Sex with strangers

I felt really good today, for what it was worth. I was skimming down the boulevards of Hobart with $olal and Peder featuring Anne Trolle on the IPOD, and it was fantastic. It wasn't as cold as it normally is, the mountain looked incredible, the way the light was dancing off the water was amazing and I almost (almost) had a good day at work. It's funny how a beautiful day can convince you that things are going well, especially after such a lousy start to the day when I was tired and grumpy. I love Hobart on days like today, it's beautiful and spellbinding, without the annoyance of a vast amount of people pushing past you or trying to steal your seat on the bus. What really made me laugh though was that Ashlee Simpson came on my IPOD at the most beautiful moment of scenery, which is a very strange soundtrack I'll admit, but somehow, oh so right.

Given that I'm now quite an old, unattractive man, I think my days of picking up at nightclubs are over - don't get me wrong, I was hardly Dirk Diggler, but at some point, it's part of human experience to wake up in someones house in the morning, peer over awkwardly and then wonder what the hell happened. If this hasn't happened to you, you have to think you've missed out - although on what, I'm not quite sure, as it's quite a horrible five minutes in your life as you struggle to put together the pieces. Chances are, one of you is a lot hotter than the other one, and there's some silence as you fuss through the morning after etiquette. It's almost always impossible to simply up and run as the door is almost always locked. I wonder what celebrities do, say, Anne Maree Cooksley, or an AFL footballer, if they have an agent or a member of staff to talk the person through who they've just slept with and would they mind awfully not going to the press. I've already spoken about the Brett Lee "incident" here, and I also know most of our state cricket team went on the pull, so to speak, after we won the one day title, so I guess they have experience handling these situations, but even they must get it wrong and sleep with mingers from time to time (and to be honest, some very ugly blokes get stunning girls because they play football, to flip it around - did you see who married Mick Martyn?). I guess these days one night stands seem to feel a little like cyber sex for the younger folks - awkward, unfulfilling, but still a little exciting, no matter how lame you feel afterwards. Still, like I always say, no cyber sex until you buy me cyber dinner first...

What has inspired this thinking today was I saw (when I was walking past listening to Goldfrapp on the IPOD) a guy and a girl clearly on their first date, a lunch meeting for coffee and muffins at the Muffin Break store. Nice choice, safe, clean, everyone likes muffins right? Just bland enough to take the edge off the day. However, even with Monster Love on the IPOD, I could tell exactly what was going on. She was talking awkwardly but confidently, in that girl way, about something generic and safe - say, the axing of Big Brother, the taste of the muffins, or how she'd bought an Iphone. Wait, it is about an Iphone, she's pulled it out of her bag. Anyway, she was talking away quite happily, 1/2 smiling, breaking down the walls between two strangers getting to know each other, you know, all good, enjoying the muffin. Now he, and I don't know if she knew this, was plainly not listening. Not to a word. He was staring at her breasts. It was subtle, but a male can tell. Iphones, fantastic no doubt, but what do you look like naked? It was plain as day, I think even the weird looking girl with the funny eyebrows at Muffin Break seemed to notice. I don't know what happened after that, but he seemed to be preparing to sleep with her, and then leave. This may have been a rash judgement, but she was clearly being set up for a one night stand. If he had to sit through an Iphone lecture, he didn't mind. Hell, if it didn't work out, he got a muffin.

Now, this may have been a completely wrong judgement, based on years of having blokey friends, he might have really loved his Iphone lecture. In fact, thinking back about it, the first time I ended up staying at someones house overnight purely for adult entertainment, the girl was the bloke and I was the girl, so to speak. I've already said in this blog I listen to Hannah Montana, so it's looking good isn't it? Anyway, I was at uni, I was on the Internet in that weird underground lab down the path where that bloke was always pulling himself off (we knew what you were doing) over pictures of fat girls. I was sitting doing work, when this quite lithe, snappily dressed brunette girl with great legs and no hips came into the lab, probably the first girl I'd seen in real life with a tattoo. I was writing an e-mail to my friend with my usual pop culture drivel, when this girl just for no reason at all began singing that song "Sex and Candy" - remember that song? Marcys Playground? What was with indie bands in 1997? Fastball? Harvey Danger? Remember them? Anyway, yes, so she starts singing it really loudly, and it's clearly directed at me that she smelled sex and candy. I was a shy, naive Burnie boy but it was pretty clear to me that I was being hit on really aggressively. But what to do, what to say? This is what I said, verbatim, and if it happens to you, I hope it works for you as well. "Well, we can start with candy" and handed her a square of Dairy Milk. Is that lame? Or is that smooth? Is that smoother than a muffin and an Iphone?

Either way, she was treated to a wonderful seven minutes later that night and a bowl of Nutri Grain in the morning. Ah, self deprecation, how to end any blog post I find...