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We’ve all heard plenty about the so-called “friend zone”, which is where a person you want to date, just wants to be friends, and somehow that’s unfair and bad and mean. Let me tell you about its converse, the Un-Friend Zone.
A while back at work, we got a new deskside support/IT guy. He quickly identified me as the person in the department to talk to, because I know what I’m doing – and what everybody else is doing – with computers (even if they don’t). We were going through a major hardware and software upgrade at the time, so IT Guy came around a lot. He and I would get to chatting while he was working, and we discovered we had lots of nerdy things in common. We really hit it off together. We started chatting over instant messaging when he wasn’t around in person, and he really brightened slow days for me – and I assume I did the same for him. I was happy because I don’t make friends easily, and yay, a new friend! It got to the point where I was considering asking Arb if I could invite him to join our tabletop roleplaying group, because I thought it would be fun to be outside-work friends as well as work-friends. I was positive it was strictly a platonic thing, because he was at least ten years younger than me, and I’m not conventionally attractive, and he never said anything remotely flirtatious and neither did I.
Then one day, I said the fateful words: “My husband…” The conversation faltered. (It’s not like I was keeping Arb a secret, just that I’m not one of those people who’s constantly all “My husband this…” and “My husband that…” and “Well my husband says…” to every opinion offered.)
He didn’t message me the next day like he usually did, so I messaged him. He was really terse. I messaged him again a couple days later, same thing. And the other IT guy started coming for all our deskside support calls.
Ladies and gentleman, behold the Un-Friend Zone: where you think you’re making a new friend, and the other person wants more than friendship, and then when it turns out you don’t feel that way about them, they drop you like a hot potato. Obviously there can be hurt feelings involved, and that could require some space to get over; I get that. But on this end of the stick it feels like it wasn’t worth spending time with me and getting to know me, if the payoff isn’t going to be a sexual/romantic relationship. And that’s crappy. (It’s not a gendered phenomenon either; Arb has had women do it to him as well.)
I don’t think I have an obligation to be constantly flashing a verbal neon sign that says MARRIED MARRIED MARRIED MARRIED, just in case somebody is attracted to me and I don’t realise it. On the other hand, I really object when the opening line from a stranger initiating conversation is an inquiry about my sexual availability. (and yes, this happened to me frequently before I aged/fatted out of the prime fuckability category) I don’t know what the solution is. But I wish people who are looking for mates, wouldn’t object to making platonic friends along the way.
The tango that they dance in Argentina is a very, very different dance than you might see on Dancing with the Stars. It’s highly improvisational, and allows not only the leader, but also the follower, to make artistic decisions. Everything is communicated between the partners through physical contact, whether it’s a slight shift of the shared center of balance, or physically pushing with hands, feet, or legs. One guy that I taught tango to, who was into martial arts, commented that Argentine tango is very much like judo, except that the object is to NOT fall down.
Here are Miguel Angel Zotto and Milena Plebs dancing to “Gallo Ciego”, by Osvaldo Pugliese. By where they put little flourishes with their feet, you can tell they’re very familiar with this particular recording of this particular song, but the steps they do together could all be communicated with lead and follow, no need for pre-planned choreography.
One particularly interesting thing about Argentine tango is that because of its origins in a time and place where men significantly outnumbered available women, there’s also a tradition of men dancing with men, without any gay connotation to it – not that gay guys don’t dance tango together nowadays and make it very, very homoerotic. Here are brothers Enrique and Guillermo De Fazio, dancing a milonga – a country dance that was one of the precursors of tango. It uses many of the same steps as tango, but goes a whole heck of a lot faster. Because they do break apart a fair amount, some of this performance probably had to be pre-choreographed. Note how every once in a while they’ll trade who’s leading and who’s following. Enjoy the hot guy-on-guy milonga action!
Because tango music is in four beats per measure, you can actually dance it to any music that’s in a multiple of four. Here, a fan has taken an Argentine tango video, and redubbed it with VNV Nation (the band I introduced you to last week), and it works. In “real life” it’s hard to dance tango to industrial music, because when you go to venues where they play industrial music, you usually wear big, stompy boots, and they tend to be too grippy to spin well.
Anti-rape education is making poor frat-boys’ penises sad, according to this article at Bloomberg.
…making out with a girl at a party. Things were going fine, the student said, when suddenly a vision of his school’s disciplinary board flew into his head.
“‘I want to go to law school or medical school after this,’” Pollack said, recounting the student’s comments. “‘I said to her, it’s been nice seeing you.’”
OK, if the disciplinary board is flashing into your head, chances are it’s because you know something’s not right. It’s too bad fear for your future, and not, you know, empathy or human decency, made you back off, but I’m sure the woman in question appreciates it.
“I don’t think it’s about me,” said Gill, the Harvard student. “I feel like I’m pretty good guy. But if I’m talking to a girl and want to gauge her interest, I’m more cautious than I used to be. I don’t want to cross the line.”
And this is a bad thing?!
Some men feel that too much responsibility for preventing sexual assault has been put on their shoulders, said Chris Herries, a senior at Stanford University. While everyone condemns sexual assault, there seems to be an assumption among female students that they shouldn’t have to protect themselves by avoiding drunkenness and other risky behaviors, he said.
“Do I deserve to have my bike stolen if I leave it unlocked on the quad?” Herries, 22, said. “We have to encourage people not to take on undue risk.”
Oh for fuck’s sake. Let’s talk about undue risks here. Back in the day, I used to be a goth/punk/alternative club-girl. I used to go out dressed super-provocatively, and dance provocatively, and drink – sometimes too much – and sometimes go home with people I met at the club and we would have consensual sex. I never got raped. In fact, I don’t even recall having been touched inappropriately without my consent. And we’re talking about a period of several years, here.
Why was “my” club a safe place for women to express our sexuality? Because, simply put, the culture there was a culture of consent and mutual respect. Things like coming up behind a woman, grabbing her by the hips, and grinding against her, were Simply Not Done, and the social opprobium unleashed on anybody who tried it (“normal” bro-dudes out to slum with the weirdos and ogle girls in corsets) put a very swift end to it, and to the perpetrator’s presence in the club.
But you know what? None of this put any kind of damper on people hooking up. So suck it up, poor poor fratboys of Stanford and Harvard, and learn to tell the difference between a woman who wants to make out with you, and a woman who was happily minding her own business before you imposed your unwelcome person on her. I assure you, it’s really not complicated, as long as you’re not an entitled flaming douchebag who thinks your boner makes everything you do morally ok.
When Shadow asks me for something, I’ll often make her earn whatever it is she wants by asking her to sit or lie down or shake a paw. Apparently ‘lie down’ is my favourite, because lately she’ll come boop me with her nose and make want-noises, then immediately lie down while giving her best puppydog eyes. Note also the blurry wagging tail. (In this picture she had just booped me to remind me it was her dinner time.)
This is VNV Nation, an Irish/English alternative electronic/industrial duo currently based out of Berlin, but touring to Canada this fall/winter – I’ve already got tickets – and plane tickets because the closest they’re coming is Vancouver.
They were my first exposure to electronic/industrial music – I grew up in a classical bubble – and I was hooked pretty much instantly.
Turn up the volume and turn up the bass before pressing play.
The song is “Joy”, a humanist anthem and my personal anthem as well.
Hi everybody, just a random update from your friendly Intransigent blogger, to lighten the mood around here. I have a tale of a happy convergence of circumstances.
One day, I’m at the horse rescue and another volunteer invites me to come to a different horse-establishment to meet her horse. Of course I said yes! So we made a date, and I met up with her and her horse, and as we’re fussing over her horse and giving him treats, she asks me, have you ever thought of starting to ride again. I (as cheerfully as I can manage) say “nope, I’m too fat.”
We carry on pampering her horse, and the owner of the barn stops by to chat. “So,” she asks, quite innocently like there was no ulterior motive in getting me to visit, “Have you ever considered starting to ride again?”
I do my little nope too fat, shrug, self-deprecating laugh thing.
The barn owner looks me up and down, and says, “We have a couple lesson horses who could handle youno problem. Email me if you’d like to have a lesson sometime!”
I emailed her as soon as I got home, and lessons started the week after singing lessons ended for the summer!
A few observations upon getting back in the saddle after eighteen years on the ground:
- Everything is still there mentally, but the balance and fitness to do what I remember, has left the building
- Riding, especially posting trot, is way more exercise than I remember
- Horses are still very silly, unpredictable animals
- Falling off hurts about the same amount as ever
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…