Part 2 – And a gay old time was had by all…

Last time on “And a gay old time was had by all”, Natalie Chatalie pondered the conundrum “Am i just too old for this shit?” We left her at the bar after the home cooked meal, the awkward silences, the new and interesting people, and being drenched from a sudden downpour on the way to 2 Brewers in Clapham… 

The Bar continued…
Anyhoo, we did what was expected, bought drinks, found a free plank of wood to rest them on, stood around shivering in the aircon trying to dry out and attempted meaningful conversations with our new friends over the boom of the speaker system. “What’s that? You want to know if you can use Jif on dishes and pants? What? Ohhh, do I remember the dishy Geoff Janz? Ohhhh yeah yeah I do and no, no not dishy, sorry.”

A couple of times I got the distinct somewhat fuzzy feeling Malta was interested in me. The girl who prefers my hair clean, fluffy and poofy thought so too, and was none too pleased that we began chewing on each others’ ears for long periods to enable what passes for a conversation in a bar. This by the way is why I make it a rule never to engage in bar conversation with men over 60, as the likelihood of accidental ear hair consumption exponentially increases once the conversationee reaches his 7th decade. Not that most of you would have to worry about this. Men of a certain age in the straight world are usually found in pubs aren’t they, not bars, and there’s nothing louder than a bit of Sky TV or the local Morris Dancers to contend with there. Hazacazawhaaa? You’ve never seen Morris Dancers in a pub? Helloooo, have you never been to Hastings for the Jack in the Green festival? Well, put that on your bucket list then. It should be up there with meeting the Dalai Lama and going to the moon.

God where was I?

Oh Malta… yeah so I was just glad to have met someone I could talk easily to. Too often meeting new people is like being with the two Hungarian girls from earlier, a bit of an effort, and for some reason it’s often me making that effort and plugging the silence holes. But I don’t think he was really interested, as in interested… in my bits. He was kind of the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. He was down to earth, friendly, he’s a top class chef for fucks sake and I’m guessing a lot of girls would scratch their best friend’s eyes out so they got to see him first. Guys like that generally aren’t interested in girls like me, although they do like the fact I will quite willingly sit through a “Family Guy” and Simon Pegg marathon with them.

But what was just a tiny bit of a further clue was when he confessed he is questioning his sexuality and the immersion into the gay world is an attempt to try to figure himself out. So no, I think what he found attractive about me was the Melbourne factor and the fact I was just a small step ahead of him in the “what am I?” game of sexual identity. And maybe, just maybe, it was my strong, manly forearms.

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Part 1 – And a gay old time was had by all…

I think I’ve gone all Murtaugh on myself. My reaction to most things in life these days is “I’m too old for this shit”. Or maybe I’m just boring. Old and boring? What’s next? Fat? Shit, can you StairMaster and type at the same time?In whose universe is a fabulous home cooked dinner, fun and interesting new people, a bar, a drag queen, several regular queens, a free bowl of sweeties and a 2am alcohol munchie pizza fix not a good night out?

Weeeell (Cher tongue out, double hair flip)… let’s diagnose the situation shall we?

Fabulous home made dinner
We went to the girl who doesn’t make a sound when she sleeps old houseshare for dinner. This house is fascinating. The main tenant is a Hungarian girl and she rents out the four other rooms as and when needed, so the house is a fast rotating roster of London’s temporarily homeless (usually) gay new Londoners. Some stay for weeks, some months and less frequently some stay more. In the record breaking eight months I’ve been with the girl who I just put down as my next of kin on the medical registration forms (yegads!) I think I’ve met about 14 people there, mostly briefly, but if you’re up for deeper socaising, it’s there for the taking.

I often wonder if the bulk of London’s gay people got together in a room, ok a disused office building floor… no wait I’m thinking Melbourne proportions again… if they all met in an abandoned wharf along the Thames (don’t ask me why I’m relegating gay get togethers to large empty spaces) I would imagine a good proprtion of them would have passed through those five rooms in Stockwell. She’s good at keeping in touch, in keeping the social offerings coming and each weekend there’s an array of people in the kitchen or her bedroom cum reception rooms ready for a night out with her. She’s like Fagin, just without the petty theft and starvation.

Before dinner, the girl who I can’t think of any more descriptions for right this second and I were left alone with two other Hungarian girls, guests of Fagin, not new housemates. They seemed nice enough, they answered the inane questions I felt had to be asked to cover the elongated silences, they spoke English for my sake when everyone else in the room was Hungarian and they had nice bangles (err that’s not a euphemism for anything, I mean the jewellery stuff on their wrists). But the silences grew and grew and in the end I just couldn’t be bothered filling them, which is strange because I come from a culture where silences are never golden, they’re awkward and must be stuffed full, even if it’s with the kind of polite conversation that you save for your visits to your grandmother.

A Pussy Pickle

I’ve already put one blog on here about a cat. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to do it again. But I promise it won’t become a habit. Not that there’s anything wrong with blogs about cats mind you, but this blog is supposed to be about my bum, not my pussy.

Ahem.

So I oopsadentally bought a kitten this weeekend. Speaking from a place of denial extreme animal empathy, it’s because I thought it would be a good way to help Professor Scaredy Cat, that she’d have someone to play with and maybe calm the rubber duck down. Speaking from a place of selfishness, it’s more likely because I couldn’t handle being randomly hissed at for no apparent reason by Scaredy.

I can’t handle the hate anymore. I want an animal to love me. I want some furry animal love dammit!

And who could blame me when you look at this face…

Somewhat in hindsight, we spent the weekend frantically looking up how to introduce grown cats to kittens, and have been slowly introducing them to each other. Knowing Scaredy Cat as little as I do, I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as they all seemed to say, in fact her hissing has progressed to something like the sound an industrial steam pipe with a leak any time the little one gets in sniffing vicinity. Not that I’ve ever been anywhere near an industrial steam pipe with a leak, but I’ve watched all four “Alien” movies several times alright?

Weird stuff I done seen today #1

11am Sunday, local neighborhood park playground equipment.

The Scene 

Dad is on the floor doing push ups.
Kids sit quietly by watching.
Dad leaps up, jumps in a swing and gleefully pushes himself back and forth.
Dad has what looks suspiciously like a cigarette or Chupa Chup hanging out of his mouth.
Kids stare off into space bored.

Possible Explanation of the Nation
a) – Dad is in touch with his inner child. His kids are geniuses and this type of behaviour is just intolerable.
b) – Dad read somewhere that exercise counter balances the effects of smoking. His kids are geniuses and know if they wait five minutes he’ll be worn out.
c) – Dad just got back from a rave and his happy pills haven’t worn off yet. The kids have been there four hours already and they’re worn out.

Whaddayareckon?

The rule of multiple choice, when in doubt – choose C

Java Palava – a story of O

I embarrassed myself yesterday, but I didn’t realise till I got home so I’m not sure if that counts. It’s like that “if a tree falls in a forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?” thing. If you don’t know you’ve just done something stupid, does embarrassment exist?

Anyhoo, it was all the cawfee’s fault. That’s coffee with a New York accent, not that I’m from New York or have ever spent any significant amount of time there, I just like New Yaaaawk accents. Sorry. I don’t get it, cawfee I mean. I don’t drink it, don’t eat food stuffs flavoured with it, don’t crave it first thing in the morning. I’ve never liked it, tea either, and if that didn’t put me immediately into the weirdo basket, I’m also from Melbourne. A Melbournian who doesn’t drink coffee? Whaaaaat? Unheard of. Well not really. Now you’ve heard it and just like the tree in the forest, that means it exist right?

Where you should get your coffee whilst in Melbourne, I’m told.

So I went to get the girl whose cat hates me some coffee yesterday and it had been a while since I had done that. I walked the whole block and a half to the cute little local cafe with the very polite, very British looking young workers who always remind me of the kids at school who were so quiet you sometimes forgot they were there, who always had their nose in a book and wouldn’t dream of ever swearing, whose wardrobe when they got to their teens was filled with summer dresses from vintage shops and who now think the definition of daring is sneaking a hip flask into the Paloma Faith concert, when it suddenly occurred to me that this sentence needs a full stop. And also that I couldn’t remember the bloody name of her usual.

Scaredy Cat from Ballarat, I mean Budapest

I don’t like to excercise in front of people. I mean, who wants someone looking at you while you contort your body into strange shapes and make weird faces from all the effort? I have the same thought process for sex with the lights on, but let’s not go there. I also don’t believe in having to pay money for exercise. Or sex. I mean you can excercise plenty for free at home. Sure, I may not have sophisticated weight machines in my house, or someone who’s studied PE at some obscure training college in Dorset for a couple of months so they can be qualified to sit on a bike in front of me telling me to peddle faster, but there’s bound to be something heavy I can lift up and down for a while at home, like the couch for instance!! Ok yeah whatever, sure, that’s not really true. I don’t have a couch.

Anyway, if I have to be exercising I prefer jogging to a gym, and I use the word prefer loosely. If I had my way, I’d do neither. But getting back to the point, I recently discovered the best time to go jogging is 7am on a Saturday morning, because that’s when there’s nobody around. What the hell was I doing jogging at such a god awful stoopid time you ask? Weeeeellll, it all started at 4am. With the cat. Well not my cat, the girlfriend’s cat…