I'm sorry for storming gung-ho into the conversation you were having with your friends just now. Even as I sat down and said 'do you mind if I cut in here' I could hear the unspoken question who is this crazy bitch and what does she want hanging in the air- and judging by the way you were hiding behind those enormous rhinestone sunglasses you had no better idea of how to make me go away than your friends did.
It's just that after lying on the bleacher above you for the past half hour listening to your friends trying to persuade you to cut all the carbohydrates and protein out of your diet for the next two weeks I wasn't able to make myself quietly leave. Their idea that you should get a boyfriend and have sex with all the lights on so you could 'see exactly what you looked like' as motivation made my stomach curl. And by the time your protest about how such an extreme crash of a diet might affect your study was overruled with the suggestion that 'every time you feel tired or bored or want to eat something just go work out instead', I was past the point of just shaking my head at you from several feet away.
I suppose it's not really a coincidence that a country where the heat leaves most people wandering about with a lot of flesh on show has introduced me to firstly some of the most buffed-up and toned body types I've ever seen in my life; and secondly to the most incredible wealth of eating disorders. I've seen it particularly among the girls. I have one friend who seems to exist almost entirely on raw spinach, and on the occasions she decides she's feeling fat simply stops eating for forty-eight hours. I've been on cardio machines next to girls who could take someone's eye out with their vertebrae, and who, when you look over at their dashboard, have been running for the past hour and a half and apparently have no intention of stopping any time soon. It disturbs me that the ruthlessness with which people scrutinize their physical appearance is becoming so much more of a norm; that society has reached a place where people can find so much wrong with their bodies; and especially that the culling of some of the most significant food groups can be experimented with and talked about so casually between 'friends'.
So when, as your pal in the dental floss bikini was saying 'just do it, just make the call and say you'll do it and then we'll all help you power through', I suddenly sat down in front of you and embarked on a rant about how shit trying to go without carbohydrate and protein would make you feel, I wasn't trying to be overbearing. I just wanted to let you know that, even as your friends, sisters, whoever they were, did everything they could to push you into a 'health' regime you seemed less than keen to embark on, there were still some people who would rather champion you looking after yourself. I'm sorry for being less than polite when one of them lowered her sunglasses and pouted "excuse me, but this is for a SPORT. We know what we're talking about.", but there's really no sport which justifies a diet of pure salad. If you- and I mean you, not your friends- really want to lose weight then eat a little less and exercise a little more. But lettuce, and only lettuce is never the answer... and for what it's worth, you seemed a perfectly healthy weight to me. And your friends seemed like a bunch of idiots.
Once I'd gone stamping away it's possible everyone shrieked with laughter and relaunched the campaign to get you shedding those pounds. Perhaps even now you're bouncing unhappily on top of some strange boy with all the lights on, or frantically cross-training in the RSF. But you did peep over the top of your sunglasses and mouth 'thank you' as I flounced haughtily back to the changing rooms in my *slightly saggy* bikini bottoms. So I'm going to hope you decided to be kind to yourself.
Break is over, and everyone is back in the I-House. I was happy
for the return to hustle and bustle, until early Saturday morning when I
tried to run my sheets down to the basement for the wash. For the first
time in about a month I arrived to find every machine was full, and two or three
students milling, (apparently aimlessly), watching the clothes turn. The sound
of churning water mingled with the thick smell of tension.
You’re not a true student until you’ve done the tactical
laundry run. Back in England my student house was the crummiest of hovels: but
it did have its own washing machine, and enough clothesline space that me and
my housemates could get by easily enough without rising to each other’s throats.
Back in residential halls however- or if you have to get by at a Laundromat-
the weekly wash becomes a whole different ball game. There are about fifteen
washers in the I-House basement. Fifteen washers, roughly six hundred
residents. You may think it’s a miracle anyone can get clean: but here are some
tips on tactical laundering that will help you become a tactical, a
passive-aggressive- or a flat out bully launderer.
First off, know your time: never go to wash your clothes on a Sunday. Sunday is the day
everyone realizes they’re down to their last pair of jocks and will have to go
to class wearing trunks or bikini bottoms the next day if they don’t do a very
speedy turnover. Avoid evenings and early mornings, aim for the middle of the
day- preferably during the week while a big chunk of the residents are in
class.
Secondly, know your enemy. Look
around you, as you gear up for the wash.
A tactical
launderer will be standing eyeing the amount of time left on the various
machines, fiddling with a handful of quarters so they don’t look as though they’re
actively sharking around the machines. But they’re smart and will often nip in
ahead of you before you can do anything about it.
If you go away to get a coffee while
your machine is on the spin cycle, and return to find your wet clothes dripping
on the nearby table while a totally alien wash flounders in the machine you’ve
got a passive-aggressive launderer on
your hands. Passive-aggressives are most famous for their ‘disappearing clothes’
trick, where they whip your entire wardrobe out of the machine and dump it in
some obscure corner of the basement to fester. They’re irritating because a lot
of the time you never actually see them; although they also have a habit of
standing silently behind you, staring at your basket with hungry eyes.
If, as you’re piling the whites and
darks in together, a shadow falls across you and you stare up at a hulking
great figure with a wicker basket in one hand and a bottle of Tide in the other, who growls ‘How much longer
are you gonna be?’, that’s a bully
launderer. They use intimidation techniques to try and make you move faster.
Those are the three main categories of launderer to look out for. My third tip is to keep an eye on the clock.
I can square off to a bully launderer easily enough, but I can’t bearthe passive-aggressives, who think it’s
totally fine to manhandle my clothes onto a nearby table and leave them there,
gently infusing with the smell of damp. Clothes take half an hour to wash, make
sure you get back to the basement in time to grab them before someone else
does. Same with the dryers, just calculate for 45 minutes instead of half an
hour. Get down there and every machine is full? Check how much longer the
cycles will run for and time your return accordingly.
I’m primarily a tactical launderer.
I’m not big enough to intimidate anyone, and I’m just a bit too uptight to be
comfortable with the idea of moving a stranger’s wet clothes (although when I
did arrive one weekend to find my own laundry passive-aggressively displaced, I
did open the culprit’s washer and throw a red sock in among their white
sheets). But I got down there on Saturday to find all the machines full, and three
other students hovering around, eyeing each other up as they hefted their
baskets behind them. All of us locked eyes: this was essentially the Hunger
Games of Hygiene. May the odd socks be ever in my favour.
The Danger Zone
One of the machines freed up, and
as the laundry was unloaded, two of the hoverers zeroed in on the washer. The
first guy staked out a claim by dumping his basket down close to the machine,
but made the fatal error of not having the right amount of quarters, and had to
make a dash to the change machine. In the time that took, his competitor shunted
the basket a few inches to the right with his foot, and, at the speed of
lightning unloaded and slammed the door shut just as the first boy returned.
Keen as I was to watch the ensuing silent fracas, I was distracted by a girl at
the far end of the washers. Her machine was in the narrowest part of the
basement, and I set course down there, as speedily as I could without drawing attention
to myself. I was just reaching her, when I noticed a guy coming in hard on the
left, clearly aiming for the same machine. We sized each other up. He was big,
and wearing one of those sleeveless basketball shirts and a backwards cap, and
he was giving me a ‘danger’ look, but as he hadn’t jumped in with an ‘Are you
finished with this machine?’ he apparently wasn’t a bully. The issue was the
space. If we both went diving for the machine straight away we’d probably knock
into each other, the girl unloading would get jostled, and then we’d both look
like monsters. He stared into my eyes and mouthed “I will end you.”
[Okay, It was possibly a yawn, but
the sentiment was very real]
Suddenly the girl was standing
between us, looking decidedly confused as she headed for the dryer. It was a
split second that lasted a lifetime; I slithered past her, lunged for the
machine and threw in a pair of skinny jeans, claiming it as my own. WIN. I would
live to wash another day.
Think I’m sad, or possibly a little anal-retentive?
I don’t care. I haven’t run out of underwear since last
August.
Here are five isolated moments I can't figure out how to work into a proper blog post. Think of them as soundbites.
1)I
climb a tree to watch the Chinese New Year Parade
This was a while back now, admittedly, but
the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco is tipped as being one of the top
ten parade events in the world. I went up to town with the
Laconic Australian and the Irish Aristocrat . Stepping out of the Montgomery
Street BART station the first thing I heard was a sharp rat-tat-tat, and, in a
moment of extreme paranoia, thought it was machine gun fire. I hit
the floor, dragging the boys with me, but they were less than impressed with my life-saving ability, and only pointed out the sight of firecrackers
hitting the tarmac.
The volume of people lining the streets was extraordinary, and
there was no way of seeing anything happening on the street. We wandered along helplessly until the Irish Aristocrat had the genius idea of climbing a tree: we found one sturdy enough to support the three of us, and soon we were drawing almost as much attention as the dragons. The parade was spectacular, despite the relentless advertising, which often dwarfed the performances (since when was the Coca-Cola Polar Bear a fundamental aspect of Chinese tradition and culture?). We stayed in the tree for two and a half hours, before limping back to Berkeley on dead legs.
2)I
see a giant
Co-op parties carry a very different vibe
to the Frats. They are less predatory, but druggier and rather more naked
affairs. The Laconic Australian potato-sacked me to a ‘Willy Wonka’ night at
the effete Oscar Wilde co-op, where I stood in the middle of a packed dance
floor and watched lithe boys in nothing but their underwear turning themselves
upside down on the two poles flanking the DJ decks and wave their pointed toes
at the ground. I’d been standing on the balcony with a complete stranger who
was smoking a large pipe and talking to me about the theatrical production of
Billy Elliot. Drying our tears half an hour later we parted ways, and when I
re-entered the room, through the haze of dancers and, dwarfing everyone else in
the place by at least a foot, I saw A Giant.
I don’t mean a ‘really really
tall guy’, I mean a giant. To my alcohol-fuddled brain he was about ten
feet tall, and broader than feasibly possible: bizarrely dressed in an open
waistcoat, no shirt, and cut-off trousers. It’s true that America breeds a
strange species of superhuman who play football at college, but this guy was
truly extraordinary. . Or perhaps it was just that I was up close. I spent the rest of the night trying to dance as close to him as I could without looking a little bit weird- just so I could feel what it was like to be a child again; but he must have left the party at the moment everyone got distracted by the completely naked boy cavorting behind the DJ decks, because I couldn't find him again all night. I've been keeping an eye out for him on campus ever since, but no luck yet.
3)I
get hired by US News and World Report
My first piece: tips on making the transition to an American College workload, can be found here. I am very, very lucky.
4)I
attend an evening of Japanese Rope Bondage
I was writing an article about Bay Area erotica for my journalism class, and had one of my interviewees- a fine artist who specializes in kink and bondage- invite me along to her gallery opening at the Wicked Grounds cafe. The models from her paintings would be there, and were going to give demonstrations. Why not, I thought. When in San Francisco...
The portly and slightly balding model chewed gum and complained about the bad traffic as his colleague
tied his arms behind his back, wound him in some heavily knotted rope until he was trussed like a raw turkey, and winched him up until he was suspended from a hook in the ceiling, about a foot off the ground. He revolved on a slow axis, still chewing his gum, and revealed that his leather thong was, in fact,
backless.
“My goodness” the Laconic Australian said,
through a mouthful of strawberry waffle.
5)I
make it to Spring Break.
Where I'll be if anyone needs me this week. Ta-ta.
Berkeley has been evacuated as thousands of students return home or go storming off on road trips, wreaking havoc across the state of California and beyond. I've stayed behind to save money, and to look after the Irish Aristocrat, who worked himself into early-onset pneumonia and got ordered to take it easy.
I rather like a quiet Berkeley. The seventh floor is so deserted I can walk around in my underwear and no-one comments. The campus carries the air of a fatigued parent after all the kids have finally left home; a weary peace has descended on the buildings as everyone regroups for the last big push through the next five weeks. I have seven days to recharge, go swimming, and sleep. Lots of sleep. It's hard to believe there are only five weeks of class left. Where has the year gone?
I'm really kicking myself because it's getting to that part of term- midterm season!- and the days are piling up without proper blogposts. I hope you can all forgive me this week: I have five different article deadlines for various publications looming for this weekend including, in no particular order, tweets from beyond the grave, an evening of Japanese rope bondage, best ways to get a free day out with a student card, and coping mechanisms for academia in a strange country (the solution to the last one being to not try and run an independent blog at the same time).
I am also cripplingly worried about flopping again after the ridiculous success of my last blog post, which has had the most traffic out of anything posted so far. Big thank yous to everyone who has been reading; for your personal enjoyment I promise to spill my proverbial guts online more often in the future.
While I try to get my act together over the next couple of days, why not check out Issue 7 of Caliber Magazine? There's a nice big article in which I mull over American adaptions of British TV shows and mock MTV for their ridiculous censorship policies.
To all those back in Blighty, here's hoping Spring arrives with you before the year is out!
I’ve gone backwards and forwards trying to write about this.
I even fleetingly toyed with posting on Valentine’s Day, because when your
other half is on the wrong side of the ocean there are only so many ways to
make a gesture. But the potential for self-indulgent rambling was too great, so
I shelved it for another week.
I decided the time had come to blog firstly because I’ve
been doing the long-distance thing for about five months now and have a vague
grasp on what it entails, and secondly because for the past week I have wanted
nothing more than to sit on my boyfriend’s back and mash his face repeatedly
into the ground; a feeling that should act as a foil for excessive emotion.
Mawkish content aside, this is a blog about my experiences at Berkeley, and having a significant other beyond the sea is part and parcel of that.
The long-distance relationship is something most people have
to face up to at some stage. My parents have been married for over twenty
years, my Dad’s work takes him to other countries a lot, and my mother has always said to me, with that edge of steel
in her voice that after ten years of trying I’m still failing to replicate: “The
key to a successful relationship is spending lots of time apart.” I don’t know whether I took this too
closely to heart (anyone who has met my mother knows she’s not the sort of
person you ignore) or if it’s just been pure luck, but The Graduate and I are close
to our one-year anniversary: and while that may be peanuts to some, it’s the
longest and most functional relationship I’ve ever had. We’ve spent about half
of it five thousand miles apart.
To recap: I have been angry with my boyfriend. Has he done
anything to merit this aggression? No. Then
whyam I behaving like a lunatic? Because
he is on the wrong continent, and I don’t like it. Can either of us do anything
about that? No; it is what it is. When I came out to Berkeley last August I belonged to a
fairly sizeable community who were all trying the long-distance thing. Now with
the second semester people have moved back home, fallen into an open
relationship, or broken up altogether, and I’ve become one of the strange ones.
People are curious: always asking what’s
it like, or don’t you miss him,
though, which is stupid;or
trying to draw me into a would-you-ever-cheat
or what-if-he-cheated game, which is voyeuristic
and weird. I’ve also had friends and acquaintances- because guess what,
everyone is extraordinarily good-looking out here and people fall in love left
right and center- asking how I manage it, as they try and figure out if it’s a
step they want to make when this year ends and we are scattered back across the
four corners of the globe. So here are a few long-distance (and largely
hypocritical since I’m sure I’ve failed at all of them at one stage) bullet
points for your consumption.
What Makes It Hard:
1)You
don’t see each other and missing each other is an absolute bitch.
2)Relationships
are not just two people. Having each other is all well and good, but you
also need the affirmation and affection of family and friends to prove you’re
going in the right direction. I’ve never forgotten the anxiety when my last
boss told me “You want to stay with this guy? Forget it, it just won’t work,”; or
the delight when I first introduced him to my housemates and my best friend,
breath heavy with whisky whispered in her Irish lilt “Oh my God Em he’s
wonderful.” When you’re apart, your other half doesn’t have a place in the
community you build, and that makes it much harder to get a second opinion on
how the two of you are doing. “I can’t even picture what he looks like.” The
Laconic Australian said the other day, scrutinizing the photos pinned above my
desk “his face looks so different in all of these.”
3)Touch.
The old chestnut about how you never realize what you have until it’s gone.
Being able to hold hands, lean against their shoulder or hug them until they
wheeze is vastly overlooked in short-distance relationships. Being able to
touch makes difficult conversations easier, and is a mark of comfort, security,
happiness otherwise. Going without it is a strain.
4)The lack of immediacy The Graduate and
I are limited to windows of contact due to the eight-hour time difference. For
him it’s normally five in the afternoon by the time I’m even awake, and what
with my classes and other commitments we normally don’t get to talk until
around nine in the evening his time. I have to take time out of the middle of
my day for us to chat, and when I’m winding down in the evenings it’s three a.m.
at home. You get on with that. Even more frustrating is the moment when you’re
in the crux of a joke, a sentimental moment, or a heated debate and your webcam
or microphone goes on the blink. Say what?
It’s not great for spontaneity.
What Makes it Okay-
and eventually worth it:
1)You’re
forced to work through the ugly stuff: Not having the physical side of a
relationships is one of the most painful things about it, but what it does mean
is that you’re forced to really talk to each other when you have a scrap, or if
one of you is feeling a bit shit.
2)Technology
makes the world a smaller place: When it comes to actually being apart,
most of us don’t even know we’ve been born. Facebook and Twitter keep a constant
running commentary on the most mundane of activities, and Skype means you can
speak face-to-face with your beloved every day, if that’s what you want. Outside
of immediate contact there are all kinds of online communities, blogs, advice
columns and forums where people offer tips and support. There’s even a
terrifying Japanese pillow that captures your lover’s heartbeat, although I
haven’t felt driven to this stage quite yet.
3)At some point it ends. I know he hasn’t
booked his plane tickets yet (yes that’s a dig Mister it’s March now, get a
bloody move on), but we are planning a roadtrip and when that ends I will be
back in Blighty. And for those long-distance couples who don’t have the luxury
of a fixed end-point, that doesn’t mean you should give up. Walk around the
International House and you often come across small brass plaques outside the
bedrooms, celebrating couples who met here, kept it together, and frequently
ended up married. The whole building is like a weird Neo Mediterranean Colonial
testament to love across the distance. It
can work.
4)Statistics show that if a long-distance
relationship is going to fail, the average timespan for that is in the first
four and a half months. Break past that barrier, and you can be fairly sure you’re
onto a good thing. And when you do get to see each other it’s hella good times.
Making it Work:
1)Be
sure it’s what you both want: For long-distance to work, both sides of the
agreement have to be fully behind it. If one person isn’t sure then leave it,
come back to it, but don’t try and push it.
Helping me cook at Thanksgiving
2)Set
your boundaries. If you want to be monogamous, if you want to be in an open
relationship, if you want to take time out and see where you are when you’re
home again, then be 100% open about it. Taking emotional ambiguity and putting
several thousand miles between it is not a recipe for success.
3)Talk,
often. Talk about any and all stuff happening to you, however big, small, weird
or mundane. What seems boring or run-of-the-mill to you is often interesting to
them because they don’t get to live it. The internet is your oyster: use it.
Share articles, videos, memes, that trending video of the dancing pony.
4)Not
too much though: This is my ultimate long-distance flaw. I still spend too much time sitting in front of
the computer hoping he’s going to appear. Then if he doesn’t appear I get angry
and he doesn’t understand what he’s done. Step. Away. From. The. Computer.
Which segues neatly into
5)Learn
to be happy and functional without each other. Can’t stress it enough. Yes
you need each other and you miss each other, but you also need to have a life
outside of each other, if for no other reason than it will give you lots to
talk about. The relationship has to work around your life, not the other way
round.
I miss The Graduate every day, but through trial and error we are
making the distance work. We have a common enemy in the ‘big bully Atlantic’,
which frequently finds itself victim to attacks of rage. We have both messed up
at one time or another. He still makes me laugh until I feel sick. I hope he
forgives my temper tantrums of the past week, because the fact remains that I’m
deeply in love with him, and there’s no-one I’d rather share the frustration of
a broken Skype video with. And if you’re thinking of going long-distance yourself,
the only other thing I can suggest is that you try it. You never know where it
might take you.
Oh, and here's that dancing pony, to a strangely appropriate soundtrack. Happy March!
I suppose it's not really a coincidence that a country where the heat leaves most people wandering about with a lot of flesh on show has introduced me to firstly some of the most buffed-up and toned body types I've ever seen in my life; and secondly to the most incredible wealth of eating disorders. I've seen it particularly among the girls. I have one friend who seems to exist almost entirely on raw spinach, and on the occasions she decides she's feeling fat simply stops eating for forty-eight hours. I've been on cardio machines next to girls who could take someone's eye out with their vertebrae, and who, when you look over at their dashboard, have been running for the past hour and a half and apparently have no intention of stopping any time soon. It disturbs me that the ruthlessness with which people scrutinize their physical appearance is becoming so much more of a norm; that society has reached a place where people can find so much wrong with their bodies; and especially that the culling of some of the most significant food groups can be experimented with and talked about so casually between 'friends'.
