Slutty McWho?

Where is everybody?

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Hello! I have decided to retire from the blogging world for various reasons. I made my blog "private" some time ago, and only I was able to read it. It never occurred to me that some of you might think I was snubbing you, so I apologize to those of you who thought you weren't on the guestlist!

I've decided to come back, and make my blog open to the public again for a short time because I'm trying to reconnect with certain people who, much to my chagrin, seem to have disappeared from the blogosphere while I was gone. There are many of you I'd like to get in touch with, but Reluctant Blogger, Peridot Ash and Arekino particularly spring to mind.

If you're out there, please leave a comment on this post with your email address (don't worry - I moderate all comments, and won't publish your info).

Hope to reconnect with some people soon! If not, thanks for coming along for the ride! It was fun while it lasted.

Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:27:00 +0000

I'm coming back. I'll see you all tonight.

Thank You, America!

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:08:00 +0000

I feel bad for not writing on here sooner about Obama's victory but I have been sick for about a week because of the dog I rescued - my allergies developed into a nasty chest cold, which is still leaving me tired and lethargic, with a hacking cough.

I know that most of my readers (fuck, most of the world!) is delighted about the election result but I wonder if those of you who don't live in the US understand just what a fucking relief it is to be rid of Bush and the Republican Party (hopefully, for eight years at least!). I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and I know that most of my American friends feel the same way. Months before the election took place, I joked about leaving the country if McCain won (especially when he brought that whack job Palin on board) but on the day of the election, I realized that I really would have to leave if the Republicans held on to power. The last eight years have been so dark for America, and I just don't think I could have taken any more.

It's strange the way a country's politics can really affect your own happiness and sense of well-being, and I don't think that I had quite realized just how much living in the US, under a Bush administration, was getting me down. I never worshipped Obama the way some people did - he is a politician, after all, and how much change can he really bring about? - but, oh my God, this is such a huge step in the right direction that it literally brings tears to my eyes. On the morning of the 4th, I was cycling around town, and went past two girls holding up Obama signs. I grinned and waved at them, and had to suppress a sob because I was so moved at the thought of an Obama victory.

Later that night, I went to a Democrat party and watched Obama's victory speech, and the tears were streaming down my face. Michael and I then went out onto the streets and danced and sang with everybody else. I have always been interested in politics, but I have never been so touched and inspired by a politician before, and it was truly amazing to see how much he energized people.

He is nowhere near as liberal as I would like him to be (how could be ever be in this country?), and there's no way he can live up to all the expectations people have of him but, nonetheless, I am ecstatic that he won and that Bush and his cronies will be sent back to Texas with their tails between their legs.

For the first time in four years, I can now say that I've actually got some respect for the American people. Maybe this is silly, but Obama's victory makes me more inclined to think nicer thoughts about Americans in my daily life. I live in a Republican state, and the vast majority of my clients (I'd say 90%) are Republicans, too. Of course, most of them are perfectly nice on a personal level, but chat to them about politics for a few minutes, and you quickly see the greed seep out. In many cases, they're just too fucking stupid, and know so little of the world, to be able to question Republican ideology. These men didn't suddenly wake up the day after the election with a more compassionate, socially conscious world-view but here's hoping that Obama can show them - even if only slightly - that the USA does not need to ruled by greed and money. And if he doesn't, well, I can still experience a great deal of Schadenfreude about McCain's defeat. It is a huge "fuck off" to the clients who piss me off the most. Ha fucking ha ha ha!

The most curious thing about the sex industry - at least in my experience - is that most clients seem to have a distinct right-wing bent (the only black client I have even said that he was planning on voting for McCain?! What the fuck?!). So much for all that talk about sexual liberty and "alternative lifestyles". Republicans are all for alternative sexualities, just as long as their cocks can be involved! If not, then they're all about "family values"! (excuse me while I vomit on my keyboard). Admittedly, this could be because I live in a Republican state, so perhaps it's only natural that I'd attract that kind of client. Maybe if I lived somewhere like New York City, I'd have a wider, more diverse range of clients.

I don't know, though. Most men who can afford to see erotic masseuses and escorts on a regular basis make quite a bit of money and are therefore more likely to lean Republican because they don't want to pay high taxes. Very rarely do I encounter clients who are teachers, artists, social workers e.g. clients in professions where money isn't the guiding principle. My regulars, for the most part, are engineers, lawyers or work in real estate.

I avoid reading and posting on escort review boards/message boards because most of the guys on there are right-wing assholes. They're not just Republican in a fiscally conservative way, but rather they want to bomb the fuck out of Iraq and Afghanistan; they talk all the time about American being the greatest country in the world; want to ban abortion; love their guns and tell you to get the fuck out of their country if you happen to voice just the teeniest bit of dissent. I used to get such a rise out of provoking these guys online, but then I realized I had far better things to do.

Nonetheless I could not resist putting a little political element in my latest advert online. In the subject line, I wrote something like "Celebrate an Obama victory with an erotic massage". The following three messages I received (I'm surprised actually that there weren't more) just show you the ignorance of the people I have to deal with on a daily basis:

(1) "Yea for Obama!!! I can't wait til he gets into office so I caN PAY MY FAIR SHARE OF TAXES!! AFTER ALL i HAVNT BEEN PAYING ENOUGH. And once he bankrubpts the coal industry we can look forward to electric bills "sky rocketing" as we dont pay enough for that either, Yes we will all have to pay our fair share.. the top 5% (your customers) and midle class alike, we'll be privlaged and patriotic to pay more taxes, more for electric bills and everything else as well since we wont drill and gas prices will come back to 4 or 5 dollars a galon. Yes I'm with you, and us patriotic Americans will appriciate your sacrifices too as there wont be as many customers (not as much expendible income and all) yes we can all do our part. And what nerve to pick a woman and think she could do the job of a man ..lol, thats got to be the worst. thanks Charles"

Note, by the way, the terrible spelling and this person's inability to make a coherent argument. Perhaps this poor fellow would have had a better education if the US poured more money into schools rather than into bombs!

(2) "Bringing politics into the picture is not a smart move. It is a personal preference that is only shared by half of your possible clients. I respect those that see a different view, maybe you should do the same and keep politics out of the picture. I had been interested in your services, but now I am not so sure. Have a nice evening."

This guy is more articulate although he seems to be a little confused about free speech. Right-wing types on escort boards are always touting "free speech" as one of the reasons American is great (yadda yadda yadda) but it's strange how they can't seem to tolerate it when someone espouses views different from their own - especially a woman! I was also amused that this guy expected me to be upset that he no longer wants to come see me! Clearly he never stopped to consider that sex workers have preferences, too, and I am certainly not upset about losing the custom of an asshole.

(3) "Slutty Dear, i will not come see you now. you really should not interject political discussion in your business ventures. its your choice to do so, but, its my choice not to come visit and support you financially. if you like Socialism so much go back to Europe."

Yet another client who doesn't realize that he is no great loss. And don't you just love that old, tried-and-tested "Go back to your country" line?! That one always cracks me up given that the US is a nation of immigrants!

Ahhh, I'm getting angry again, and this wasn't supposed to be the point of this post.

I have only one last thing to say: Thank you, America! For the first time, I am actually glad to be living in the US!

Dr Slutty McDolittle

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:56:00 +0000

I've always said that variety is the spice of life, me. But when it comes to sperm, I was quite happy to stick exclusively to the human variety. Today, however, I actually got some dog cum on my left hand!

Accidentally, I should add.

Just when I thought I couldn't get any more broke, I had to go and find another bloody stray dog, didn't I? He was wandering through an old, local graveyard where I sometimes take my own dogs for a walk. I don't have the time, energy or money for another dog, but what could I do? I couldn't just leave the poor wee baby out there all by himself. It was a good thing I found him when I did because the nights are getting colder now, and he would surely have been miserable if he had had to sleep rough any longer.

There's no point taking animals to the shelter because there are so many strays in this city that they end up putting down tens of thousands of animals every year. Strays have got about a week to find a home otherwise they get euthanized. Maybe it's irrational of me, but I always feel that a stray has crossed my path for a reason, and that it's my duty to take them in. I don't understand how people can be so cold and unfeeling when it comes to animals because they are just like us - they have complex emotions and feelings, and so of course it must be awful for them to be strays with no-one to love them!

It's horribly time-consuming and expensive to have so many pets (two dogs, two cats - and now this new one) but, on the other hand, they bring me so much joy. My life would have been so much emptier without them. I do worry about the future, though. The plan is to move to a big city eventually - hopefully New York City - and how on earth will I fit five pets in an apartment there? Worse still, pit bulls are banned across most of Western Europe, and I own a pit bull mix. The law is slightly more lenient about letting mixes into the UK, but there's no guarantee she'll be accepted and if she's refused entry I'll get fined for attempting to bring a dangerous dog into the country, and would have to send her back to the US! I cannot give up my pit bull, so I may not be able to return to Scotland until she dies. Oh, if only I had cultivated more underworld connections when I lived in Scotland. I'm sure I could have found somebody to help me smuggle her in!

The new dog, a boy, looks like he's got a bit of rough collie in him (like Lassie, above), and I have a huge soft spot for collies given that I'm a farm girl, and grew up around them. My grandfather was a shepherd and even used to train them. They're such sweet-natured animals, so eager to please. This one is also a bit of a randy bastard, though. He hasn't been neutered, so he keeps trying to shag my female pit bull. He's like the fucking Benny Hill of the dog world, the way he keeps chasing that poor girl around the yard. Those balls are coming off on Friday, so I will never again have to deal with dog cum on my hands whenever I try to pick him up! I'm also hoping that his lack of balls will make me less allergic to him, as apparently neutered and spayed animals produce less dander. Ironically, I am horribly allergic to most animals (everything except cats, and my own two dogs - and I'd have to be hospitalized if I went near a horse).

I wanted to write more, but I am slightly tipsy and exhausted, so off to bed I go with my menagerie surrounding me.

Disillusioned by Academia

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:28:00 +0000

Those of you who have been regular readers of this blog for the last couple of months will know that I have spent some time thinking about training to be a high school English teacher. I just can't wait to get my sperm-stained erotic masseuse's hands on America's youth!

Those of you who have been with me from the very beginning will remember that I spent far too long languishing in a Liberal Arts Master's program, which resulted in my getting depressed, dropping out, and finally graduating this May. Amusingly, I came in to my program as the best student - and even got a prestigious scholarship - and left as persona non grata after threatening to sue my department when they wanted to kick me out! Fun times!

Last week I was busy putting together all the paperwork I would need to send in to the education centre - transcripts, references etc. As my most recent work experience as a teacher was at the university from which I got my Master's, I realized that it might look weird if I didn't have a reference from someone there. As you can imagine, I do not have many people there I can ask for a recommendation given that I threatened to sue their sorry academic asses! However, my thesis advisor is actually not in the department in question and was, as far as I was concerned, a neutral person. Most of the time, we had a good relationship, and at one point she even said that I was her "favourite student". She was certainly my favourite professor although, looking back, there were certain little things she said or did which left niggling doubts about her sincerity. As luck would have it, I had also been her teaching assistant one semester, and she had seen me teach. Towards the end of my time at the university, there was no doubt that she got frustrated and annoyed with me for handing in work late - and I definitely sensed a deterioration in the relationship - but this should never have been something she took personally because she knew that I was depressed. In fact, she had even told me about how her father had sexually abused her when she was a child, and that she had been clinically depressed in graduate school herself. She had been on antidepressants to combat panic attacks for ten years at the time she told me this.

I emailed her a couple of months ago to let her know that I would be looking for teaching jobs, and to ask if she would mind giving me a reference if the need arose. I made it clear that I was not asking for an academic reference, but specifically a teaching one. I had not been a good student in grad school and, even though there were extenuating circumstances, I realized that she could not give me a positive academic reference, and that it would be putting her in an awkward spot if I asked for such a thing. I had, however, been a fucking great TA - even if I do say so myself! - and she knew this. She had observed me teach, and had read my student evaluations at the end of the year, in which the vast majority of my students had nothing but lovely things to say about me. In quite a few cases, students had even written "Slutty is the best TA I ever had. You could tell she really cared about her class".

Her email response to my reference request was (and these are her exact words):

"Yes, you are a great teacher and I'd be willing to tell anyone that!"

When it was time to post off my teacher application reference to her, I did notice that there were some questions on the form, which talked about my academic abilities (such as "Rate this person's ability to do academic work"), and I did wonder if those would be problematic for her. I assumed, though, that she would just email and tell me she could not rate me positively in those areas, and suggest I find someone who could. This was, I thought, the correct etiquette when giving someone a reference, and I had made it perfectly clear that I would not be offended if she told me to find someone else.

Well, earlier this week, I had still heard nothing back from her to say she had received the reference form, or that she had sent it off, and this struck me as slightly odd. The deadline was looming, and I was worried that her silence meant she was out of town at a conference or something, so I emailed her to ask. I got the following email back (once again her exact words):

" I sent it in.

I feel I should tell you that although I was of course able to rank you very highly on your academic preparation and classroom skills, there were also questions about whether you meet deadlines, are reliable etc. that I was not able to answer as positively. So it is a somewhat mixed review. I'm sorry to have to say so."

The word "flabbergasted" does not even begin to describe the emotions I felt when I read this email. Yes, it is true that I had trouble meeting deadlines while in grad school (in fact, I was so bad I don't think I ever handed anything in on time) but, as for reliability, I always worked hard as a teaching assistant and certainly didn't slack off. In fact, at that point in my life, teaching was the only thing that gave me joy and a sense of purpose because I felt so lost and confused when it came to my own research, so I would say that I threw myself into it. If my supposed "unreliability" refers to those missed deadlines again, this is just bullshit. The woman knew I was depressed, and should have known how hard it is to get stuff done when you feel like shit.

All of this, however, is besides the point. The point is that one does not send off a shitty reference and inform the person of this after you've posted if off already. The decent thing would have been to tell me she couldn't give me a good reference and tell me to find somebody else (and, hell, I could have found numerous people to vouch for me. I only asked her because she had witnessed my most recent teaching). The fact that she didn't do this suggests that she quite maliciously set out to hurt my chances.

And why? I'll never know for sure, but I will guess that it's because, in some way, she took my missed deadlines very personally, and as insult to her prowess as an academic. I also suspect that, for all her supposedly heartfelt commiseration about depression, she eventually came to the conclusion that I was just someone who could not get her act together, and who had nothing wrong with her. I remember her telling me one time about her own depression experience in grad school when she said she crawled out of her bad every day to write a paragraph of her dissertation. What I took from this was that her studies were the only thing that kept her going. This was certainly not the case for me. I found grad school pompous, pretentious and cut off from real life, and the work I had to do only made me more depressed. I had no passion for it to pull me through the bad times.

All this means is that academia was not for me. But it does not mean that someone has the right to screw up my chances of doing something I would be passionate about just because of their own ego.

This professor is a feminist and a lesbian who has two small sons with her partner whom she conceived with the help off a sperm donor. She is very conscious of her own place at the margins of society, and all her work is about deconstructing traditional hierarchies of power, and empowering the disenfranchised. When I talked earlier about the niggling doubts I had about her, it was because I had noticed eventually that she was still very much a part of privileged academic culture despite her claims to the contrary.

Her shitty reference upsets me all the more because she professes to be someone who does not abuse her power, and who is on the side of the underdog.

My time in the US has been so fucking hard and I feel that I deserve a fucking break, and I just can't believe this woman couldn't see that, or chose to ignore it to exact some form of revenge for God knows what.

I am, rather surprisingly, quite philosophical about the whole thing, though. I genuinely believe that I would be an inspirational, caring teacher, but if this woman's reference stops me from getting accepted onto the program, well, I'll just take it as a sign that it wasn't meant to be - at least not now, and not in this country.

To be honest, I also feel rather glad that I'm me, and that I had the experience of struggling at university because I think it will make me a better teacher. My professor has suffered in her own way, no doubt, but she is still very much the child of middle-class, highly-educated parents, and she coasted effortlessly from undergrad to an Ivy League grad school. I don't think that she really understands the disenfranchised people she talks so eloquently and compassionately about. My parents both left school at fifteen but, nonetheless, there was always an expectation that I would go to university, and, when I did, I always excelled at everything. Until grad school, I had no idea of what it was like to be in an educational institution, and to be flailing about miserably despite having talent and potential. I never really understood "low achievers" (or the complex reasons for their lack of achievement) and probably thought that they were just lazy and unfocused. I never understood what it was like to have people in authority treat you like you were an idiot, and to overlook you.

I understand now. Oh, my God, yes, I understand all too well. And I know how utterly damaging it is to be written off as "lazy" or "unreliable" when you're desperately trying not to be, but somehow can't manage it. I also understand what it's like to be seen as an immature rebel, the one with an "attitude problem", when developing that "attitude" was the only way you could salvage some of your self-esteem when you felt so disempowered and weak. If I ever do become a teacher, I will certainly never write off children for being "lazy", "disruptive" or "slow" or whatever other labels children are given when they don't achieve what they're supposed to. I don't think there's any such child actually. Instead I think there are only institutions which don't meet, and don't care about meeting, the needs of their students; and teachers who don't take the time to really work out what's causing their students' problems.

My graduate student days were the most miserable and painful of my life, but at least I learned that fucking lesson. And, you know what?! It pisses all over my stupid fucking Master's degree.

Teacher's Pet?

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:39:00 +0000

I've gone and done it again, haven't I? Disappeared from blogland, I mean. To be honest, I have fallen into a rather dark spell over the last month or so. I stopped writing in my journal, and posting to my blog because I just can't shake the feeling that it's self-indulgent to do both these things. I have also stopped running as much as I used to, so much so that I pulled out of the Portland Marathon at the beginning of the month. When I get depressed, I don't eat as much as I should, and it was ridiculous to think that I could run 26.2 miles in such an undernourished state. My financial situation was also a factor in that, though, as I just couldn't justify flying to the other side of the country for a marathon.

Luckily, my dark spells don't last too long, so I think I am getting back on track with the running and the writing. As my darling Reluctant Blogger mentioned in a comment yesterday, she goes "batty" if she doesn't write, and I feel the same way. I just need to get it into my thick skull that writing and running (even if they are self-indulgent activities) are completely necessary for my mental health. I have also come to the conclusion over this last month that it might be worth trying antidepressants again because there are some issues in my life that probably won't go away no matter how much writing and running I do. I used to be such an ambitious person, really organized and efficient, and would always get things done in time, but now all I seem to do is sit around and procrastinate. I feel like I'm a shadow of my former self, and it affects my self-esteem that I can't get started on tasks easily, or finish them when I do. It's a vicious cycle - the more I procrastinate, the more my self-esteem is affected; the more my self-esteem plummets, the more likely I am to procrastinate because I feel hopeless. I don't know if antidepressants are the answer, but I do think that I am probably suffering from some sort of low-grade depression, so I'll give them a shot again. At the very least, the idea of going on them gives me hope that I'll get better.

What else is new? Hmmm. Well, I did end up applying for the teacher training program I mentioned in my last post. I felt a little bit insulted by some of the comments on that post, which suggested that I wasn't "dedicated" enough to the students to become a teacher. I have actually always loved teaching, and have always got excellent feedback in student evaluations precisely because my students could tell that I genuinely gave a shit about them. My only worry about high school teaching is that it will be five days a week. I'm concerned that it will drain me so much that I will have no energy left to do anything creative. I know myself well enough to realize that I am somebody who is at her best when she has a good balance of outside stimulation (through other people and my environment) and time by myself.

Right now, my life is completely uncentred. Working as an erotic masseuse means that I spend far too much time alone and, well, giving handjobs for a living is hardly intellectually challenging. All of my excess energy, which could be channelled in healthy, appropriate ways if I had a job that interested me, ends up turning back in on itself. The result of this, as you have witnessed from this blog, is that I become neurotic, self-obsessed and depressed. There is far too much "me" in my life.

I worry that teaching may tip the scale too much in the other direction - that I'll spend so much time wrapped up in the lives of my students that I'll have no time to sit and think about shit - something which is good for me, in moderation!

Ach, but what the fuck! I'm fucking sick of erotic massage, and I want to be useful to society. In fact, "want" is the wrong word here. I'm fucking dying to do something useful with my life, which helps other people. Generally, then, I feel rather good about my decision to apply to be a teacher. There is no guarantee that they will take me because I am not an American citizen, and, once I have done the training, I will need to convince a school to sponsor for me for a work visa. There's no legal reason why they couldn't do this, but perhaps schools just won't want the hassle of this. We'll see what happens. If I get rejected, I'll just take it as a sign that I was never meant to teach in the US in the first place. I can always move back to Scotland and get trained to teach there, or perhaps even London.

I do have my doubts about the American education system, though. When I was filling out my teacher application, I saw that I had to do an "online interview". I was a bit confused about this, and thought that a real, live, human being would be asking me questions online. This struck me as weird and faintly ridiculous (why not do a fucking face-to-face interview?), but, well, what the hell. It actually turned out to be something even worse - it was an online fucking personality test - which was ironically called "Teacher Insight" - with multiple-choice answers.

Here's an example of one of the questions:

Q: Do you think that you are better than other teachers?

(A) Yes.
(B) No
(C) I don't compare myself to other teachers.
(D) I don't know.

The answers above weren't exactly the same as in the test, but are pretty similar. To be perfectly frank, such questions actually make me livid because it seems to me that the answers don't take into consideration people's cultural background, which could make people, with very similar skills, talents and experience, answer very differently. Now I know that I don't come across as the most modest person on this blog but, hey, this is my personal space, and I feel entitled to be an arrogant bitch sometimes, if I so desire. However, in "real life" I would never come out and say that I consider myself to be a "better teacher" than somebody else. I sure as hell might think it in some cases, but I was brought up - as were most Scottish people - to be humble and modest. You just do not talk or boast about your talents in public. I could not answer "yes" to this question (was this what they wanted?!) because it seems insufferably arrogant to do so. I think that, yes, I am better than some teachers but, hell, I've got a lot of learning ahead of me. I also rejected (C) because, even though I do have several years teaching experience, I still consider myself a novice, and I do compare myself to other teachers. I think this is probably something every new teacher goes through until they've been doing the job for a long time and are confident in their abilties.

In the end, I chose (D): "I don't know".

There were many other questions, even more ridiculous than this one, which cannot possibly measure the many subtle and wonderful qualities I, and other prospective teachers, could bring to the classroom. The ones I am sure I will be slammed on were "Do you consider yourself a negative person?" and "Do you consider yourself a judgemental person?" If an answer option had been "Fucking hell, yeah!", it would have been my first instinct to choose it. One of my major flaws is that I dwell far too much on the negative side of life, and I am always too quick to criticize and judge other people. I know this about myself, though, and I do try to work on it.

I should also mention that one of the things I love best about teaching is that it has actually taught me to be less judgemental and more compassionate. I can't believe I just wrote that last cheesy sentence, but it is actually true. One of my favourite teaching moments was when I had to lead a class in a discussion about abortion. Half of this class seemed to be filled with sorority girls (with dyed blond hair, and perfectly made-up faces and manicured nails - yuck!) from strict Baptist backgrounds who seemed to think that unwed, pregnant mothers should be burned at the stake, or, at the very least, given forty lashes. If I had met any one of these people down the pub on a Saturday night, I normally wouldn't have been able to restrain myself in ridiculing them and their opinions, but, well, obviously you can't do that in the classroom. I actually led a very rational and well-mannered discussion, and learned something very valuable - that screaming and ridiculing those who oppose you certainly ain't going to get them to change their minds! I do still believe that these girls' opinions were ill-formed and ignorant but I think it was important to give them the space to voice them, and to try to understand why they think the way they do. At the end of the course, one girl actually told me that she had completely rethought her opinions about abortion, and many other issues, because of the class (although this was mainly because of the absolutely fucking amazing professor, and not because of me).

To get back to the multiple choice question, I answered "neutral" because I just could not say in all honesty that I am not a judgemental, negative person. Clearly, "neutral" wasn't the answer they wanted here. They wanted me to pick "highly disagree" with a perky, cheerleader flourish, but I couldn't do it.

I realize that I may have completely fucked up my chances of getting picked to be a teacher but, you know what?, if a school district rejects me on the basis of an online personality test then I probably didn't want to work for them, anyway. I can just go back to Scotland where prospective teachers have to attend a group interview (in which you have to give a presentation) and a face-to-face interview.

Besides my disgust at the methods of choosing teachers in this state, I am also worried about the quality of education. I've been taking a beginners' Spanish class for the last month, and I nearly fell off my seat in shock when the teacher said that she would not be calling on any of us individually to speak or read in the class! Her reasons for this were that it can be awthfully wathfully scary wary for people to speak a foreign language in front of other people. Guess what? Yes, it is a fucking uncomfortable feeling (especially for me who has a slight stutter - God, I used to dread public speaking at school because I was ridiculed every time) but, Jesus fucking Christ, how on EARTH, do you expect people to learn to speak a foreign language properly if they DO NOT FUCKING SPEAK IT! ARRRGGGH! Apparently the word "conjugation" is to be avoided in her class because it might threaten Americans' self-esteem. Instead, she calls it "putting a verb into real time"????! Now, I realize that I have a degree in foreign languages, so I am perhaps more familiar with language learning than others in the class, but, nonetheless, I don't believe in making a classroom so comfortable that students are not challenged enough. Michael, who took Spanish in high school for several years, says that he can't speak a word because he was never encouraged to speak! What the hell?!

You know what, Mr McCain and Ms Palin: instead of focusing on invading other countries and bombing the fuck out of them, it might suit you better to pay more attention to your education system. Last night in the debate, Obama said that education has "more to do with our economic situation than anything". Yes! Thank You, Obama! I just hope to God that he gets elected because, if I do get accepted onto this teacher program, it will not be fun teaching under a McCain/Palin administration.

If teachers were paid better, then we wouldn't have to become hookers!

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:54:00 +0000

Slutty McWhore has fallen on hard times. My rent was due on September 1st but I only just managed to scrape it all together today. I've been so broke that I've actually not had enough money to eat properly and, as a result, I'm looking rather gaunt and skinny. The only reason I was able to have dinner tonight was because I found a stash of quarters I'd saved in a yoghurt pot in the days when I didn't have a washing machine, and had to go to a laundromat. Thankfully the wee Thai woman who accepted my mounds of silver in return for a steaming plate of noodles was incredibly sweet, and didn't seem to think I was a homeless crack addict.

It's all my own fault, of course. I've become so bored of massage recently that I can't really bring myself to work very much...and so I just don't. I can't keep going on like this, though. Clearly, something has to change.

On Thursday night, I attended an information session about becoming a high-school English teacher. I'm still very much in two minds about committing myself to a teacher training program in the States, though. First of all, I have no emotional attachment to the country, so it seems weird to teach kids here. Secondly, the thought that McCain and Palin might win the election totally terrifies me. I just can't stand to spend one second longer living in a country where people like that are actually accepted and venerated. Finally, if I do get certified as a teacher here, and then move to New York for a few years (as is the plan), I'll be in my mid-thirties at that point. I'm worried I'll end up being sucked into living in the US forever. I've seen it happen before; I know a Scottish guy here who's well into his eighties, and who's spent the last fifty years living here. He says he never meant to stay that long. Apparently it "just happened". I can't imagine living my whole life here, and having American kids with American accents. I have such a love/hate relationship with Scotland but, nonetheless, I'm very fond of it, and can't bear the thought of not returning there one day. Glasgow is like an old lover to me. I'm sick of it, and need something new and fresh, but it will always be my first and greatest love. There truly is no city like it.

My aversion to teaching is intertwined with my rather childish, immature belief that one has to be tortured to produce great art. Well, it's not that I actually consciously think this; but I do believe that this myth is embedded very deeply in my subconscious. Teaching just seems so bourgeois, so sensible, so stable. I always thought I'd live a more exciting, wilder and crazier life. Part of me definitely feels like I'm giving up or selling out by deciding to be a teacher.

But, hell, the annals of literature are filled with stories of poor artists having to work some shitty job to make ends meet. It's not like I'd be the first one - and teaching wouldn't even be shitty. Just time-consuming and emotionally draining. But, hey, if Robert Burns could be a customs and excise officer, then I can be a teacher! Let's just hope that I don't die a miserable death at the age of thirty-seven, like he did.

[Did I ever mention, by the way, that I think I bear an uncanny resemblance to Rabbie? Given that he comes from my neck of the woods, I'm convinced that we're related. Better still - the following extract from his biography (Catherine Carswell's one - read it! It's amazing!) suggests that I may very well be his reincarnation:

"During these obscure attacks, which affected not only the nervous but the muscular system, attacks of which the duration increased as he grew older, his mood fluctuated. At times, even during the onslaught, he could pull himself together, make efforts, be witty, and even wise; but for the most part he lost his grip on life and was crushed by fear, particularly the fear of poverty" (310).]

The teacher certification program doesn't start until January, and I wouldn't actually be earning any money as a teacher until next September! In other words, I could have a whole year of massage ahead of me! I've been scouring the job ads looking for teaching posts, but there are hardly any in this fucking town. The only jobs I can find seem to be in daycare centres, and I have zero experience with little kids - and I don't want to have any. Looking after a room full of toddlers is my idea of hell. I pity the poor women who take these jobs, as the employers spell out a long list of duties and responsibilities, and yet somehow think it's acceptable to pay $9/hr! I get infuriated reading these ads, as it seems that women's skills and life-experience are still not valued in this society. Looking after young children is certainly not my cup of tea, but it is still a very important job, and it's disgusting to pay women (because it will undoubtedly be women who fill these posts) so little.

It really is no fucking wonder that women turn to prostitution when there are just not enough well-paid jobs out there.

I was reminded tonight, though, just how much erotic massage pisses me off. I ended up working much later than usual, and when a regular of mine emailed to ask why my hours had changed, I told him I needed the money. The wee fucking shit then had the gall to email me back to ask if I would see him for $100 i.e. $20 less than usual. He obviously thought that I was desperate enough to give him a discount. Well, I was desperate actually, but I told the twat where he could stick his fucking $100. I would rather starve than see someone who thinks he can get one over on me. I am always disgusted when someone asks me for a discount. I feel like yelling "You want a discount for ME? ME? ME?!!! Me who has so much fucking passion, and love, and intelligence, and so many dreams, so much of everything! You have got to be fucking kidding!" That sounds arrogant but, ach, what the fuck do I care?! You need to have a large ego to avoid being ground down in this business.

He responded ranting some gibberish about how "The world doesn't revolve around ego maniacs, and that if you don't like the concept of discounts, and living in a capitalist society, then you should try Communism". It disturbs me that some Americans seem to think that anything other than rampant Capitalism and consumerism is the devil incarnate.

But it's not Communism that's the opposite of their greedy, self-interested, vapid society - it's compassion. And the people who support McCain and Palin are sorely lacking in that.

Photo Credit: gabs666

One hour, just one measly hour.

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:11:00 +0000

OK. Deep breath. It's nearly 4:15pm, and I am going to write for one hour. I've set the alarm on my iPhone and when it goes off at 5:15pm, that's it. I will stop writing. Even if I'm in the middle of a fucking sentence. I don't care.

One hour exactly. Just one hour.

There will be no stopping to read over what I've written obsessively.

There will be no worrying about whether I've written Noble Prize worthy material.

There will be no telling myself "Oh, you can't possibly write anything meaningful and profound in an hour, so why bother writing anything?" (One of the main reasons I hardly ever write in here. I keep looking for huge chunks of time when I will finally have the time to write something really impressive and thought-provoking...but, of course, those chunks of time never come).

There will be no worrying about whether this blog just proves once and for all that I've disappeared up my own self-absorbed arse. Yes, I think I am self-indulgent and self-absorbed, but maybe I just need to let myself be whatever it is I need to be on here. I need to stop worrying about what other people think. I really do.

Fuck it! I just re-read what I've written by clicking on the "Preview" section. I said I wouldn't do that! But, oh well. I can't expect to break the habits of a lifetime in an hour, eh?

Fuck. I feel quite teary. I feel quite vulnerable. Bloody hell! The pressure of writing a post in only one hour is making my sentences really short. It's stream-of-fucking-consciousness, and you have no idea how much stream-of-conscious writing bores me to tears. I've never understood the appeal of Virginia Woolf (except for a "Room of One's Own", which was great).

I've been feeling very tearful and vulnerable this week (but I said that in the last paragraph, didn't I? I cheated again, and re-read it). I haven't worked at all. I just can't bring myself to log into my massage account and answer emails from guys who ask questions like "Is it OK if I touch you during the massage, too?" I fucking hate emails like this. I hate the way they expect me to sell myself and talk about my various body parts as if they were spare parts for a car. I have now reached the stage where it turns my stomach to work as an erotic masseuse.

This hasn't really got anything to do with Michael although we are still together, and everything is - for the most part, anyway - good. I even went to Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland, called North Royalton, to be exact) to visit his parents, and his family loved me. I thought they were rather amazing, too, although it was stressful and draining having to be on my best behaviour all the time, and trying not to say "fuck" or "cunt". I was nearly successful (I said "fuck" once when I was playing some odd game called "Cornhole" at a family gathering - but it was OK, as Michael's mother said it, too, when they had a little fight in the car on the way there! Ha! This was funny, as she's a sweet, Catholic lady! Why is it that I always end up dating Catholic boys? Protestants are so boring, though. I can't help it!).

Wow! This exercise reminds me of sitting my finals at university, where you'd have to write, and write and write for hours on end.

Anyway, back to Michael.....My total distaste of massage hasn't got much to do with him. I want to give it up now, as soon as I possibly fucking can, but it's not because I've found true love, and want to ride off into the sunset on the back of my white knight's horse. I will concede, though, that being in a relationship and experiencing (some of the time, anyway) feelings of tenderness and affection for someone have certainly highlighted just how depressing massage can be. I don't think that the men who come to see me are all psychologically fucked-up (although some of them undoubtedly are) but a lot of them are lonely. A lot of them - the vast majority - are married and, even though I don't feel guilty for helping them commit adultery, it does disturb me greatly that they lie to their wives. I don't want to collude in lies and betrayal. It's not me who's doing it directly, but I think it's corroding my soul. Worse than that, it makes me distrustful of love and relationships...of men. I wonder how it's possible to have a trusting, meaningful relationship when every day you meet men who are liars? I hate it when non-sex workers say that we're all poor, abused little victims, but I've got to admit that it's pretty fucked-up that I became an escort at nineteen! Nineteen! How on earth did that happen? It seems so self-destructive. I was always a good student, very conscientious, so I would never have allowed myself to become addicted to drugs or booze, so having a secret sex life was very, very tempting. I could fuck myself up at night and still be perky and bright for class the next morning.

My negativity about massage comes comes from the fact that I am just so fucking incredibly bored with touching men's bodies. I'm tired of their cocks. I'm tired of their fantasies. I'm tired of their flesh. They all seem to be the same man to me. They've all merged into one. A couple of months back, there was a strange phase where I bumped into a few of them in Wholefoods. They would look at me with recognition in their eyes, and a faint smile on their lips, unsure if they should say something. I honestly didn't have a fucking clue who they were. I mean, they looked vaguely familiar, but if they hadn't looked at me, I would have walked straight past them.

I can't stand this boredom. There was a point when delving into these men's psyches - listening to their secrets; hearing them confess things they'd never told anybody else; finding out about their lives - was very interesting to me, but after a while I came to realize that their stories were remarkably similar. Hardly anybody sticks out anymore. Part of the problem is that these men are, quite frankly, not the most interesting people in the universe. If you have $120 to burn on a quick handjob, chances are that you've made your money by doing something sensible. A lot of my clients are software engineers, computer programmers, realtors. I have got absolutely fucking nothing in common with them. I'm not saying they're bad people. They're just not interesting. They don't seem to think about the bigger picture, or care about creative things. It drags me down emotionally that my daily life is filled with people who don't stimulate me intellectually, creatively and emotionally. I need to be in a different, healthier environment.

When I graduated from Glasgow university, I vowed I'd never become a teacher. It was too much of an obvious choice, too sensible for me. I've reached a stage now, though, where I think it makes perfect sense to apply for a teacher training program. Massage is damaging me psychically, and I want to have a job I enjoy in which I can help other people. I am self-absorbed, it's true, but I've always been very compassionate and nurturing. I've always been on the side of the underdog. I've always volunteered for various projects (I've actually been teaching English to immigrants, mainly Mexicans, for the last two years). I'd love to teach high-school English to underprivileged kids. I can't think of anything more boring than teaching in a private school to white, middle-class kids. These kids have so much already, they don't need me. Part of me is scared of teaching, though. I'm scared the kids will drain me of all my energy and creativity. It probably sounds weird to say that, but, well, I've had a pattern of going out with damaged, creatively blocked men whom I made into my little project. Is my desire to teach underprivileged kids just another way (but more socially acceptable this time!) to avoid focusing on myself?

There is perhaps some of that, but, well, as long as I know that about myself, I can hopefully avoid getting too focused on the kids I teach.

I do still want to be a writer, too, and my initial reason for not wanting to teach was that it would take too much time away from my creative pursuits. When I graduated with my Master's, I had this fantasy of myself rising at dawn to pound away at the keyboard, writing brilliant article after brilliant article, but how many times have I done that? The question's easy to answer. None! I thought I could be a freelance writer and do massage on the side to keep me going, but I've realized that I'm somebody who badly needs structure in her life. The more free time I have to write, the more I squander it by analyzing myself too much, or by procrastinating, or getting blocked by my perfectionistic tendencies. I'm glad that I'm a self-analytical person, but if I have too much time on my hands to analyze, it's a huge hindrance to my moving forward in life.

Tomorrow night there's actually an information session about an alternative certification program. I'm excited.

Oh, God, what else was there to write about? Oh, yes, I nearly forgot. I've been reading some books about Borderline Personality Disorder, and some of the behavioural tendencies described therein sound scarily familiar. Not just for me, but for my mother, too. In fact, I am 100% convinced that my mother has Borderline Personality Disorder. The more I read about BPD, the more I feel sorry for my mother. It makes me sad that she has absolutely no fucking clue about her own behaviour. She's completely in denial, and, of course, this means that she will never get better, and that we will most likely never have any kind of relationship again.

After Moggy's recent "Get a Grip" comment, I feel a bit embarrassed to mention on here that I think I might also have BDP. I'm worried that I might come across as a hypochondriac who's just looking for any old label to pin onto herself. However, as much as I write about my feelings and emotions on here, none of you know just how fucking enraged and mean I can be sometimes. I never do this to friends really, only romantic partners. A lot of the time it's almost like I'm looking down on myself being a fucking bitch, totally irrational, and filled with hatred and anger towards Michael, and yet I can't stop myself. It's like watching a totally different person. I've also never understood the way my moods change. A lot of people said on my last post that their moods are changeable, too, but it feels so strange and wrong that I could start my day lying in bed, feeling totally hopeless and depressed, and yet be cheered up an hour later by a song on the radio, all elated and bouncy. It's hard to describe my mood swings on here, but I do definitely think there is something wrong with them. They are so frequent that it makes me question who I am, and what I want from life, because I can never seem to have the same mood for very long.

I hate to say it but I'm very glad to have Michael in my life - at least that's how I feel right now, at this particular moment in time. He's so steady and dependable. Oh, God, I miss the crazy, crazy drama and highs and lows of fucked-up, narcissistic men but if I'd had one more of them I would very possibly have thrown myself under a truck. I couldn't do that anymore. I needed some fucking love for a change. If that all sounds like a fairytale ending, don't worry! I will probably be filled with rage and hatred towards him in an hour or so!

Hmmm. It's 5:13pm and I'm done. Can't bring myself to write anymore. I'm emotionally exhausted. Strange. But, fuck, I feel better! So much better. I love writing!

If anybody ever tells me to "get a grip" again, I will show them just how good my grip is by ramming a very large, thorny stick up their arse.

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:41:00 +0000

Sometimes I sit around moping, having very nostalgic thoughts about Scotland and wondering whether I should move back. Nostalgia can sometimes be a very self-defeating, time-consuming emotion, so you can imagine just how happy I was to read a comment from Moggy on my last post, which snapped me out of my melancholy in less than two seconds. As I read his opinions about my blog and life, I realized that I would rather eat my own shit than return to a land filled with people whose answer to everything is to grimace masochistically and say "Aye, lassie - just get a grip and get on with it!". There is something quite endearing about Scottish stoicism - and I daresay Moggy's comments were intended to be supportive - but I just wish that we could, as a nation, take a leaf out of the Americans' book and actually manage to talk about feelings occasionally. I'm not suggesting that we all head down to George Square for a big group cuddle session (heaven forbid!) but, let's face it, the "grin and bear it" mentality just ain't fucking working anymore.

Just yesterday I read about Neil Lennon getting his face kicked in and knocked unconscious in Glasgow's west-end by a couple of sectarian thugs. These idiots probably don't really give a fuck about Lennon's religion, or even their own - they were just looking to get their aggression out somehow, and Lennon just happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. There is - and always has been - a huge problem with violence and aggression in Scotland (especially the West Coast), and it's no fucking wonder! We sweep all our problems under the carpet, and get them out our system by smashing some poor fucker in the face.

When you read again and again about the increase in suicide rates in Scotland, and our binge-drinking culture, surely there comes a point when we should begin to question our "get a grip" stoicism?!

The reason I reacted so strongly to Moggy's "get a grip" comment is because, as a good Scot, I already spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the self-indulgent nature of blogging. Before I started my own blog, I thought it was quite ridiculous to plunge the dreary depths of one's soul online. I still worry that it's ridiculous, to be honest, and that's probably why I don't update here as much as I want to. The ironic thing is that it really helps me to get my feelings out in my blog. In fact, I would never have realized that I was a good writer if I hadn't had my blogging audience to practise on first. And I certainly would never have developed enough self-confidence to decide to try this writing lark professionally. If I were to assess the last two years of my life, I would say that blogging was probably the best thing that ever happened to me in that period. That's maybe a bit sad and pathetic to admit but, hell, I was depressed and lonely, and I needed something to pull me out of it.

I miss blogging when I don't do it. For every day I don't post, I have countless thoughts about this blog and what I could write about. I write nothing, though, because people like Moggy tap into that annoying Scottish part of me that worries about being pretentious and self-indulgent, so I give in and think that it would be better to just shut the fuck up instead.

Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker, of course this blog is self-indulgent and pretentious, but what's so wrong with that?! Can't I have a little space where I can work through my embarrassing thoughts and feelings without being made to feel guilty about it? Moggy complains that "I used to read your blog, went away, came back, and to what? An overwhelming sense of deja vu". The implication here is that I am writing this blog for my readers, for their entertainment and amusement. Of course I want people to like what I write here, and come back for more, but I can't help it if my life doesn't progress in a nice linear fashion. If people don't like it, I don't understand why they feel the need to tell me so. Just stop reading, for God's sake! That way everyone will be happy!

Moggy also seems very dismissive of the way some people find comfort in the comments their readers leave. "Is that what blogging has evolved into, I wonder?", he asks, "Some online help group?" In an ideal world, we would all be surrounded by loving, nurturing families and friends, but not everybody is lucky enough to have this, so it's no wonder that some of us develop virtual relationships at certain times. I used to scoff at online friendships, too, but I changed my mind when I realized how amazing it was to have entered into a dialogue with people I'd normally never meet or exchange ideas with in real life.

I realize that I'm overreacting to Moggy's comment, but this is perhaps because I think it's incredibly dangerous to tell someone to "get a grip". This is because such an attitude essentially shuts down communication, and silences people's voices. How many people - women, people of colour, sexual minorities etc - have been told to be quiet and just stoically accept their lot in life? And where would they be now if they had actually listened to that advice?

If Moggy had ever met Charlotte Perkins Gillman, the course of American feminism might have been changed forever! He would probably have wanted her to re-write "The Yellow Wallpaper" to reflect a more stoic worldview.

"Och, naw, hen!", he'd have admonished (although I actually think he's originally from England so probably doesn't speak with a broad Scottish accent), "ye cannae huv yer main character lyin' aroon' in bed like a lazy bitch! Naw! She jist needs tae get a fuckin' grip and get oan wi' it, ken whit I mean, hen?! She needs tae get doon those fuckin' stairs tae make her man's dinner and feed the wean!"

Aye, right.

I can't stop running away.

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:05:00 +0000

I was looking forward to going to New York City with Michael. I imagined us spending our mornings lounging around in bed and having sex, not needing to feel guilty for once that we were neglecting other aspects of our lives. We would walk over the Williamsburg Bridge, I thought, hand in hand, gazing adoringly into each other's eyes.

The holiday wasn't a disaster or anything, but it was far from being the romantic get-away that we had both anticipated. In fact, we only had sex once the whole time we were there, and it was a pretty rushed affair, almost a little angry and aggressive on Michael's part. I can't say I blame him, as I was incredibly emotionally distant and aloof for most of our stay in New York. Whenever he tried to cuddle or kiss me, I would let him but only for a few moments, and then wriggle out from his grasp. I felt that he was suffocating me, and almost felt like yelling "Stop touching me, for fuck's sake! Stop touching me!"

Too many years of disgustingly pathetic self-absorption have made me an expert at self-analysis, so I think I know why I was acting that way. Michael and I have been talking ever since we met about moving to New York together next year (conveniently, we both wanted to do that before we met each other). When I'm not in New York, I'll fantasize about our life there, and it all seems so terribly amazing and exciting. However, actually being physically present in New York made the reality of our relationship seem frightening and claustrophobic. Everything about our lives in the city we're in now is temporary and ephemeral, and our relationship feels that it exists in a little bubble, untouched by the outside world. The future is like a fantasy, so being in New York, where I caught a glimpse of how our real lives could actually be there, terrified me. I imagined myself living with Michael in a tiny, poky New York flat, where I'd have no private space of my own to write or get away from the world.

The night after the half-marathon, when I was drunk and exhausted (never a good time for meaningful discussion!), I told Michael that we should probably live in separate flats if we were still together by the time we moved to New York. I told him that moving there with a boyfriend seemed so boring and unchallenging, and that I wanted to have my own New York adventure, without having the comfort of a live-in boyfriend. All this, of course, was a reaction to my feeling of emotional claustrophobia. As soon as I said this, I could literally see the little cogs of Michael's brain whirl, telling him "Don't trust this woman. She's emotionally fickle". He didn't say anything, but I could sense that he'd immediately put up an emotional barrier.

You'd think I'd be happy about this, wouldn't you?! Happy that I got him to back off from me emotionally. Wasn't this what I wanted? Instead, I felt a sense of panic and vulnerability, and almost immediately became more aroused and attracted to him. Michael tells me all the time how beautiful, smart and creative I am and, even though I do appreciate this, there is also a huge part of me that thinks "You have got to be fucking kidding me!" I just can't bring myself to believe it completely. I know that he genuinely means what he says, but I can't help but think there's something wrong with him for believing this. He must be delusional or something. Sometimes I almost despise him for being so nice to me, and lose respect for him, as well as any kind of sexual attraction. Most of my other boyfriends have been very emotionally distant, and critical of me, and yet somehow this seemed to make sense. It feel real, like they knew what they were talking about. Such men have always aroused me sexually because it seemed like such a challenge to get them to notice me, want me and find me attractive and clever. When it comes to Michael, on the other hand, I have noticed recently that I am very rarely in the mood for having sex with him because our relationship, and his feelings for me, are too "easy".

I also spend a lot of my time analyzing his looks, clothes, body, behaviour, personality, artwork and finding fault with it. I've always been this way with boyfriends but never to the same extent as now. Of course, this just makes me feel even less attached and more emotionally distant from him. On other occasions, I feel, paradoxically, very much in love with him, but this constant see-sawing of emotions, feelings and opinions leaves me feeling incredibly confused and troubled. If you change your mind about the way you feel about someone every couple of hours (sometimes every couple of minutes!), it's very hard to know what the reality of the situation is. It's very difficult to recognize genuine problems in your relationship because you're unsure if they're real, or if your commitment-phobic mind has just grabbed onto a tiny, insignificant detail and blown it out of all proportion. It also leaves me feeling terribly guilty and ashamed because when I'm lying in his arms contentedly I'll suddenly remember a bad thought I had about him, and feel horrible that I could have thought such a thing. Even in our good moments together, I can't quite relax or let myself go because of this. I'll be lying there thinking, "This is lovely, but, ooh, how do I know he's really the person I think he is, because I thought something completely different about him a few hours ago".

If I was a stranger who had just happened across this blog post, I would probably think I was a pathetic, self-absorbed, selfish, egotistical bitch - and I'm not sure how wrong that person would be. I realize that it causes Michael a great deal of pain to be with someone who is so emotionally inconsistent. I wonder how much longer he can put up with me, and I feel that something changed in him after our trip to New York. I can tell he's going to be more cautious around me from now. All that is understandable as, clearly, he's the one who is suffering the most here, but I also experience a lot of anguish because I just don't know what the fuck is going on.

It's fucking agonizing to undergo such terrible mood swings and changes of opinion. It stops me from being able to experience any kind of true intimacy or love.

I'm fucking sick of it, but I don't know how to help myself.

[Photo Credit: Slutty McWhore - Long Island City, Queens]

Slutty McWhore Runs New York City!

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:23:00 +0000

I nearly decided to stop writing in this blog today, and to make it password-protected from now on i.e. blocked off forever to the rest of the world. So many people (friends, boyfriend, fucking punters) have found it that I no longer feel able to express myself freely on here anymore. I don't really have the same desire to write in here or have the same sense of fulfillment that I used to because I don't have the freedom of anonymity. But, oh, I don't know....it seems like such a shame to pack it in at this stage. We'll see - maybe I'll keep writing here, and start a completely anonymous blog elsewhere, which I won't tell any of you lot about. Ha!

Perhaps I'll feel better about this blog tomorrow. I am, admittedly, pretty tired and grumpy at the moment because I ran the NYC half-marathon today. Obviously I'm not going to tell you my exact finishing time (and thus compromise my anonymity even further) but I was very happy about my performance, which was better than I expected (especially since it was fucking 90% humidity!).

New York has, of course, been wonderful although I don't feel excited about it the way I used to when I was younger. I don't know if that's just because I'm older, have seen more of the world and am therefore harder to impress; or if I'm jaded with life. Hmmm. Perhaps a little bit of both.

But, despite my slightly diminished enthusiasm, there still is nowhere quite like New York City. I like the fact that I can just disappear into the anonymity of the city, and its endless possibilities.

Michael and I have been talking about moving here together next year. I told him I loved him last week, but I don't know if I'm even fucking capable of love. I change my mind all the time about how I feel about him. Right now, I would rather move here all by myself and experience this city alone.

We've been here since Thursday night, and we've not even had sex yet. This is partly because we've barely had any time to fit it in, inbetween going out late, coming back exhausted, getting up around 2:00pm and then rushing out the door to make the most of lost time. However, I've also got to admit that I don't really want to sleep with him. I have no idea why this is... Am I just commitment-phobic, trying to distance myself from him emotionally, or is there a genuine reason I don't want any physical contact?

Whatever it is, it makes me sad. I'm so tired of being complicated. I just wish I could appreciate what I have, which, right now, is a nice guy and NYC.

(Photo Credit: Jeff Ragovin)

(Not My) Last Exit to Brooklyn

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:12:00 +0000

Next week Michael and I are off to New York for about five days so that I can run the New York City Half-Marathon. Well, really, I just decided to run the half-marathon as an excuse to go to New York. As a good Presbyterian, I cannot just "go" to New York for the mere sake of it, as that would be unforgivably frivolous. One needs a "reason". And that reason is getting up at 5:00AM next Sunday morning to pound through the streets of Manhattan for 13.1 miles. I actually converted to Catholicism three years ago à la Muriel Spark (if only I was as good a writer!), but, sadly, there will always be an uptight Presbyterian wedged inside me somewhere.

Apparently, the half-marathon is being televised online, so you should check it out to see if you can catch a glimpse of a certain slutty, mcwhorish person. It should be dead easy to spot me, as I have bright red hair, tartan shorts and will be cursing wildly while taking large swigs from a can of Tennents Super Strength Lager. That's if I ever make it to the start-line. I was supposed to run the Bronx half-marathon in February, but I ended up getting wasted in Williamsburg the night before. Probably a good thing really, as it was fucking freezing. Slutty McWhore does not do cold. Ooooooh, no!

Every time I decide to take a wee trip out of town, it seems that the universe conspires against me. Just when I need to switch into full handjob mode, there are never any customers. This is always the case when I urgently need some money. Is there a "Law of Handjobs" that I've never heard about? It occurred to me recently that there is very little difference between me and the crack-addled streetwalkers plying their trade a few blocks away. We're all hustling, it's just that I do my hustling inside, on the internet. Living around here makes me really conscious of white privilege. I'm doing pretty much the same thing as these women but because they're black and poor they're the ones who'll get arrested. As a white, European woman with a "cute" accent, I never get any hassle from the police. The most they've ever done is tell me off for cycling at night without lights. Of course, now that I've said that, I'll probably get arrested tomorrow.

I'm quite excited about going to New York with Michael. At first I wasn't because, in full-on commitment-phobic mode, I wanted to wander around New York without anyone cramping my style. God knows why I wanted that, as I've been in New York a lot by myself, and it gets boring having nobody to share things with. Michael and I have been "together" for just over three months now, and everything seems to be going really well. I still fantasize about running off to Brazil or Argentina by myself at least once a day, but every time I see him I'm bowled over by his good looks and, well, just the chemistry we have together.

He's so incredibly well-balanced. That doesn't sound very sexy, and sometimes I wish we had more of a Catherine-Heathcliff drama thing going on but, God, how many times have I had that? And it's all so fake, superficial and meaningless once you've pulled away all the layers of intensity. All too often I've been infatuated with a guy, only to realize that there was nothing there once it was all over. Michael is the lighthouse, steadfast and rooted, around which my hurricane can whirl and burn itself out. I need that.

It will be good for us to go to New York and get out of here for a few days. There are much worse places than where we are now, but I often find myself sinking into a rut here of sun, laid-backness and margaritas. This may sound like fun, but it's hard to pull myself out it to get anything done. The people here are "nice" but, quite frankly, I find niceness over-rated. I don't look for bland friendliness in the people I associate with. Instead I want to be surrounded by people who challenge me intellectually and with whom I can have stimulating conversations. I very rarely find this here. Michael, with typical Midwestern practicality perhaps, hates to hear me or others blame their current predicament on their surroundings and he's right to a certain extent. However, I do believe that one's environment and friends radically affect your way of thinking. When I'm in New York I feel energized and excited again, and I miss feeling that way. When I was in New York in February, I met more interesting people in five days than I have here in four years. I don't kid myself that I'd have loads of fascinating friends if I moved to New York. More likely than not, I'd meet people somewhere and then off they'd go, swallowed up by the city, never to be seen again. That would be OK by me, though. I just need to know that they're out there, and that I could meet them. I love the endless possibilities of huge metropolises.

Oh, I can't wait to see you again, New York!

[PS/ The above picture is of the greatest American - and New Yorker - novelist ever - in my opinion, anyway. A free erotic massage to the first person who tells me who it is!]
[PPS/ Dear Sam the Social Worker living in Tampa, Florida. You might want to learn how to hide your IP address when you check my blog because I can see you! Thirty-four pages in one night in the Hampton Inn, eh?! You could at least have left a comment, you cheeky bastard!]

Bend Over Jasper Hamill: You're a naughty, naughty boy!

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:23:00 +0000

It's amazing the things you come across when you try to find a picture of a man being spanked on google. Who'd have thought there was a whole subculture out there of men who enjoy being spanked?!

But this post actually has got nothing to do with spanking. Rather, it has everything to do with me - or, rather, an article Jasper Hamill wrote about me and The Skinny Mag in Scotland's Sunday Herald.

The article was written to coincide with The Skinny Mag's decision to have a whole "sex positive" section in their latest issue. I've been out of Scotland for nearly four years now, so I'm not really sure what's going on in the media as regards their coverage of the sex industry and the women (and men) who work in it. It's pretty safe to assume, though, that all the same tired, old clichés will be trotted out - sex workers are "nymphomaniacs", "emotionally damaged victims", "psychologically flawed" and their clients are just dirty, old men - to explain the situation. This is why the sex-positive stance of The Skinny Mag's latest issue is so refreshing (not to mention their liberal, progressive attitude towards the sex industry, in general).

Jasper Hamill's article should also be commended because he reports on The Skinny Mag (and me) without passing any judgement whatsoever. Normally journalists who write so-called objective articles on the sex industry/sex workers still manage to get their moral tuppence-worth in, too. I'm appreciative that he wrote this article BUT (and this is a very big "BUT") I still felt that he misrepresented me to make me more palatable to his readership. My problem with this article starts with his description of me, in paragraph two, as "a high-profile sex blogger". Given that he'd already mentioned Belle de Jour in the first paragraph, I couldn't help but feel that he was trying to fashion me into the Scottish version of her because, well, that would be newsworthy, wouldn't it?!

First of all, I'm far from being high-profile! I average maybe one hundred hits a day - and most of those are from people looking up porn and leaving abruptly after about two seconds when they don't find what they're looking for (like the person who found my blog last week using the google search term "My dog brings me to orgasm". Uh, okay - whatever turns you on)! I fucking wish I was high-profile and had a massive book deal but the sad reality is that the easiest way to get noticed as a sex worker blogger is to write about your sexploits. I have nothing against women doing this, but it's just not me. I'm not a prude or anything, but I just have no desire to spend all day jerking men off only to write about it at night. I don't find writing about sex all that interesting unless it's connected to a wider, more important issue. I also don't consider myself a sex blogger at all. I'm pretty sure that if I was to add up all the times I've written about sex it would be a lot less than the amount of times I've mentioned being depressed.

My problems with the article continue into the third paragraph where Hamill writes that I'm an anonymous blogger. "The only clue to her identity," he writes, "is an admission that her parents read the Sunday Herald". When I answered, via email, some questions that Hamill had sent me, I actually said that I no longer was particularly concerned about anonymity. Sure, it would be a bit weird if I returned to Glasgow and was greeted with a chorus of "There goes that Slutty McWhore lassie!" but, ultimately, I am not ashamed of what I do and don't have much of a reason to hide. I also told him that it would be pretty easy for someone to blow my cover if he/she desperately wanted to. I have never mentioned on here where I live exactly, but I rarely use Tor to disguise my IP address when posting or leaving comments on other people's blogs, so I've left a huge trail all over the internet. I've also mentioned plenty personal information (descriptions of how I look; my interests; my pets; place-specific events I've been to), which someone could piece together to track me down.

Any of you out there reading this are willing to try to find me, but, quite frankly, I don't think you will, and I don't much care if you do. I'd be peeved for all of twenty seconds, but that's about it. I know I'm a good writer but I honestly don't think that my subject matter is interesting, controversial or salacious enough to obsess anyone to the point that they'd want to find me. Perhaps I'm also not willing to play the "anonymity game". I realize that many sex workers are different from me in that they're extremely paranoid that their nearest and dearest will find them out. However, for women like Belle de Jour, one has to admit that her anonymity is a major part of her appeal and her titillation. If hookers are meant to be fantasy women, her anonymity makes her even more so of a sexual fantasy. We don't know what she looks like, so she can stay forever in our imaginations as a beautiful, alluring femme fatale. I've even noticed this myself when it comes to advertising on sex boards. I never post pictures of myself (that's one thing I'm very, very weird about. I refuse to have half-naked pictures of myself still popping up on the internet twenty years from now. My image belongs to me, thank you very much!) and it's interesting to see how this intrigues some of my potential clients.

Once again, I would fucking love to be a mysterious, enigmatic film noir hooker bombshell (when I was in school, I would purposely alienate myself from all the other kids to suggest the air of a "tortured genius" - this lasted all of two minutes, as I could never keep my big, talkative, giggly mouth shut for long enough) but, once again, this is just not me.

Clearly, I'm very far from being the glamorous, salacious sex worker blogger that Jasper Hamill needs me to be to make his article newsworthy. If he were to write about the truth - that I'm mainly a normal (albeit sometimes dark and complicated) wee lassie whom you could meet down the supermarket any day buying haemmorrhoid cream - it would be far too fucking boring.

I'm also not the sex-positive feminist that the article makes me out to be. In paragraph 7 he quotes me as saying that "Sex work - or writing about it, at least - has totally boosted my confidence and self-esteem as a woman." I actually did say this, but he quoted me out of context. What I really said was that I find sex work to be neither empowering or disempowering. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a job. The best thing about it is that I would probably never have started a blog, and discovered my voice as a writer, if I hadn't been a sex worker. In this respect, then, I'm very grateful to the sex industry because it (indirectly) improved my self-esteem.

Another interesting aspect of the article is that Jan McLeod (from The Women's Support Project in Glasgow, a virulently anti-prostitution organisation) was asked to comment on my blog and did so - clearly without ever having taken the time to read what I've written in "The Skinny Mag" or even on here! According to Jasper Hamill, she's "worried that the blog would perpetrate the "male fantasy of the happy hooker", a woman who enters sex work voluntarily and enjoys her work". If she had spent even one minute on this blog, she would have quickly learned that I am far from being a "happy hooker". I think there is a LOT wrong with the sex industry, and I've certainly never been one to shy away from criticisms of it. I don't especially enjoy the job (although I do love talking to my clients - mainly because I'm a nosy bitch and love finding out about other people's lives!) but it's far better than any other job I've had so far, and it's a means to an end. I'm not a poor victim, Jan McLeod! And sex work doesn't necessarily have to be damaging towards women. I've carved out a niche for myself and made it work for me. You're entitled to your opinions but before you pass comment on me and my life, it would suit you better to find out a little more about them. Otherwise you come across as a bigot who refuses to listen to the very women you say that you care about!

If I ever meet you in a dark alley, Jan McLeod, I'll throw you swiftly over my knee, and give you a bloody good spanking for your uninformed opinions. That would teach you a lesson. Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe you'd find that you actually enjoyed it and would pay me to do it again!

And as for you, Jasper Hamill, you may have written a non-judgemental article, but your arse can't escape my leather paddle that easily. You're better than other journalists of your ilk but you're still guilty of stereotyping me, and other sex workers. For that you deserve a very good spanking indeed!

Now don't argue, young man. Just BEND OVER!

Sexism and the City

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:05:00 +0000

I’m feeling naked and deprived. I’m sitting on the patio in my favourite café (faithful chihuahua at my feet – she got groomed today, and is looking particularly dashing) and the fucking wifi connection is so slow that I’ve had to resort to writing this entry in Word. It’s weird how different it feels using Word instead of writing directly in blogger. Even though I know that you’re all still out there no matter how or where I compose my entries, Word makes you feel so much further away. It’s completely irrational but when I’m connected to the internet, I actually feel that I’m connected to something bigger than myself.

But, hey, it’s probably a good thing that I’m writing in Word. Every time I come to a café to blog, I feel totally paranoid that somebody will look over my shoulder and see “Slutty McWhore” emblazoned across the screen. On Saturday, I was convinced that the waitress kept edging closer and close towards me to peer at what I was writing.

At the weekend, I finally went to see “Sex and the City” and it was much better than I expected. I’m not a big fan of American films (unless they’re of the art house/indie variety) and I was never hugely into “Sex and the City” either, but there’s no denying that the lives of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha are totally compelling. I never really understood why that was because what on earth could a wee Scottish farmer’s daughter have in common with four rich Manhattanites? My feet are more familiar with the squelch of cow shit under them than they ever will be with the insides of a pair of Jimmy Choo’s.

As I watched the film it suddenly hit me why I love these four characters so much and why I was rooting for them – female friendship. As hard as I try, I honestly can’t think of another example of female friendship in popular culture. In fact, I can’t even think of an example of this in my own life. Oh, of course, I have lots of female friends but I’ve never had a group of female friends who have stood by me through thick and thin and whom I’ve all known for years. I have individual friends who do that, but never a group.

Last year I wrote a paper on “Dangerous Liaisons”, and one of the most interesting parts of the novel concerns female friendship, and explains why it is perhaps so difficult to sustain it in a man’s world. Prévan (one of the male characters, second only to Valmont in the number of women he's manipulated, bedded and then discarded) discusses the friendship of three women – “Les inséparables” - who, despite their love affairs with men, remain utterly loyal and devoted to each other. There is, of course, a hint that these women might be lesbians and, well, that just won’t do! You can’t have women existing all by themselves, and having fun, without the involvement of men! Prévan devises a fiendish plan, which not only allows him to seduce each woman but also ruins their friendship and ensures that they are sexually humiliated and unable to show their faces in polite society again. He also fits in a spot of male bonding with the women's lovers although they knew he's shagged their women! The idea seems to be that men will band together to destroy any group of women that they find threatening. This whole scenario in the novel struck a chord with me, as I'm not sure that things are much different nowadays.

I’m envious of the friendship of the “Sex and the City” women because, unlike “les inséparables”, their friendship survives despite all the obstacles (and men!) who get in the way. I wonder, though, if it’s possible to have such a thing in reality? All my life, I’ve been very suspicious of groups of women because I suffered a lot at their hands. When I was in primary and secondary school, I got bullied a lot by both girls and boys; however, the boys’ teasing was more of the “bra-strap-pinging” variety whereas the girls were incredibly vicious in their cruelty. I was glad to grow older and go to university where women were generally more civilized, but every so often I’d find myself in a women-only situation, and, sooner or later, some bitchiness would emerge. I find that women tend to form “gangs” where individual members are singled out and made to feel like they don’t belong. Six months before moving to the US, I started a dead-end call centre job where ALL my team-mates were women. On the first day, two of the women were spectacularly bitchy to me (and actually made fun of me, high-school style!), and this atmosphere lasted for about two weeks until I got so pissed off that I had a huge argument with one of them. Ironically, that girl and I became quite good friends, and are still in touch now, but I just don’t understand why it has to be that way?

If women learned only one lesson from the Clinton/Obama presidential campaigns, then it should have been that we are all still living very much in a sexist world. The press coverage of Hillary was quite breathtaking in its virulent misogyny. I wanted Obama to win the nomination, but I found myself feeling furious and strangely protective of Hillary.

Why do we pit ourselves against each other, when we could achieve so much together as a team? It’s only by banding together that we will be able to overcome the obstacles put in our way.

A month ago I had a reminder of the difficulties facing thirty-something, single women when I visited a friend of mine in Boston (she’s Scottish but had moved there for work for six months). She had a horrible break-up a couple of years ago, from which she’s still not fully recovered, and it was obvious – despite her protestations to the contrary – that she worries a lot about growing older, and being alone and childless. This is not a criticism of her by any means, as I’ve had the same worries myself. When I consider what it would be like to be single at the age of thirty-five or older, I imagine myself being lonely and hardly ever having any contact with my married or otherwise partnered-up friends.

Ironically, my aforementioned friend practically disappeared off the face of the planet when she was in her six-year relationship. Despite the fact that we both lived in the same city (Edinburgh) for a year, I could count on one hand the number of times I saw her. She was extremely busy with work admittedly...but c’mon! I was almost pissed off when I heard her complain about her problems as a singleton because she wasn’t really there for me when I needed her. I had a similar experience with another Scottish friend of mine who lived here in the US for a while. As soon as she arrived, she got together with some guy and only reappeared to look for advice and comfort when things weren’t going well. I wouldn’t have minded quite so much if this guy had been a total catch and had had a great deal to offer her, but he practically defined the word “wanker”. Nobody liked him, or thought he was good for her, and it made me angry that she would jeopardize our friendship for him. When I look back at my friendships with different women over the years, they’ve given me so much more than a relationship with a man ever did. Men come, and men go – but my female friends are always there to pick up the pieces (well, most of the time!)

A part of me almost feels guilty that I’ve met somebody (a man) and am now in a relationship. I’m nearly always single and, to be honest, I was beginning to think that this would always be the case. It is very strange to have to think about somebody else now, and I’m still not sure I like it. When I was in Boston, I almost felt apologetic for having gone over to “the other side”. I can’t help but feel that being involved with a man is somehow letting my single female friends down or “selling out”. I wish that the whole structure of society wasn’t based upon “The Heterosexual Couple”. I wish that there were communes specifically for women where we could all live together. We would nip out from time to time for a quick shag with a man, so we could get knocked-up, but otherwise we would be together – and we’d all raise each other’s children. Sometimes I’m tempted to enter a convent, but, well, I don’t know how I’d cope with the vow of chastity.

One of the most disappointing aspects of “Sex and the City” (WARNING! PLOT SPOILER!) was that it didn’t provide a satisfactory alternative to getting married and popping out sprogs. Admittedly, the course of true love doesn’t exactly run smoothly for the married women (Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte) but, ultimately, they still get married, and two of them have children. Samantha’s sexually voracious, bachelorette character could have been an interesting counterpoint to this but I found her fate somewhat depressing.

First of all, her character seemed to have been sanitized, as she was actually involved in a five-year relationship this time instead of shagging left, right and centre. Her relationship breaks up but this time she reminds her girlfriends that she tried “really hard” to make things work. This, in itself, is commendable enough, I suppose, but I couldn’t help but feel that this has been written into the script to reassure viewers that even “bad girls” eventually turn over a new leaf to follow the rules of coupledom. Instead of cheating on her partner by sharing a shower with her new, incredibly hot neighbour, Samantha decides to stuff herself with food instead to bury her sexual feelings (more “good girl” behaviour!) until she eventually realizes she’s no longer happy in her relationship.

Clearly, the viewer is meant to admire Samantha for being strong enough to give up her toy boy lover at the age of fifty, but we’re given no clear sense of what will happen to her next. The tacit assumption is that she’ll resume her active and varied sex life, but the script gives us no such closure. The last we see of her she’s sitting on a sofa, with a fat gut, surrounded by her married friends, talking about having “tried hard” in her relationship. I wanted to see a closing shot of her lost in orgasmic bliss, but we don’t get this for two reasons – first of all, it would have been too radical to suggest that an older woman could be happy with such an alternative sexual lifestyle ; and, secondly, society wouldn’t let a woman get off with such behaviour, anyway. When I was in secondary school, my art teacher (a single woman in her late forties) was routinely mocked for being a “lesbian” (no doubt her short hair didn’t help). I have no idea if she was or not, but it was striking that my teenage classmates had already learned that a woman can only be considered “normal” if she’s part of a (heterosexual) couple.

Jesus, listen to me rant. I couldn’t be more ambivalent about relationships if I tried, eh?

Well, um, hello, Michael...

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:26:00 +0000

Don't get carried away. This isn't a picture of me. I just found it online (it's taken by someone called David Perry apparently) and liked it, as it reflects how I feel at the moment - still kinda anonymous, but also pretty exposed, too.

To date, four people who know me have found my blog - first there was "Hairy Fanny" (my Danish, Berlin-living painter friend); then there was a client of mine (a Pulitizer Prize-winning writer no less!); next there was the stupid Hispanic lawyer guy I met while running one time...and now there's Michael. I also suspect that one of the johns who comments on some of the other sex worker blogs I read knows who I am and actually lives in the same town as I do.

It really doesn't bother me that these people now have access to my deepest, darkest thoughts because I'm not ashamed of the things I've written about on here. Occasionally, I'll read over some of the older entries and cringe because I sound like such a self-absorbed twat, but well....I am a self-absorbed twat, so why try to hide the truth? And, on the whole, I just don't care that I've exposed myself a lot on this blog. I probably should but perhaps I feel that nobody who reads my stuff will ever be able to piece together what I've written and gain any insight into the "real" me. The most vulnerable, fragile part of myself is wrapped up very carefully in tissue paper and locked away somewhere deep inside me - so deep, in fact, that I don't know if even I have access to it, let alone anybody else.

The one thing that does bother me, though, is that it's difficult - if not damn near impossible - to write so freely and openly when you know that a friend or acquaintance might read it later. No matter how I try not to let this thought influence me, there's no denying that it does. How can I possibly air all my thoughts about Michael, for example, if he'll see it? I feel sad that now I've been forced to clean up my act, to create a more sanitized "Slutty McWhore". The irony is, of course, that I brought it all on myself. If I hadn't blabbed on about having a blog, then the above people wouldn't have tried to find it.

I don't know why I let my tongue wag so freely when it came to this blog. I think, perhaps, that I wanted to let people know that I was doing something creative with my life instead of just sitting around being depressed, homesick and teary. Instead I was sitting around blogging, being depressed, homesick and teary! Perhaps it doesn't seem like there's a big difference between the two, but blogging really did help me develop a more positive attitude towards my life, and show me that I was actually a good writer. It was very difficult not to share my enthusiasm about my new hobby with all and sundry.

When I started this blog, I didn't have any plan whatsoever about how it was going to progress, which looking back was perhaps a bad idea. On the one hand, I'm happy that this blog became a sort of sounding board for me where I could talk about what's upsetting me, and ask for advice. However, sometimes I feel "trapped" by the confessional, intimate tone my blog has developed because that makes it very difficult to experiment with another form of writing. I feel that my regular readers almost know me, so it would be weird if I suddenly wrote something with a more distanced, journalistic tone, or perhaps even fiction.

Like most sex worker bloggers out there perhaps, the success of Belle de Jour (who apparently just got another major book deal!) was in the back of my mind when I started this blog, and I guess I had the vague hope that some publisher big-wig would discover me and pay me millions to write about handjobs. I soon realized, though, that writing about my day job just doesn't interest me that much. I'm jerking guys off all day long, so the last thing I want to do when I finish, is sit down at my computer and write about it. It's always a surprise to me when people refer to this blog as "adult oriented" as I feel that I write much more about the ordinary, humdrum problems facing thirty-something women than I do the sex industry. I suppose I mention sex and my clients from time to time, but it's hardly the main thrust of the blog. If I was cannier, I would write more about sex, as it seems that's the way to get noticed but it's just not me. It feels fake and pre-meditated to plan what I'm going to write about beforehand just so I can get more attention.

I even find reading about other people's sexual antics downright tedious unless there's some sort of self-reflective, analytical content, too. That's why Emilie Dice is one of my favourite writers in the sex industry blogosphere: Sure, she includes some raunchy details, but she's also very ambiguous about the sex industry, and her role in it, and her writing is a lot more self-analytical than the majority of other sex worker material. Sex writing needs that, I think, otherwise it's just a dull account of "penis in pussy", or "penis up arsehole" ad nauseum.

My only criticism of Emile (and it's not even really a criticism) is that I wish she would reveal more of the "real" non-sex worker side of herself to her readers. She's been building up to that ever so gradually, I feel (perhaps she's just a tease!) but I want more! I want to know about all the little banal details of her life, or what she thinks about non-sex work issues, because this is what makes a person interesting to me. There are probably millions of pro-dommes out there, but there's only one Emilie Dice, and I want to know about her - her childhood, her parents, her friends...all of her past experiences, which contributed to making her the person she is now.

It occurred to me recently that my blog (which, in sex worker terms is very dull. Hardly titillating at all) is perhaps valuable precisely because of its very banality or ordinariness. I write about depression, relationships, dating, falling in love, falling out of love, my tampon-eating chihuahua (!). These are all things which "ordinary", "normal" women experience so, by writing about them, I am perhaps humanizing sex workers. I thought about this when I came across the blog of one of my commenters, The Chronicles of Sunshine Steve, which, although containing only a few entries (write more, please!) is interesting and well-written. In the first entry, "Reading Sex", Steve talks about how he's "hopelessly fascinated by the woman who sells herself, in love with the idea of her". He goes on to recount how he "frequently fantasize[s] about dating sex workers, of getting personal insight into their lives, learning who they are inside, gaining the sort of intimacy that's reserved for the very few. Having real sex with a woman who pretends with others". Part of me can relate very easily to what Steve has written because he's obviously a romantic who's pulled towards the "darker" side of life. I've been that person (perhaps still am) and that was one of the reasons I got involved in the sex industry in the first place. However, there came a point when I realized that there was actually nothing dark or romantic about selling sex. It's just a job for me.

If I wasn't dating Michael, and if Sunshine Steve didn't live in Portland (I am coming there in October, though, to run a marathon!), I'd be tempted to offer to date him. I'd soon make him see that I'm far from being an "idea" from which he has to distance himself- I'm a normal, regular woman - warts and all. I'd make him sit on the edge of the bathtub while I plucked the hairs from the edge of my nipples (yes, I'm a hairy woman, but I'm sure I'm not the only one out there) or I'd push him into the bathroom and lock the door after having my first bowel movement of the day (and, as I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, my bowel movements are never that pretty).

Whatever I did, I'd make him see that I'm not a fucking fantasy. It puzzles me the way men want to mythologize women, put us up on a pedestal to worship us from afar - or knock us off into the gutter if we get too big for our boots.

The Skinny Mag: How to establish a man's dickhead credentials

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:47:00 +0000

Sorry for the lack of posts and response to your comments. I will be back on track soon!

I have no excuse other than that it's hard to get back into the routine of blogging once you've had a sabbatical. Michael also found my blog a couple of days ago, and that has made me somewhat hesitant to post again. I'm not pissed off with him, as I had mentioned my blog to him (why? I have no idea!) and knew it was only a matter of time until he found it. It does, however, make me question how I feel about my now semi-anonymous status (I even met up with a blogger friend of mine yesterday and her Scottish husband!). On the one hand, I don't care, as I have nothing to hide but, on the other, I think it's a shame I can't be free to reveal myself as I perhaps once could.

But more about this later....

In the meantime, if you're pining for some more Slutty McWhore action, then why don't you check out my latest piece in "The Skinny Mag", "Scotland's cutting-edge culture magazine"? I think this one is much better than my first attempt. Onwards and upwards!

(And if you really want to get into my good books, you could leave a wee comment on the piece so it looks like people actually read what I'm writing!)

Confessions of a Commitment Phobe.

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Sat, 31 May 2008 18:32:00 +0000

While waiting in an airport a couple of weeks ago to catch a flight home, I picked up a copy of "New York Magazine" because of that issue's leading article. "The Secret Lives of Married Men" (written by Philip Weiss, a 52-year-old journalist who "has always struggled with the desire for sexual variety") trots out all the same tired, old clichés about how "men have needs" which just can't be met in marriage. I can't be bothered dealing with the ins and outs of this article (Mary P Jones, over at a Room of Mama's Own, has already done so if you care to contribute to the debate) but I would like to use one quote from that article as a starting point for my post today because it troubled me considerably and made me question my own attitude towards relationships.

Weiss writes about a gay friend of his who "has 'brooded' over his infidelity for a long time, sometimes feeling that he ought to confess" and who "told me it's a very 17-year-old American view of the world to think that you should tell someone you love everything and somehow the world will be a better place. Instead, he reminds himself, he's a grown up, he has secrets".

I gulped when I read that quote, and immediately felt like a stupid, hopeless idealist because there is a very, very strong part of me, which wants to confess everything to Michael. Every time I have a new partner, I wish that I had a black box inside of me that I could take out and insert into his brain, letting him see every thing I've ever done; every thought I've ever had; every emotion I've ever felt. I want to give this black box to Michael and cry out "Take it, take it! This is me and, oh, I've done so many bad things, but I'm a good person deep down! Please accept me! Please love me!"

I have been very honest with Michael actually, and haven't hidden anything about my past - and present - as a sex worker. I've even gone into (far too much) detail about former relationships, normally - because I'm a tactless Sagittarian - at the worst possible time e.g. when we're lying in each other's arms. On several occasions, Michael has reminded me, with unbelievable patience and tolerance, that there is a time and a place for such confessions, but sometimes it's like I can't control myself. I just have this incredible urge to tell him everything about me. I can't bear the thought of keeping something secret from him, or - heaven forbid - lying to him because I feel that this would create an insurmountable emotional barrier between us, which would doom our "non-relationship".

The most troubling aspect of sex work for me is that I'm surrounded, day-in, day-out, by men who have the same attitude as the gay guy above. The very fact that they use my services means that they have created a secret between their partners and themselves. They come to me, get a handjob, then go home to wifey, as if nothing had ever happened (actually, I do believe that a lot of them feel guilty but choose to suppress that feeling). Every time I have a married client, it chips away at my belief that it's possible to have an honest, emotionally open relationship, and I am left feeling depressed and empty.

At the same time, though, I have to ask myself just how realistic it is to expect a partner to listen to and accept everything about me. When Michael mentioned to me once how he'd been to strip clubs a handful of times, I was filled with uncontrollable jealousy and disappointment - quite hypocritical given that I've got my hands around countless men's cocks every week. And, when it comes to former girlfriends of his, I don't mind hearing about intimate details of the ones he was with years ago, but I have got no desire whatsoever to know about his most recent one. In fact, I am glad that she is now living many thousands of miles away in Chile! (and would be happier still if she wandered into a rainforest and was never heard from again! Ha!).

Despite my "urge to merge" with Michael, I have recognized that I do still struggle quite intensely with commitment phobia. I find that I am either all loved-up, and overcome with bliss and ecstasy, or I'm in a panic, plotting my escape. At the height of my anxiety, I've even had dreams about being unfaithful to Michael. Sometimes I long to see him, and other times I just want to be left alone. When I went on my recent trip, he stayed in my house, and looked after my menagerie of pets for me, and I must admit it was very nice to get a taxi back from the airport at 1:00AM, knowing that he'd be there waiting for me. Sometimes I think it would be nice to live with him, but just as often I freak out at the idea of always having to share a bed, and all my personal space, with someone else. I'm even the same way with my dogs - if I'm in a good mood, I let them sleep on my bed beside me, but there are nights when I don't want to have a chihuahua and a pit bull anywhere near me.

In some of my more pretentious moments (and, oh my God, there are many!), I wonder to myself how someone in love, or in a serious, committed relationship, can possibly produce "great art". There is a part of me which thinks that an "artiste" should be wandering lonely like a cloud that floats on high o'er fucking vales and hills blah blah blah instead of selling out with the whole love game. Clearly, I've bought into the idea of the tortured artist, which is amusing if you consider that, when I'm unhappy, I tend to spend more time gazing up my self-absorbed arse than creating any art.

At the advanced age of thirty, I've finally realized that most people probably swing between needing love and affection, and being afraid of commitment, but my problem is that I'm so emotional that I give myself over to whatever feeling I have at a particular moment. If I feel a need for escape, I find it hard to tell myself "OK, this is normal. It's fine to want time to yourself. It doesn't mean that you need to set out right now and lose yourself forever in the Alaskan wilderness". When I'm in such a mood, there is a very real risk that I could be emotionally cold with Michael, or make him feel unwanted or unneeded. I haven't done so yet, but I worry that I will. On the other hand, when I feel connected to him, I'm quite overcome with emotion and find that I can't control myself. One time, when we were having sex (maybe only four weeks or so into the relationship), I blurted out "Oh, I love you!". I realized in horror what I had said and clumsily tried to cover it up mid-thrust by saying "Um, well, I meant, uh... I meant....I love... fucking you!". I don't think he was very convinced.

The only "good" thing about my mood swings is that they pass incredibly quickly. It would be entirely possible for me to propose marriage to Michael at noon, be packing my bags dramatically at 12:30PM to catch a flight to Alaska, after all, then lying back in his arms, contentedly, at 1:00PM. My mother's moods, on the other hand, lasted for days, which was awful because her bad moods made the atmosphere of our house so oppressive and dark. My moods, in contrast, are so variable that Michael probably doesn't realize how changeable they are. Between him leaving for work and coming back home again, I'll have gone through the whole gamut of emotions and feelings and be back in the same mood as I was when he left. The problem with such emotional ups-and-downs is that it's hard for me to know what I actually am feeling. If I care deeply for him at noon, but an hour later am obsessing about some "problem" I've detected between us, how can I gauge what's real and what's not? I wonder if it's "normal" that I have such mood swings. I've often thought that my mother exhibited some bipolar tendencies or perhaps Borderline Personality Disorder, and I can't help but think that about myself from time to time, too. It scares me the way my thinking is so "black and white" - not just about myself or my relationships, but pretty much about everything.

Since my moods make me question my perception of reality, I also often find myself analyzing my feelings for Michael to such an extent that's it's almost damaging. If we are, for example, cuddling in bed, and I'm happy, I'll suddenly start thinking "Well, this is great - but, well, is it as great as the feeling I had last week? Or am I feeling less for him? Oh, my God - do I feel less in love now?" Worse still, I can swing between idealizing him and devaluing him, which again destabilizes my sense of reality. Sometimes I fear that all the good things about his personality are just things I've projected onto him. These fears were, however, more intense in the first few weeks, and I feel that I've calmed down a lot in that respect.

Commitment phobia doesn't just affect my love life. Now that I've finally finished my MA and can get on with The Rest of My Life, I'm beginning to wonder if I have commitment issues as regards a "career". Michael has made clear that he is not very happy at all about my job as, uh, a "manual technician" and wants me to give it up ASAP (more about this in another post). I've considered doing a fast-track teacher certification course to become a high-school English teacher but, to be quite frank, the idea of being involved in any sort of educational institution again fills me with dread. The routine; the fucking bureaucracy; the ridiculous standardized tests of the US school system; the fact that I'd have literally no time for myself or my creative interests for the first few years of teaching.....I don't think I can stand that. I just don't think that I've got the personality type to teach full-time in any sort of educational establishment (part-time, however, would be fantastic, as I do love teaching). I'm too free-spirited, too rebellious, too anti-authority. The pragmatic, presbyterian Scot in me, however, sometimes thinks "Jesus Christ, Slutty: who the fuck do you think you are?! Why should you get to loaf around all day, being a freelance writer and being a sex worker?! Go and get a proper job, ya lazy fucking bitch". Could it be that I don't want to get a "real", "proper" job because I'm afraid of growing up or, worse still, afraid of growing as a person?

Why the fuck must I be so fucking complicated? Why can't I just live life and be happy?!

The Return of the Prodigal Slutty One.

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:36:00 +0000

Goodness! I have been gone for rather a long time, haven't I?! Time flies when you've been having rampant sex with a new love feeding swine and atoning for one's sins. But, fear not - The Prodigal Slutty One may sometimes forsake her dear and loyal readers, but she will always return!

So, a small update is needed, I suppose. In order of ascending importance, then, here it is....

(1) The Boston Marathon
Well, I hate to disappoint Bandrobas, who was so eager to learn about my fate, but the Guinness Book of Records will need to wait until next year to have an entry about the first ever Scottish erotic masseuse to run Boston. I pulled out at the last minute because I was so stresssed out because of my Master's, and the incredibly bad timing of meeting Michael when I should have been writing instead. As usual, I was incapable of realizing the stress I was under until my body decided to break down. I was feeling very weak and tired; one of my wisdom teeth threatened to become infected; my calves were constantly sore, even after pitiful five mile runs, and I had a crick in my neck, which refused to go away. There was no way I was going to fly so far to run a marathon under those conditions. Fuck that! However, I can still use my qualifying time to run next year's marathon and a certain loyal blog reader (whose name begins with "w" and ends in "x") may be interested to learn that I will perhaps be swinging my lithe, young, slutty marathon-running body to his neck of the woods in the fall.

(2) Just call me Mistress McWhore
I rather like this new title (kindly suggested by my darling colleague, The English Courtesan), and I request that you always address me as such from now on when leaving a comment because I finally did finish my Master's! I am now Slutty McWhore, MA! I can't say that writing my thesis went, um, exactly to plan, though. As you all no doubt know, it is customary for Master's students to hand their first and second readers a draft of each chapter as they go along. My first reader did see a draft of my fifteen-page introduction a couple of months before the due date, as did my second reader. The former said it was "excellent" whereas my second reader never got back to me. I should have been encouraged by the praise and just kept writing, but, as usual, the sheer horror of writing so many pages for an institution which had left such a bad taste in my mouth left me blocked. I found myself spending hours lying in bed with Michael, trying to numb the pain of it all. Clearly, that wasn't sensible, but, well, I can't really say I regret it. I needed to get to know him better, and it was hard not to. I handed my first reader about 25 more pages one day before the fucking thing was due, promising her desperately that I'd finish the remaining 15 that night, and she was furious at me, telling me that I didn't have enough "credibility" with her for her to sign off on my Master's for me to be able to submit it! However, she finally did, looking at me with utter contempt. My second reader (whom I met for the first time the day before the due date!) was an adorable, adorable man and signed off for me, probably without ever having read a single word of my prose ever (he'd managed to forget about the introduction I'd emailed him). Obviously this whole experience didn't make me feel very good about myself, but I don't especially care. My thesis clearly wasn't my best work either but I have to say that I did a pretty fucking good job considering the circumstances. I wouldn't say I'm exactly proud of what I wrote, but I'm certainly not ashamed of it either. The main thing is that I learned a lot about my subject (Early nineteenth-century female Scottish peasant poets), which I'm sure will come in, um, very handy in the future. I'm just glad the whole fucking business is over, and I can move on with the next stage of my life.

(3) Mistress McWhore, confirmed commitment-phobe, actually attempts to have a "relationship"
God, where to start writing about Michael? So much has happened over the last five weeks or so since I last wrote in here. Yes, we're still "together" (not that we really use words like "together", "relationship" or "boyfriend" and "girlfriend") and, yes, I still like him. There's really too much to go into here about him and the "relationship", so I'll leave that for another day. If you want to know more, I suggest you have a wee word with my chihuahua-dachshund mix, as she is probably the best gauge of the seriousness of this relationship:

Those of you familiar with Chihuahuas will know that they tend to bond intensely with their owner, and are often quite clingy. My little darling (yes, that's her above) has never enjoyed sharing my affections but she's had a particularly visceral reaction to Michael's appearance in my life. Should I be careless enough to throw my knickers on the floor of my bedroom in a moment of pre-coital passion, I will invariably awake the next morning to find them under my bed, the crotch shredded to pieces by tiny chihuahua teeth. My knicker collection has nearly been completely decimated and, as I write this, matters have reached a critical stage, thus necessitating a panic mass-purchase on the Calvin Klein underwear site. And it's not just knickers to which this dog has taken a fancy. On one very memorable occasion (*** those with squeamish stomachs are advised not to read any further ***), I discovered my dog eagerly devouring a curious mass of red and white fiber under the bed. I couldn't think for the life of me what it could be until I remembered that I had, um, removed and thrown a tampon on the bedroom floor before Michael and I were about to have sex.....OK, OK, I'm a total skank I admit it, but I was so horny, and going to the bathroom would have interrupted the flow of things. And I fell asleep before I could remember to remove the evidence of my skankiness!

(4) Mistress Slutty McWhore is finally in print!
Well, technically speaking, this isn't the first time I was in print (as I did have a rather large article appear in the Sunday supplement of a Scottish newspaper last year) but I now have a monthly column in The Skinny Mag, a free events-listing magazine, available online and also in various locations through Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, I believe). I've only written two pieces so far (this month's one is about to be published) and I must say it's bloody hard to limit myself to only 600 words a month! But it's good practice, and a lesson I need.

If you're interested in reading them, then here's the link to the first one (I'll post the second one as soon as it's published). I wasn't particularly pleased with what I wrote (I feel it lacks punch and panache) as I was still getting used to the incredibly minimalistic word limit but it's OK for a first effort. And I'm happy that I've got stuff in print, as I think freelance writing is definitely the way to go for Mistress Slutty McWhore. Fuck the stifling, boring atmosphere of academia! Ooh, I'm so excited about life right now! I can't wait to see what's going to happen next.

Lord, have mercy on me - I was blind but now I can see!

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:29:00 +0000

"You're here, I'm pleased,
I really dig your company,
Your style, your smile, your peace mentality,
Lord, have mercy on me,
I was blind, but now I can see
What a king's supposed to be,
Baby, I feel free, come on and go with me"
"A Long Walk" - Jill Scott

Apparently my pupils dilate and turn my very blue eyes completely black when Michael gives me an orgasm. I have no idea if this has happened with other men. No-one has ever mentioned such a thing but, then, no-one has ever looked into my eyes with the incredible intensity that Michael does when we're having sex. "Sex" is the wrong word for what has happened between us. For the first time in my life, I think I finally understand what the phrase "making love" actually means. It's not like I've never had good sex but, well, this......this is something so incredibly different. I've never felt so close to someone before while having sex. I've never felt so close to a man before full-stop.

I've read all the books on love addiction, so I know that one should be suspicious of intense, immediate passion and the headiness of falling in love. I've been trying to keep my wits about me and take a step backwards but I can't because it all feels so natural. And it's far from being just a sex thing....This person excites every single fucking tiny fibre of my body - sexually, yes, but also mentally, emotionally and spiritually. He makes me feel special; he makes me laugh until my sides split, he makes me feel wanted. He listens to everything I say and he accepts me even if what he hears is painful. I have spent time around so many fucked-up, emotionally distant, broken men, and there is none - none! - of this in Michael. He seems so down-to-earth, well-balanced and chilled-out. I love his humility! The ironic, naughty look in his eyes, which change colour in the sunlight. His quiet smile! He calms me down and makes me feel light and free. We talk for hour and hours, only stopping when it's the early hours of the morning and we can no longer keep our eyes open. My God, even his sperm tastes sweet!

Michael was/is a server in one of my favourite coffeeshops here in town. I started going in there once a week in mid-January, after working out in the gym, to write in my journal for an hour or so. I noticed him straight away and thought "Who are you?!" because he had such an incredibly beautiful face: gorgeous olive skin; expressive, almond-shaped brownish-green eyes; sensual red lips and short, dark curly hair. I was immediately self-conscious that he was very handsome and, that every time I saw him, I would be wearing a pair of lame running shorts. Perhaps I over-compensated for this by being a little cool and stand-offish with him. I wasn't conscious of doing this, but this is how I apparently came across to Michael. He said that he was pissed off one time when he brought something to my table and that I barely looked up to acknowledge his existence or say thank you. I think I probably thought "You are far too handsome for me to pay you any attention!"

I got a similar vibe from him. Every time he gave me my coffee, he would be pleasant enough but he would make absolutely no attempt at conversation whatsoever. This was highly annoying because my Scottish accent normally gets me a lot of attention from the men I come across in this town. If they find me attractive, the accent's a good ice-breaker, and gives them an excuse to strike up a conversation, and the vast majority of them do - but not Michael. To be honest, I thought he was an aloof asshole, and that he looked too serious, as I never saw him smiling. One day I decided to order tea and saw that they had Scottish Breakfast Tea. I giggled flirtatiously and said "Ooh, I'll have that one - because I'm Scottish, too!" Jesus Christ, I might as well have pasted a huge sign to my forehead that said "Flirt with me, goddamnit!" but he just smiled politely, looking bored, with a "whatever" expression on his face, never asking me a thing about myself. I seethed inwardly, outraged that he would dare to ignore me! He told me this week that he refused to flirt with me because it was obvious that I expected that from men, and he didn't want to give me the satisfaction! Ha! That made me laugh quite a bit, as I like a man who challenges me, and keeps me on my toes like that.

Weeks later, I went back into the café and (finally!) struck up a conversation with him while ordering my drink. I was sneezing all over the place because I had terrible allergies, so we had a silly little chat about that. I was quite surprised by him that day because there was a gentleness in his eyes that I had never noticed before. He also smiled a lot, and he just seemed so sweet and kind. But, whatever... I was there to study, so it wasn't like I really gave him all that much thought. All he had ever been to me before was the standoffish server who didn't flirt with me, who had finally opened up a bit. I was just glad that the ice king had finally thawed out. I did my studying and left, not looking around me to see if he was there, and making a point not to say goodbye (after all, I didn't care about him!).

Things would have continued thus had we not bumped into each other in the supermarket the next day! But even that nearly ended in disaster because he was with a friend of his whom I met months earlier in a local bar, and joked about marrying for visa purposes. It was obvious that the friend liked me, and wanted to talk to me. Michael started to wander off, probably to give the friend some space, but I managed to get him to stay. We immediately started talking to each other, ignoring the friend, so much so that he went home in the huff! We were getting on so well, that we left to go to a café....and four hours later we went home!

We went out on our first date on Saturday (yes, we've only known each other for about a week!) and it lasted two whole days. Our first kiss was so incredibly passionate and natural! We slept together that same night, too, which is something I thought I'd never do again. I had decided a long time ago that it would be much better to get to know a man well before jumping into bed with him and finding out too late that he's a total asshole. But I don't regret it at all. Once again, it felt so unbelievably natural. It would have been a crime against nature if we hadn't had sex that night. I absolutely love, love, loooooooooove the way he fucks me. He's so affectionate, warm and touchy-feely but there is also an assertive, masculine side to him as well, which makes me feel very feminine and womanly.

I know it may seem crazy or unhealthy to be so enthusiastic about somebody I've just barely met...but something is happening here, and whatever it is, it's amazing. I feel like I've just embarked on a huge, exciting adventure. I can't stop smiling. Life is beautiful! It's spring! Flowers are blooming, the oak tree across the street is a bright, vibrant green again, and every day my heart opens up a little bit more. When he leaves me to go to work, I worry that something bad will happen to him and that he'll never come back. I want to look after him and protect him from all pain and hurt. I had forgotten about love, and that I had so much of it to give. As elated as I am about what's happening, I'm also fucking terrified, but, at the same time, I am so ready for this. More ready than I have ever been. I have never met anybody who has touched me in quite the same way that Michael does, and I want to give him everything of myself - every last drop of tenderness, affection and love.

But....

All is not entirely rosy in Slutty McWhore's garden of love. I told Michael what I did for a living on Sunday night. I never planned on sleeping with him so quickly, and I certainly never anticipated revealing my profession so soon either, but I had a very clear sense that I didn't want to lie to this person, or obscure the truth. It just felt so wrong.

He took the news very well, although of course he was surprised. He doesn't have a moral problem with how I earn my money, but he's also not OK with.....with what? Well, I suppose "sharing" my body with other men. He's been trying to accept it, but I can see the pained look in his eyes every time I mention having to work. It's creating a huge strain because it would be unhealthy if I just stopped mentioning it, and glossed over it, and yet it's clearly not something he can cope with hearing about. Perhaps he will gradually learn to accept it but, if not, we're in trouble. It would be horribly naive and foolish of me to give up sex work for a man I barely know no matter how wonderful he is. If we end up having a committed, serious relationship, then, yes, I would consider it, but right now I'm just not willing to. I can't even afford to either. I have a lot of debt to pay off and it seems like every week brings new problems. I'm going to have to get one of my wisdom teeth removed, and that will cost at least $400. I could never afford things like this if I did the standard immigrant "cash in hand" restaurant job.

For the time being, I'm just going to go with the flow, and enjoy every second of his wonderful caresses and kisses...Maybe the other stuff will work itself out on its own...

Normal Service Will Resume Shortly

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:59:00 +0000

Dear readers,

I do apologize for my unforgivable absence this last month. However, Slutty McWhore has been terribly busy...

(1) Finishing off her Master's thesis.
(2) Training for the Boston marathon. It's next week!
(3) Shagging the funny, smart, artistic, handsome, gentle, kind, dark-haired, brown-eyed, olive-skinned guy from Cleveland, Ohio, who works in her favourite coffee shop - and liking him very, very much. Midwestern men...Wow!

Normal service will resume at some point next week, so tune in then!

PS/ Happy Birthday, Williamx in Portland. You are one old motherfucker.

(Slightly More Than) 500 words for you, "D".

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:07:00 +0000

If you look very closely at the back of this picture, "D", you will see the bar where you and I met on Saturday night. I shouldn't even have been there but the allure of red wine and people-watching during the most interesting week of the year was too much. It was 2:00AM, I was on my way to a party with my Italian friend, and I had only stopped off at the bar to grab a quick drink of water to lessen the effects of the next morning's inevitable hangover.

And there you were.

To be quite frank, neither you nor the guys you were with interested me much. Even without hearing your accents or knowing anything about you, you all had the typical over-confident swagger of English media types on a boys' night out, looking for a bit of pussy. I wasn't surprised when you started talking to me, or that the badge you wore around your neck revealed that you worked for a major English newspaper. I listened to your accent, looked you up and down and thought "Fucking journalist Londoner wanker".

But I started talking to you, mainly because I'm always interested to meet journalists and pick their brains about how to get started in the business. I told you that I was a sex worker, and had a blog, probably because I thought I'd never see you again and that it wouldn't matter. You weren't my type (too middle-class, too English - even if you were half-Scottish) but you were quite charming and witty, and certainly had a way with words, so I invited you to the party and off we went.

This post should be, as you suggested, a 500-word review of the reggae bands we saw there, but I have no interest in reviewing other people's creative endeavours. I don't care if music and book reviews are a way into journalism - it offends my ego to review other people because I'm the one who should be being written about. Yeah, that's horribly arrogant, but so what?! If I was going to write about the music, then it would make up only one little part of the narrative. It would merely be the background to what I really want to write about - people, and all the pain and messy little dramas which make up their lives.

As l listened to the music at this party, it struck me only that its message of peace, love and understanding seemed completely unrelated to our lives. I looked at the Bob Marley poster on the wall and it bored and irritated me as did the white rasta kids with their dreads. Across the room, in a haze of smoke from countless joints, I saw my Italian friend dancing, all alone. He, like you, is in his mid-forties now and still single. He was married once, but now he dates women half his age ("because they're more submissive") and, up until a year ago, spent a lot of time in strip clubs striking up an emotional bond with the strippers. Well, not all of them, you understand - only a certain kind. He couldn't tell what that "certain kind" was, only that he knew it when he saw it.

It annoyed me when the Italian told me about his stripper habit ("Not another fucked-up, emotionally stunted man!", I thought) but really I'm no better than him. I sat on the sofa at that party feeling completely disconnected to everyone around me. I wanted to feel more connected but at the same time the idea of truly belonging was terrifying.

And then there was you, "D". I was amused by your white boy dancing, which was simultaneously ridiculous and endearing. For a guy on the wrong side of forty-five, who's been married for more than twenty years, you had a very youthful, fun-loving quality to you, and I liked that. You were, in fact, very amiable but it was obvious to me that you were the unfaithful kind. I had already figured that out while we were making our way to the party, before I really knew anything about you. You just had the air of a man who was constantly searching for....something.

Later, in your hotel room, you confirmed what I had already suspected as we chatted until 7:00AM. You talked about the affair you'd had in your thirties when you'd nearly left your wife and two kids; the eighteen-year-old work placement girl with whom you'd had a brief affair and the Californian you'd fucked two nights previously and whom you'd met in the same bar as me. You said you'd have fucked me, too, if I'd been up for it - but you didn't make a move because you were enjoying our conversation so much. It's just as well you didn't, as you weren't in with a chance anyway, although I couldn't help but notice that your old, chain-smoking body had held up rather nicely!

Yesterday afternoon I told the photographer I'm interested in about you and our strange encounter, and he was outraged at your infidelities. I was, in fact, actually quite surprised at how angry he got. His family was broken up because of an extramarital affair, so he feels strongly that one shouldn't get married unless you can keep the marriage vows. He thought you were a total cunt and, if I hadn't met and talked to you for so long, I'd probably have thought the same thing, too. I was glad to have met you because it allowed me to look at you, and men like you, with understanding and compassion instead of disgust and disdain.

Behind the swagger of a cocky journalist, I could see your vulnerability and weakness. Your life story was surprising to me because you hadn't had it as easy as I thought. I made a mental note to myself not to make snap judgements about people with middle-class London accents in future (although I still will. It will take a lot to knock that Scottish chip off my shoulder). It must have been hard for you to have been sent off to boarding school at such a young age, all on your own. It must be even harder still to cover up the fact that you are still that lonely, confused wee boy. Maybe that's why you are, as you said, constantly looking for someone new to "unpeel" you, to strip away all the crap and get right into your heart. I understood what you meant because I, too, am always looking for intense emotional intimacy yet I'd run a mile if I ever found it.

Perhaps this is why I enjoy random encounters like the one we had so much - there's always intensity and intimacy but it can never last. Holed up in your smoky hotel room, it was as if time had stood still as we revealed the intimate details of our lives. We were existing in a bubble where the normal rules of life didn't apply, where we could let our guard down in the darkness. The next morning, I squinted as the harsh light hit my bleary, mascara-smudged eyes and you zoomed off to the airport in a taxi. Gone.

I wonder what you're doing now, "D"? Perhaps you're already writing your copy, putting in all the details about the bands you saw and the musicians you interviewed. I wonder what you thought when you curled up beside your wife in bed on your first night home? Did you think of the Californian girl? Did you think of me?

Whatever you're doing, I hope that you finally find some peace in yourself. You deserve better than a cheap and tawdry fuck with some chick on a business trip. Your wife and kids deserve better, too. I don't know why I care because I hardly know you. Perhaps it's because I see so much of myself in you, and I'm scared I'll end up like you.

No More Drama

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 05:49:00 +0000

Friday Night: March 7th 2008 (Warning! This post is really disjointed because I got distracted half the way through. Sorry!)

Right. I don't care how busy you are right now. I want you to read this post and give me advice - immediately. Don't make me wait. I especially want any sex workers reading this to comment because I feel that their opinion here will probably be the most unbiased and helpful. Yes, yes, I know it's sad and pathetic to ask for advice from complete strangers on the internet but my only good friend here is quite straight-laced and prudish, so there's no point in asking her opinion.

Here goes...

Well, I went on my date with Darth last night. I nearly cancelled the whole thing because I was still convinced he was a wanker. However, he had invited me to accompany him to a magazine party, and I couldn't resist going to that because I knew that there would be a lot of stylish beautiful people there and, well, I'm superficial. I love beautiful people and I love looking at them. Also, I knew that there was going to be a free bar, and, hell, I'm Scottish! Free booze?! I'll be there!

The evening did not get off to a particularly auspicious start. As soon as I got into Darth's car, he barely said hello because he was taking some business call although he did apologize for that. Then, when he parked later, he took yet another call from some journalist who's apparently doing a feature on him. He was on the phone for about ten minutes while I just sat there like a big numpty beside him and examined my nails. He did turn several times and mouth "Sorry! Sorry!" but I was kind of pissed off. It just reinforced the opinion I already had of him that he was a self-absorbed wanker.

Things improved quite a bit at the actual party itself, though. He made a point of introducing me to all of his friends, and I really liked the way he interacted with people. There's no doubt that he does have a great sense of humour. He makes me laugh, and I feel at ease with him (which is more than can be said about Luke - more about him later). I also get the impression that he's very comfortable with his sexuality and/or a raging homosexual- when I introduced him to an acquaintance of mine who also happened to be there (actually a really cute Filipino-American architect I used to date) he said "Oh, you look great!". This guy does look great (in fact, he looked so great - much better than Darth, in fact - that I immediately thought "Oh, my God. We absolutely must fuck again") and he's an incredibly stylish dresser. I was, however, quite taken aback that Darth commented on this. Many people don't realize this, but Scottish men are actually quite macho, and most would rather kill themselves (and, oh, they do!) than comment on another man's good looks lest they give the impression that they like taking it up the arse. One time while having sex with a Scottish boyfriend, my finger strayed accidentally towards his arsehole and, afterwards, he freaked out and told me with a panic-stricken expression" "My asshole is a one-way street". I thought "Okaaaaayyyy. Here's a closet gay if ever I've seen one". I mean, my God! What harm could my middle finger possibly have done to his anal passages, I ask you?!

But, anyway, I digress. My point was that I'm not used to men having such an enlightened attitude towards other men's attractiveness, but I must say that I like it. In fact, I think I every straight man should be required to take it up the arse once or twice to put them more in touch with their feminine side.

Perhaps Darth really is gay, though, or at least bisexual. His predilection for shaving off every last scrap of body hair is suspicious. He wears a little hoop in each ear. And he made quite a few jokes about having a threesome with a gay couple he is friends with.

Just to digress again (sorry I'm drinking Guinness right now, and I'm a wee bit tipsy), I fucking loved that gay couple, by the way! Especially the younger of the two. He told Darth that I was the most interesting person Darth had introduced them to in a long time, and we got on fabulously. At one point, I was sitting on a table, holding court, surrounded by three gay men who were listening with rapt attention to my every word. "This is the life!", I thought! I really need to find more gay male friends. In fact, I don't know why I don't have any....

Right, sorry. Back to the main story. Well, the party was fun and Darth came across as far nicer and sweeter than I had imagined. By the end of the night, I actually had quite a good impression of him. Once again, he made no attempt to come on to me, which I appreciated. When he dropped me off, he handled the awkward goodnight kiss moment with great dexterity. Most American men I've been out with always start looking uncomfortable at this point because they want to kiss you, but they don't know how to broach the subject so I always end up saying "Well, kiss me then!" But Darth moved towards me like it was the most natural thing in the world.

[......Oops, sorry. It's Tuesday March 13th now, the wee hours of the morning....I got distracted for days by my thesis and running, so I'm going to have to cut this story short now...]

Right, well, to cut this very long-winded story short, here's my dilemma with regard to Darth (which isn't really a dilemma anymore, as I realized that I've got better things to do than analysis a man). I googled his name to take a look at some of his photographic work, and came across a picture he had taken of a local escort (very tastefully done, I might add. Not the usual legs-spread variety of escort picture). It had crossed my mind that I was probably not Darth's first excursion into the sex industry but I hadn't given the matter much thought really.

Much to my surprise, I found myself feeling really pissed off about this picture. First of all, this escort is really hot, so maybe I was jealous and insecure. Secondly, I didn't like the idea of Darth fucking hookers left, right and centre, and this photograph suggested that this was what he might be doing. I've had several boyfriends who've slept with prostitutes before, and it didn't bother me that much, as it was something that was over and done with, but I just didn't like the idea of Darth still indulging in it, which was a distinct possibility given that the photo wasn't that old.

Also - and you may laugh at this - I can't help but be a little disappointed in a guy when he admits to having slept with prostitutes. You could argue that this is a double standard, as I'm obviously involved in the industry myself, but I'm not sure if it is. It just seems so fucking predictable and boring for a man to sleep with prostitutes whereas I think it's far more transgressive for a woman to actually be a sex worker. We're the ones more likely to be labelled as "dirty", "diseased", "immoral" etc., whereas the men often get off with it because they're just "being guys" who've got "needs to fulfil". I suppose it all depends on why a guy decides to sleep with a prostitute. There are plenty of men who feel entitled to do it because they believe that paying for sex allows them to exert power and authority over a woman, and then there are those who are just horny and want some quick, no-strings-attached, uncomplicated sex. I can understand this latter attitude although it disillusions me that men can't control their sexual appetites a little better (yet again a double standard on my part, I know, because men's lack of sexual control is what pays my bills!).

When I saw the picture of this escort, I had a lot of conflicting emotions, which I probably had no right or reason to feel - jealousy (that she's beautiful); anger (that Darth was just a "typical" guy); fear (that he might have a huge prostitute habit and be yet another fucked-up, abusive man who'll hurt me and turn me into a paranoid wreck); embarrassment (she works in a bar/club that I go to a lot, and I would hate to bump into her with Darth); confusion (I didn't know how to handle my new-found knowledge...should I confront him or just keep stumm?).

I decided to play it cool and ask him "casually" at some later date if he had ever seen any other sex workers in town. If he answered in the negative, I would know he was lying. However, "playing it cool" is not exactly Slutty McWhore's forté. In fact, I can't think of a single moment in my life when I've ever played it cool. Matters were not helped by the fact that Darth called me literally minutes after I'd discovered the picture before I'd really had a chance to formulate my "plan of action" in my head. To say I broached the subject with the subtlety of a sumo wrestler driving a fork-lift truck would be putting it mildy. I literally interrogated Darth on the why's/when's and where's of his prostitution experiences before he'd had a chance to say hello.

His first reaction was to say that, yes, he had seen four escorts in the last ten years but that he had never had penetrative sex with any of them because he was too scared of disease. I was immediately skeptical of this and said so, and he asked "Are you calling me a liar?!". Eventually, after more probing, he admitted that he had fucked the hot one twice, but he still maintains she was the only one. The fact that he had fudged the truth really bothered me and there was a voice in my head going "I can't trust him! I can't trust him!". I have since talked to some friends about this and they gently reminded me that Darth probably felt attacked by my less-than-subtle approach, and I can see how that would be the case, and how he wouldn't exactly be forthcoming in that kind of situation. Darth later told me that he felt "violated" by my questions and that really none of the above was any of my business at this stage in our "relationship" (which isn't even a relationship yet). I said I felt that I could never trust him, and he said "Well, you shouldn't. You barely know me yet. Trust is something that takes time to build. It doesn't just happen overnight".

My first instinct after this incident was to think "Fuck this!". I really don't need any drama in my life anymore, and my "relationship" with Darth has got off to such a messy start. I know I can find something/someone less complicated out there.

However, I have to say that I actually like this person. I can't explain why but I just do. I like the way he dealt with my neurotic, paranoid phone interrogation. He could have freaked out and told me to fuck off, but he didn't. I like the way he said that we should just take things really slowly, get to know each other better, make an informed choice about each other and then decide whether we want to take things any further.

Yeah, I like him. But, at the same time, I just can't be bothered to sit and drive myself crazy worrying about whether he's a sex addict with a prostitute habit. I want to see him again, but I'm also quite happy to continue to date Luke, too, or any other men who take my fancy. This feels very liberating because I've always focused obsessively on one man at a time, magnifying his shortcomings out of all proportions. I'll find out soon enough if Darth is an asshole, so I don't need to worry about it now.

Hell, I've got a Master's to finish and a three-hour marathon to run!

Another dour dreich day - and another rant about superficial Americans (especially ones with no pubes).

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:03:00 +0000

Sometimes I wonder how I ever managed to live in Scotland. On two days this week I have woken up and immediately felt depressed because the sky has been so overcast and dark, rather like the picture of Edinburgh I've included. There were many days like this in Scotland (normally accompanied by a sort of half-assed drizzle) but the weather never seemed to affect me. Well, I wouldn't say that I was exactly a bundle of joy when the weather was dark and depressing, but it didn't depress me the way it's doing today. There has been quite a remarkable change in my mood. Everything seems so pointless and negative. Maybe it's because the main thing this town has going for it is the weather and, when you take the sun and warmth away, you see it for what it really is: a provincial backwater with delusions of grandeur.

It says a lot about Glasgow that it's constantly pissing down and yet the inhabitants are still full of life, vitality and energy. I know that Kevin Williamson over at The Scottish Patient is going to leave some cheeky comment now, attributing Weegie vitality to our fondness for Buckfast and drugs, but even he would have to admit that Glasgow is a great city, at the centre of Scotland's cultural life.

Anyway, Weegies - and Scots in general - can't help but consume lots of drugs and alcohol. I was delighted to read in Depression-Free for Life that it's all in our genes:

"Some alcoholics have a gene defect that inhibits the conversion of essential fatty acids to to series 1 prostaglandins. This defect seems to appear mostly in certain people from Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands. The series 1 prostaglandins have specific antidepressant effects. By helping the converstion to series 1 prostaglandins take place, alcohol serves as a type of treatment for the related depression".

It isn't just the weather and my alcoholic Scottish genes that are depressing me, though. I'm having another one of my "What the fuck am I doing in this country?!!!" moments. Recently, I had developed a better attitude about Americans. I still thought that the vast majority were bland clones, but I had met a few interesting people and, well, no matter where you are, it's always people that make the place really, isn't it? You might be surprised to know that I had become fairly good friends with The OMMP (he even invited me to Thanksgiving and Christmas at his family's place) and I was enjoying the company of my new running partner who has a really dry, sarcastic sense of humour. After the marathon a couple of weeks ago, when I was sitting in a sun-soaked pub drinking beer, I looked around me at the people I was with and thought "Och, they're not a bad lot really, these Americans". I was almost becoming slightly fond of them.

However, I think I may have spoken too soon.

When I was in New York recently, I was hanging out with a Peruvian acquaintance of mine who lives in the same town as I do. When he found out that I don't own a car, he said "You know, Slutty. If you ever need a ride anywhere, just let me know. I always hated asking gringos for favours when I didn't own a car". I knew what he meant exactly because I have felt the exact same way. It's not that Americans won't do you a favour, but I always have the sense that they're not exactly very happy about it. If someone gives me a lift to the supermarket, I normally feel totally stressed out and guilty, and rush through the aisles as quickly as I can.

On the other hand, there have been some Americans (all men, of course) who have gone out of their way to help me. The OMMP was kind enough to look after my dogs twice when I was out of town, and he did, like I said, make a point of inviting me to his family's house over Christmas and Thanksgiving because he knew I'd be alone otherwise. Last week, however, he got all grumpy when I told him that I was going on a date with Darth and Luke. He was especially annoyed about the date with Darth because he was one of my clients, and he has accused me several times of wanting to sleep with all my clients. First, even if this were true, it would be none of his business and, secondly, the only client I ever slept with was that twat, TheJewishNewYorker. Given that I've been an erotic masseuse for nigh on two years now, and have seen God knows how many penises, it's hardly time to put me in a straight-jacket to curb my out of control behaviour. The OMMP has a huge self-pitying streak which means that he considers himself the down-trodden good guy cast aside for a jerk - this is despite the fact that he never had the good grace to apologize for that time he sent me those weird stalker-like text messages. He whines constantly about being too skinny to attract women, which pisses me off. I mean, he could get his bony Hispanic ass to a gym if it bothers him that much.

None of the above would be enough for me to want to end our friendship, but he made a comment last week, which really made me question his integrity and maturity. When I told him about my dates, he said "Oh, I knew it was going to turn out this way. I knew that I was going to be the nice guy who'd be relegated to the friend category. I'm so glad that I planned it the way I did". I was confused and asked what he meant, so he proceeded to tell me that he had deliberately slept with a friend of his and some other girl, after I rejected him, so that he could continue to be my friend, something he had made a point of telling me all about at the time. "If I hadn't slept with those women, I wouldn't have spoken to you anymore". Now, I know that his ego was probably slightly wounded after the rejection but, Jesus Christ, we went on two fucking dates! It wasn't like we were engaged!

I can't believe that a twenty-nine year old "man" would feel the need to fuck someone so he's able to see me as a friend and not an object of sexual desire. So much for being Mr Nice Guy. Also, all his kindness to me now seems phony, like he was just being so nice in the hope of getting into my pants later.

My new running partner has also pissed me off this week. When we first started running together a month or so ago, he was also very attentive, picking me up to go running and texting me all the time. Such were the frequency of his texts that I did begin to wonder if he was interested in me romantically, but it didn't seem like it because he never made a move or anything. But that's the way it always seems to be with the men I meet here. They never tell you outright what their thoughts or intentions are; instead they're just very kind, thoughtful and attentive because they want something from you and, if they don't get it, they drop you like a hot potato. I don't know what the fuck is going on here. It must be some kind of Southern chivalry or something but, whatever the fuck it is, I don't understand why American men can't just say they want to fuck you instead of pretending they're all nice.

I made a point of telling my running partner that I was going on two dates last week because I wanted to make it clear that I wasn't interested in him in case he had romantic intentions. And, surprise surprise, there has been a deathly silence on the text message front this week. He even cancelled our run this morning. I just don't understand why it always has to be like this. Are American men incapable of having platonic friendships with women?

If all this wasn't bad enough, I bumped into Darth at the gym yesterday (our Monday night date was postponed, so we're going out tonight instead) and I nearly fell over in horror when I looked at his SHAVED legs! Shaved legs! To be fair, Darth does do a lot of cycling, but, c'mon, he's hardly Lance fucking Armstrong, so I don't see why he has to shave his legs. Looking at them reminded me of his SHAVED CHEST (why?! why?! I love hairy chests!) and his PERFECTLY TRIMMED PUBIC HAIR!

Just what is wrong with American men? It's not enough for them to be hypocritical assholes - apparently they have to hairless hypocritical assholes, too!

I start breaking out in a cold sweat when I think of Darth's lack of pubic hair (how could I ever have forgotten this important detail?!). With such a hygienically trimmed, sterile pubic area, I won't know what to do if I ever see him naked again - fling my clothes off? Or whip out my scalpel and start putting on my scrubs to perform penile surgery?

A Far From Heavenly Creature

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:28:00 +0000

When I saw Heavenly Creatures for the first time in the mid-1990's, I experienced a variety of emotions - of course, like any other normal person, I was shocked and horrified to see Pauline and Juliet bludgeon Pauline's mother to death; but, at the same time, I had the discomfiting realization that I was also a little bit thrilled to witness a matricide on film. And by a daughter and her female friend no less! Most matricides are, it would seem, carried out by sons, but if a daughter is involved then she's normally in cahoots with a male lover.

"Heavenly Creatures" struck a chord with me because I envied Juliet and Pauline their intense, passionate friendship, something I've never really had with a woman but which I always longed for (maybe I still do). Their relationship almost frightened me, though, because if I had ever met a girl who was as much of a lonely outcast growing up as I was, I can imagine that we would have lost ourselves in an unhealthy fantasy world of our own making, just like Juliet and Pauline did.

I don't know if we would ever have considered killing my mother but, God knows, I certainly thought about it enough while I was a teenager. My mother is only 5'1", but I can think of no better word to describe her than "tyrant". I really can't be bothered going into the details of my childhood or teenage years right now, as it's too fucking depressing, and it's pretty hard to articulate what happened anyway. All I can really remember is a terrible tension in the house (not all the time - she was very much a Jekyll and Hyde character) and her verbal and mental abuse.

There was really no way to escape her because I was too young to leave home, so in the end I actually resorted to physical violence in the hope that that would shut her the fuck up. It did, for a while, but then she would pull up her sleeve dramatically and shove her bruised arm in my face, yelling that I was such a problem child and that she didn't know what to do with me. That made me even more furious because I only reacted violently out of frustration and desperation. We lived on a relatively isolated farm, so it wasn't like I could just run out the house and go around to a friend's place. I don't feel especially guilty about having hit her because the things she said to me back then were unforgivable, and I think it was good that my ego was at least intact enough at that stage to put up a fight. My dad, on the other hand, had obviously been ground down by it all through the years and would just sit there and take it like some fucking pound puppy about to be put down.

One time I got out my old chemistry set, and poured the contents of all the test-tubes containing white powder into my mother's powdered coffee creamer. The first thing she did every morning was to make a cup of Nescafé, and I wanted to see what her reaction would be when she swallowed a mouthful of chemicals. I wouldn't say that I was trying to kill her. I think I just wanted to give her a fright as if to say "See! See! This is how much I hate you, you bitch". In the end, I went back and poured in a test-tube containing green powder, so her coffee would turn such an awful colour that she wouldn't drink it. That was exactly what happened, and as she looked at her coffee, I could see that she was horrified when I told her cooly and calmly what I had done.

I haven't spoken to either of my parents for about three years now, and I'm happy that way - well, perhaps "happy" is the wrong word but they certainly never contributed anything to my life when they were in it. No doubt I have a lot of repressed emotion about this situation but, as long as I don't have that fucked-up pair in my life, I don't have to worry about it too much. Every so often my mother will call up, though, and leave a vile message on my answering machine (I never pick up when I see my parents' number and I screen all unknown callers in case she withholds her number), and she did so on Sunday morning at 9:00AM. Even the very day and time of the call pissed me off because the stupid bitch knows that there's a time difference of six hours, which means I'll probably be in bed on Sunday morning. Even if I wasn't, she never stops to consider that someone might not like to have their "day of rest" ruined by hearing one of her diatribes first thing in the morning.

Each message takes the same format: she'll tell me that she and my father are moving out of the farm now (it's taking them a long time, as she's been leaving this message for the last three years!); that she has no intention of taking any of my stuff with her and that if I don't arrange some way for it to be moved out of the house, she will donate it all to charity. How she imagines I'll be able to pick up my belongings, I don't know, given that I live on a different continent. And where does she think I could put it?

None of the stuff in my old room is worth anything much, but it is of huge sentimental value to me. There are all the books I collected in my teens and twenties; huge amounts of letters, photographs; my notes and essays from my undergraduate days; and various other stuff that documents a young life. Really, all that stuff is my past and if that bitch throws it out or gives it away to charity, it would be as if she had wiped out my existence prior to the age of twenty-six. The first time she ever left that message my first instinct was to be filled with rage and sadness and to reach for the phone. But I didn't because I knew that was just what she wanted. She would love it if I called her up screaming because she's looking for drama and a huge fight. This is the only way she knows how to connect. Very occasionally she's left more conciliatory messages, too (always in a hard done by, "poor little me" voice) when she says that she still loves me, that I'm her only child blah blah blah. In the past, I would always feel guilty when she said stuff like that, so I'd get back in touch, but it wouldn't be long before she'd turn again, so I learned not to trust her and just to ignore anything she said. I don't know if she actually will throw my stuff out, but she's certainly quite capable of being so vicious and petty, so I certainly wouldn't be surprised if she did.

I know I'll be incredibly sad if she destroys my stuff but there's also a little part of me that thinks "Go on, bitch! Do it!". If she did, every last vestige of lingering guilt I have about our relationship would disappear and I would be able to cut her out of my life once and for all without ever contemplating going back. My greatest fear is that my mother (like her father, her father's father, and nearly all his siblings) will die a slow lingering death from colon cancer, and that I'll have to go and look after her. I would feel absolved from that responsibility if she threw my stuff out.

If my mother was to call me up now and say "I'm dying, please come home", I honestly don't think that I would. I know that I should but I just can't face seeing her again. All those fucking 12-step programs talk about forgiveness, compassion and "letting go" but why the fuck should I? When I think of my mother, the most pleasant image I can think of is my fist flying towards her face. I understand why she's the way she is, but that doesn't mean that I want to have her in my life. She's too sick and fucked up. My life would have been much easier if she had abandoned me outright because then I wouldn't have had to deal with her guilt-trips and violent mood swings. I imagine that children who were abandoned never quite get over the absence of the lost parent but, in my case, I never got over my mother's overbearing, all-consuming presence, and her attempts to control me and sabotage everything I ever did. I'm filled with rage about this because she has never once been there for me when I really needed her, and yet she has the audacity to leave messages talking about how much she and my father have done for me, and how I'm an ungrateful good-for-nothing.

Now, who needs a mother like that in their life?

"Eanie, Meanie, Miney, Moe....."

noreply@blogger.com (Slutty McWho?) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:05:00 +0000

"Eanie, Meanie, Miney, Moe,
To the bar cute indie kid goes,
Chats up two women, One says no,
Nevermind, there's always the ho!"

And so I had my date with Luke last night (who looks a little bit like John Connor in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, hence the picture to the left). It was a good date, as far as dates go. Dinner was good and the band we went to see later at a local dive bar were surprisingly entertaining, too. He's not my type at all and I didn't feel that I could really be myself around him (more details to follow in a wee second) but he's definitely somebody I'd like to get to know better because he is interesting and smart.

At one point, though, I did feel a little bit insulted. Luke was talking about how he ended up meeting me and said that a female friend had encouraged him to go up to me. He had already told me this the night we met, and it was quite flattering because it suggested that he had been watching me and had found me interesting or attractive but was too shy to approach me without some prodding from said friend .

On our date, however, Luke mentioned how he had also locked eyes with the waitress that night, too. I can actually even remember this waitress (a very tall, leggy brunette) because I recall thinking how pretty she was. I think I even watched her a little bit as she wove through the bar, taking people's orders, and eventually concluded that she was very pretty but curiously not very sexy. Luke's friend apparently noticed their "eye-locking moment" and suggested that he chat her up, too, but he demurred saying that she was working and probably wouldn't appreciate some guy coming on to her while she was busy. Apparently he did talk to her at some point that night (maybe after I handed him the menu without really paying him any attention?) because, from what he said, it sounded like he asked her out in a sort of vague, half-assed way and that she knocked him back. He sort of hinted that I was the better bet, anyway, because she was only twenty-two and looked like a "little girl".

The reason he came up to me in the first place was because his friend basically looked at the two of us, obviously did some of "eanie, meanie, miney, moe" mental processing thing, and told him to go up to me instead. Well, this wasn't the only reason Luke approached me, as he concluded from the Wholefoods bag sitting at my side (which most lazy Americans would have put in their car) that I was a cyclist, like him; also he thought we would at least have something in common given the "alternative" nature of the show we were at which the "average" music fan might not have liked.

I have to admit that my ego was a little bit put out when he told me about his chat with the waitress. It's not that I think I'm the most attractive woman in the world and that men everywhere should be blinded by my beauty, but I'm just not the kind of person who would approach two (two!) men in one night in the hopes of getting a date with one of them. I do tend to flirt a lot with men but when I do so, it's not because I'm thinking "Ooh, shall I ask this one out? Or this one?" Rather, I just really enjoy some tipsy inter-gender bar banter. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, it NEVER leads to anything more than that because I am pretty picky and am just not that interested in the vast majority of men who cross my path. If I ever went up to someone to ask them out, it would be because there was something pretty impressive about them (looks-wise or personality-wise) which inspired me. Well, most of the times my so-called "inspiration" is a result of all the stuff my feverish brain has projected on to them, and turns out to have been misguided, but at least I thought I was inspired!

I don't know if I'm being too romantic and idealistic, but the way Luke and I met just seems so prosaic. It seems that he would have talked to any old semi-attractive woman sitting there alone with a Wholefoods bag. I can remember telling him the night we met about Darth (I was drunk and bitching once again about his lack of gratitude) which is hardly the sort of stuff one should mention to a prospective beau, but at least I fucking met Darth weeks previously and wasn't sizing them both up on the same night like a pair of fucking prize heifers!

This experience with Luke is pretty much symptomatic of everything that is wrong with the American dating scene. When I arrived in the US, I was literally flabbergasted that men who had just met me maybe half an hour previously, and with whom I'd exchanged at best a few superficial pleasantries, would suggest swapping phone numbers and going out for dinner. I found this quite odd because there was no way they could possibly have formed an opinion of me in that short space of time and I really didn't understand why they would want to ask me out so quickly. It made me feel that I was like some sort of commodity they wanted to take home to try out and then return if it didn't match their requirements. It seemed horribly unromantic and just so, well, practical and efficient. It was obvious they were thinking "Oh, she's got the necessary physical attributes I'm looking for, so I'll try her out".

I've complained about this before to Americans and they explained that people in the US have such a fragmented, disjointed existence that they seize every opportunity they get with the opposite sex because they don't know when they'll ever get to see that person again. That explanation sort of made sense to me because it does seem that American society (at least where I live) is far less social than Europe is. Back home in Scotland, I would meet loads of new people every time I went out whereas here I find that people are incredibly friendly on the surface but, ultimately, too wrapped up in their own life/family/job to forge any sort of meaningful, lasting connection with people. Whatever it is, I just don't fucking like it! I miss the more relaxed attitude towards sex and relationships that there is back home. I miss European men!

Besides this one complaint about Luke, I really don't feel like going on any more dates with him. Physically, he isn't my type - he's definitely very attractive, in a GAP model kind of way, but it puts me off that he's not very athletic and is your typical, skinny indie kid. Personality-wise, I think he's very sweet and pleasant, but I just didn't feel that I could open myself up to him at all. I pondered this for some time, wondering "Hmmm. Am I expecting too much emotional intensity all at once?" but, no, I don't think it's that. My main problem is that I can be extremely vulgar and bawdy at times and I just wouldn't feel comfortable showing the more "raw" side of my personality in front of Luke. I don't necessarily think he would judge me for it but he is just sooooo not like that. I think I need a man who's a bit rougher around the edges than he is. I just think we're very different people. He has, for example, lived in this town for nine years which I could NEVER have done in my twenties. I feel that he prefers a laid-back, small-town existence whereas I want things to be fast, fast, fast.

A good dating litmus test for me is to imagine taking the guy back to Glasgow and asking myself "Would he fit in here?" "Would he get on with my friends?". I'm sure Luke would like Glasgow and that he'd find my friends interesting, but I can't imagine him there at all.

But I would say the same thing for Darth, too.