Wisdom dictates that one should not act in the heat of the moment, or write and post something online whilst angry and in the throes of intoxication. It can often be unwise and ill thought out.
However, as I’m sure you wonderful readers will know, sometimes you have to give words to feelings that you have immediately when they occur, else risk losing the zeal for them forever afterwards.
The past few days I’ve spent time with people that I’ve either not seen in a long time, or those who I’ve never really gotten the chance to hang out with outside of a brief encounter at work before.
On the way to meet one of my old friends tonight I couldn’t help but reflect a bit on going abroad and now being back home. Being in America, and so far away from everything that happens in regular life, it can be easy to dwell on the romanticism of disappearing off there for some sort of extended period. When you walk along streets that you know so well though, with people who work in the shops along the way waving as you pass, you can’t help but love your city. How else are you meant to find such a deep rooted sense of belonging than somewhere like that… a place that you love? No matter how long or how comfortable you get in Glasgow, there is always going to be a myriad of different people and things to experience… relationships that need to be teased out and explored. If you know somebody in one context, who knows how the dynamic might shift in a different one?
Case in point, this is Julie/Julz/Jules.
This fair red-haired maiden is somebody who I’ve known through a strange set of circumstances for quite a long time. Even though we’ve only ever had brief encounters before tonight, she’s a lovely girl who has always been dead nice to me, and given the close people in our lives that we have in common, it was way past time that we actually got together and hung out for a bit.
It should have been obvious that we’d get on since our connections are through some of my oldest and closest pals, but from the minute she turned up on my doorstep (okay, after getting lost a bit), we seemed to get on like a house on fire. Know where you can just talk and talk with somebody with no pretence and without playing silly conversational games, as if you’ve known each other for years? That’s how it was, and we both couldn’t believe we hadn’t been proper pals a long time ago.
Saying all of that, it’s amazing how the opposite can also be true, and no matter what ties you might think you have to the people in a certain place, how shallow and easily breakable they can turn out to be.
Whilst the romance of going abroad may be obvious, the romance of your home city can be just as deceptive. The feeling of community that is fostered between the weak relationships that we build up day-to-day is so easily shown up as hollow when you come up against certain situations, and leaves you wondering whether there really are any proper ties to your hometown, or wheter it’s all just social semantics.
One thing I am sick to death of is the pre-conception that males and females are unable to spend time together without having an alterior motive.
The social rigmarole that surrounds the idea of a girl and a guy together is probably the single biggest issue issue that pisses me off more than anything else.
As should be obvious from the focus I have on portraits, I love people. There’s something about the incredible complexity that is both fascinating and wonderful to me… and that’s without even considering the emotional response to that.
I often find myself battling against preconceptions because of this. Believe it or not, it is possible to be close to somebody of the opposite sex without having a primary driving motivator based on the physical act of sex.
Tonight I again encountered this pre-disposition in an ugly way, and am left feeling disaffected and jaded. Instead of rallying together to look after people who we care about in common, guys jostle for some sort of macho-bullshit-alpha-male position, not out of any real strength but some sort of deep-rooted insecurity, in order to claim some sort of ridiculous, superficial supremacy. Instead of recognising that those who we supposedly trust are able to be friends with the opposite sex and not simply some sort of arbitrary threat, time and again males opt for the defensive stance… which comes at the detriment of us all.
I am sick and tired of being treated a certain way because of my gender, especially by those who are doing so precisely because of their own corrupt intentions. It’s time that we start fighting back against this ridiculous idea of sexuality, and refuse to criticise those of our own ilk for their perceived actions off the back of our own biase. The more we adopt stereotypes for our own ends, the more we harm ourselves.
I apologise if there are too many big words in this post to be clear enough, and I wouldn’t expect those who I am directing this post at to understand, so let me state the general principle in no uncertain terms:
I will not accept being treated like an idiot again by anybody for being close to somebody of the opposite sex.
Clear enough?
Cool.