Two months down, ten to go
It’s now two months since I’ve been here. I’m more and more attached to my bike (despite the fact i’m hemorrhaging cash on the old girl, the fact I can leave her out all night and she’s still waiting for me makes me like her more and more) Meanwhile what little German I started to gain is slipping, taking classes feels more more urgent. The money situation is worse but then my sense of how to live on less is better.
I feel like without a day job to fight against, I’ve lost a lot of discipline. I feel knocked back by not having a schedule or structure, and not having people around me who have schedule or structure. I feel inspired by the city, in love with it a little, but also overwhelmed by it. But it is getting easier to set my own limits. To say when I need to leave, to stay in my studio and work, to have an early night so I can work a full day the next day. But my achievements constantly seem a little lost in all I have to do, learn, sort out. For example that I still have to sign up for German classes, for example the fact that I’m only now finishing the notbar doc, and haven’t even begun to import any of the footage of the on line doc since I’ve been here.
I know I have something, I know there is a reason new friends seem to want to keep hanging out, or to develop the friendship, or work with me creatively. But I do feel knocked back. By the increasing pace of my fledgling but busy social life, by the stream of guests from out of town. And now that I have seriously derailed from the serial monogamy track, I feel all sorts of other things. this sense of having a relationship here being completely impossible because everyone is cruising and hooking up. Wanting a relationship here especially because it seems so impossible. Not wanting it really because I know so well what those boys are like away from their girlfriends.
Feeling like I’m part of a group. A group of boys. Feeling like it would take years and years (if ever) for me to really be part of it. Being surprised that my friends are truer friends than I think. Being disappointed that my friends are not friends in the way I’m used to. Feeling special because I’m still relatively new in town. Feeling like my sell by date is soon as there is a constant stream of new girls in town. Looking around me at the smug girls who have managed to score boyfriends and thinking I’m far too much of a party girl to achieve their committed state.
Feeling at peace with my new sexual identity. Feeling like I have no sexual identity. Feeling like a straight girl who is bi in inverted commas and just cruises other straight girls and maybe kisses them when we’re both drunk and in a club with boys watching. Feeling like I fancy no girls on the girl scene. Feeling like a fake on the girl scene anyway. Feeling like straight sex isn’t quite enough, feeling like lesbian sex isn’t really either. Wanting sex all the time, getting it and wanting to step back from it for a while.
Currently I carry a myth in my head. The hot hipster boy who will look at me like I am the hottest coolest girl in the room. The boy whose arm I hang on smugly. The one who is so into me, he doesn’t f**k around when I’m not there. And we’re into the same music, and art and films. And we are as likely to go to a live gig as stay out all night at an after-hours. I have no idea if he exists. But then I remember something my friend Uta said to me when I was flat hunting. That I didn’t have to compromise, that I could find what I wanted but I would just have to be more patient…
At any rate, at this moment, I’m feeling all turned on by summer.
I’m enjoying the random flirting and playing, and I’m way more interested in finishing these films and setting up this site than falling into a relationship.
Two months down, ten to go…We. Shall. See….