And the Winner Is...

Oh, Sydney.

We just went to visit our capital city for a few days. Since I don't know my way around at all I was being driven around this city by my partner, my head virtually hanging out the window to soak up the mish-mash of cultures, people, smells, and architecture. I'm still feeling queasy from a dubious experince in Chinatown. Or maybe it was a combination of that and memory-deleting amounts of alcohol at a gay bar on Sunday night. My legs are still sore from the mammoth walk we did along the harbour, looking at light installations and people and fire shows. My mind is overloaded with snippets from exhibitions and sights and wonders.

Could I live there? I don't think so. Maybe. I think that mash of people would send me insane.

Could I visit, as much as possible, indefinately? Hell yes. I don't ever want to tire of looking up at the struts of the harbour bridge while we drive over it. I don't want to lose that amazement of somanybuildings and so MUCH sandstone. I think I probably would if I was a "local".

Anyhow, some picures from the light festival should pop up here within the next couple of days....

Road Trip!

We're heading off to a festival this weekend.

You go, you camp out, you listen and party like you know best.



Problem is, it's been pissing down for the last few days and it's not letting up.

Night Out

An hour of preparation shared between the shower, razor and the bedroom mirror.
An hour of self-admonishment for forgetting how to let loose with my style.
Five cans of Rum & Dry.
Half a dozen cigarettes and a couple of slices of cold pizza.

Smash the last can of rum down on the half-dozen block walk to the train station and there’s no turning back.

We’re going out on the town.

More specifically, I’m going out on the town to the only local gay bar I know in existence. That was another point of self-admonishment. I’ve forgotten my dyke style. I haven’t been around my kindred spirits for so long I’ve forgotten how to make my statement among them.

Twenty minutes of train journey.
Twenty minutes of enduring some snotty little teenage girls talking about how many guys they got onto and how so-and-so is so disgusting for getting onto so-and-so.
Get me another fucking drink.

I turn on the music player on my phone as I get off the train. Let’s have some pump-up music, in the form of Big and Rich’s party track Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy:
Well I saddle up my horse and I ride into the city
I make a lot of noise ‘cause the girls they are so pretty

Yep, yes, and hell yeah. I’m hoping to see me quite a few of those pretty girls, bust a few beers down and perhaps make a few friends. Then I plan on getting my merry arse on to the dance floor and working off all the pies I shouldn’t have had on the way to work. Then, hopefully, I’ll make it home without sleeping past my stop on the train.

It worked out, sort of. I listened to bad karaoke run by a fantastically camp tranny. I watched two absolutely gorgeous women play some great pool. I was hanging out in the smokers’ section chatting to the occasional random person when…
I got picked up on.
You’re joking. I think to myself.
I haven’t hit my peak with the style. I’m wearing sneakers for fuck’s sake. I’m carrying ten kilos more fat than I want to, and in all the wrong places.
Surely this is a joke.

I bailed to the dancefloor because I wasn’t actually there to pick up. I just wanted a night out.

She continued to seek me out, cornering me in the smoker’s section.

No joke. She definitely wanted me. Wow! Holyshit and whatthefuck all in one big swirly mix. I ended up trying to go home because I wasn’t exactly that interested in her. She was sexy all right, but I was tired and she was extremely forward. She asked if she could kiss me before I left. Sure, I say. Why the fuck not then?

It was nice, although it felt as though she was trying to rape me in the middle of the courtyard after a while. I broke it off, kind of embarrassed to be virtually fucking in front of everyone, and also not wanting to have her think I was going to take her home. Another day, maybe I would have. Not this time. I had only just started coaxing my dykeness back out of the closet and there was no way sex was going to come easily to me. I thought it best to head home. That’s where things turned nasty.

I was a fucking tease
A mole.
Apparently I knew that she’d had her eyes on me from the second I walked in the door.
An arsehole.

So maybe it’s going to take a while to get my mojo back in full swing. Certainly it’s going to take a while to deal with being hit on. That normally doesn’t happen to me and was a daunting surprise to say the least.

But the mojo, my inner dyke style?
It’s coming. It’s coming back with a vengeance.

Hung Over

There's nothing quite like sharing a hangover with somebody. It suddenly makes it far more okay to feel like shit if somebody else is feeling the same way. You identify with each other on a completely different level. A level where you share the overwhelming relief of cold water, the lack of motivation to accomplish anything, and the need for a really good hamburger.

Personal Challenges

Beer. I love the stuff.

I've recently got into home brewing and it's been going pretty damn well. I haven't had any explosions or undrinkable brews. There was one that was close to being not very tasty - but to me that depends upon the level of desperation for the first drink. Once you're through the first few mouthfuls of the not-so-good one your tastebuds adjust anyway.

I don't discriminate too much. I've brewed from ginger beer (alcoholic of course) to stout. The stout I haven't tried yet, however I got a text message from a friend that I gave some to - she tried it last night and it gets an enthusiastic thumbs up. I love trying different things and when you can cut your beer tasting costs by at least a third by brewing your own it has to be a good thing.

That doesn't stop me from loving the pub scene though. I'm a beer whore. So when my sister's hubby Mike and I spot a Bavarian Bier Cafe on the seaside Manly wharf... We were up to have a go. They served it in steins! How could I say no?

Then there was the challenge...

You could get a one litre stein.

Again, how could I say no? Some people climb mountains because it is a personal challenge. This was my challenge.

A week of food and beer

A week from now, it will be my birthday. I will be celebrating twenty-seven years of mediocrity, of non-achievement and laziness. I will most probably spend some time on the official day thinking "Well, Vic. What the fuck have you done with your life, really?.". To which I will answer myself with "You know how to have a good time, you need nothing else. The rest is just faffery anyway. Shut up and have another drink.".

What I try to do on a birthday is at least one thing that I love. Just one is the minimum. Hopefully I can get around to a few. Take last year - it was the first birthday I had ever celebrated alone, no relationship, no family surrounding me. But I was determined not to let it get me down. The thing I did for myself? Conned my workmates at the wholesalers into playing frisbee on the road outside after work. I spent all day looking forward to it and fuck it was brilliant. I had a bucketload of fun.

This year I'll be doing a few things I love. Travelling - I'll be in Sydney. Hopefully I will get some time on the beach with my freinds and my sister doing something else I love - playing frisbee. Of course there will be plenty of drinking and hopefully somehere along the way we will shoot some pool and catch some live music that we can groove to. Yes, I'm looking forward to it.

But why stop at just one day? This week is now Vic's Week of Indulgence. I've set myself a challenge to appreciate a different beer every night of the week (ciders are accepted, also) and to actually attempt a different recipe each day out of the stack of cookbooks I've gathered and rarely use. Boring? Deal with it.