lolabobs: (Default)
I have a male friend. He's single, doesn't really like himself, but wants a partner.
(Oops - realise this sounds like I'm about to draft a personal ad for him, it's not. I'm just trying to set the scene.)

When we are out together he is constantly looking at girls. As in constantly, as in lose the track of our conversation follow them across the room with his eyes, looking. If we go to a pub he chooses where to sit based on having a good view of the room. When we are ensconced in our seats, or there's no one else around, he is focussed. He is considerate and cares for his friends and I'm not trying to make him sound bad here, but trying to explain what it's like.

It's just it bugs me on two very different levels.

On the one hand - whilst I do not want him to like/want me at all, I do like to have the attention of people I'm with in the same way as they get mine. In that I don't want 100% uninterrupted focus, but I would like not to feel that the second a young girl walks past, our conversation will be put on hold while he ogles. I have called him on it and it's now almost a joke -"you know what I'm like", "I'm a man", "did you see what she was(n't) wearing" "hubba hubba" - being the kind of answers that he gives.

I think it's just that it's so constant that it sometimes makes me wonder why I'm bothering to be there, distracting him from his main goal.

The other hand is a little more complex, in that it makes me feel abnormal. 'cos I *don't* spend my time ogling other people. I glance at people when they pass (and when I'm with him I now find myself looking out for girls he's going to find attractive), but generally I don't. And I don't just mean I don't leer like he does, I mean I generally don't look at people that way. It's hard to explain. I obviously look at folk, I can abstractly assess them and can see if someone is good looking or not, but in general I'm not attracted to them*. Certainly not folk in passing. When he sees someone he will say things about being sexually aroused, or wanting to sleep with them etc etc and I just don't do that. And he's so matter of fact about his 'looking', as if it's completely natural and not at all unusual, that it makes me conclude I must be the odd one.


*obviously I can look at tv shows and see people there that I think are gorgeous, but that's in an almost abstract way. So removed from reality as to not count. And I don't imagine myself fucking them either.

I don't know.
lolabobs: (squee)
The movie has just been on tv and although I hadn't given it a thought for many many years, watching it I remembered that I had a huge poster of it on my wall at Uni - which led to a complete memory of the other things on my wall and in my space, Much Ado about Nothing poster, Peter's Friends, Star Trek calandar, a life size Kirk cut out figure, Hamlet poster (of Kenneth B at the Barbican), and all the postcards, Quantum Leap, Hamlet again, the Kiss (!) oh, I had such a fannish space - yet not fandomy at all. I didn't even know "fandom" existed then. I used to phone my friend to talk about episodes of Soldier Soldier the minute they were done, we obsessed and squeed over Kenneth Brannagh, we wrote 'Odes' to Emma Thompson. We would both have been so much happier had we had internet and fandom then. Easy contact without phone bills, and the realisation that other people were as obsessed and joyful as we were. Other people wanted Donna to make Dave happy and not cheat. Other people "preferred the book to the film" (Man without a Face), Other people thought it was okay to go and see films over and over again. I don't know.

Yet it's strange - now I have fandom and yet no one in real life to discuss and bounce and squee tv with. My space isn't filled with posters and pictures and images like it was then. I saw Forever Young tonight and I just had a huge 'pang' of loss for that space. Which is ridiculous 'cos I could plaster my walls in just the same way - I have a whole house to do it in now. Now it's almost as if that living space has been compressed into my lap top. All the pictures and stories and silliness is in there and my house is "grown up."

I think that needs to change.

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