The last time I blogged here I was seeing baby for the weekend, even though I was working. It turned out to be the last weekend we would spend together. I don't know what happened for sure but this lovely arrangement came to a peaceful close after a complete shift between us. Baby is a great guy, great guy! But I can't do this long-distance thing right now, not at 24, not while I'm supposed to be focused on my own personal growth, and while it sounds awful I think perhaps it was hindering that growth. I missed reading all weekend, and deciding what I wanted to do for the day, be it gym or what have you. I didn't above all- want to have to sms anyone to let them know what I'm doing or where I'm going. Does that make sense? There were other factors that baby and I discussed and understand. In fact it came to a very mature close. He was down this week in Cape Town but we decided last minute not to see each other for fear of opening wounds. Good call.

In other news, I have completely immersed myself in MAN OF THE CLOTH so please, please, pretty please go check it out. It's new so I'm going to be piling on posts until I can make them more sporadic.

It's early, and I'm working at 1pm so I better get my gym kit together and be off.

xM

I'm back at the gym again. That little hiatus was just too long for my liking. I didn't plan on going home to Knysna to vegetate but it happened that way. What can I say? I'm a sucker for Brothers and Sisters and my folks recorded the whole second series on PVR. I took my running shoes and everything!

Anyway I'm back now and that's what's important! I'm determined more than I've ever been in my life, and for the first time I actually know what I'm doing with those weights and machines, at least I think so. I'm still not sure about results yet, but I got sick with the flu twice from what my big buff friend Etienne says is over-exertion. He says I'm pretty intense but I thought that was a good thing? I spent two hours there today including a forty minute run with 1kg weights in my hands. I saw Janez do it- he's a local model and T.V presenter with the body of a god. I've picked up a few tips from watching random people workout, including this Ab exercise at an incline with a round 15 kg weight (you sit up at an angle and swing the weight from side to side).

After watching Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner and Demi Moore I was a little freaked and didn't want to go to bed with the images in my head so I started looking up random things online. You know if you google someones name you can find pretty much everything ever printed on them. I discovered a German football player with my exact name which is too weird... but I also found this hilarious but genius website called DO NOT DATE HIM that you should check out if you're South African. It lists all these names of men and if they beat women, or stole or lied or cheated on their women. I suppose men could have the same type of website listing crazy women but I haven't seen it!

Speaking of websites, I started a new one, a mens fashion blog called Man of the cloth that I plan to fill with tips and images I find inspiring in my own fashion-obsessed head! I wrote the first "article" and will update it soon.

Baby is coming down for the weekend even though I'm working the entire time. Just so we can spend the nights together. I think it's pretty darn romantic. I can't wait.

Oh, and have you heard the new Britney Spears song 'Womanizer"? it's a cool song, although I was expecting more. I hope girlfriend dances like her old self in the video! Everyone found it rather amusing that I was so excited for the release!

Some things never change I guess!

Baby and I are getting serious. Were discussing the eventuality of that B word-- you know the one. We've been seeing each other for three months now so I guess we're more ready than ever. I guess the more interesting fact is were talking about Cruise ships, and perhaps working together as Port & Shopping guides like both my brothers. It's good money. But a new couple in a confined cabin? Well I'd say you'd have to be a lot more than "secure" in your relationship for that. Working on a ship is very different to working on land, there is no driving in traffic, no going to the movies-- you want time away you go to the crew bar!

Sure it's a little early but were just looking at our options. And with South Africa having no president, as well as that small loss of 11 cabinet ministers, including the Minister of finance, I want out of here. Jacob Zuma, you remember him don't you? He was involved in that small Rape Trial where he claimed to wash the Aids off in the shower... well he's up for Presidency so I don't see this country loving the idea of our country being run by that moron. Neither do I!

Last week I started feeling pretty sick. Bronchitis probably as I had all the symptoms that Baby had. Only I'm still sick and he's not. After putting on all that weight you can imagine my eagerness to get back to gym but I still feel feverish a week later! I've plonked myself on the couch and have for the last four days watched nothing but the greatness that is Prison Break. Pure genius. Hopefully when I've watched the last of season three I'll have time to swing by the gym and work out a bit.

I'll let you know how it goes!

You know, I don't know how on earth I got into it, but my life in Fashion is all consuming and inspired. I literally spend hours on Style.com and as I've posted before The Sartorialist. Recently I was snapped by Robin Cooke while walking around with my Lesbian and she put us on her street style website here in Cape Town. Biatch stole my idea but I will forgive her because it's great to have some of South Africa's fashionista's (although if she spent more time on Long street and The waterfront she'd get a lot better dressed folk)exposed for the world to see. We really have some of the best intigrated styles around but so many people are still too close minded to attempt a quirkier image. Or colour! You swear it was the plague-- men are just horrified with the thought. "What? Me? in pink? Never" They would argue that it's not masculine but that Beckham bloke plays football and dresses well! And Paul Smith is a married STRAIGHT man who designs floral prints for men around London, and now in South Africa, so what's the big deal?

A little change could do you good! Just look at Cher, she is so irratic that she changes her hair colour weekly.

My advice from a fashion and yes, GAY angle, is to shop around with your eyes first. Go online, search for mens fashion blogs and read GQ STYLE for ideas. Make buddy buddy with a queer guy and let him help you out a bit! Save money and make a list of all those basics you need, cross them off one by one until you've acquired a darn nice wardrobe. Oh sorry is that too Gay a word wardrobe?

At the end of every month I feel a lot like Andrea Sachs when I get my monthly free uniform. It's wonderful, I'll have you know. But instead of just taking whatever item I could get, I prioritized shirts over everything else, to build my wardrobe!

I idolize DSQUARED and anticipate their new collections like a kid for Christmas as it epitomizes my style. What's yours?

I'm reading the most fascinating book that I can't seem to put down. Even now as I type this I desire to be reading on instead. I'm sure you've heard of it, as would your Father, your father's father and so on. No, it's not the Bible, although it's on my list of to-do's I'm sure... "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie.

While watching Brothers and Sisters on tv one day in Knysna, I spotted a small pile of books near the television set. I sniffed around, circled it as one does and started to eye them one by one. A book first published in 1936 I could hardly believe would appeal or even relate to me-- yet on so many levels it has!

For a while now I've been craving this type of read. Each page turned finds me more enthralled, more surprised and awakened! Not on a spiritual level mind you... I bought A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle for that. It seems after six months of eyeing it on CNA shelves I finally succumbed to it's call. I digress!

How to win friends? How? I wondered. Well quite simply (and the greatest lessons in life generally are just so)all you really need to do is shut up about YOURself, and genuinely concern yourself with the other party. Brilliance I say! Complete and utter genius. Years ago a friend of mine from work arrived with a big red flashing siren on her forehead. I said to her "Why not pop it?" to which she quite plainly replied "Why should I? It's not ready to come out yet and besides, no one will remember a year from now so WHY should it matter today?" The reason is that people are so concerned by their own lives that they fail to notice you unless their insecurities need massaging.

There's a few other steps to take, so I won't ruin them for you. Just go read it for yourself!

I suppose that somewhere between Here and Knysna I realized a big part of myself is driven by EGO. It's the human condition but it can be altered! Don't you feel like there's a better way to live than this?

I'm working on that now!

I was recently granted two weeks leave. Some time, I figured, to help me gain some perspective. What I gained in addition to that was evident when I slipped on my jeans for work on Monday. Figures.
I guess when you decide to enjoy yourself, i.e not starve yourself, have that extra helping of Mom's cooking, smoke a thousand cigarettes and exercises not-- you're bound to pick up a little extra weight. Damn-it.

Two months have passed since I met someone from one of those Internet sites, and he actually turned out to be a great guy. I'll call him "Baby" because in this particular arrangement that's just what we don't call one another. You see Baby lives in JHB. That's all the way up the country. A two hour flight! That means we see each other every 4-6 weeks for a long wonderful weekend, and then endure another long stretch until we meet again. It's mad but it works for where we are in our respective lives.

So After two long weeks of watching dvd after another, playing soccer as manly as I could muster with Baby Marco- who turned 5 last week so I suppose he's not a baby anymore- and enjoying what little time I have with my parents, it's only fair I guess that I come back to the real world at some point. I particularly enjoyed all the long drives I took with my dogs, glaring at the wonder that is the Knysna skyline.
Of course I took with me enough mood music to drown a cat, and all those dvd's that take me back to my childhood. My plan was to pen a good deal of my book whilst sipping on mom's Vanilla coffee, but I got so sick with hay fever I slept with a roll of toilet paper to my cheek-- I'm really not even joking.

I guess bottom line I got to rest which was my main prerogative. I did manage to visualise and plan my book, I even added a sub-plot which makes sense considering it was staring me in the face. And Oprah...Dear Oprah and I got a lot of each other.

By day 10/15 I was missing Baby and was ready to see him in Cape Town as planned. See every time he comes down it's in part for business so he gets a room in a great hotel, it became our thing to spend part of our time in a place where someone else picks up after you. Don't even let me get into the Tequila ritual. Oi Vey.

Baby left yesterday morning, sick as can be since Saturday. I advised him to see a Doctor here in Cape Town so he could at least stay here whilst booked off. When he went to his GP in Joburg he got booked off till next week!

I'm listening to a particularly beautiful song on the Soundtrack to Little miss sunshine by Devotchka entitled How it ends... do yourself the favour and download it now!So here I am, at work, bored and wishing I was popping the next dvd in for my new man.

Homeward Bound
A short Story By Marco Riekstins.

Years ago when kids played outdoors and global warming was not yet upon us, there lived a little boy in a long rectangular shaped house. He was a smart boy, a pretty boy- on account of the fact that on several occasions he was mistaken for a girl with short hair- so full of love and sensitivity but just a little lost.

He played alone mostly which made him adapt easily to adulthood when it finally arrived. He cleverly recorded all those girly kids programs that were not suitable for macho boys to watch, and in the silence of the midnight hour he watched them in his room. You would look at him and wonder if he had any male influence in his life, and in some ways he did, but it surely wasn't around enough to have any type of effect on him. Dad was working all the time, while Mom was busy with this and that for so many hours of the day she couldn't really keep an eye on him.

Yes, there were siblings, older brothers six and eight years his senior but they seemed to leave each phase as the youngest entered them. It was a shame how this affected him, for he was so desperate for their approval. He would rebel and challenge them on anything, because deep down he was so angry that they abandonded him in such an important time of his growth.

It was easy to point out the patterns, the way he would act out in those two weeks a year he'd see them- of course they never understood that, nobody did. A kind of resentment brewed from this time, because from his little brown eyes he saw them as so much more than he was capable of. Successful, good-looking and strong individuals. Not like little 'Mac' who wore his hair black one day and blonde the next.

He found solace in solitude, reading pop magazines that later became fashion magazines that ultimately led him to start a career in just that. His earlier eccentricities found a home, a base, an outlet. What he discovered was that he was a much milder version of his peers, but at least he was happy there.

Now when his older brother- not the eldest mind you, for he's married with a child now- comes down from his exotic and high paying career in the United States, it's not hard for little 'Mac' to feel that recurring pang, that reminder of what his visits are like. No matter how old or mature you become, it seems your older sibling is there to remind you they know better, even if you end up feeling worse about yourself entirely as a result. It's something he has learned that he may never escape. But he sure as hell won't let it affect him now that he's old enough to know better.

My life has changed somewhat since last I blogged. Sure I still avoid a razor at all costs and step politely over my clothes each morning to switch the kettle on... I even live in the same apartment. But where my life has changed, well that's no easier to document in one page than it is to explain what the hell U.S troops have achieved since arriving in Iraq.

But I'll start with Boys...

Boys, Boys, Boys. What can I say about them we don't already know? I decided early on this year that I would no longer, how do I word this correctly, "Give a shit" about my dating status. I decided instead to adopt a new way of thinking, and no, I have yet to read that "New Earth" Book Oprah keeps feeding us, that conclusion I came up with all by myself.

Dating is over-rated, and for me, most certainly a topic I have sucked of all it's life with no more understanding than when I started. Of course that doesn't mean I stopped dating, Oh no, it meant If anything I was dating more, but without that need for it to mean anything in the greater scheme of things. I just don't take it as seriously as I once did.

I mean, after discovering that your boyfriend, we'll call him Ruen for now, was dancing the horizontal Boogie with an 18 year old behind your back, for the entire duration of your "relationship", it can put you off just a tad. But because I'm stronger than that I made sure I would only look back on it as a lesson, and rather than hate him I can choose to pity him instead :)

Work was going well, although as the busy season crept back and the months went by, I grew restless and bored with nothing but empty hours in the day. And the odd game of Suduko, of course.
I became disheartened by the monotony of my life and when March rolled by and our Employers finally gave us our free gym memberships, I took it as a cue to make some changes, not only to my Derriere, but to my soul too. I bought books and devoured them quicker than I ever have in my life, and started writing again more seriously, I went to gym every day and was eating healthily... it was just all going so well. And I'm doing Yoga!

Even now I'm sitting in a clean apartment (I got wise and hired a maid) and I have stuff to look forward to. I'm young and creative and intelligent, and I spent so many years putting that behind me and focusing instead on who would complete me-- I woke up from that dream this year and I'm really happier as a person because of it. I'm dating me now... getting to know moi in the truest sense of the word. Like that painting above by Itzak Tarkay who is my favourite artist, no reason why I love his work, I just do.

And Yeh, there is a Fella. He's cute and funny, a clean-freak, driven and intelligent, above all the type of character I need in my life right now. He also lives in Johannesburg, so we've been spending weekends together since we met each other a short while back. What I like about this scenario is there is no room to obsess, or analyze-- it is what is it and were enjoying it even more because of that.

I'm back Bitches :)

Just a few days in and I've already reaped the benefits of a more normal lifestyle. While going to my favorite bars or trendy events is fun I just really needed a break from it. I don't know how long I'm planning on staying clear of the gays but it's for a little longer at the very least.

I've discovered this new band which I'm loving so much. One of their songs is featured in the new Motorola Razr 2 ad. It's hot hot hot if you haven't already seen it. Possibly they hottest ad I've seen in a long time. Best Choreography too. The band is Shiny Toy Guns from L.A. Check them out, it's a mix of electronic/japanese pop vocal/American Punk Rock... brilliant.

Yesterday Po came to visit me at work and I took my lunch hour to chat to him. He's heavily in love which can only make me feel very happy for him. A real testament to the fact that we made the right choice. He needs this, and after all of the shit he's dealt with certainly deserves it.

When I got home from work though I was bored, so I cooked myself a gorgeous dinner and ate it watching all the Monday night comedy shows, which let me say was very fulfilling! Then I got to talking with Nic and we decided to watch a movie. Which is weird considering I was ready for bed at 10 and the movie started just after. We attempted the Beowulf epic, but it turned out to be an Epic load of shite so we ran off to catch the beginning of SURFS UP. Which let me tell you is huh-friggin-larious!

Before bed I manage to read a chapter of one my many bedside books, and last night I was reading Ask and It is Given. Weirdly after reading this book every night I'm sleeping so much better. And I wake up feeling better. Does it work? You decide.

I need to get ready for work. I have a busy week ahead. Hens party tomorrow night and Dinner with Andre on Thursday. Andre, if no one remembers is the first guy I chatted to online when I was 16. I lied and said I was 18, but I did eventually clear that up. We went for lunch at Paranga in Camps Bay on Sunday. And yes, at 41 he's still hot.

I think the only thing I still need to do is go back to GYM! Now that would make a change!

I think Eventually we all get to this point where we've had enough. Be it in our jobs or a nagging girlfriend. Suddenly you just don't know how to accept these conditions and you have to do something about it. What was stopping you before?

So while work is going well, and I have no girlfriend to speak of there is one thing that has been irritating me of late. Or more realistically the last 10 years.
For whatever reason I've made finding a boyfriend such a major priority that I've missed out on some of those experiences you were just meant to have as teenager, or young adult even.
I would look extra hard just to make sure I didn't miss him. I would try extra hard when I'd meet a man, and even when it came down to the simple task of sending a text message I would sit for ages trying to find the right words to say.
Then a while back I decided I would start asking men out in bars, making the first move which for me was already a challenge as I've pretty much only dated older men. But I did it and when they agreed to 'do coffee' we would meet at some nearby coffee house only to realize the java came without enough conversation/spark/intelligence. So, disappointed I would venture back into the night life and attempt it again if I saw someone worth the effort. For a while there was no one else. At all.
After my holiday I found myself on Gaydar, which is already a sad development to my life. But I found that I had more people to talk to and it was fun. But meeting them only resulted in my realization of something very important.

I dated several men this year, all good men with steady jobs and no illegal habits to speak of. Things went well and then suddenly I didn't want anything more from them. To the point where my sexual connection to them had ceased. Done. Gone.

Speaking to Po one night I opened up to him. "I think I'm broken" I said. But he took this conversation as an invitation to try get back together with me. It could have been a bitter end to our friendship but luckily it hasn't. Oh and he has a new boyfriend that he's crazy about. So that door is closed. And with Nic, who is so wonderful... there is just no spark anymore.
I met a Frenchman at one of those elite party-events and we ended up kissing in my car. But the next day I felt nothing again. So I'm done. I'm not bothering with this whole thing anymore. I'm done with the 'scene' I'm done with chasing men. Or looking for that matter. I just want some peace and balance! That's all. So now I'm reading again. Playing Sudoko, although I get laughed at daily for that one (but it's really calming!)... anyway it's me time. If he wants a part of me, he's going to have to come directly to me. Because it's too tiring for me to rely on it so badly. I'm young. I want to live.