the background to an upcoming confession

I met S in The Lemmy in December. I don't know what attracted me to him, I just noticed him and liked what I saw, even though there physically wasn't anything that made me lust after him, apart from that unique bulk and brawl a rugby player's body has-which, embarassingly, makes me ache with lust. I guess he just had that quality.
I spent a while doing my usual looking over a lot, and trying to catch his attention for a sultry smile, but he was so busy, surrounded by beautiful people he never noticed. I remember a gorgeous Oriental girl, clad in denim and fuschia, standing right next to him, and my heart sank, both because it might have been his girlfriend, or he simply like the company of exceptionally beautiful women. Feeling a stab of defeatism, I gave up, sulked for a bit and then, after a few boozy snaps and dances with my friends, totally forgot about him.
Later, I was doing my usual last-hour of The Lemmy thing; hanging about by the doors, in the corner of the achingly cool bar-hip hop room and smoking my customary, poser-ish long white menthol cigarette. I always smoke when I'm alone, it makes me look less sad and desparate, as I perch at a table, cigarette held high, me dragging on it and exhaling smoke with aloof grace. I like to think I look like a Tarantino-esque heroine, dark hair, dark eyes, simple clothes, glitzy jewels, surveying the scene, and wondering if I deem these people cool enough to join. S suddenly appears, dashing in and out of the swinging doors, me casually surveying him, no smiles this time, I'm in a Tarantino movie remember? Another drag, and a cooler nasal exhalation (tres Francais), and S is suddenly returning my sly grin. He sticks half of his body out of the door but then springs backwards, and ambles over to my table. As he chats to me, rather suavely I may add, I half grin, pout, giggle, suck on my methol slowly, and we swap numbers. He shows me a photo of him and then-pop-star-of-the-minute Steve Brookstein, and then, just as I think I'm about to drop the Tarantino act as I fish for my cloakroom ticket and have to queue up against the breezeblock for my coat, S announces a mate of his has been punched by a bouncer in another club and he has to run...

...we text, I think he's rather sweet, due to the lack of sexual suggestions and I don't see him for some time. He's in London a lot he says; as he's a third year he's looking for work, he lives in West London anyway, and his uni housemates distract him from his dissertation. But it's temporary he assures me, we'll soon meet up. My heart smiles, I imagine cosy drinks and long chats, not the usual boozy cocktails and innuendos, before we can't keep our hands of each other anymore and crawl back to whoever's bed is nearest, for aggressive, grunting sex...

...the penultimate day of the first term looms, and I have a terrible cold. On campus, during seminars, study group meetings and the like, Tarantino heroine is gone. After all, you can't smoke in most campus buildings either due to law or the amount of scowls you recieve from sickly looking prep-princesses and bottle green clad athletes. Anyway, my arms are too full of books and junk, despite the empty tote bag swinging empty and open off my shoulder. I'm heady with photocopy ink, and there's a million things to do but I don't want to do them. I'm aggressive, lazy, full of bitter resentment. Ready to chomp the head off the next braying Sloane girl who mentions St Kitts or her boyfriend or tonight. And everyone's so well dressed compared to me. As I stand over the photocopier, green light sweeping back and forth over my face, the glass on the copier juddering as I aggressively turn each page and whack it down, I make the ever-renewed resolution to actually care about what I wear in the AM. You know, plan my outfits, make collages from the glossies cluttering my room, buy clothes, not the latest miracle spot cream, which, if I was naturally pretty, like EVERYONE here, I wouldn't need. Armani, Ralph Lauren, REAL designer luggage, folders effortlessly slung under arms or casually bound to chests. Artfully ripped denim. Clear tanned skin, bright white teeth and eyes. Giggles, bevies of friends. And my jacket is falling off my shoulder, my skirt is twisted round back to front, my tights are falling down, so are my slouchy boots and the cold has rendered my appearance dinosaurish.
My phone bleeps with a message. Which is really unusual during the day. It's S. Phew, he's in London. No he's not apparently, he's just witnessed the horror at the photocopier. And...his "friends are dead impressed". It must be a nightmare, I conclude, not replying to his request to meet up and hurrying off to my seminar, where my lips will remain glued shut in the presence of people who bothered to do the work and know how to discuss things.
I stomp home, the iPod screeching 80s rubbish in my ear and my phone continues to vibrate. He wants me to meet him in the campus bar. I'm halfway home, sweating and full of grumpy cold, and yet again forgot my make up bag. So there's not even the hope of retouching my make up in the reflection of the bus shelter glass before breezing back to campus. I just can't go. Even though he's leaving for the holidays today. House parties pass, goodbyes are said and term one ends.

I text S to say Merry Xmas, and things remain sweet. I joke like a fluffy bimbo, about a stocking full of diamonds and Chanel goodies, now the wholesome, rosy cheeked family girl celebrating Christmas with the family. My dark, black lace clad sexual side hasn't reared it's head with S yet, I think he's too nice.

Term two begins and plods on, the boring first half, full of exams and nothing much else. Everyone's snappy, it's been cold for too long and we wish we could come out of lectures into the late afternoon haze, not street-lit concrete and eerily shadowed trees. I always run home, pass the smells of student cooking and Neighbours glowing from cosy and messy living rooms, in the black streets, where it's damp and unloving. I don't hear from S, we're all busy, until exams are over and everyone's getting overexcited about the future. New housemates for some, tears and anxiety for me about where I actually am, halfway through. Not wanting to leave but dying to just jump on the train to London and never come back. Crying about leaving here and staying here. S is always in the background of my life, a cosy light. One day I'll be like my housemate and her boyfriend. Blockbuster videos and pizzas, giggles, kinship, lazy morning sex and spotaneous outings. It seems that sexually I'm finally getting all I want. But S texts back and he's always in London. A pattern begins to form and still I cling on. Because one day he'll have time and be my boyfriend, sure he will.

That sustains me for a long time. Even though I'm getting deeper and deeper into the messy world of casual sex with people in clubs, and in the darkened bathrooms of house parties, my panting louder than the rumble downstairs. S is always there to me though, as I lie naked on my bed, grabbing hold of yet another bobbing backside. I like to think S is waiting for me, as I shag about S is being respectful and telling everyone he's kinda seeing someone. S is going to change me, he'll be nice.

I get a little cocky one night, and text S something cheeky to which he replies with something X rated and admits he was fed up of being all chaste and was starting to worry about me. Enter MSN and my webcam. I'm doing what I've never done before. Lip-glossing and hair-ruffling up for a lens, gyrating alone in my room in th best lingerie I can find while S responds with admiration in the filthiest sentences. Now I'm cam-girl, greeting an audience of thousands as my friends watch in admiration and the guys I know from first year see that sexual side of me and dream about me in the most exotic positions. Sexual confessions and ambitions too, and suddenly that's all I am. Sex toys arrive in the post and obscure "discreetly named" companies appear on my credit card bill. My pubic hair disappears on a hot waxy strip of paper. Soon I'm gonna meet S too.
And that's how I developed the fatal habit of baring all for gains.

S has always been my secret. Nobody knows about him, nobody knows I even met him. I don't know why, but I like it that way. He's mine, my private hope, my rope ladder from a burning window. I'm envisioning parties where everyone's secretly gobsmacked at my smart choice. S is wowing the boys in the kitchen, beer casually clutched in a bear like fist, gesticulating and making kind jokes about me in the Carribean, London restaurants, at rugby matches. I'm in the lounge, glowing, orange tanned, sleek black hair, frosty make up, flicking long nails about and jangling jewelled wrists, talking about "my baby, S". Everyone's imagining me, a tiny toned stick under his mass, slim ankles on burly shoulders, between hotel sheets and my face contorted in extascy, while my cockney boom is replaced with a high pitched squeak for a voice and I'm whipsering American porn cliches in his ear as we make the steamiest love possible.
So I head off on the train, to see some vaguely phrased "boy from my course", in an impossible combo of tight denim, bouffant hair, heels and a ballet wrap, to London's West End, the rendez-vous point Selfridges. I've never seen S properly. And there he comes, huge, in an expensive suit, kisses me politely on the cheek and leads me through a melee of softly lit marble beauty halls and noisy fashion departments full of echoing ragga music. It's weird though, S looks bored as I chat animatedly over a vile noodle broth while he stabs slovernly at a piece of chicken and chews it powerfully, glancing about and nodding or asking me to repeat myself or grunting assent.
S is different in real life to the charming "sweet-heart sweet-heart" over the phone.
He discusses hotels, champagne, a night together. A bit speedy I must say. And as we leave, we both start to head off before bashfully assenting to a polite kiss. An hour and that's that.

Something doesn't feel right, I brood silently over tea indoors, where Mum bitchily sticks the boot in. I stare into space and think as burgers sizzle to a dried out black disc on a griddle. My mind is split in two as I scrawl cooking preferences for steak and slap it on a grimy tiled wall in a kitchen. The dream is unravelling, but I'm doing my best to keep it tight. Perhaps it's me.
But the chats on MSN are brief now, a few filthy sexual suggestions before S before he announces how busy he is and just logs off. I don't hear from him for weeks on end, he's always busy. Term three does not bring pizzas, videos, outings and morning sex but more hurried, sporadic messages and chats, and an increasingly worried mental state for me.
I'm hiding in my room, cringing and crying whenever a housemate laughs in another room. Phoning my parents for hours on end in the middle of the night. S visits me for 15 minutes one day, but ignores my conversation and just wants me to suck his cock. Interrupting my worried gabble about things not feeling right to make grabs at my boobs and pull me on top of him. A housemate walks in confused about the huge suitcase in the hallway and finds S. An elusive description from me in return and S's threat to never get my friends involved in us.
I'm getting bored and spending more time alone, in tears, ignoring my work, feeling sick as I walk back to my house from campus. Something's wrong. And S was supposed to be here this term.

S phones now and again. On the eve of my aunt's funeral while I look at ponchos with my mum in a deserted Docklands supermarket. And other times. S is still that little hope, although now tinged with grey, when I return home suddenly, unable to take life anymore. And he continues to disappoint. Still too busy. Arranging a date because he cannot stand me online. A midnight phone call lecturing me about my accent. Bragging about strippers and strip clubs and breaking his ankle in a topless bar in the Ukraine. S was nice. Not a blue-lit face looking up greedily while a long-legged, big breasted Amazonian beauty with fluttering false eyelashes pouted at him as she flips herself around a pole. Not the guy who books a double room and then phones me to tell me on no terms are we just gonna be sitting chatting the night away before undressing with our backs to each other and dozing off. I'm going to be fucked till I faint in every hole. Who cares what underwear I've spent hours browsing when he will push it to the side as he aggressively takes me.

Life is full of disappointments.

Mingleville c'td...

So my obsession continues. Although my online Mingleville stints are shorter-due to both sharing a computer and terrible VDU-induced migrane, and perhaps, the need to get a real life-I'm stil totally addicted.

The Internet has forever been a double-edged sword. It's caused a boon in communication, and made the world so much smaller. It's created a 24 hour society. It's also become home to a lot of lonely people. People like Mandie, and like me. Girls who feel the need to pout and flex in glamour-model poses ("let my tits do the talking") in a strive for male admiration. Indeed "the Mingleville effect", creates a feeling in one (speaking for myself perhaps), of intense sexual adoration, akin perhaps to that a supermodel or glamour model might feel. Replying to messages from strangers, thanking them for their compliments, alomost feels like being a kind and caring celebrity who replies to their well-wishing fans. Mandie/Sexeh's popularity and regular "audience" is such that she could easily have her own website in the style of intelligent web-whoresTasty Trixie or Pagan Moss. Her lurid but artfully done photos and videos are combined with "txt-spk" free, sensitive musings in her blog.
Perhaps Mandie, and definately myself, are too shy to chat to boys. Perhaps we are both sick of trying to make people see what's really inside, which is far more beautiful than two bud-like breasts and young supple tanned skin in a lurid lingerie set, and succumbed to whacking it all out. That's the only way anyone's going to notice and say we're stunners. I gained more comments through pictures of myself in my underwear on Mingleville, than through any soulful musing on Blogger, although's that's probably simply explained by the respective vastness of both communities and Mingleville's tracking of members movements throughout the site. Blogger allows one to sink back into oblivion between posts. Mingleville tells the sites you visit, in deep purple, who you are through the click of a button.
The phenomenon could just be simply explained by the ever dark and secret underworld of teenage sexual discovery. How the young girl realises through private fumbling in her bed at night what masturbation, arousal and orgasm are. The teenage boy falls in love with the female form through stolen glances of pornography in the school-yard or the newsagents. A teenage girl realises through the media, and her own developing self-awareness the pleasure the very sight of her young nubile body can bring to a lover. Sexual awakening, and one's developing awareness of the sexual elements of their personality should not be criticised or frowned upon, indeed, the deep problems of Britain's sex life can be directly attributed to this cladestine attitude to sex left behind by the Victorians. And moreover, we should not stifle the sexual growth of youngsters, or find worrying teenage sexuality. Teenagers will always be sexually frenzied, it's both hormonal and environmental, and on the whole it's harmless fun, and all part of growing up. At least the Internet allows young people to explore sex in a relatively safe manner. We longer have to venture into seedy red-light districts, down staircases and through beaded curtains. A teenage girl can take a photo of her self in underwear and post it anonymously to a website where she can be admired, if this is what turns her on. However, the popularity of sites which allow purely one's sexual side to stand out are surely worrying.

...my reason could not be worse. It's not a time of soul-seeking, or the dicovery of distance running or a great friendship, but an addiction to something as mundane as a teen photo-profile website known as Mingleville. Should anyone who mercifully escaped the FaceParty craze of the early-noughties not know what exactly this site is, let me explain. It's a neon-pink and purple little community of personal profiles, which include the posting of five free photographs, a little box to describe oneself, a blog, links for Mingleville buddies and the ability to message other members and comment on their photographs. The average age range of a "Mingler" as I shall refer to them is usually between 13 and 17.
I came across it in a dark moment of internet boredom-induced by unemployment and a non-existent social life, not to mention living in the back of beyond-where your brain feels heavy at Googling yet another useless topic-I found myself Googling Grange Hill characters and kids toys of yesteryear, not to mention cures for corns. Browsing FaceParty, I came across the profile of a young lady called Sexeh, known to her parents-in clothed form no doubt-as seventeen year-old Mandie. Mandie could be technically described as an amateur cam whore. She has all the common characteristics, bar an extravagant Amazon wish-list. She's articulate, slightly bookish in appearance, and obviously extremely computer literate. Not to mention obviously extremely curious of the effect her burgeoning sexuality has on men. Headless shots of torsos, breasts, legs and bums grace her many photo pages. Mandie had discovered, in her hours of browsing phot-profile sites, a cheaper and far more popular alternative to the dated, expensive and cliquey FaceParty-Mingleville. So off I went, tempted by Mandie's scores of male fans, worshipping at her pixellated, stilleto-clad feet. Within seconds, I too had my own Mingleville profile, and a community of 5, 000 potential viewers in my grasp.
Blogger it ain't. So fear not, I haven't found a superior sphere in which I can air my views. Nope. I've simply found a garish little spot on the internet for which to indulge my curious, narcissictic side. The photo comment feature had me signed up straight away. What do the web-literate teenagers of Britain think of moi?
With that it was time to take some photos. My first attempt, with the dated old webcam we got as part of our PC package, consisted of demure shots of me clad in jeans and a baggy TopShop hoody, and of my face only. I like to think they were model-esque, arty shots of my facial profile, glancing to the side and anywhere but the camera, lip-gloss pouts and Colgate grins. They were quickly uploaded, pended for approval by the webmasters and were then live on the site. And suddenly my mailbox was the fullest it's ever been bar when I've been on a long holiday. The comments were usual randy teen fare, in typical teen "txt spk"-"U R A BABE :D", "STUNNIN!", "MA JAW DROPZ, GAL U FINE". Messages asked me for everything from MSN names-more about this later-to phone numbers and addresses (seriously, the teens of Britain obviously learned nothing from Sarah-Louise hiding under the bed in the house of a web-paedophile in Corrie. And they can't be watching Tonight With Trevor McDonald either, with it's horror stories of teen girls zipping over the Atlantic to meet obese ex-Marines.). My positive rating, where members can rate you and therefore gain you points to spend online adding features to your profile, soared and I had 1000-plus hits in a couple of hours. It took me a year to achieve that on Blogger.

Mingleville's ability to turn your profile into a ratings hit worthy of the more popular Bloggers lies in it's intrusive tracking software which lists the last few visitors to your page at the bottom of your profile, a full list of online members, and the opportunity to see exactly who visits your site, and who rates you. Your every moved is tracked, and this is particularly highlighted by the feverish ratings and messages left by members whose profiles you stumbled upon for five seconds, because of an interesting name of something. It's on the whole a friendly place, where one never feels lonely. This ranges from the simple friendly comments on your photos or through messages, to the protectiveness and loyalty of Mingleville members when jealous 16 year-olds turn on one anothers bra pics. Your page isn't quite complete with a txt spk "ur pics r fake innit bitch" comment or two. That usually means you're a looker, worthy of the jealousy of people who wouldn't have even bothered spitting on you at school.

So I've become addicted. The first few days of my membership, when messages and comments would appear by the second, I was online for five hour stints, diligently replying to such and positively rating members. I formed friendships with a humourous and camp 16 year-old Dubliner, a male model from Brighton, a sex-obsessed Oxbridge graduate and a teenage Jordan lookalike from Sheffield.
The downsides of Mingleville are both it's potentially personality-altering effects, and the sociological explanation for why so many beautiful teenage girls feel the need to be photographing and exhibitioning themselves in their skimpiest underwear, and why I obviously succombed to a similar desire...

Two Days, One City...

...it might be a corny title but it was literally the only one I could think of to describe my personal slant on the polemic events of these last two days. How London can go from elation to horror in the space of twenty-four hours. Solidarity in every situation, from Live 8, to yesterday in Trafalgar Square to today. It's so eerily weird. No-one really thinks about how we felt yesterday. It's just bizarre. I remember some of the later IRA attacks in London in the mid-nineties, my most prominent menmory being that of hearing the Docklands blast from my bedroom, a faint rumble, and the subsequent cancellation of school trips. I remember that gnawing sense of worry about my dad, who worked in The City at the time, as I saw sheets of glass hanging from wrecked office blocks, ghost-town streets shrouded in the squeal of car alarms. I remember feeling, whenever I went to London that sense of "What if?". And that disbelief that there were such evil people out there who didn't care if they killed innocent people. Today felt very much the same.
It was odd looking at the news rack in the mini-mart today, "London's Glory", "We Won" "Triumph For London", phrases along the lines of what was screaming from every front page. And flicking through pages of excitement for 2012. Imagine how different the headlines will be this evening and tomorrow.
My my, it's certainly been a week.

Harriet's blog, In The Aquarium (link on your right) has a comprehensive list of the opinion of all of the main London bloggers, so make your way there if you want to read more.

Live 8

What a brilliant day. I did tingle when the camera zoomed in on Big Ben and Johnathan Ross echoed across the city with the classic Live Aid introduction. But I must say I was a little worried the likes of our generation wouldn't experience the atmosphere of Wembley twenty years ago, when U2 and Paul McCartney broke into what seemed a rather lacklustre opening (this is my opinion, and I don't profess to be a musical expert, so please don't bombard me with angry comments about putting a Beatle and "lacklustre" in the same sentence. It may well have been amazing to the musically initiated, but it just didn't do it for me, k?) in comparison to the Wembley beginning. However, once we were warmed up I was rather moved by the rendition of "Beautiful Day", and it just got better and better. Unfortunately missed the Madonna set, which I waited ALL DAY to watch, thanks to my family being into tennis, but I must say the likes of The Killers, with Hyde Park echoing "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier", Robbie Williams and of course the The Who/Pink Floyd finale more than made up for it. The Who made me jealous of my folks who saw it all first time round, Pink Floyd moved me to tears, I think they are the key example of how music is best heard live. How great were they?!

We definately had the best atmosphere, in my opinion. I watched the re-run of the Philadelphia gig and it just seemed a little too contrived. A bit like watching one of those manky music roadshows for Top Of The Pops or something (I'll probably get into trouble for saying this as well. This isn't a dig at America, trust me, I know they support the cause just as much as us. It was just teh way the show was that's all). Although Will Smith's moving world-wide "hello" to all the concerts and the clicking did move me.

That will teach me to be lazy and not find out the text number for the Live 8 tickets in time...
*
How flippin' gorgeous did Fergie look though?! Loving the laid-back but downright sexy outfit Fergs! Black vest-top, lots of ghetto gold (to quote Sex & The City), skinny jeans-which I am craving right now, although I don't think buying something 'cause La Moss looks fantastic in it is a recipe for happiness-and mad Nike trainers, very much like my beloved but as yet unworn Valentines. She looked damn good, laid-back sexy, the type of star style you can go down the corner-shop in and not feel like a fool! In fact, I shall.