Hubris.co.nz

A year ago, I went to a party, got drunk, and when a guy I didn’t really know asked me to take him home, I said yes. We went home, had consensual sex, and eventually went to sleep. In the morning, he woke up, asked me if I was awake, climbed on top of my chest, pinning me to the bed, and shoved his cock down my throat. He grasped my head so tight that I could hardly move it, and I was gagging so much that my mouth filled with vomit, and he just thrust harder and harder. I could hardly breathe, and the rest of me was frozen from the shock. I did not want this. I couldn’t stop it, all I could do was hope that he’d finish quickly and release me. So I lay there, choking and wondering if I had asked for it, if this was what I deserved for everyone that I’d ever slept with, for presuming that I could bring home someone and still be safe, and when he climbed off, he lay beside me as if nothing had happened and to stop myself from crying I curled into him like it was something I had wanted to happen.

I need to be very clear here – at no point did I say no. I didn’t have a chance to. But at no point did I say yes either. When he had me pinned down, if I had been able to move at all, I could have tried to push him off – but I was terrified that if I tried, he still might not stop, and that would turn it into a whole different situation. I had friends in the next room, and while it was one thing for them to have to hear me having good sex, I didn’t want them to hear me having bad sex. And I was in shock, believing that this was what I’d been asking for. He stayed in my bed for a while after that, dragging my hands down to his cock repeatedly, continuing to touch me. I opted for a “I’m trying to sleep” approach, sliding across the bed, too hot to hide under the covers but just hoping that he’d leave, which he did eventually, sheepishly mumbling goodbye as he stumbled out.

I spent the rest of the day pretending like nothing had happened, apologising to my friends who were staying for all the noise, and making jokes about how fucked up my hair was. “He was clearly right-handed” said my friend as she took a photo of my hair from the back. Turns out that a guy continuingly shoving your head down to his dick and then later pinning you down makes it pretty hard to comb your hair out afterwards.

(That’s not the first time I’ve posted that image on Hubris. The first time I described the guy as “kind of pushy”. Back in January I was still determined not to talk about it or to acknowledge it really. But y’know what? No.)

On the Sunday afterwards, I went to Xmas Dinner with the Lovehawks, and I told them the story, trying to frame it in a “hey, isn’t this funny, ha ha, oh you should have seen my hair, hilariousness” kind of way, because I’m one of those douchebags who uses humour to deal with things that they’re not okay with.  But of course they saw through my false bravado, and were like “You know, that sounds kind of rapey”. And there it was. There was the word that I’d not wanted to use. For months I would cling to the ‘y’ on the end there, before my counselor asked me how else I would define sex without consent. But I am skipping ahead of myself.

The next day someone asked me in that nudge nudge wink wink kind of way how my Friday was, and told me everyone knew what I’d been up to. That made me sick to my stomach and I couldn’t stop crying, so I rushed home to hide, which made for a really awkward conversation with my manager, who was really concerned about me but I didn’t want to tell him what was going on. I was supposed to be having lunch with Iva who I hadn’t seen in years, so she came over instead, and my first introduction to her boyfriend was for him to hear me talking about what had happened, trying to be calm. After they left I was still shaken, and another friend came over to see if I was okay. She held me while I cried some more, and then helped me compose an email to the guy telling him that what he did was not okay.

“I think it’s important to let you know that I was uncomfortable with some of the things that happened on Friday night. I’m not sure what you’ll do with this information, but you need to know that it left me feeling more than a little upset. I had a lot of fun before we went to sleep, but that doesn’t mean it was okay for you to wake me up by forcing your dick into my mouth again. I didn’t say no at the time, because I was pinned down, but I didn’t say yes either. And that’s not okay.”

I held off on sending it for a couple of hours while I thought about it, wondering if I should escalate the situation or not, or if I should just accept that sluts like me eventually get what they deserve, and I should just fucking deal with it. And I knew that thinking like that made me a bad feminist, and the fact that I lacked the fortitude to stop it happening when it happened made me a bad feminist, and that thinking there was such a thing as a bad feminist also made me a bad feminist. Eventually I pushed the send button though, after tracking down a non-work email address for him.

I went out to dinner that night with Kate Benton who I hadn’t seen in years, and it should have been amazing because that’s when I found out she and Rob were engaged. Instead I could hardly open my mouth, I was spacey and shaken, terrified thinking about what the response to my email would be. And also, I was feeling dreadful for having sent it. It would have been a hell of  a thing to receive. I felt awful for the way that I was with Kate and Rob and Jess, that I was too wrapped up in my own shit to celebrate properly with them, or be responsive in any way, and I didn’t want to talk about my own life at all, which until then had been going pretty great. And so I got home to his reply. He was shocked, apologetic, and thought he had behaved like a dog. I cried some more, and wasn’t sure how to respond. I ended up getting my ex boyfriend to help me with my wording. For someone who works in communication, it was particularly frustrating to find myself so short of words to express myself.

I decided that unlike the time that I was assaulted when I was 14, this would not be something I felt the need to bottle up and keep secret, so I spoke about it openly with my friends when I felt it was appropriate. That was a hell of a learning experience. One girl said “Oh, if you’d done self-defense courses, you’d have been able to push him off”. Oh, is that so? Cos what I really needed was another way to think about what I had done wrong. Thank you so much! That was the tipping point with her, and she was gone from the people I cared about. When I told another friend, she asked me how much I’d had to drink and went back to talking about her work. I switched off then too. I was reminded of a friend who when I’d told back in 2006 that a taxi driver had tried to grab me in his cab was like “well, were you flirting with him?”. No, and even if I had been, that still wasn’t okay. Others tried to move off the subject as soon as possible. My silence was their comfort. I found myself wondering if some of the uneasiness some of my male friends displayed was due to them questioning if they’d ever done a similar thing and hadn’t realised it. I think that I made jokes about it also was disconcerting for some, but that’s the way I process and handle. At times I felt guilty for talking about something that was hard for people to hear, but I didn’t know what else to do. I found myself telling people I didn’t really know about it, because I needed somewhere to put it. I couldn’t keep it inside.

Outside of the mostly safe place with my friends, when I had to have interactions with him, my body would tense up, and I’d spend time dry retching afterwards. My work suffered and I got in trouble for making stupid mistakes. I thought about leaving but reminded myself that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I started reading his twitter feed, stalking like a crazy person, looking for any sign of remorse or an indication that he wasn’t having an easier time of it. I drank more and laughed louder when he was around.  There was a lot of arguments on the internet at the time about Julian Assange, and a lot of people who I thought I respected going off onto CIA plots, and talking about how sex without a condom doesn’t mean rape, and every single thing I read about it made me feel worse, and like I had less credibility. And I was terrified thinking about the next time I slept with someone, wondering whether or not i’d be able to handle it, if I’d freak out, and if I’d ever be able to enjoy giving blow jobs again.

As it happened, I ended up getting drunk and going home with a female friend of mine, who said she wanted to give me a safe experience to help me move past it. For the most part, it was lovely, and positive. But I still couldn’t get over it. And strangely, I started worrying about him as well. I doubted that he had the same kind of amazingly caring friends that I had who would sleep with him to help him work through it. I didn’t know if he’d told anyone at all. And I wondered if he thought it was just an “oops, my bad!” situation that could be easily overcome, that hadn’t had any lasting damage. I wished that I’d said more in my initial email to him, but wasn’t sure if it was fair to bring it up again. I ended up messaging him at 4 in the morning asking if he wanted to go get a coffee sometime and have a chat. “I’d rather we just talked on email” came the reply. I felt shut down, and angry. I was trying to be good about this but I was not okay. So I went to see my counselor again.

I hadn’t seen her in over a year, and so I felt a little defeated going back, although I know I can go see her any time I need maintenance. So I cried in her office and we had intense discussion about semantics. As always, she suggested that I examine myself the way that I would a friend, because I am too hard on myself. If I heard about someone pinning one of my friends down and forcing their cock down their throat, how would I feel? I’d feel like fucking killing them. She suggested that I might have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when I told her about having an anxiety attack in the dentist’s chair as I was held down and stuff done to my mouth by the dental hygienist. I failed to articulate to her that I know that he didn’t mean to have sex with me against my will, but because I didn’t consent that’s exactly what happened. She said that I was being too nice to him, that I shouldn’t be so worried about his comfort because he clearly hadn’t been worried about mine, and that I was well within my rights to send him another email, if I thought it would help me.

I asked if you wanted to go get coffee, with the intention that we’d talk about, like, music, or movies, or pop culture, or pretty much anything at all that was just casual conversation and nothingness, but I didn’t explain that properly. I said I wanted to “normalise”. What I meant is that I wanted it to be different from how it is right now when every time I have to be in the same room with you, I tense up and I get panicky. I know you didn’t set out to violate me, and that you are sorry that I felt that way, but the truth is that I’m not over it, and I’m not okay.

I struggled with whether to tell you this or not, because I wasn’t sure if it would help me at all, but the not talking about it isn’t working, and I need that to change. I’m sure that you were shocked when I emailed you to tell you how unokay I was about being pinned down, but did it have an impact on you beyond that at all? Like, did you even give it a second thought ? Did it make you question the way you live your life? Worry about how you will deal with people in the future? Stir up a whole fucking bunch of assault trauma that happened in the past that you thought you’d dealt with? Because that’s what’s happened to me.

And yes, it’s been a couple of months, and no, I am still not over this. And I don’t know what to do about it. I do want to normalise, I want to be comfortable around you. I hate that I can’t offer a solution, that all I am presenting is a problem. Maybe there’s nothing that can be done about it but time. I know we weren’t really friends before we slept together, and I don’t expect that we’ll ever become so, but I hope you understand why I need to say these things instead of being bottled up and seething with useless rage. I don’t have the solution now, and I don’t know when I will, and while I’ve tried to express or at least sumarise everything that I’m feeling right now, there’ll probably be new emotions later that I haven’t dealt with. Like I said, I don’t know how you feel about this – or if you’ve even thought about it lately, but I’d really like to know – do you have any ideas on how I (and you) could feel better about what happened?

His reply was really good, and considered. He asked me a couple of questions which were totally okay to ask, and we agreed that time would be the best way to heal, and I said that I was going to move on. Rather than focus on what had happened, I tried to make plans for the future. When I finally got a chance to talk to the married man about it – the only person I’ve ever slept with in which every single thing I did I absolutely wanted to do, rather than feeling a sense of obligation or whatever – once he was done offering to get his friends to beat the shit out of the guy, he made the good suggestion that the next time I slept with someone, I should tie them up in order to feel more comfortable. That’s exactly what I did when I met a guy from OKCupid and took him home. I explained that I didn’t like having hands on my head while I was sucking cock, and that actually, I’d like to tie him up.  Success!

I went to Slutwalk, in the dress I was wearing the night of the party, and was interviewed by Radio New Zealand about it. I thought the march was great but had to leave during the speeches because they were too much. Mad props to Jason and Kate for being there.

Time passed and the memory faded somewhat. Eventually the guy was leaving for greener pastures, and since people were talking about him, it made me remember everything again which was really hard, although I wished him well. In the speeches, someone referenced the party, and everyone turned and looked at me and laughed. I was the punchline of a joke that actually wasn’t funny at all, and so I am super glad that Kelly was around for me to bawl and bawl and bawl onto. That shook me for days.

Time has helped a lot though. What’s also been incredibly healing was finding a dom and experiencing what consensual submissive sex is actually like. Discussing your limits beforehand and knowing you can change your mind at any time, and having someone be absolutely aware of how you are feeling while ostensibly treating you like a wet hole is really liberating. You’re actually in charge the whole time. I appreciate that this isn’t the solution for everybody, but it’s nice to know that rough sex doesn’t actually have to be the kind that leaves you traumatised for a year.

So what do we take away from all of this? Because it has to be a learning experience, right?

I guess most importantly, there is nothing as sexy as enthusiastic consent. Don’t ever presume anything in bed. Make sure your partner is really into it. And you or your partner can withdraw consent at any time.

If your friend tells you about a negative experience they’ve had, make sure you listen to them. Don’t judge them, or suggest other ways that they should have coped. They did whatever they needed to do in order to get through the experience at the time. Believe me – they’ve already worked over all the alternatives in their mind a thousand times. However they need to talk about it or act out afterwards is up to them.

And I hope that you never have something similar happen to you, but if you do, you need to remember that no matter what, it wasn’t your fault, and that there are many amazing people you can talk to about it. If your “friends” make you feel bad about it, find someone better to help you deal with it. Time helps a lot. It’s not a magic fixall though, and I’m still kinda choked up as I finish this off, but at least it’s done now.

1. I really, really wish that Holly and Hef were still together, and that they’d get married and have a baby.
2. I am not that ashamed to say that really like the movie Titanic, mostly because it reminds me of being 17 and going on the ferry to the Gathering,
3. Unless something happens in them, I change my sheets once a fortnight, even though I have so many sets of linen that they fill a large filing cabinet.
4. I haven’t smoked pot or done any illegal drugs since 2005, and I won’t be doing any ever again on account of being crazy, but I miss getting stoned, a lot.
5. Although you wouldn’t be able to tell from the state of my desk and bedroom floor, I can be really anal about my possessions, and really like to keep my books, DVDs and music in alphabetical & chronological order.
6. Right now I have at least six types of moisturiser that I use regularly
7. I have editing rights on about seven different websites, or maybe more.
8. I am still in contact with only three people that I’ve had sex with.
9. At last count (which is right now) I have pashed 33 people, or it might have been 43 because I was adjusting my stereo and messed up my hands. No wait, it’s 34/44. I _always_ forget one of the three people who I’ve had sex with that I’m still friends with (sorry!). Of those 34 people, I don’t know the names of two of them – the girl on New Year’s 2001/2 and the woman I kissed at Kowhai’s party last year.
10. I often struggle to understand why anyone would be friends with me.
11. I am really amazing at guestimating the perfect pours when I am making cocktails. What I put in the shaker will fill however many glasses I have at whatever size they are perfectly.
12. My least favourite phrase right now is “value for money”.
13. I vote Green to ease my guilt for not doing enough good deeds with the privileges that I have in life.
14. When I was 12, a friend of my mother’s grabbed my ass and winked at me in the way that you should not wink at a 12 year old girl. I slept with my pocket knife under my pillow that night. Now he’s on a Lotto ad and my parents make jokes about him. I do not appreciate that at all.
15.My iPod has three songs by 30 Seconds To Mars on it. I’m kind of embarrassed but I love My So-Called Life so dearly that I can’t not. Plus it’s Bambi’s fault.
16. If you forced me to choose only one Daily Show correspondent to watch for the rest of my life, apart from Jon Stewart, of course, I think I would have to go with Demetri Martin, but it would depend on whose piece I had seen most recently.
17. There are empty coffee cups that are at least six months old in my car.
18. When I used to see a counselor in Newmarket, it was $130. My counselor in Wellington is $85 when she’s not covered by work, but my psychiatrist who wears vaguely Cosby-as-done-by-Hallenstines-in-1998-sweaters is $170.
19. I am now physically incapable of sleeping without the aid of zopiclone. This worries me a lot but I am too crazy right now to try and come off it.
20. Although I am still angered by the stupidness of their ads, I buy Colgate Triple Action toothpaste. I will never buy a Nair product again though for the way that they state that you can’t be feminine and hairy. For the record, I am hairy like an animal.
21. I worry that if someone was attracted to me it would be because they have a fetish for fat chicks, and then I judge them for that, and I judge myself for judging them. It is fun times.
22. I frequently find myself wishing that I had the power to snap necks when people keep talking and annoying me.
23. I often don’t rinse out the coffee plunger at work. Yes, I leave it for the cleaning staff to deal with.
24. I like my coffee as a large latte, my white wine aromatic, my red wine boisterous, and my cocktails strong enough to overpower an elephant.
25. I have had almost a bottle of wine tonight and I suspect that at least one of my answers has made you very uncomfortable that you asked.

So, I went to Bar Camp today, and this is how it was. Accordingly, I must highlight the point that hi, this is Joanna McLeod’s show, and so duh, I’m not going to talk directly about whatever whosesever my political opinions are. Instead, I will present you with my Twitters from today:

1. 15 hours ago: 1 ex-work nemisis, 2 ex work fucks, 3 workmates, 4 threadless tshirts, 5 wellingtonistas
2. 13 hours ago Hadyn says the guy sitting next to him at bar camp was surfing Hubris during a presentation. Awesome! He wasn’t cute though
3. 9 hours ago: Finally have a drink in my hand, phew! Oh, and Hadyn loves Supertramp. Haha
4. 4 hours ago:It is strange when it’s been a million years & a million hours of shit & therapy & life in betwn but u have too many drinks & go “your body &I used to be 1″
5. 3 hours agoAt Lisa’s, in my princes dress, destined for Lani’s party at some stage.”

So then there were drinks at the Loaded Hog, and discussions about me declaring Feminism on the situation, before I got Lisa to pick me up, and eventually we went to Lani’s party and then no taxis showed up and fuck, aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh, but finally I manaeged to get home now, phew!

EDIT: and some more slightly coherent takes on the above information, now that is is morning and my neighbour has woken me up all worried, I can say that Smoo broke a window last night – I’m not sure how it happened cos I was asleep on the couch and maybe he woke me up climbing in it? But consequently the curtain is molesting me now in the wind. And also, my twitters really didn’t do a good job of conveying how many actual useful conversations were held at BarCamp about things that are really very very applicable to my new job. And strangely enough 140 characters didn’t let me say what I meant which was ‘it is strange that there was this level of intimacy with someone that I haven’t had since then, and it was a long time ago, but I got a reminder of it because I saw someone I hadn’t seen for a long time, and we are strangers now and I want it to stay that way, but I want to find that level of intimacy with someone else sometime soon please, where you know their body as well as you know your own, and occasionally you’re not sure where you end and they start’. Yeah. That’s a bit better.

1. Some photos that the lovely Miss Fur took on my request.

My sexy new filing cabinet, all painted up and installed in my room and full of bed linen

My sexy new Sharondalier. Sort of.

(oh okay, she hasn’t uploaded them yet, but when she does, I will edit this)

2. I went to the Great Blend last night. Beforehand, Karen and I met up with Alan and Tom at the Port Cafe where they didn’t have any of the fishes that Karen wanted to eat, but her eventual decision of Bluenose and my Groper were fucking awesome. Their food is so yummy, their decor is so crap. Oh well. At the Great Blend I found the scrumptious Miss Kimberley and she came and sat with us at the back on leather couches where I could drink and giggle and whisper to my heart’s content without bothering so many people.

My text to Martha: RB namechecked me in his opener – “We moved venues so that Jo of Hubris has a better place to swim” I’ve fucked at least 2 ppl here. I was pleasantly surprised it was only two people. I was expecting up to four.

My text to Robyn: Russell Brown just gave you massive shoutouts, woo! xojo

I hadn’t hung out with Alan very much previously, so it was awesome that I got a chance to last night, and hopefully I didn’t make too much of a drunken nuisance of myself with my hilarious commentary – and my yelling anger when the guy from TVNZ showed a total lack of understanding about egovt guidelines (I’m gearing up for my new job already, obviously) although later when he said he was the boss of the captioning division his lack of knowledge made more sense. Alan was shocked when I announced my intention to hit on Damian Christie (He likes banging fat chicks! I should be so in!), and told me I could do better, which is sweet, but awww, poor Damian, haven’t we bashed him enough? At the bar Kowhai Montgomery introduced herself and we had a good talk, and she was awesome. I also saw CJ who used to do the job I used to do, and who’d been on the Silverstripe bowling team in the Wellingtonista league, and so now she is totally my WBLTMNBFFIMDAHTRFL (that’s ‘would be like totally my new best friend forever if Martha didn’t already have that role for life’ in case you’re not down with the kids’ slang). It was funny watching Karen’s face during the talk, because she’s not overly internetly inclined, and she doesn’t even own a TV. Plus she had to drink Chardonnay. I told Tom from TVNZ that I hope that they show all three alternative endings to the Shortland Street serial killer (incidently, I am so loving it – I was totally shocked when Claire showed up dead – really didn’t expect that, though I keep getting Meg confused with the new MILF character so I didn’t care about her, and I knew Jay was going to die when they gave her a long, lingering goodbye) and then babbled something about Idol slash and something more about how awesome Robyn is. He and Damian kept going outside to have cigarettes whenever I went to talk to them, so my seduction plan totally failed.

Eventually someone yelled out that a taxi was leaving, so I ditched Karen totally and ran off with Russell and CJ and Tom TVNZ and ummm someone else was in the cab – maybe Kowhai – and we went to Mighty Mighty. Of course. More drinking was done, and I saw Luke Buda there, and decided it would be an awesome time to congratulate him for his costume in Eagle Vs Shark (which is great and you should see it) – if you’ve seen it, you’ll know that he is in a bear costume in one scene, which is hilarious on so many levels because a) I love me some Phoenix Foundation and b) I love me some bears and c) I love me some people in animal costumes and d) I love me some pretending that Sam Scott is a giant bear, and so therefore e) Luke Buda dressed up as Sam Scott! So awesome! But he failed to see how awesome it was. Strange that, I mean I always love it when drunk girls come up to me and slur at me and act like dicks. Also he said he didn’t get to choose his costume and sounded a little grumpy about it. So luckily there were other people there for me to talk more shit to, and so I proceeded to do that at great length. Yeah.

3. I still haven’t found a flatmate. I don’t understand why not.

I don’t normally do this kind of thing on Hubris, but hell, at least it’s all about me…

1. Everyone (who’s anyone) uses the phrase “jumped the shark” about TV shows, or sometimes bands, or just celebrities in general (for example “Milan totally jumped the shark when he let that groupie wear his hat right in front of me”). I’ve started to use it to describe friendships. Not cool.

2. I have seven sets of duvet covers (yellow, pink with gold, magenta & purple, brown & red retro, blue undersea, burgandy oriental brocade and brand new silver brocade) but only two sets of sheets – black and lime green, and four single duvet covers, including my New Mexico-ish Ralph Lauren cover that I got when I first moved to Japan, which we had to specially order and cost like $400 (shoosh. We paid $150 for an Xmas tree once…)

3. I have real problems with trust and jealousy – and given my background, I’m really not surprised.

4. The reason I hate being called a blogger is because I’ve been doing this for EIGHT FUCKING YEARS motherfuckers, when that word wasn’t even a glint in anyone’s eye, and why the fuck do all these newbie people get the attention and book deals and why aren’t I famous yet?

5. I made Anji and Sebastian worm themselves this weekend right along with me. My next guess is that I have haemarroids. Of course my reason for thinking this has absolutely nothing to do with an advertorial in the local rag of course…

6. I’d really like to have a cock to fuck Jessica Simpson with. This is not a “lesbian sex doesn’t count compared to hetrosexual sex” blah blah blah crap, it’s just that dude, she’s so horrible but there’s something about her that makes me want to fuck her ass and mouth.

7. I no longer talk to anyone I’ve had sex with (this would probably be an advantage if I fucked Jessica). There’s only a couple of people on that list that I wish were still in my life. Others I miss when I think of jokes that only they would get.

8. I am secretly impressed with how much pus I can squeeze out of my various pimples and assorted other bumps.

9. I am terrified of people liking my online persona and then meeting me in real life and going “wow, she’s just not real at all” and disliking me.

10. Often I think that I will spend the rest of my life without ever hearing anyone say that they love me again.

11. I find the idea of being a housewife in the 1950s strangely appealing.

12. Half the reason that I want to be a music writer is that I have a fantasy of having a musician fall head over heels in love with me and write songs about me.

13. There’s this one song on this one CD by this one guy that makes me go huh, but I’d be too scared to lose it if I did ever find out that it wasn’t actually about me.

14. If I had an infinite amount of money to spend on a car, I like to think that I’d still just buy something like a prius. Or maybe an oldskool convertible. But definitely nothing too ridiculously expensive and/or evil.

15. If I was cloned, I’d probably be friends with me, but I might think that I was too needy and/or insecure. I’d probably have sex with me though, if I got myself drunk and came on to me first.

16. I feel like I have a decent enough grasp of the English language that I don’t feel bad about twisting it to better suit my purposes.

17. When I was under five or so, whenever I counted to 20, I would generally forget the number 17. Spazz.

18. I can’t get a credit card for another four years because I didn’t pay my car registration fee.

19. I often prefer Latinish type beers, like Amarca, Corona and San Miguel, but I’ll drink pretty much any kind, except for Lion Red.

20. I plan a lot of funerals in my head – not just mine, but those of an assortment of people I know. I think about what I’d wear, what I’d say in the eulogy, what we’d serve at the wake and how I’d spend my inheritance.

So apparently, according to everyone and also me, I haven’t been writing here very often. That kinda sucks. It means that my writing is pretty much restricted to stupid little snippets of everyday banter about what I’ve been watching on TV, or endless melencholy about people that have touched me (literally) that don’t get aired much. Well, maybe I can change that. I could write a bit long piece here, or I could publish dirty snippets that I must stress are not related to one another, nor are they chronological. Maybe I’ll do both.

For a nice guy who told me that he hadn’t had sex outside a relationship before, he still managed to fuck me in half a dozen positions, transitioning seamlessly between them.

Yeah! This is going to be fun. Plus this way I get to pretend that I’m still hot and desirable instead of sitting around wearing old jeans in desperate need of a decent haircut and some proper shampoo.

So, Jo’s life as of November 25th. Well. Still searching for the perfect job. Still not sure how she’s going to pay the bills. Still questioning the meaning of life. Making sure she takes her pills regularly every morning and never lets doctor&pharmacys fuck her around again so she ends up going ten days without them.

Other than that, what ho? Hmmmm. Sebastian went AWOL for eight days, causing me no end of worry. I pashed a hot boy who looked like he was from The Strokes, but he was British, and British boys NEVER come home with me. I don’t know what’s up with them. What’s up with you Brits eh? Are you all prudes? (Actually he had a girlfriend. Whoops). I need two flatmates. I moved my bedroom furniture around. I may move the lounge furniture around although now that La’s gone I no longer have a willing helper monkey. And that’s it. That’s all that’s happened to me in the past shit, nearly two months. Fuck.

So it doesn’t matter that he seems like he is a sexual deviant. It doesn’t matter that he rejoices in my hairy legs that he takes the time to rub his cock up and down. It doesn’t matter when he licks my armpits, or tries to fuck me in the morning when he’s still wearing the same condom. He is no one. He is nothing. It doesn’t matter.

I don’t have new things going on in my life which is kind of a problem given that I need constant stimulation to keep me going. I feel very out of the loop now that I no longer receive free movie tickets and cds. I haven’t left the house in ummmm two weeks to go anywhere but the shops. No work and no play makes Jo a dull girl. No work and no play makes Jo a dull girl. No work and no play makes Jo a dull girl. You get the general idea. So right now I’m trying to correct that, in the sense of downloading free mp3s from NZm to see if I can find a great new NZ band I can love and hopefully I’m going to a show tomorrow night. Must. get. out. of. the. house. Of course, all donations of mix cds, tapes, old books and magazines will be most gratefully accepted.

I also should be creating more than I am. Maybe I oughta do my portfolio site. In fact, there’s absolutely no maybe about that at all. A few more job applications wouldn’t go astray either. I’m bloody sick of rejection letters though. If only the dole paid about $50 a week more – or my flatmates were able to cough up for their bills instantly – life would be so much sweeter. I could go out! I could do things! Oh yeah, did I mention that my car is totally dead? That kinda sucks some ass too.

What I need I think is a makeover. Maybe the Fab Five could come over and laugh at my clothes (“you have HOW MANY bonds tshirts? and they’re all tight on your nipples like that?” “What are these shoes? Silver plastic? Are you from the Jetsons?” “Christmas lights? Tack city! And what’s with all the saris?”) and change my life. Already half the time I think I have Joss Whedon doing commentary over my life (“And in this scene, Jo’s watching TV. Again. The empty dishes piled at her feet adn the newspaper opened to the ‘Situations Vacant’ are there to really drive home the loneliness she’s feeling, while soon the demons she’s battling will come back cos we’ve cut off her cipramil”). I think maybe instead I need less TV in my life. But Heather Havrilesky is the best thing about Salon, and if I never watched TV again, how would I know what she was talking about?

His hands are on my head, pushing back my head to secure his view and to make sure I don’t move my mouth away. I can taste his tang and it’s all I want for now, all that I could ever want, but there’s a knocking at the door, and he says that it’s her.

Oh yeah, crack out the porn, Jo. I do think that I’d probably have a good career in Erotica writing. I just need to get me a laptop so I can be more savvy about it. How exactly does one become an Erotica Writer? Or rather, a Writer of Erotica Who Makes a Living out of it? Perhaps even An Erotica Writer With A Shiny Laptop AND an Aeron Chair? An Erotica Writer with a Shiny Laptop and an Aeron Chair Who Can Afford to go see Her Hairdresser Again And Fill Said Hairdresser With Accumulated Scandals and Gossip, And Who Can Also Find Another Pair of $30 Jeans from Farmers That Fit All Lovely Except That Now They Have Big Thigh Holes And Are Thus Rendered Useless. Yeah, that’d be sweet.

PS: my hubris mail went down for a couple’o days, so if you emailed me and didn’t get a reply, try again. Cheers.

Tuesday June 4th
So today I handed in my final assessment for Communication Strategy – that’s my last piece’o work due in before exams (June 20/24/25) so now I have some time to tackle a multitude of special secret projects that I have on the boil. Of course, tackling them would be a whole lot easier if I had a week of little to no computer work to give my wrist a good rest, so let’s try and do that, shall I? Excellent. About my essay – I handed it in without even reading it, I was that disgruntled. But it’s gone now, not worth worrying about. Apparently I only have to take two papers next semester, cos I can credit so many from my BCs, but I’m gonna take three anyways. Originally I was taking four, but I can’t do Campaigns – an advertising paper – because its lecture clashes with Corporate Communication.

You know how I’m a grad dip and in my year, we didn’t like the grad dips a lot of the time? Well, I think I get on pretty well with the BCs students, but there are some grad dips who just rub me so the wrong way, and it’s people like them who give people like me a bad name. I feel so old when I find myself saying “well, back in my year…”. Actually, I feel so old right now full stop<!– shagging sweet young things will do that to a girl, i guess! –>. I had a very amusing phone conversation with Anji tonight, and it appears that we’ve swapped age-tastes. My average age of men I scored was 28 (although admittedly both the astronaut and the microbiologist pushed that way up) and hers was 23, despite the fact that I’m 21 and she’s 29, but now it seems that we’re righting ourselves. Also, I’m going to be 22 in less than two weeks, so you should buy me things. But anyways, where was I before I went off on that tangent? Something about being at tech, and being dumb and taken by surprise and only managing to say a “hey, how are you?” and ending up being either a) the pathetic kind of person that I strive to avoid to be or b)the bitchy kinda person that I fight my natural inclination to be<!– I feel TERRIBLE now, I didn’t mean to snub him or anything, but I didn’t expect to see him so soon after. And I’ve been giving him an awful lot of headspace as well, which is vaguely interesting –>.  Oh well.  Justin laughed at me lots – “so it wasn’t a big deal then? had a long weekend did you?” I don’t gossip <!– much –> about the attributes of boys that I respect to their friends, thank you very much, Justin. But if we did, between me and that other young lady who will remain nameless, but she knows who she is, we’d have quite a thick dossier.

Bopha wouldn’t come out for a drink with me this afternoon after I handed in my essay (apparently 3pm is too early) so we settled on going to Roasted Addiquition instead. Nice food, but kinda expensive. We didn’t watch soccer today! Well, 20 minutes of the Japan-Belgium game, but that was all, and boy, that was a relief. Like, I do like soccer, but after three games yesterday (although I really only watched Brazil/Turkey because it was SO GOOD) and a couple of games the day before… I’m starting to think I shouldn’t have kicked Ben III out until after the World Cup, because Bopha is scarily addicted. We yell a lot. Also, occasionally she has taken to muttering “I want to cut off your limbs” to me, and she’s constantly jumping on me. It’s amusing.

That’s about it all, really. Boring day, I know, but thank god I got that assignment in and now I can concentrate on other stuff. Oh yeah, I was really really really hankering to go to Pluto tonight, but I couldn’t find anyone that I know well enough to be completely comfortable around to go with, and my mind was too mushy to go with someone I didn’t really know. So I just listened to the cd twice in a row instead. Fuck it’s an excellent cd, I appreciate it so much better now. And KatieH gave me a Pluto tshirt too. This is going to have to cause me to rethink my whole band tshirt philosophy (ie – I don’t wear them). But I guess the thing is now I’m actually a grownup and not a little punk kid trying her darndest to be alternative. If someone gave me a spice girls tshirt and it fit properly, I’d wear it now. Plus this Pluto tshirt is a bonds shirt, and therefore I have more than Brad, so I gotta wear it.

There’s something a little wrong with your taxi driver giving you tips on how to become a high price hooker, isn’t there? I mean, even if he’s just giving you advice on where the rich men hang out. The George in Parnell, apparently, and I was like “sweet mate”. I think I’d just been saying about how I didn’t want to get a job and shit, and he was like “find a rich man, that’ whbat women do, isn’t it?”. Actually, come to think about it, he was a real sexist prick – going on about how much stuff women carry in their handbags, but at the time he seemed funny. I’m gald I didn’t tip him, even if I had to run into the house to get cash. Oh man, apart from paying for the taxi, I didnyt’ spend a cent tonight – how cool is that?

I found myself spending the evening in the bedroom of some apartment overlooking the sky tower and the harbour bridge. There was blue carpet and it all smelt of CKone, because everyone was spraying that on themselves. I realised eventually that the bed was the same one as we sold, and I was like “well no wonder this feels so comfortable” and Jody and I laughed a lot, and then probabyl danced some more.

Oh man, i got the best quote outta Jody tonight – almost “I have a cock in my mouth!” but I can’t remmeber it. Oh wait, yes I can – “if I was drunk enough, I’d do anything with you” – but we were talking about me asking her to sing spice girls with her at Karaoke – honestly. Damn I’ ve been using a lot of dashes.

Tech at noon, group meeting. There’s a computer hooked up on a 56 modem in the lab now, running IE 3.0 and NS 3.0 for us to do testing on, and we discovered that our site doesn’t work at these browser levels. BUGGER! stats from the NSCC say that only .48% of people have used IE 3.0 so we don’t really care about that, but 3.78% of people use NS 3.0 so we gotta do something about that. Well actually, I d unno if we do really, cvos it’s only a couple’o pixels out. And if you’re using a browser that old – even if you’re doing it ironically – you get what you deserve.

Eventually, it’s like 4pm and I’m tired of working in Quest, and having to reboot every half hour, even emails from Kini telling me what she’s eating aren’t inspiring enough, so I go get food with Kate M and Brad, and at 5pm we show up at the TV studios to provide canned laughter for Clayton’s sitcom thingie. It was funny, as were the 3 minuters we made in 1st year that we watched some of. Fuck, first year seems like yesterday, and a life time ago. Arg. I’ve fucked 3 people and snogged 4 others in less than the past year. Nothing like making up for lost time.

After the videos, we head down to London Bar, and Andrew Melville, radio tutor, calls me Joanne and buys me a pint. If people buy me alcohol, I forgive small details, especially when he amends himself to “Joanna” later. After Brad and Kate M have gone, and I’m sitting at the other end of the tables pushed together, Becks Jody and I realise that we’re magenta yellow and cyan in my case. Kate Hamlin buys me a vodka. Stuff is good. Jody Cess and I are the only non radio students – they’re a very inbred group, you know. I laugh a lot observing their social rituals and the inside stories going on. Oh the gossip! Oh the drama!

Eventually we felt like we were under threat of being kicked out becasue we were so loud, and also everyone was hungry. The group seemed to spliter in two, a nd I went with one group down to Glengarry on College Street, which was shut, and many questioned whether or not Randy actually knew where he lived. But we got there eventually, and it was posh. Bex ordered pizza, and got my handful of change to pay for it. There was drinking and drinking – alcohol the radio gang bought w ith the money they’d made f rom the static launch party. They’re not programming it anymore, which sucks cos it’s finally streaming across the Intranet. Dancing to old scary music – Bon Jovi, much stroking of someone’s chest. I got asked if I’d put out for someone in an animal costume, but I think I’d be laughing too much.

“Lydia” by Fur Patrol plays, and it seems group consensus that this is the coolest song ever around right now. It’s such a jilted woman song, and I sing it with a group. Then Jarrod plays Hootie and the Blowfish, and I complain that it’s only ever Saint Pats boys that like this kinda crap, and he’s like “you know nothing about St Pats boys” and I laugh lots, because actually I do. Dylan taught me how boys wank, after all.

Dance dance, drink drink drink, smelly smelly shoes. Gossip gossip, my head hurts, call a taxi, taxi comes, arguing with driver, he’s implying that I’m a whore, runnning into the house for cash to pay, pay, back home, computer on, requests to see my titties, so what else is new? Fuck I’m tired. It w as fun hanging out with people that I don’t know that well. It was also fun to discover the other day that someone I was afraid of hurting has a parallel agenda to mine, so wh00p for that.

More goddam meetings tomorrow, time to feel less sick and then go to bed. It’s been fun. Heh, I amuse me much, thanks Shania. I wonder if everyone’s going to Bar of the Stars now. I wanna go to Karaoke with Olivia again. I was talking to Brad today about Skid Row, and he just had no idea.

I’ve got chills – they’re multiplying