giovedì, agosto 12, 2010

You've been smelling again

It actually smells like autumn. Well, fuck me. Thanks for making it easy to quit you, Europe, going fucking autumn in early August, you frigid bitch. I'm really starting to feel like the hapless half of a relationship, in a sort of situation where Europe has been passively-agressively forcing me to break up with her because she doesn't have the balls to dump me herself, by, for example, revoking Brits' rights to live and work in the Schengen area, or by learning English so that she can do my job herself. Well, fuck you too, you evil cow, I'm going to go spend the rest of my life banging your much hotter daughter Australia.

All of which is a way to say I can bear the atrocious summer, one of the worst summers I've passed in Belgium, weather-wise, though the competition from 2009, 2008 and 2007 was all pretty stiff (motherfuck, I've been here awhile), because it doesn't matter, since I won't have to bear the winter. With that in mind, I quite like that it smells like autumn - that it smells like that clean and vigourous natural scrubdown after the sharp rain. I wish I could bottle that essence as a perfume; there must be a way, because surely it must be a thing I'm smelling when I think I'm smelling the clean - must be some sort of mushroom that actually manages to smell like clean. Right? I don't know.

But it's almost like sniffing an emotion of transcending hope and joy and I'll miss it awfully if I can't have it any more in the Antipodes. But the F-word says I can still smell it in Australia because it's not actually autumn I'm smelling, it's the post-rain, and they will have rather a lot where we are going; lots of cracking great thunderstorms. Probably it'll be even sharper and sweeter, since the breaking of the heat by the rain will be far more dramatic.

Oh good lord, it's just occurred to me that I have no idea what it's going to smell like there. I was already getting dizzy with anticipation just thinking about what the birds and the fruit is going to be like there. Goodness gracious me.

martedì, agosto 10, 2010

Does this look sexual to you?

Very nice weekend, this past weekend was. How long ago it seems. Things used to be easier in terms of swapping continents, you know. Now that I have money and possessions and a cat it's much harder . . . between that and work and the normal fuckery of Belgian existence I feel like the two days intervening since the weekend have fried my brains like so many little peices of sweetmeats.

We watched a movie called Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. I've got a massive boner for James Spader's voice, which alone makes him one of nature's own peices of ass. Wikipedia says he used to be a yoga instructor. Can you imagine how much pussy he would have got as a yoga instructor with that voice? Not to mention business; I'm firmly against yoga in many ways but I'd show up and pay money to be told to be bendy in that voice. He must have had a vocation to be an actor, because it couldn't have been for the pussy, because that would have been vast available quantities of yogic pussy. Anyways, he was a big part of the charm of Secretary; because even with that patchouli honeysuckle voice to one side James Spader brings a lot of sort of attractive humanity to neurotic pervert roles, and with that voice he's phenomenally well-suited to be the pants in a spanky romance.

But I must say the main charm of Secretary was Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was just smashing. Really awfully good. Which was refreshing, as just the week previously I'd hit a blank when I'd tried to think of any Anglo actress under 40 who didn't annoy the piss out of me.

I also appreciated the attempt - though I don't think the movie quite succeeded, it succeeded further than any other I can think of, as they were all erotic thrillers and hence something Americans are even worse at than romantic comedies - and Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance really helped bring a degree of naturalness - to present a dominant/submissive relationship as not perverted. The only thing holding it back was the slightest sense of a carefully affirming after-school special. Maybe the ending was a little too happy. Oh yeah . . . spoiler . . . hah hah. Sorry, there's my inner sadist coming out. Or else it needed more male frontal nudity. Or could have been the treacle soundtrack. Hard to say.

Anyways, it was also interesting as we watched it at a time where I had been thinking about domination and submission in a broader context. I'd never imagine you can come to any grand sweeping conclusions about humanity in terms of whether they'd rather spank or be spanked but it's certainly one of the continuums that makes up the dizzying array of continuums that makes us all so odd. And the special thing about this continuum is that I have a feeling it's less linear than most - that part of playing with this aspect of your personality (above and beyond it as an aspect of your sexuality) means an awareness of and occasional leaps to what seems like the opposite, polar end of the continuum.

There's a range of public behaviours I don't think people would commit, a range of tolerations and obediences I don't think they'd have, if this sort of bedroom behaviour wasn't part of a wider approach to the world. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I guess it's just a thing. But I can't help but feel that as much of it should be restrained to the bedroom as possible, because there's a good chance the rest of the world you're submitting to your games really isn't interested in playing.