55. The (boy)friend litmus test.

Thesis: If you don't want to be my friend, I'll never want to be your girlfriend.

Sometimes I'll go to parties or clubs and meet interesting people. Sometimes I'll go to class and meet interesting people. We'll talk about research, politics, or the awesomeness of hipster fashion. Sometimes we'll flirt a bit. Sometimes we'll go out on a date or two. A while ago, I met a fascinating guy at a party. He studied the history of jazz music, and we had a great discussion for a couple of hours. He was cute, but above all he seemed like an interesting person. Since we hang out in the same circles, I was hoping to maybe have made a new friend. Once it hit 4am, I bid my farewells and headed home alone.

...And the next day, he walked past me avoiding eye-contact.

In that moment, I lost all interest in him as a friend, much less anything else. I was also left with a sour taste in my mouth because it wasn't the first time this had happened.

I hate bull-poo. If you want to get into my pants, fine. There's no need for deceitful pleasantries. If you want to date me, ditto. I will never understand how someone can be interested - supposedly genuinely so - in someone only as long as there's potential for romance. How can you want to date someone if you don't want to be their friend?

Let me tell you a couple of other stories. A long, long time ago, I dated someone very briefly but long enough to break their heart when it ended. He turned into this guy. We don't see each other all that often, but when we do, there's no faked interest. I'm just as human to him as I was when we were making out. Another story is more recent. I started talking with a unimate at a bar. He was hammered and came onto me quite heavily. After a while, I told him I had to go home for a Skype date with my boyfriend. A couple of days later, I saw him on campus. He gave me a timid look at first, but then sat down next to me. He kindly ignored the fact I hadn't washed my hair in way too long and looked like a zombie in my baggy clothes and bloodshot eyes from late-night cramming, and started asking me about my day. In that moment, I filed him into my "future friend" box. "Future friend", and "someone I respect". He'd just passed the litmus test with flying colours.

54. Passion.

What I really should have titled this is "That spark in the eye of a 60-year-old professor when he hears people discuss his field of studies", but I figured that might have been a bit too verbose. As I stress, lose motivation and get frustrated with the every-day demands of grad school, it is inspirational and exciting to see people who genuinely love what they do even after thirty years of doing it. It's not just a job, it's a passion. Talking with him and arguing methodology with brilliant students left me in awe, inspired to one day achieve half of what they have, and comforted that there is light at the end of the tunnel and people to guide me in the right direction.

53. Safe sex.

We all know safe sex is the best kind of sex, right? Yes, but it feels so much better without a condom. Yes, but we couldn't find a condom. Yes, but we've been together forever now so it's okay. Yes, but condoms taste gross. Yes, but I was drunk. Yes, but we're both virgins. Yes, but she's on the pill. Yes, but don't you love the sweet, titillating feeling...


Let me tell you two stories. One starts at a nightclub: picture lights, young people grinding on the dance floor, the latest tacky pop hit turned sweet by the filter of alcohol. Picture laughing with your friends. Then you see a guy - or a girl - leaning against the bar and your smile is wiped off. They're stunning, literally. You down your drink, take a deep breath. Glance over again; they look back. You can do this. Hey, I don't normally do this, but I couldn't resist coming over.

The other story starts before it starts. It begins with you going to class, talking with the person sitting next to you and rewinds to you being in love. Skip over dates - maybe even with roses! - goofy smiles, movie nights cuddling, a fight and making up, learning the other inside out - I once slept with a hooker, but we used protection, I'm not an idiot - the sweet ease of having liberty to touch them anywhere because maybe a tiny bit of them are yours, just like a tiny part of you is theirs. Skip over all this and fall into bed for the thousandth time, reaching for the box of condoms but do we really need these anymore?


These stories have something in common. I'd love to tell you they both end happily, and in most ways, they do. But they both have an unfortunate interlude like any good thriller should. This interlude includes sitting in the waiting room for a doctor, blood drawn, suspense and in one case an extrauterine pregnancy which might cause infertility later on. They have one more thing in common: they're true stories that happened to my friend and I.

After my own wait for blood test results, I concluded that not using a condom is totally okay. Provided:

• everyone involved has been tested for STDs at least three months after their previous partner and has evidence of an all-negative
  
• everyone involved is monogamous or polygamous in a way that complies with the above point
• everyone with a uterus is on the pill or willing to get pregnant

Lecturing is boring and condescending, I know. I can join the chorus of after-school specials and nurses and parents preaching about using a condom. I can tell you sex is awful and will give you diseases and get you pregnant, both at once and every time. What I want to tell you instead, and the reason I wrote this, is that sex can be awesome. It can be awesome with strangers, it can be awesome with your long-time partner, it can be awesome with girls and guys. I have had awesome sex myself, and I've heard stories of friends having awesome sex. I have also been stupid, and I've heard stories of my friends being stupid. I've spent three months crying myself to sleep for a very valid STD scare, I've observed a month-long miscarriage a friend had after a morning-after pill gone wrong, I've had a friend contract an STD from oral sex. I have friends who continue to have unprotected sex despite the above experiences.

Horror stories are boring, but the thing that fills me with despair is that these things happen. And yet, a lot of us care too little for ourselves and our partners to stay safe. This isn't about trust, about love, or about monogamy; being monogamous now doesn't eliminate the risk of an STD contracted from a previous partner.

To me, using a condom shows respect for yourself and your partner. To me, that is a much better feeling than the sweet, titillating feeling of waiting for those blood test results.


And while you're having safe sex, here's a song to get you going:

52. 'Just Another Love Story'.

Don't be deterred by the gross English title. 'Kaerlighed på film' is a love story, but also a thriller and a story about strange occurrences in ordinary lives. To be honest, I would have preferred had they kept it a love story rather than add a thriller twist to the end, but I think it's still a very good film. It's full of marvellous acting, scenes that have potential to be ridiculous but somehow seem credible, and characters that are real and raw. It mercilessly drives home the message and accepts that lies have consequences, no matter what the underlying motivation. The main character doesn't ask for pity when his lies catch up with him; he offers no excuses, merely his actions. Such maturity I find rare on- and off-screen, but it fits the character and the actor.

For synopsis, see here.

51. Endless days.

Image courtesy of: http://wwbpa.org/tag/sun-salutations/

There are no metaphors here, just sunlight coming through my window at 3am. Visitors complain they can't sleep; I love falling asleep at dusk and waking up to dawn three hours later. The energy I get from the sun makes up for the sleep I miss. In winter, I hibernate; in summer, I'm alive.

20 Jun 2011 03:54 22:50 18h 55m 46s
21 Jun 2011 03:54 22:50 18h 55m 55s
22 Jun 2011 03:54 22:50 18h 55m 53s

50. Languages.

I recently did a count, and I've studied ten languages during my life. There's something about wrapping my tongue around unfamiliar sibilants and alveolars that keeps luring me back into introductory language classes. I've been fascinated with the 'dark l' of Gaelic, the reflexive constructions of German, and most recently the fact that 'aime', 'aimes' and 'aiment' are pronounced identically in French.

I rarely get past beginners' level, and I sometimes wonder what the point is. I wonder if it has to do with growing up speaking a small language and feeling keen to reach out to other languages: we are here, we're not English but we exist in our comfortable cocoons, happy to stay huddled in but sharing a shy smile whenever our eyes and tongues meet - kiitos ja hei. I wonder if it's militant multilingualism; I certainly used to harbour dreams of defending Gaelic from being worn down like old smokers' teeth on pipes made of clay.

But languages aren't ours to protect, to police, to deepfreeze. Lately I have been falling in love with internet English. I shows what a vibrant organism language is. A 'zomg n00b' can carry a tone, a register, a sense of us versus them - or nothing. I am merely dabbling in it, but it's been a pleasant dip into a new language.

I am very much a library linguist, but there are moments when the world pummels in and reminds me there is more to languages than phonetics and syntax trees. One such moment was in Greece last summer. I hiked for hours to reach a monastery on a mountain, only to find the hustle and bustle of a few busloads worth of tourists. I joined everyone else, and queued to buy a CD of hymns sung by the local monks. The sales clerk told me in Greek, in a rather resigned manner, that the songs were for a particular service. I nodded and mostly pretended to understand. He asked me where I was from; I told him. His eyes lit up from just that one word showing I had understood. He started asking me if there were many Orthodox people in my home country. I managed to stutter out in Greek that can't have sounded anything short of barbaric that there weren't many but some. He latched onto my arms and said, 'Κατάλαβες!', 'You understood!' And for just a brief moment we were out of our snail shells, me teetering in my 80's style skirt required by the monastery's dress code, him reaching out until his Greek was stretched into baby talk. It was an awkward lean, but we made it, and just for a moment the tips of our fingers touched.

Yes, I understood.

49. Letters.

Over the years, I've had numerous penpals. Until recently, I only had one of them remaining. We have never met, and I doubt we ever will, but I have been graced with glimpses into her life since she was fifteen and I, seventeen. It is a strange friendship, knowing I wouldn't recognize her on the street, but having witnessed her - and myself - grow up, find a partner, live in various cities as well as an outback town that made Deadwood seem like the suburban dream. Strange, but a friendship nonetheless.

My best friend sometimes writes me letters. Not too often, but I do remember reading about her tiptoeing her way into what would become the love of her life. She dropped a card into my letterbox before I returned home after the most taxing goodbye of my life so far. Through my haze of jetlag, longing and fury, her card made me feel like I was coming home as opposed to having left it.

Now, I have a new penpal. He doesn't write me often - we talk enough as it is - but he sent me a Valentine's letter that was grossly late and filled with the most devastatingly true and beautiful things I've ever read. I'd thank him, but I'd run dry of words halfway through or never find the right words or not have the courage to say them. I guess that's part of the wonder of letters, that gentle buffer of time that allows us to look each other straight in the eye across the distance.

48. Detours.

Several years ago, I sat an entrance exam for university. While waiting for the test to start and fiddling about in my stripy socks after not having slept in thirty hours, I started talking with a boy waiting to sit the same exam. We both agreed we were not going to get in and would spend the year bumming around.

He got in; I flunked the test. He started his studies and built on his previous preparation and knowledge in the field. I worked in a factory, learned to flirt with boys and travelled around Europe on my own for the first time. The next year, I resat the exam and this time got in. He continued to study diligently, started dabbling in projects run by the department, networked with the faculty and top-of-class students. I started my studies from zero, drank heavily, joined the students' society, and dedicated my time to organizing parties and editing the magazine for the society. In the process, I made friends and slowly carved out a life for myself in an unfamiliar city. Our paths with the boy swerved away from each other; we would meet for coffee once a year to exchange pleasantries, for him to tell of research trips to Rome and for me to sweat while trying to make my sorority-esque life seem remotely respectable.

I continued my merry lifestyle, and in the end it took me five years to get my BA. I finally did get involved in university policies (if not politics) and alienated some faculty members while gaining the respect of others. I spent three summers on projects that had nothing to do with my department but which in the end proved elemental in making me realize what I'm interested in and that opportunities to study it exist. I drank retsina, met people, talked about beer breweries as well as research.

I last met the boy a year ago. He told me, much to my surprise, that he was fed up with our department, our field of studies and wanted to get a degree in Business and get an actual job. I told him I wanted to study in the US because I similarly was not happy studying what I was; however, I was determined I could find my niche across the pond.

Now, I hear he's been accepted to Princeton to study History, a dream spot for the research he's interested in. I am fortunate enough to have a choice between several of my dream programmes in the US. I do not know what happened to change his mind over the past year, but he seems excited in a way I don't think he's been in many years; I don't know what happened to land me where I am now, but I am excited in a way I haven't been in many years.

The moral of this story is not that I am a shameless braggard. Nor is it to spend five years getting drunk every week. It's not even that studying hard will get you into Princeton.

The moral of the story is that everyone can win. Detours are not in vain, and two very different paths can lead to happiness. Your happiness does not reduce mine, nor does it make the choices I've made any less valid.