Groper

This is a picture of a Queensland Groper.




I know. I couldn't bring myself to look for an actual groper picture.

So, I had a "date lunch" today and it was so horrible, so bad, and so awkward, I'm just glad it was not a date dinner, so I could pretend my class was earlier and run, run like the wind; away from this horrid person.

I feel like taking a year-long shower. He was so icky, always trying to touch my hands, face or legs, in the most annoying way. I asked him to stop. He tried to kiss my neck. I jumped back in alarm and disgust. He tried again.I said: "Don't do that again." He tried again.

Needless to say, I will not be seeing this person ever again.

Sadder, he thought he was a "sensitive, feminine man" who is "attuned" to women. Yeah, not so much, Gropes!

The worst of this debacle is the fact I may be turned off men for weeks. I know, I know: there are wonderful people out there. But honestly, this lunch reminded me how many stupid, pretentious, disrespectful men there are walking around, who think that lust is the only thing we want because it validates us, and I'll be having another shower now please.

I WANT TO BE A NUN WHO IS ALLOWED TO LISTEN TO BRITNEY AND HAVE A CRUSH ON CHRISTINA HENDRICKS.

Fire over Dillenburg!

A tale of two cities.





Look who's in Dillenburg, looking refreshed and not at all under the weather? 'Tis I,by Jove.


So I went, I saw and I conquered.
Yeah, my train was late, I was exhausted, but it was still pretty funny. I went back to my workcamp site from this summer to see the musical the town wrote, composed and staged: Feuer über Dillenburg.
Yup, it rocked.

They did an amazing job, working their arsches off for three years and rehearsing into madness; no one was a professional, the orchestra was the regional youth formation, the actors were local talents etc.
I was super proud and moved.
My friend Tosca (who's 14 BTW) was a dancer. I took a picture of her with Armin, who played the French bad guy.
Armin, Tosca und Annie. Is that a Napoleon look-a-like or have I stumbled into a wax museum?
Also Tosca danced as an evil gypsy, while looking like a German milkmaid.

Then I went to the afterparty. Ach du meine Güte. It was wild! So imagine a bunch of drunk German teenagers in a gym gyrating to Britney and David Guetta. Yup.
Here we have the before...Look at those innocent miens, and one of them teenagers is wearing a suit. I mean, really?
That tie would soon end up being used as a harness.
Unfortunately, I was too busy getting deaf next to the boom box to take a pic.
Then it got OUT OF CONTROL.








Look at the debauchery. Dancing and drinking.























One guy pictured here took a mad fancy to me and got some good lines. (He was seventeen).
My favourite: "My braces are being removed next week, let's celebrate by kissing."
How sweet. He did invite me for a slow dance, which was a first. He was much taller than me, and he stroked my hair and told me I was the prettiest girl in the room. Also that it was wonderful to meet a girl who had good conversational skills. Then he gazed at me romantically and asked me if I wanted apple juice or to be kissed. SMOOTH. I chose Apferschorle. Underage men are fun, but juice is wonderful.

After narrowly avoiding being mauled by the jailbait in the room, Tosca and I went to bed at five in the morning. Shocking.
We had coffee next day with Tobias and his girlfriend, both were super friendly and nice. Tobias taught me how to drive this summer.























Tobias, GF and Tosca





Neun und Neunzig Luftballoons of WIN. Bikers!

Then I went home. Oh Dillenburg, you are endlessly surreal.

Bad music

Some music you should never, ever listen to when close to a computer, a cell phone or any gizmodo that can communicate with people:
Radiohead
Soulful duets
Anything by Noah and the Whale.
Anything you've ever made out to.

The Great Escape

I pride myself on having great escapism skills. I can have a conversation and still be elsewhere, although I can't if the conversation is slightly more sophisticated than the weather. I can be in class and yet someplace else, also not recommended but sometimes essential. I like to think of it as a skill, and of myself on being a great escape artist, but these last few days I've been trying to live in the moment a bit more, and stop yearning for another time or another place.

I tried this successfully a few times: during one of those "in the supermarket queue" moments of awkwardness, where half conversations are born and killed, I was incredibly there and attentive. During a class on statistics, not the most rrrrriveting of subjects, I tried to be 100% focused. And while reading a book on Microeconomics, I concentrated on every word as if it were a sacred text.

I think this awareness technique is better for me when I'm stressed or depressed, because it eases the feeling of virtuality and loneliness that comes with unhappiness.

However, when a boring lady tried to draw me into her maze of shopping information in the bus this morning, I stared at her forehead, nodded at her, and remained firmly inside myself, happily escaped from the world. Sometimes it's best not to listen.

The question that has no answer

Every Thursday afternoon, I have a routine. I walk up the hill of the Quartier Latin in Paris, I stop in front of the bicycle shop and fantasize about owning that sweet blue number. I walk on until I arrive in front of a primary school, and punch in the entrance code of a small, inconspicuous building. I go up to the second floor. I ring the door bell. A slight man opens the door, shakes my hand, takes me to the waiting room. When the previous patient leaves, he comes to fetch me and I sit in the large leather armchair, feeling overly large and strange.

How was your week?

I take some time to answer this. Because there are so many answers, every time. It went fine. I did loads of things. I talked to people I don't know and it wasn't scary.

So I answer.

It was OK. But I'm still sad.

Why are you sad?

Why am I sad, indeed. I don't know, Mr Shrinko. Please open my head and empty it of all its shit. It's that same bloody question I always have to answer. Why did you try to commit suicide? Why do you cry for hours? Why does getting up feel like picking up the globe? How can YOU complain? What's wrong with you?

I get why I should ask myself this question. It has to begin somewhere. But the truth is, every answer I give (I'm stressed, I'm not good enough, my family is going to pieces) is never the truth. I don't feel like I belong here, never have. But that doesn't mean I don't try. I straighten myself up and I look at him straight in the eyes, and I tell him that next week I'll feel better. Or that I know it's just a phase. And he knows that I'm not being honest, but something more important for me: I'm being optimistic.

See you next week.

So if I know how the routine goes, why do I go back?

I want to be happy. I will be happy. I believe in me.
Sometimes I find the right answers.

V for Very Painful but Very Worth it

Oh boy, where to start.
I know!
I'll start at the end, when I crossed the line, when thousands of people were cheering me on, screaming encouragements. Well, they weren't cheering me on, but it felt like it.
I saw the 2 hour mark behind me, and I could not believe it.
I ran it in less than two hours; one hour, fifty-eight minutes to be precise. I feel like the Queen of the Planet, if she had such bad pain that she could hardly move. It's not so much going up the stairs as going down them actually. Someone laughed at me in the street, and I couldn't blame them. A guy in my class winked at me:" You obviously had a great week-end."
I certainly did, if not for any sexy reasons.

I would do it again in a flash. Once the pain stops, I mean.

20 K

Dear Running Log,

Today I don't want to run "against". Let me clarify: I don't want to run so I can prove anyone right or wrong, à la Against All Odds.
I want to enjoy myself as much as I can.

See you in a few hours,

Sara

The mean reds

A nod to Holly and to Truman.
After a day of being excruciatingly blue, a girl needs some wardrobe therapy.

Some mean red, for instance. I love this red skirt. It's pouffy, it's girly, it's just a bit noticeable. I like how lounge-singeresque it makes me feel. I just want to grab the mike and start singing a bit of Ol' Cole or some Irving Berlin. It feels like an autumn color to wear.

Or like an antidote to the approaching cold, short days of work.

Crazy how clothes work on us.

Lost Cause

I'm tired of feeling like a lost cause.

David Bowie is my homeboy

This week hasn't been very high in excitement or merriment: it's been a slow burner, with long, tiring days, followed by short, harried nights. I've been slightly reckless in that respect, not sleeping quite enough, and avoiding meals altogether. Chocolate has been good to me.
But the rest of the week has great potential, I think.
Tomorrow I'm meeting someone to get on with a political blog project we have going on AND playing with the cousins AND partying with my sport buddies.
Friday will see my uncle from America come over have dinner with us.
Saturday is running club!
And SUNDAY IS SEMI-MARATHON!!!
I can't say how bloody scared and exhilarated I am. I'm Magic Dancing with excitement here.
I've never run so far, and I'll probably never run so fast. So wish me luck and actual meals instead of scraps of food.
I hope I do well and that I'm not too tired. But hey, I'm 23! This is the time to shimmer, right?
I really need sleep.

Subway lust

I was sitting in the Parisian subway, reading a book by French novelist Maupassant. Coming back from the Track and Field practice, I could already feel the burn in my legs and abdominal muscles fade, and I was in that mellow state of endomorphinese that long-distance can give you. I'm told it's like a shot of morphine or heroin. Being quite the neophyte in drug matters, I can't tell you. Someone got in at the next station. I noticed beautiful honey-blond hair and since I am very short-sighted, not much else, and as the person sat down next to me, I apologized in case my running gear bag was in the way. I then found out my neighbour was a gorgeous man. I then blushed and returned to my reading. He started to fumble in his own bag and got out a compendium of Russian poetry, translated in German, so I could read over his (broad) shoulder. Handsome and German-literate? OMG. For the next four stops I wondered if I should ask for his phone number. No, wait, give him mine. What if he's taken? Or wait, I've just come back from my training session, all sweaty and pink-cheeked. I must look like shit. He's really beautiful. Oh no, only two stops left.

As the train grumbled through Paris I leaned back on my seat and purposefully brushed his shoulder with mine, before leaving my arm to rest against his. My heart was beating ridiculously hard. I couldn't believe I had to meet the most handsome man I've ever seen when I felt so high and so unattractive at the same time. He did not move his arm away, but he seemed so concentrated in his poetry, I couldn't decide whether he knew I was making a pass at him or not. And damn it, I had to leave. So I got up, still blushing ridiculously intensely, and left the train.

I turned around to check him out one last time.

He was staring at me. And I smiled lustfully. And he smiled back. And then I never saw him again.

Note to self: next time, give phone number. WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU?

subcultures

I have a class with a eccentric American teacher, who's apparently dabbled in porn (as an actor), is a script doctor, writes sociological inquiries about high-class SM practices and owns a crumbling villa in Morocco. He wants us to write a presentation on a subculture, and he gave us a handout about some of the themes already done in his previous classes:
Pro-ana, gothic lolitas, steampunk, gay skinheads, transsexual Iranians, pedophiles, neo-vampires, dykes and lipstick lesbians, trekkies, nerds, frats etc.
On the whole I don't find it an uninteresting topic and I'm thinking of writing about Furries. But what got me ticked off was the way he described some of the subcultures he supposedly "studies". For someone who's worked in the porn industry, he's pretty narrow-minded, describing transsexuals as people who have to work through their issues and mocking the Amish. Excuse me? Yell about pedophiles all you want, but no one is hurting anyone by wearing Spock ears and nerding out at conventions. GAHHHH. At one point he told a student that queer was a synonym for gay. No context, no detailed explanation. I wonder if I'm overreacting.

Maybe those who belong to a subculture can be even more intolerant than mainstream people. As a sociologist, he has no reason to let any judgement enter his field of work. So, shut up, teacher. Or rather, shape up and open your mind.