Intimacy – Fact or Fiction?

The other day something absolutely terrible happened to me. I got stood up by a guy I was really looking forward to seeing. OK, so I wasn’t actually stood up in the literal sense, but he sent me a text on the day that we were meant to go on a date saying that he’d forgotten that he already had made plans. Most of my dates lately have been pursued half-heartedly, but I was really looking forward to this one! Tall, good looking, sense of humour, nice job, good sense of style, pierced and tattooed, what more could you want?

So today, as a ritual of recovery I went into town with a friend to have a cheap and secretly indulging lunch (money increasingly becoming a major problem). So after charging a Burger King meal on my Amex my friend started telling me about his relationship, in which he’s been for a couple of months now. For some random reason the topic of conversation lead to that of underwear, which lead to my friend confessing that he was actually wearing his boyfriend’s underwear at the time. After he said it I remained shocked for minutes. I had no idea people did that, and am I really stuck-up and conservative for thinking that it’s odd? My friend couldn’t really understand where I was coming from, highlighting the fact that the pants in question have indeed been washed. Although he justified it as being something functional, as something that you do when you need clean underwear after spending the night, I still couldn’t get it out my head. To me it seems like a very intimate thing, almost like a fetish. Perhaps I should stop being so conventional and just start wearing other people’s underwear. Is it one of those things that all couples do but never talk about?

Post Valentine - A New Hope

Yesterday was the feared commercialized 'holiday' when couples celebrate their union and single people either choose to celebrate themselves or bury themselves in depression. Accordingly I went out with some of my single friends for a non-Valentines night out, involving countless Long Island Ice Teas followed by a very drunken indie night by the seafront. In terms of my dating agenda recent events has emphasized one single notion in regards to finding a significant other; namely 'power'. Whether we like it or not, or whether we choose to conform to them or not, there are inevitably social power structures at play.

For me this has taken the form of two people in the past week, the first is one of those really connected Brightonians who promotes various club nights etc around town and know literally everybody. Even though this person may not be the richest or best looking person, the fact that his social standings are higher than mine puts me in an inferior position. Obviously I have always known who he was, but I never thought that maybe he'd be interested in me. I'm not really sure that he is, but recent experiences has proven otherwise which puts me in a very paradoxical situation; because he is of higher social status than me I don't have the power to turn him down without consequences. So far my suspisions of him fancying me have not been officially validated so I am yet to face such a dilemma.

The second guy is someone that I really like, one may even call him perfect (as far as I'm aware of at this stage). But because I have labelled him as such I am also investing myself emotionally more than he would. I shall start the dating process next week and recite how it goes, but unless he feels similar about me I will have put myself in a very risky position. Even though my friends have said that he is by no means better than me (perhaps equal on the social power barometer) I still cannot disregard the fact that he is very attractive, dresses really well (even better than me) and actually has a sense of orignial personality (which I've come to learn is quite rare these days!) What happens when you meet someone that is perhaps a little bit too perfect? Hopefully I will be able to find some flaws so that he will seem more equal to me.

Dating Fatigue

So the whole social experiment I have been trying has proven to messier than I first anticipated. Partly due to that, as well as an increasing workload, I have taken a break in the past couple of weeks. Instead I have had some good nights out with friends; house parties in Hanover and Kemptown, the last ever Shibby's in Ghetto, expensive cocktails at various venues and a random birthday party. However, all these instances have left me somewhat pessimistic about the whole thing. How on earth do people actually meet each other? If you don't meet the significant other in bars, clubs or through your friends at random parties, as popular culture has taught us, then where exactly does it happen? For me it might just be a matter of state of mind, I seem to have had enough of the entire thing for the time being, so therefore I haven't had much intention to actually look. After a week of being heavily buried in academia I think I'm ready to jump back out there and see how it all happens. Drinks tonight anyone?