Carried by the Fever

I was thinking today about how we let perfectionism stop us from doing things, 'cos we're waiting until things are in a state that we can be proud of and we make something that can follow us around a long time. But then I looked at bands like The Mavis's - and they post photos of themselves from the nineties, like, oh my god, look at us, we were babies, look at our strange haircuts and clothes, and they went through many eras but they didn't let it stop them, that, you know, in 20 years time they were going to look back and go isn't that weird. They just went through with it anyway. Carried by the fever.

Penis Salesman

Should I just lie, when asked - "No, I'm not single"?
I don't want to lie. But answering "Yes" leaves me open to instant, underwhelming mating attempts from insidiously boring men.
When I tell them how much I fail to appreciate the gross forwardness of men at establishments shilling liquor, not only do they fail to get the hint, but they advise me on how to deal with it: tell the men outright I don't want to fuck them.
Even if they haven't hit on me.
Even if they're just being friendly.
I'm doled this advice too often.
This idea that I'm too attractive to be standing there alone and any man who approaches must be verbally warned that his penis has no presence in my body, existence, or future.
What the fuck.
I'm to assume all guys want to fuck me?
That my value to a male stranger is only sexual?
How fucking arrogant is that?
How fucking arrogant is it that when an interested man does talk to me and finds out I'm single, he assumes his attraction must mean I want him back.
Like some schlub who works little on his appearance walks up to me with 2 hours of make-up and thinks he's a prize.
No, they don't even think about what there is to offer, beyond alcohol. No good conversation, seldomly good looks or fitness, nothing. Just want. Sometimes they talk themselves up, shit like how they love to go down on chicks and can go for hours.
This is always a lie.
I've been told I make eye contact a lot and listen, and men only experience this from women with interested vaginas.
These dudes don't get that I grew up with 3 older bros and think more like them - I forget I'm female but get constantly reminded.
They also don't listen when I tell them I don't hang around guys who always remind me of my fucking gender.
When I'm playing music, I barely have a gender.
Instead of girls being expected to tell men to fuck off, or to let them down mid-one-way-flirt, or pre-emptively ward them off, and most likely leave them rejected and uninterested in any professional or personal relationship and potentially earning their spite, or worse... maybe guys shouldn't expect so much.
I know - dudes are evolved to be more optimistic and pushy about mating. You can learn about it in The Psychology of Attractiveness - studies have shown in.
Men have 400,000,000 sperm per ejaculation. Women have 13 eggs a year. Of course we are pickier. Of course we pick up on signals better - for benefit and safety.
But this idea that if we make ourselves pretty we must be up for it by whomever (dude the other night said "You're a knockout - of course every guy here wants to put his dick in you. I want to put my dick in you"), that we need to verbally deter - hiw about guys change their fucking shit. Listen. Watch. STOP FUCKING DRINKING
STOP FUCKING DRINKING
STOP FUCKING DRINKING
If you come off as a 1970s Aussie male chauvinist bordering on rapey vibes, you have no fucking right to go drinking in public. Esp. if you imagine booze helps you talk to women - talking to them like they're your bagsied fuckhole is not welcome. And then turning passive-aggressive? Nope. Nope nope.
I havr social anxiety. Pretty bad. It takes a lot to go out, especially alone. And then to be treated like garnished meat? Girfriends scowl at me, men either avoid me or become penis salesmen? What's the alternative - go without makeup or nice clothes and be looked at like I'm sick (I am, I hide that for survival).
I'm watching Mad Men and getting angry seeing the shit that was commonplace then is still standard now. Boys will be boys.
Will I ever meet a man? The only guys who hit on me are ones that I would never want, and refuse to see me for who I am, no matter how much I tell them who I really am.
Maybe I'm just destined to be a lone cat, slinking around different driveways, never with my own backyard.

Maybe I should wear a wedding ring. I'd rather men learn that single doesn't mean available, but I don't want to have to have a conversation about why no means no all the time. I don't want that job.

Germanic genital RANT

I am frequently amazed by confident drunk guys who nod and smile at everything you say and flush you with compliments in between telling you how you should think and act because you are wrong about basically everything. I'm sorry, but it's hard to have my entire personality mansplained by someone who keeps pointing their dick at me like a compass needle poking north. I can't be awe-inspiring one moment and literally the next an example of a misguided fool who hasn't read their non-existent book. Err on the side of caution - once I'm no longer a dazzling, manic, Germanic genital, those traits you disapprove of will be all there is, so back the fuck away. You can't spend a night making a woman feel physically uncomfortable then point out her traits that make you morally uncomfortable. You don't get to say what goes on a pizza you try to steal.

Millennial - NOT!

I have something bad to tell you guys.
Those of us born in the early '80s - we are MILLENNIALS.
Why did no-one tell me?!! I've never drawn on Groucho Mark eyebrows or hunted down gunt pants in a mothballed St. Vinnies - I don't feel okay with this classification!
And to make it worse, I graduated the exact year that it was generalised millennials would graduate - 2000.
I didn't surf the web until I was 13! Gen Z, aka, 'The Naturals' should be Millennials. We already got enough slop being called Gen Y.
Sure, I could ignore labels and go on living my life in my usual self-designed fashion, but my inner-contrarian rises up! Like a phoenix from the ashes of a thing that has ashes in it. Currently-known Millenials are wearing the same fashions we lived through in the '90s - this doesn't work! Cast wider this generation thigh gap! Keep your Flume chai latte vegan Tinder top-buns away from me. I'm going over here to yell at kids to stay off a lawn I'll never be able to afford thanks to the Baby Boomers.

Backyard Bandits VS Pub Snubs

I was thinking about how I always miss bands playing at parties. In sheds, backyards. I have a great memory of watching bands blasting a shed ceiling off under a cold inky ocean of stars in a NSW town populated with bored teens. Of a band in an unlikely yard in Albury, just behind Dean St. The air thrilled. People moved to the music. No-one got paid.

Not getting paid sucks.

But no-one gets paid now. Unless they do weddings or functions. And if you do get paid for a gig, it's so little all you can buy with it is a pair of sunnies from Chemist Warehouse and a drink. Many places don't pay at all. Then you're there, performing earnestly to people who aren't necessarily even listening, sipping rieslings, clattering knives on plates, smoking, laughing, scowling, maybe remembering a polite clap, or getting drunk and yell-talking and maybe spilling beer on you during some underevolved attempt at wooing of a human female. The venue makes money, the performer, not.

So, if no-one is making money, and a party provides fun and energy where a pub may only offer disillusionment and ill matching of musical mood to present ears, there should be more yard parties, yes?

I don't know people who have yard parties, but I've always wanted to play one. It'd be like busking, but more intimate and chaotic and safe. I like raves and festivals, but I don't dig the techno and wish more had live music, and that live music festivals and gigs could be happier and more colourful like raves. And every NYE I wish I was on a stage playing a metre from dancing people, howling in the new year. Drums pounding behind me. Whether in a venue, or a cleared shed.

Music for the people, with the people. I lived through the '90s but I crave like someone who has only seen it in films.

DRIVE by Lera Lynn & its memories

I love this song for several reasons.
It reminds me of Berlin, when it flooded my ears daily and I saw Lera sing, just a walk over the old gothic bridge that intersects with the Berlin Wall.
It reminds me of a hotel room bath I lay in at 3am in Stockholm Sweden, where I sipped a pink tea, let the cold of my feet restore to warmth after standing in the dark and wet for hours selling t-shirts and CDs to increasingly drunk Swedes, feeling the pain of my back and damaged rib from sliding down a staircase ease up, knowing I badly, badly needed to sleep, but also needing some alone time after an emotionally testing night and too much time on the road with another human.
It reminds me of a night in a small panel van flying along a freeway in outer-northern Melbourne, vision swiped with the lights of night, a man I loved beside me, and these sounds sailing through the dark with us.
Mostly - it's just an amazing song.

DRIVE