Social media blunder

Ouch.

In a non-sex related project I recently set up a Twitter account and Tumblr. Twitter is something I haven't much experience of. There was the experience of spying on Sarah Smith on Twitter once, which was quite weird, and I haven't really used it since.

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Lateness and discretion

If only one could be honest about these things. "I'm sorry I'm 20 minutes late," I would say, arriving for a shift at the scandalous rag: "I was masturbating. I just couldn't leave the house until I'd had two orgasms, and then I was ruined for about five minutes."

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Did I mention that I had a crush on my neighbour?

Serious excitement at Harlot Towers this morning. I hardly ever find anyone instantly attractive but my upstairs neighbour caught my eye immediately and with force. Even though we rarely bump into each other, for over a year now Dmitri has occupied a special place at the back of my mind. Imagine a little shoebox labelled 'crushes that will never be satisfied'.

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The view from inside my ass

Creeping Americanization made me choose that one, right?

I had something close to a panic attack earlier. The trigger was going to spy on Sarah's Facebook profile. I read some of her wallposts (she's witty) and looked hard at a rather indistinct picture of her on a bicycle. It's her second profile picture where she is on a bicycle. Virgil always rides his bicycle when he goes to see her. I wonder if she has some kind of bike thing going on.

The reason I am spying on Virgil's lover's Facebook page is that I thought she might have blocked me (there was a reason for this other than pure paranoia) so I checked. Obviously I then had to look.

The lesson, I tell myself, is that it is not a competition about who is the coolest. I have humiliated myself. It's not good for self-esteem.

I feel like a big fake, a twat of epic proportions. I am a monster with a towering, fragile ego. I have only myself to blame. The view down is scary. I need something in my life, some kind of achievement of my own to feel good about. I phone Virgil and tell him about the snit although I don't tell him what started it.
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Facebook Envy

I can't stay away from Facebook but it mostly serves to make me feel bad about myself. It's like picking a hangnail or worrying away at a mouth ulcer, painful but you can't help yourself.

If honesty and candour were permissible - and they're not - my Fb update would be: Your life looks better than mine.

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Oh! That's our neighbour...

I say: Oh! That's our neighbour...

I am looking at the Coco de Mer website. There are pictures of leather bondage harnesses. A few years ago they were at the top of my wishlist. Today I am sighing over a pair of underbust knickers. They are exactly what I have been looking for but now that I have found them I cannot afford them.

I have been trying to tell you that for about a year, says Virgil. Your profound lack of interest in other people will be your undoing.

Virgil and the designer are Facebook friends already so we spend a few minutes looking at pictures of him and his flat. That's exactly like our ceiling, says Virgil.

I am secretly relieved that I was quite friendly and nice about the neighbour's total cooption of our bike room to make his exhibition stands in these last few days. If I'd known what he made I might even have offered to help.

What a lickspittle.
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The Ostrich's Dilemma

At the prospect of sexual encounters without Virgil I feel apprehensive, excited and curious. Unfortunately I feel quite shit about Virgil seeing other people in a measure that is out of all proportion and quite unreasonable and unjustifiable. Jealousy, insecurity, avarice and fear are all there.


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I'm busy doing nothing

"Are you ok?" asked Virgil earlier. He cornered me outside the bathroom and put his arms around me. "Are you sad? You just seem a bit aimless today."

I had been lying on the sofa reading a book.

I assured him that I was fine. I had, indeed, been enjoying my book, which is of the self-help variety and not just a novel to be read for pleasure. I have been enjoying this book at various moments for the last month and I would like to finish it. I think it might help me work out what to do with my life.

When did finishing a book become something like hard work? As a child I managed one a day. As the books became longer and I more sociable and responsible for feeding, clothing and housing myself, this dropped to several a week. In the lows of depression in my twenties I read intensively and pathologically. When studying I had less time to read for pleasure, but looked forward to the moments when I could jump into a book.

Now I struggle to finish a book every two months. Now it is such a colossal achievement to finish a book that if I am not enjoying one after a couple of chapters I will abandon it. I would never have finished One Hundred Years Of Solitude with this attitude, or Moby Dick, or... well, many other books that I'm very glad to have read.

And why does Virgil think that reading a book equals lolling around? A few weeks ago during a conversation about the self-discipline required for self-employment he said how good it was to see me busy at my laptop rather than reading.

Virgil doesn't understand. I can spend hours wasting time on the internet while looking industrious, looking at things that are none of my business on Facebook and ignoring important chores while kidding myself that I am working. I have decided to have less internet in my life and more books.
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I want to crawl under a rock and read there.

This post is not about sex or poly anything. It is about how I feel like an utter FUCKWIT right now, this very minute and second. If I were a generation or two older I would be pouring my heart out (on)to a stranger at a bus stop or in the post office queue right about now. However, having no one to share this with immediately, and not wishing to post such self-indulgent wailings publically on Facebook, I'm going to scream it into the electronic ether instead.

I am an idiot - a fucking useless wastrel!! I just FORGOT to turn up to a paid job of work because I FAILED to transfer it from my (erst-while perfectly reliable) paper diary to my iPhone calendar! Someone had pointlessly arranged childcare because of me! I have lost money, which I cannot afford to do, being woefully underemployed at the moment. I feel simply horrible inside, all tied up in knots. I wouldn't mind having a cry but I can't because I'm not quite upset enough to do that (or maybe I'm TOO upset?). And I won't phone Virgil because he's giving a presentation and actually I'm too embarrassed to tell him what I've done.

At what point did the idea of holding such a thought inside oneself without expelling it in some way become unthinkable? It's curious isn't it, how hard it is to sit with an unpleasant feeling or piece of bad news without telling someone else? Simply by writing this down I'll have expelled a bit of the poison that is making my guts twist and turn so. Nowadays we can twitter, text, FB update, blog, call someone as soon as we feel the need to halve a problem by sharing it, and we need to, because often there is nobody around to dump on in person. This is a culture of unparalleled personal space, especially if you're under-employed and spend too much time on your own at home.

I am going to tidy the flat and sit and stew in it. And I might try to read a book, because Bête de Jour has reminded me that I don't read enough. The internet has been the death of me as a reader. At least if I read a book I can tell myself that I am doing a good thing.
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Beware the virtual friend

Another person I've asked about open relationships is Aaron. Aaron is stretched out on my massage table and I'm giving him a massage. He has a cold and is feeling shitty, so he's at my mercy. He snuffles and blows his nose while explaining how when they first met Polly was the one with play partners and Aaron felt insecure and had to be persuaded. Now Polly is busy with her career and Aaron is the one who wants to play - and not just play but have romances and relationships on the side.

I ask him how things are going with Polly. There was definitely something wrong when they came (separately) to my birthday breakfast a few weeks ago. "Not good," he says. "We're great sexually and intellectually but I need romance. Polly wouldn't say I'm at all romantic but I am really, just not with her. I need to find someone to feel like that about." I ask if having an open relationship is why they might split up and he says no.

Polly and Aaron have been together for a couple of years. I thought they were one of the most solid of my friends' relationships but a few days ago my newsfeed told me that Aaron is now single. God, don't you hate the way Facebook does that? Me and Virgil have not changed our Facebook statuses to announce our relationship, although I've had moments when I've wanted to and thought it would be nice, like a public avowal of commitment blah... Now I remember why it is an awful idea.

The Facebook page of one of Virgil's Facebook friends, which he flicks closed as I glanced at his laptop screen in bed on Saturday morning, draws a surge of gloom and jealousy. We are about to watch the leaders' debate together. I glimpse a brightly coloured professional shot of a vivaciously attractive woman and think he is flirting with someone. Even if he isn't, I tell myself, this is exactly what he will be doing in the not-too-distant future. Virgil has thousands of Facebook friends. He uses it for his business and for networking, and he knows a lot of performers and pretty girls through his work too. I meet no hot people in my line of work. It's not fair.

We start to watch the debate. I lie stiff and silent as a board. A small cloud gathers over my side of the bed. Virgil's far too sensitive sometimes. "What's up?" he asks, "I don't feel that we're together in this anymore."

I sigh. I say nothing. Then I say "It's nothing," in a very feeble way. I say, "Let's get up and have some breakfast. We haven't time to watch this now." Agh! he says, and goes into the kitchen to cook.

I won't make eye contact. I think I'll keep this bad mood to myself and learn stoicism, but I'm utterly incapable. I wish I were somewhere else, but we live together. Eventually over breakfast I have to tell him what happened. It's embarrassing. I've never been so paranoid and jealous before.

He says it's so and so... - a performer I've heard of. I think he says that I've met her but I can't remember. It's her birthday and he's writing her a birthday message. He says it's ok to feel like that, that it's not stupid or wrong. I feel a bit better, but not much.
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