Original Kate

Chem. lab

Relationship-wise I’ve been through a dry spell of late.
I find myself having to resort to hook-ups for sex; but they are solely that -with people I wouldn’t commit anything to other than a ride back home. It’s not my idea of dating but it’s safe sex and with people I know. Friends with benefits if you will.

Conceding that I’m still getting some- my current choice of fuck buddies puts me in a dismal cycle of introspection that I don’t want to meander through.

In a room full of prospects, with boys and girls with the appropriate check marks why is it that noone catches my interest? There is attraction doesn’t go beyond a few words of converstion or a meeting or two at most.
Where is that zing, that hazy warmth or is that something I made up about past love and romance?

I’m gorgeous, bright and unattached and sometimes terribly lonely. I haven’t been in a serious relationship in a while and I miss the companionship.
I miss the fitting, the unsaid understanding, the combining of opposite energies, the sex with someone you care for.

I know I’ve hit some kind of wall when after numerous outings and pick-up lines, I’d much rather be at home with my dogs. Jaded isn’t a feeling I enjoy- this cannot be as good as it gets.

I love Butch girls and How!

I met this very cute ‘Butch’ girl the other day. She was stunning really – muscles, tanned skin, pearly smile. She was kind of offended though that I said Butch. I think she thought I meant that she was a “tractor lesbian” or that she’d forgotten to wax her moustache. I didn’t. She’s a gorgeous woman, both when she’s being a tomboy or when she’s perfumed and coiffed. What I really meant that she had that elusive appeal, that ease about herself that made me want to hand out my telephone number as my heart did somersaults in my chest.

Apart from the anguish about being lost in translation, I started to think about ‘Butch’ and how it has so many different connotations how we understand it differently depending on how out of the box we’ve allowed ourselves to be.

For me Butch is completely about personality and an attitude to life versus a ‘Look’. Somehow, in the media and socially ‘butch’ has come to mean that if you dress a certain way you are a certain way. Dressing in a way that’s out-of the box isn’t equatable with thinking of feeling out of the box; Looking like you don’t conform isn’t the same as non-conformity.  And I mean not conforming in a purer sense, not to be contrary but because you know no other way to be.

So I don’t think being butch is about being a “diesel dyke” or a “tractor lesbian” or all the other words we have for girls who dress differently; I don’t think being butch is about wearing men’s jeans than it is about your attitude and personality,

I think what’s common to both Butch men and women, is that they’ve found intuitively or through trial and error that the good old boxes of male, female, gay straight don’t fit so well and so they go on to make their own. So I met very manly men who won’t shirk from acknowledging their soft side, who’ll allow for their creative side and who’re not scared to pretty-it-up. Or women who’re assertive, active, confident about their sexuality or sex without caring  what other people think. That to me is definitively Butch!

Butch people have an ease and self-confidence about them that makes them irresistible. It’s hard not to like someone who likes him or herself the manly parts the chick parts, maybe not the moustache but whatever floats your boat.Whether you’re a guy or a girl being ‘butch’ it’s about allowing for all aspects of yourself; for the strong, for the soft and for the shades of grey.

These lucky people are a tonne of fun to be around because they don’t apologize to you for who they are and in turn inspire confidence in you to be who you are.

So to all those Beautiful butch men and women out there, who switch between manly men and womanly men and between manly chicks and womanly chicks and all the shade of Tran – you make my heart race!

Changing People In A Relationship.

Have you ever been drunk-dialled?  The calls can be maudlin but sometimes entertaining .

My friend Sam called the other night and told me how much she liked me and could we date each other? She blustered on to say that ofcourse for it to work I would have to change things about myself and she in turn needed to be in better place in her life things. I eventually got her off the phone and the next day she was suitably embarrassed, enough for me to not give her a hard time- her unique proposal did get me thinking about change and how we want people to change especially our romantic partners.

I had an ex-girlfriend who wanted to change things from the start– from giving me a makeover so we’d look more alike, to telling me what to eat and changing my exercise routine. I decided I didn’t want to morph into ‘matching couple’ and we split.  I remember telling her that in a relationship the only person one could change was oneself.  I think I’d go back and qualify that, it’s very hard to change even yourself, so it’s not fair to  give your respective other a hard time about it.

Think about how hard it is to actually change things about yourself?  Even something as uncomplicated like a diet plan or an exercise regime- you can do it for a month but beyond that it’s an uphill task and few stick with it.

And this is easy tangible stuff like diet and lifestyle-they’re trimmings. How hard is it to change fundamentally things about yourself? Can one become more courageous, fun or funny or more caring? How long does it take?

I’ve wanted to start writing in the last couple of years. But it’s taken much dallying back and forth and some false starts to get going. With the writing I’m trying to take it a day at a time. I guess that’s what one would do with other resolutions- Small steps, discipline and an insane compulsion to want that change.

For someone who doesn’t exercise to say  “I’m going to exercise everyday” is unimaginable”. Or for someone who has skewed eating habits to eat healthy is a daily task. To change things takes effort and a lot of people decide that the effort isn’t worth it.

So anyway back to changing yourself and how hard it is to stick with those changes. I’m not saying it’s impossible to change yourself , on the contrary . Just that to change something about your inherent personality takes persistence and time which a lot of people are not in for.

I think the difficulty is compounded by the fact that we have a lot of external suggestions from girlfriends, boyfriends and from tv about improving ourselves and so we’re in the unique situation of not knowing what we really want to change about ourselves. Do we even like ourselves? we don’t know. What parts of us are likable? We’re often so worried about if people will like us , love us, we don’t know what bits to keep and what needs improvement.

With the explosion of television in India and allied technology as well as with the growth of the internet, a current of homogenization of wants and aspirations seeks to sweep us in. Popular culture as defined by the tv and magazine is starting to define what we aspire to, atleast till we wake up from the dream. For an increasing section of the population it determines lifetsyle- tells you what kind of kitchen to have, where to holiday and what to buy. If TV want to decide whats passé and what’s not where is the room for individual expression?

Fortunately for us ’15 minutes of fame’ isn’t a universal dream, however much we’re conditioned to believe. What the dreammakers don’t realize and often we don’t either is that we’re at different points on the graph- human effort as defined by Artha ,Kama ,Moksha, Dharma chart our lives in different permutations and combinations.   Even if we do come to , we’re in a harder position still because we  don’t know what to want anymore and if we do, we don’t where to begin.

The problem also lies in this biraadri /log kyaan kahenge mentality.  It’s scary to be different and we do want to keep up with joneses. I recently spent some time with my nieces in Pune and they just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be on TV like Deepika Padukone. “But Masi you’re so pretty”, sadly being an unglamorous yoga instructor didn’t cut it with them. I can play guitar and sing, so that scored serious points.

I was reading Agatha Christie’s autobiograogy where she says it was easier back then i.e. in a family of three it was decided by the parents which of the kids would a) have a career b)be of no good c)be the quiet one. I thought this was incredibly funny and wholly appropriate. This was ofcourse a time when schooling wasn’t as uniform and one didn’t automatically go to college; also it was the time of independent incomes where you weren’t as worried about getting a job. I agree with the thinking – that children were unique and had different talents and should not all be brought up to want the same things. Agatha was slotted as “the quiet one”  and with no formal schooling and a largely free and unregulated childhood she went on to become the best-selling author of all time! Hugely successful,  she has single-handedly her sold more books than other author till date (apart from the Bible). Kudos to her parents and her two husbands on letting her be!

So back to the point, exercisers will switch from exercising three times a week to daily and back to three, dieters will diet and continue to, dreamers will dream, procrastinators will procrastinate and whiners will whine.

Self-improvement is a good goal but not if it comes at the cost of not accepting yourself  and at the cost of not living your life in the present. The time for  “when I’m more perfect” is now, not  in the unforeseeable future.

Changing yourself is hard enough  why would one put that expectation on a spouse, partner or mate?

Please someone remind me of that the next time “I’m completely I’m fed up” and want someone else to change.