Racing Stripes

Dear Fashionable Gentlemen;


We know that you primp, preen and hone yourself to as close to perfection as your physique and modern cosmetic technology will allow you. By ‘we’ I mean the female population in general and we, the part of the female population that appreciates your efforts to catch our interest, can completely sympathize with the pains you put up with simply for our benefit (I suppose it’s really all to your benefit if you are getting the attention, but that’s beside the point.). Regrettably, a sizable share of you has taken the task of preening too far. Luckily for you, however, a large proportion of the above mentioned women who, as much as this may personally bewilder me, more than simply value those of you who are well groomed, but swoon over men with perfect tans, frosted tips and that oh-so masculine diamond earring hanging off of your earlobes. Fine; I’m sure your matching tans and Luis Vuitton purses will look great together.

Over time, I have learned to repress my gag reflex (as it really is rather unhealthy to heave so often) when I happen to run into those of you who spend more time on your two inches of one hundred and fifty dollar hair than I did on my entire outfit before heading to the bar that night. Despite obvious distaste and a general disapproval for men who remind me more of my female friends than of those with bits that dangle, I have come to accept that you will forever be a part of the social scene. The past three years or so, however, have brought a new idea to the ‘fashion’ stage that has left me completely bewildered and near incapable of speech. It is just that horrendous.

Why the fuck would you shave racing stripes into the sides of your heads?

Do they make you go faster? (which is not something you should be advertising to get sex anyway) Is it perhaps an accelerator to your love lives that I have failed to notice? I suppose it is plausible that in my distaste for men like you, I have somehow managed to block an innate female draw to men with stripes by their temples. That must be it! The patterns you dropped your last pay cheque for (or had your mother cut in her kitchen) must be some sort of archaic natural symbolism designed to draw us females into your arms and bedrooms. Better yet, it is entirely possible that those outlines were not even a result of conscious design but rather that of a vicious street fight in which you were repeatedly knifed across the temple and nowhere else, thanks to your incredible testosterone drive and the inevitable defeat of your attacker.

…Right. As a gesture of peace, however, I wholeheartedly allow you to take those excuses as your own and run with it if you still feel the need to flex your waxed, cheddar-coloured arms and zoom by us ladies at the bars. Whenever you see any of us smiling at you from the dance floor, try not to ponder too deeply into whether we’re smiling at you or if we are really reading the message shaved into the side of your head; you’ll just end up lowering your hard earned self-esteem.

The Don'ts of Doing Me

Time and experience have taught me several lessons on what I will and will not accept… mostly on what I won’t. The oddities that men seem to think are sexy and the various things that they will bring up in the midst of a romp session are sometimes so damned amusing, that I have decided to document them.


1. Don’t ask me to say, scream, or moan your name as, chances are, I have no idea what it is and I generally don’t want you to feel too terribly about yourself if I am not quite done yet.

2. Don’t deny me the opportunity to take a shower with you. What are you; gay?

3. Don’t swing yourself in front of my face whilst wishing me “Merry Christmas.” I thoroughly chew the meat I find in my gifts.

4. Don’t call me up to help you heal your friend’s bleeding and broken heart with sex. As much of an experience and story as it may make in the future; the delicate way in which you drag me by the belt loops towards the big bed in the middle of the room with him watching is not the way to get my blood pumping.

5. Don’t threaten me with handcuffs if you do not plan on delivering. There is a reason that I am around you at all and without the handcuffs, that reason is very hard to remember.

6. Don’t insist that I compensate for your inability to keep a condom full. Get used to it or go home; I like to sleep with dirty men but that does not make me willing to ditch my clean record.

7. Don’t ask to keep my panties. Not only is that weird and brings to mind the Swim-Fan type, but I paid for those panties and I damn well intend on impressing more than just you with them.

8. Don’t try to lay me on your parents’ bed. That is the bed where they most likely conceived you and/or recreate the events of your conception regularly. I want nothing to do with your parents anyway, so don’t find a way to somehow include me in their sex lives.

9. Don’t dry hump me like you would your favourite space between the pillows; I have a dog and he can do that just as well as you can.

10. Don’t ask me to go out while I am straddling you. And please don’t correct my belief that you want to go outside to finish up in January. I would rather think your mind is on the sex than on possibly seeing me outside of the bedroom.

11. Don’t tell me that I look just like your girlfriend during our threesome. The reason I was invited to join in is because I am obviously hotter than she is.

12. Don’t blame me if your grandmother sees the scratches on your back; it means that you were at least doing something right.

13. Don’t tell me about the seven year old daughter you found out you had three months earlier. While her pictures might be endearing and the story may be quite cute, I do not plan on engaging in reproductive behaviours with someone who has already proven to be unexpectedly fertile.

14. Don’t make it a competition. I will win.

15. Don’t comment on the bruises left behind by the last guy; you know damned well that I just heard your phone call to one of your other call girls.

16. Don’t sweep me off the sidewalk for an aggressive kiss and then tell me not expect it of you in the future. That is like opening the door of the chocolate factory to Charlie, slamming it in his face and later anticipating a return visit.

17. Don’t ask me if the sex means anything to me. This is generally a good rule of thumb, but, for your sake, specifically refrain from asking me this after having met the day before.

18. Don’t hope to get anything out of me after telling me I belong to you. Don’t hope to get away alive, either.

19. Don’t bite my arm. Biting may be sexy, but the arm is generally not one of the erotic female zones and the fist sized bruise you leave behind evokes more sympathetic looks than my ego can handle.

21. Don’t try to hold my hand after sex. Unless I like you (and I probably do not) or plan on laying you again within the next five minutes, I do not want to be touched or cuddled by you.

22. Don’t invite your roommate into the room for a toke while I am still naked under your sheets.

23. Don’t cover my neck in so many hickeys that I look like I have a severe case of melanoma. I am not one of those women who enjoy wearing scarves inside.

24. Don’t hang yourself out the front of your jeans at the beach as the shock the tour group of septuagenarians may experience could only lead to several fatal heart attacks. You would not want that on your conscience, would you?



None of these "Dont's" are fictitious; I do fully intend to make fun of every man I’ve ever slept with... they deserve it, after all.

Blood Spatter on the Rose Petal of My Heart

Please, recognize the humour in this... this is by no means the way I would spill my heart out on the internet (which I'm very pleased to say I've never done). I think if I were to do as much, I would have to be no older than 14, and the final result would be much more obscene. Kindly see 'Option C' for further background.



today marks the third dark day in a week of oppression. i do not know how my soul could possibly take this much cruelty and confinement, but somehow i think i have inverted myself so as to protect the preciously soft material that forms my heart. i can not bring myself to understand the motives of the bodies that gave me life. yes, i say bodies because i believe it to be quite impossible to so thoroughly lack compassion as a proper live human being; and worse yet, to show compassion for the vampiric creature with whom i share no more than name.

that beast believes herself to have the power to speak of my whereabouts to our unfortunate creators, despite my obvious instructions and faith in her silence. she can consider herself cursed from this moment on- she no longer has a brother. and thus, while she lays unsuspectingly in the laps of my guardsmen; i will exact my revenge. how many people, i wonder, has she told of her youthful bedwetting problems? … all the while they dote over her despicability and ignore my need for affection; even if the ones i require care from seem to lack that human quality.

“i’m not okay,” to quote the brilliant gerard arthur way who, incidentally, is slandered inappropriately by those who can not seem to bring themselves to understand the way he touches so many broken souls. where would i be without his beautiful music? unemotional and more alone than i am now, without a doubt. i would still be mourning that cruel bitch who had the nerve to steal the pure virginity of my lips and then tell the clandestinites of our institution of conformity that i did not suck face properly. how is my soul ever supposed to find its bloody twin in this tainted environment! speaking of conformity; we the clandestinites have made a movement for individuality and expression; no more shall we capitalize. it is an elevation of one idea above another, the escalation of one’s blood over another’s, the assertion that one sibling is better than the other. and so capitalization will become a thing of the past.

my spirit is now too heavy with emotion and i have bared my beating heart for too long; i must leave you until later and cleanse my blood of today’s injustice.

**dark~nymph**



~*ps. i got tix to good charlotte’s show! =D itll be nothing but babes!*~

The Pool-Boy I Call Rugby

There are some days that come around when I sit at my desk, massaging sore legs and wonder how normal people do it. Not “it”, the very subtle allusion to secretive human (and surprisingly enough, the natural biological form of reproduction) S.E.X., but actually the “it” of not having any. Granted, it would be a slight exaggeration of the truth were I to claim that I got some on a regular basis from a wide variety of victims, I mean, attractive volunteers, but if I’m somehow lacking at least I get worked over frequently by the Pool-Boy I like to call Rugby.

The moments when I come home covered in mud, bruises, or scratches and babbling happily to my roommates are, oddly enough, the times when I find myself favoured with more blank looks and raised eyebrows than usual. Is there something wrong with enjoying a little blood and dirty work? Undoubtedly, despite what your mother or pastor would tell you, it’s the sweat and the resulting ache that land and keep survival of the species on everyone’s mind. So why wouldn’t I spend eighty minutes rolling through the mud with a ball? The women I play with may not be exactly my idea of a good tumble, but the balls and adrenaline that my Pool-Boy brings to the field are more than worth forfeiting my ability to walk the next day (which is something that gets left at the door before decent playing time in the bedroom anyways).

While I’m sure that knitting the sex drive away may be some people’s visionary answer, I personally feel it lacks a certain sense of rush, of excitement, of… While I may not be expressing myself clearly, generally, other options could only result in boredom. Subject yourself to some mud and bruises first, and then tell me that your preferred Pool-Boy is stamp collecting.

An Ode to Specificity

As many of our wizened instructors and others have taught us over the years; details are what we call 'tools' in writing



So I was just thinking about this thing that happened pretty recently and thought, you know, I could tell you about it. I am not sure if this is actually something you may want to hear about but, the point is that you won’t believe what happened. Anyways, I was at this place (you know, the one with the thing?) and all of a sudden this person comes up to me and starts talking about this stuff that happened a while ago. To be honest it was kind of weird and it was all a little vague, but I think he was talking about the time that thing happened to the people down south a little ways. It was something about these chicks at a school who did some stuff to a guy and then something happened at a time a little later on and now nobody wants to talk about it. The point here is that some group of people ended up getting a little drastic and then there were some big changes in the way we do things and those chicks ended up getting sent away. So the person that’s talking to me about this smelt like something I knew that I know and I remembered that time that we did the thing together, which is an absolutely ridiculous connection to make, but we were at the same place that those chicks were and so technically, we are intricately connected to those events.

Crazy, eh?

Holiday Lessons

A list of the lessons learned by one Miss Tanysia over two weeks of Christmas vacation;


1. Sleep is for suckers.

2. Chaw should not be left tucked into your drunken lip during a twenty minute car ride, especially without a spittoon and after having told the driver that you had spit it out already.

3. One of the better ways to measure beer is in yards.

4. 3 o’clock in the morning is the best time for a full-fledged, bacon and cheese-eggs sort of breakfast.

5. The many layers your ass is covered in during skiing tend to become a hassle after eight cups of coffee and two glasses of beer.

6. Christmas shopping is best done the day before, with all the malls closing in half an hour and no idea what to get for the four relatives that have blessed you with their presence this year.

7. Finding that you are in your sweat pants and not your pyjamas Christmas morning and wondering how you even ended up in bed is the inevitable result of seven bottles of wine and your father’s insistence that you simply must try his cognac.

8. There is a limit to how much food you can consume in one sitting... that limit, however, has yet to be found.

9. You really do get more attention when you are dressed in only half a shirt.

10. Eating strangers’ pizza is perfectly acceptable when stumbling around outside the bar and calling for taxis at two o’clock in the morning.

11. While common belief states that following three men home alone will ultimately lead to death, experience states that you will only be subjected to two hours of them prancing around in Hot Gossip clothing… although seeing that much concentrated metrosexuality could kill you.

12. Male strippers are unfortunately small in the pants; even when your extreme sexiness has them standing at full attention.

13. Your parents will not take you skiing when you called them at five o’clock that morning to let you in the house.

14. Mature individuals hate when vast quantities of liquor are consumed on the train.

15. Do not agree to go to a party in Bowness with one of your old friends if you plan on being at home anytime before sunrise.

16. The people who work 24 hour convenience stores never fail to be talking at high speeds on their cell phones, but to whom are they talking to at three o’clock in the morning? The only other people who aren’t sleeping or incoherent: convenience store employees.

17. Remember to apologize profusely if someone who carries a knife thinks you insulted their family (or, better yet, their ability to take care of their family) sometime last spring.

18. The only way to fully appreciate a drug house is to make yourself comfortable on the couches and watch ShowCase grade porn for four hours.

19. The bottle depot is a worse place to be when the alcohol is not sitting well in your blood the next day than a morgue after a two week power outage.

20. Loonies stick to strippers and, oddly enough, their twats too.

21. Upon going to gay dance clubs, the constant disappointment of seeing hot men and then realizing they aren’t interested can get depressing; it is best to go armed and intoxicated.

22. It is advised that if you are going to make fun of people in the gondola, on the slopes, and on the chairlift, you do so with friends around as it does not make you any new ones.

23. When you are at the liquor store and joke with the cashier about the amount you are buying, have someone around later who will ensure that you actually were kidding when you said it was all for you.

24. Next time you have an old friend start jumping, screaming and yelling about how much she misses you- try to remember her name.

25. Hot tubs and New Year’s Eve do not ever go well together.

26. When you are too drunk to smoke, you are too drunk. Period.

27. New Year’s Day is decidedly the worst day in any living memory; the time has come to replace the aforementioned day with another night, designed primarily for sleeping.

28. You look like an idiot when you accidentally die your thumbs the same colour as your hair.

29. The guards at airport security giggle when they find three bottle openers upon searching your purse, almost as if it isn’t something they see very often.

30. The ability to keep yourself entertained by finding patterns in the carpet is no longer a talent to be laughed at; it becomes a necessity when your plane is three hours late.


The University shall now be known for detoxifying one Miss Tanysia. Who would have thought?

Real Degrees

When my parents pushed a "real" degree (as they like to call it) into my smoke stained hands, I will readily confess that I ran from the house and towards my local coffee shop. It may have been the idea of basement labs and formaldehyde that provoked my outrage or perhaps the devious suggestion that I may even meet some smart men while I was at it, but I couldn’t help but cringe from the thought. I would much rather sit by the ocean gazing off into the distance trying to find the inspiration in construction cranes than dig through pig cells to discover the meaning of life. Interesting it may be (the process of pig cell extraction would admittedly have me sitting on the edge of my seat), but I have a hard time believing any of that is necessary to my own unplanned future.

Oh sure, the science types may be characteristically nasal and bound to be incapable of human interaction, but even I couldn’t deny that there is a certain prestige to a person who has endured hours of lecture willingly. Occasionally while sipping coffee black enough to chip teeth, I’ll notice the frazzle of my roommate’s hair or the glaze in her bloodshot eyes. Further inspection (or in my case, yelling “What the hell happened to your face?”) has taught me that there is a price to be paid for the esteem of intelligence and that “hard work” is apparently more than just a word yelled by parents. However, even after months of my own hard-won research, the belief around my house remains that exam aneurisms make for better stories than the ones that find their way onto my pages.

Getting calls from home only serves to highlight the difference in view points, between what I call work and what my parents call lying around on my ass. My father will ask what I plan to accomplish during this waste of time, my mother will insinuate the question of when I mean to land a ring, and to both I shrug and explain that it really just takes time to uncover the true meaning of inspiration; you can’t rush an artist.

Besides, who wants a smart man?

Apparently

My writing apparently lacks anything of substance, any sort of plot, or anything that would make people jump up and see the world in a new, brilliant sort of way. But somehow this morning, between my right and left pockets and the daily struggle to find my keys, I realized something so fantastically enlightening that I had to rush to my computer to share that information with the world and my facebook friends. I, the ambitious young writer woman that I am, don’t really care.

On a daily basis I plop down (and I mean ‘plop’ in the most literal sense of the word as I’m not one for delicacies or intricacies or even punctuality) beside a student who is sure to be the next big hit. After excusing myself, I can always look over at my prompt comrade and see some sort of sparkle of ingeniousness and new ideas, a small dreamy smile and a face that I’m sure will adorn not the back, but the very cover of their next book. They’re just that good.

Though it’s the little twinkle that will one day grace at least two different Oprah shows I notice when I first look over to gauge my competition, it’s only once I’m thoroughly bored and after a full ten minutes that I start to examine more that just the sparkle. Often times these prodigies and professor’s favourites come complete with a hereditary squint, hairy knuckles, or hair compliments of grandma’s hairdresser and while they’re busy thinking up new ways to approach politics or in depth analyses of the human relation, I explore much more relevant issues. For instance, how did they get to be so hairy? Why wouldn’t they simply go get waxed? Apparently, however, this sort of thing is neither earth shattering nor is it deemed highly thought provoking.

Well fuck that shit.

I may lack sparkle. I may never write a story read in gr.11 English Lit, or even be the author of a novel read by the neighbourhood book club, but I am determined. Determined to continue writing letters to broken bones, plays about nerds because I think it’s funny even though no one else does and stories about crazy ladies who get strangled by their nine cats. I will be as apparently unthought-provoking as humanly possible, as irrelevant as the mouthwash on my table, and as inconsequential as the girl who sits in class and writes about her genius rivals. How this inspiration came to be in my pockets, however, I have no idea.

Dear Finger

Dear Finger;

It is now obvious that for the past several weeks we have had somewhat of a compromised relationship. Although you must be aware that I respect your demands for space and private time, I would appreciate your cooperation in the immediate future. Understandably, after suffering such a personal injury, you can not be held accountable for your incredible touchiness and sore disposition, but it was the incredible numbness and your retreat from my life that hurt me deeply. The way in which you suddenly "broke it off" from me, even if for as short a time as it may have been, left me so dazed and disoriented that, without you, I found myself near incapable of such simple tasks as tying my shoes. In complete honesty; I was wounded.

Now, the time in which I implore your return to my life has arrived; I have missed you sorely. Investigative attempts from friends "behind the screens" have informed me of your moves to put yourself back together and I would like you and your many talents to be back in my hands as soon as possible. I am willing to put everything at my disposal into supporting you during this period of healing. As much pain and discomfort as you may have caused me during this short foray of yours into self inflicted personal bindings and away from our adventures together, I understand that I must continue to treat you gently in hopes of your full return to stability. I promise to treat you cautiously even though you have been keeping yourself isolated from the world in such an impenetrable casing.

I know that with patience you will be on hand again, but I do not know how much longer I can care for myself as your sudden departure left me quite debilitated.

Please, piece yourself together again.


Thanks,
Tanysia

Option C

As I like to think of myself as an aspiring writer of many and numerous talents (the most notable being the ability to consume the amount of liquor necessary to kill a small horse), the past several weeks have prompted me to begin pondering how precisely do I ‘aspire’? Does this involve me campaigning small magazines to print pieces on the local artwork, the perfect placement of a beret on my head as I smoke and scribble in a small black notebook, or would sitting in my pyjamas in front of my computer after rugby practice count? Personally, I prefer option C.

Option C, however, is one of the few points on any young wannabe writer’s list that gets them literally nowhere. The thing, though, is that I do thoroughly enjoy a good challenge. And it was just as I was enjoying complaining about this desire for difficulty, the resulting complexity my life would become over the next forever and whining in the general direction of a theatrically brilliant colleague of mine, that she kindly suggested I start a blog.

I hate blogs. The entitlement they lend to people to tell stories about how terrible cleaning the cat vomit off of their shoes was is ludicrous. I should be the only one entitled to spin that tale. So fine! I decided that I would blog and I would blog well; so well that I would burn an imprint amongst the properly aspiring writers who spend their vacations baking and actually remember their New Year’s. At this point I rolled out of bed, ready to reveal my frogprint-clad ass and the glory that is my literary works to the world, impressed with the brilliance of my plan and the resulting quashing of the emotional blogs 14 year olds write in their spare time.

Now, the only roadblock to my destiny is the conception of a name to properly title my aspirations… and unless I'm about to call it "Blood Spatter on the Rose Petal of My Heart," that is much more fucking difficult than it looks.