch it, it does make me feel better. Actually (and i feel a tad embarrassed saying this, let it be known)... it makes me feel... validated. Because it bears witness to the Single Girl in the strange social game going on Out There. Sure, she may have created quite a few, and i wouldn't even put my weight behind them, but it makes me feel less lonely somehow, less desperate, less pathetic and less weird (and pitiful) for wanting to be happy on my own rather than tolerantly satisfied with a fuckrag who adores me. So there.

Second ponderous 'hm'.

Apologies, i should've warned that this was going to be a rambly whingy post about Singledom. I didn't even know it was going to get to this. I was just counting on the rambly part, really. But lounging here with too much time on my hands, listening to old French love songs with Carrie & Mr. Big still freshly roaming in my head from last night oestrogen binge, as perfect & warm as i feel right now, and despite what i've said previously about boyfriends & getting attached, it just hit me that all this reasoning doesn't matter at all and the one thing that would make my morning even more perfect is having a handsome man watching over me as i type these silly, silly words (in a non-stalkerish fashion, preferably).

I hate how i am programmed. And where the hell are my chocolates?!