My Friend Waldo

.1. Stop everything. Now, go download Mobile’s ‘See Right Through Me’. Thing is, and what most of you don’t know is that your life has it’s own natural built-in Soundtrack and this song is The song that you’ll need as you’re walking away from something old, tired, painful and completely finished.

It’s that song, and when that song comes on, you’ll have just closed that door, smiled your most incredible heartbreaking smile and started walking away without so much as a glance over your shoulder.

(I have no idea what the lyrics are, and am too scared to check just in case they're about a boy whose groveling to be let back in. Damn the lyrics that don’t match the tune; I shake my fist at them.)

.2. Was rocking out to another tune which you must also download immediately. If you mock this, you may bite my a*s and never come back here again: Barry White’s ’You’re the First, the Last, My Everything’.

If this song doesn't make you dance then you're "a cold hearted snake. Look into his eyes. Wu-ooooh, he's been tellin' lies." Pauvre Paula.

.3. H, my hilarious and stunning girlfriend lost God-only-knows-where in the Far East has finally found me. We usually fall off one another’s radar – only in the form of email but never in our thoughts and hearts – for a few months until someone sends a “WHERE ARE YOU?” email and then we chat for a few weeks and it’s back to Start.

The first nickname I gave her was “WOZ” because it suited the immense personality stuffed into the body of a dancing pixie. WOZ is a trained dancer, watch out Britney!, and is the size of a pixie. When she sleeps over, I lay a tissue in some Crack and off she naps.

More recently, I’ve taken to calling her “Waldo” only because of where she is (or isn’t). I laugh every time I type ‘Waldo’, as in “Are you high, Waldo?” or “Whose the Asian dude, Waldo?” or “Waldo, I’ve missed you”.

Over the past few months I’d been having vivid dreams that Waldo had fallen into thousands of silk fabrics somewhere in Thailand and no one was able to find her. And then D, her guy, left because he was hungry.

Actually, I did no such thing but it makes me laugh to think of Waldo stuck between those huge fabrics rolls.

Waldo is the only individual with whom I speak and can not stop laughing. Our conversations are a little insane because the worst, most offensive non-pc dribble comes out of both our mouths. Ergo, in today’s email I asked: “Is (insert name of our friend, the actor) still a homo?”. I don’t know why or how it happens, but it just does and I’m usually left snorting, drooling, and doubled-over laughing hysterically. Our effect on one another is most definitely unique and anything but calming. I wouldn’t have it any other way and I wouldn’t trade her for a million Gerry Butlers (screaming crotch et al.).

It’s been a few years since we’ve seen one another in real time, and if there’s one thing I miss, it’s her laugh because no one else laughs like her; for a dancing pixie, her laugh is a bellow and anything but diminutive. Will see if she can make me a recording of it so that I may then podcast that sh*t here; You won’t believe your ears and you’ll fall in love with her as quickly as I did...

...the first time I met her at Oliver’s Pub (on campus) many moons ago. I was seated with Puma and we invited her to join us. I said something funny, she busted my eardrums and we lived happily ever after, her lost in the Far East and me everywhere else…

I miss that laugh, Waldo. Isn't it time you f*cking came home, already?

Are you a Picasso?

Recall how last year I told you about my need to be a Mayflower Madame for Halloween as a young child. Following that, I was a witch, another year a ballerina, and finally a ghost. The last time I was wh*ring around on Halloween was at the tender age of nine, pretending to be God only knows what (I called it "a lady"). Anything to prance around in my mother’s Crack and wear red rouge.

When I grew up, I dressed up once for Halloween, I was a bumblebee. I wasn’t sexy, I was a bumblebee. I was wearing a large barrel and would lay on my side with my arms awkwardly sticking out because I couldn’t actually sit. Anything I drank, I drank through a straw. My antennas rocked and I received a lot of compliments about my costume.

I’ve been speaking with several women about their costumes, and I am a little surprised by their intentions. Each one of these women is beautiful, successful, and intelligent. Add to that, each woman is using the occasion to show off her sexuality by being a “sexy (insert whatever pleases you)”. So, we have:
- A sexy bunny
- A Playboy bunny (way to move the sisterhood forward!)
- A sexy cowgirl
- A sexy nurse
- A sexy librarian

My male friends, on the other hand, are going to be:
- A gorilla
- A dead cowboy
- A seal
- A pirate
- A mobile telephone
- A plumber
…there is nothing sexy about any of the above male choices unless the gorilla decides to become a baboon and paint its ass red. Whereas none of the men declared “a sexy cowboy” or a “sexy pirate”, each and every woman did. And when I pressed further, I was told that it was the perfect opportunity for them to show off the fact that they are “sexy”.

And so this has left me a little disconcerted, without really understanding why it was upsetting me…until I finally realized that there are two layers to my personal distaste re the above. First, it is that these women – who have everything going for them – feel the need to illustrate overtly, their sexuality. None of them believe that by default and by virtue of the fact that they are women, they are already sexy.

They don’t need to take off their clothes or show a little more cleavage or a little more ass. They ARE sexy because they’re of the female sex. It is built in us, it is in the way we move and the way we touch our hair, look at you, smile at you, put on our lipstick, take off our sunglass, and dial the phone. I quite honestly believe that no matter the size of a woman’s ass or chest, she is stunning and sexy in all of her incarnations.

The second red flag I see with the above is as follows…
When I asked: “Why is it important that you be perceived as ‘sexy’?”, none of the women were able to provide a straight answer, instead tip toeing around the reality that it’s for attention. What I hate about this is that – in terms of my personal beliefs – it’s the easiest and therefore most fleeting sort of attention. Several of the women kept stating how it would be “empowering” to play the sex kitten.

Ok, so then here’s my Q: How hard is it to get a man’s attention with your boobs hanging out or when your ass is much higher than your pantline?
A: Not very, sweetheart.

There’s much to be said about our society stemming from the above reality; although you may be wondering why I would be upset by this, I do believe it lends itself to a much greater and deeper problem in our society. There’s MUCH to be said about the feminist movement as well, but for now (and just for today) I’m going to leave it at this: Empowerment does not come from your breasts, nor does it come from your ass. Most definitely it is not this strange belief that because we, as women, now have the right to f*ck as often and as frequently as men, we are therefore equal to them. (And if you would like to talk about the “empowerment” of females in the porn industry who “choose” their profession, please consider this an invitation to engage me and those who live here in the comments field of this entry.)

Empowerment comes from your accomplishments and your return to this world (and for those who believe, then also in your return to Him). Empowerment and strength are when you overcome the odds and the challenges blocking your way, and not when you use the easiest means accessible. Ergo, empowerment is not about using your God given sexuality that resonates in every single movement flowing through you, it is about taking the road less traveled and on the 31st of October, that means dressing up as a bumblebee.

As an aside, I’d like to place one small thought into the minds of women reading this blog (all of the brilliant men, too, who will undoubtedly print this up and hand it to their daughters in 10 years). We possess the right to make a choice. What seems to have been lost in translation is that since we've been given a right which has always been ours, our only "choice" seems to have become: giving it up, and to put it crassly, it is to undress and sleep with dozens of men at our own whim. Otherwise, you may be perceived as frigid or "square". Does that then mean that your actions are in fact a "choice", or are you merely choosing not to act, but to avoid a specific label? (Ultimately, choosing the later is still a "choice" but it is most definitely not about equality.)

Few people talk about the following "choice", which is based on the belief that: Everything about you is unique, special, invaluable, timeless and rare.

You are among the world’s most treasured items. The items that hold these same characteristics and values are items we protect and to which the majority of humanity does not have access. The reason a Picasso is so valued is in part due to its perfection but also because of the lack of access to it. Make this a reality of who you are and treat your bodies in this same vein because you truly are a work of art.

Pole-vaulting to find Faith?

A part of me believes there are moments in our lives when a leap of faith is really quite necessary. That feeling is immediately overshadowed by my Muslim sensibilities which indicate there is no such thing as a leap of faith. Rather, there is real and concrete belief that every step you take, no matter the consequence or of what that action is borne, it is meant to be the best action you take. It’s not a leap of faith, but rather an unwavering belief that every step you take is a step in the right direction. (This isn’t to say that you live La Dolce Vita and chalk it up to being ‘a step in the right direction’. Obviously, there are guidelines (that I call ‘anchors’) set forth and with the intention of providing a semblance of order to one’s life…but that’s a greater conversation which extends beyond this immediate blog entry.)

This isn’t about free will either. Ultimately, you don’t need the concept of predetermination in order to believe that everything to come / which has occurred, is in fact the best possible scenario. The two are mutually exclusive and what follows is a little bit of my own personal philosophy in the form of a hypothetical extreme:
.1. I fall in love with and am convinced 100% that there is no other man for me.
.2. He feels the same for me & we decide to be married.
.3. He drops dead the day of our wedding.
.4. There is a real possibility that I will die a virgin.

Forget about the natural state of mourning and grief that are relatives of the human condition in that situation. Think instead of how you, were you in that situation, might treat it. I would have to say ‘Alhamdulilah’, which translates to: ‘Thanks be to God’ (or: “Thanks, God!”).

That sounds insane, eh?
Not really. Not when you believe that death was the least amount of pain you could have suffered. (E.g. Had he lived, two years later he and I and our child would have been in a car accident. He would have become a complete and total invalid, incapable of speech, movement, whatever. Our child would have died by being splattered on the road, and I would have lost my hands, nose, ears and feet because the accident occurred in the middle of winter and we laid out on the frozen road for hours and suffered severe frostbite before anyone found us. And while I was laying out on the road, I was pinned beneath my seat and had no choice but to watch as my baby gurgled itself to death because it was THE ONE TIME that I decided to not tie him in completely because he was being fussy. The consequence of that is that I then, with the years, neglect my mother who dies alone because I forgot to feed her. My dad, too.). But that’s just me and how I think. You can argue the opposite and believe it, instead choosing to live a sad empty life where you either believe in nothing or you believe that God gave you the shit end of the stick at every turn, you weirdo who is not my friend because you are likely very depressing to be around believe whatever pleases you.

After having gone through my first Blue Day at the end of last year, I had to revisit everything I understood of my own Faith. It wasn’t easy and at many junctures, most definitely not pleasant. But I had complete and total Faith even during moments of the most (metaphorical) blinding pain. Actually, I think my Faith would have been at its strongest at those very moments.

I believed that although outcomes had not been what I wanted, they were still perfect. Moreover, that had I in fact received what I wanted, the pain from that would have been far greater.

Although we can never know 100%, we can sometimes have a general idea of what could have been had we received what we wanted. This was one such case, where months after I’d dealt with the residue of my Blue Day, I was lucky enough to get a glimpse into what could have been had I received what I wanted when I wanted it. It would have been complete and total disaster. (Naturally, this isn’t to say that in perhaps a year from now I won't get what I originally wanted…when it’s right and when it is the best thing…)

I had believed everything was for the best, but had no way of confirming this, and I had to let go of my need for that proof . I was lucky; Allah graced me with the proof (which, technically, isn’t my business in His Greater Chain of Being). It may sound strange, but in my own little world it became a testament of me, in my head. (I didn’t solicit strangers to “like, totally check me out because my character = pretty f*cking intense”. But rather, literally: in my head, I was proud of me. And I bought myself ice cream all the time (vanilla or crème brûlée only, please))

The reason I’m mentioning this is because since coming back from Beirut I’ve been thinking about doing something and I’ve been hesitant, fighting my own gut instinct to act. T told me to take a “leap of faith and just do it”. As soon as she said that, I thought: “I already have the faith, there’s no leap to take”, and I made my decision…one that was confirmed that same night, two nights ago, by one small sentence made by Anjum.

Whatever the outcome, I already believe that it’s the best outcome possible, no matter that it may be emotionally taxing.

Now. I want ice cream.

I love Anjum

For so many many reasons. And she's inspired me to write something about you incredible people who live on my blog. Soon it shall be posted, I promise. (Just call me 'yoda', or whatever that little green creature with the big ears is called, and who speaks backwards, he does.)

Mr. Adjective

What follows does not stem from any particular experience I have had, but rather, it is from observing dear girlfriends go through what I am about to describe and reading emails sent from girls living at this blog who have also gone through the same thing. Am hoping that this entry may help some girls either avoid or let go of their own 'Mr.Adjective'.

Every once in a while, I post a personal opinion on straight men and the straight women with whom they interact.

Tonight, I’ve decided to discuss one such caricature of a man.

Society at large calls him A Player.
Women call him The Love of My Life.
Men call him Stud.
I call him Mr. Adjective.

The man with the thesaurus
Mr. Adjective doesn’t have to be spectacularly beautiful, but he does have to be charming. He needs to know how to work a room and everyone in that room (male, female, straight, queer, undecided, fetishist, child, etc.). For the most part, Mr. Adjective does this by making every single person in said room feel like they are the very centre of his attention. This is often done by his undivided almost creepy concentration on and awareness of you when you’re in his face. He’s heavy with eye contact, will ask you intimate details about your life and may even share intimate details with you. (In hindsight and when you revisit his words, you’ll recognize that he didn’t really give you much of anything, let alone something honestly intimate.)

Mr. Adjective will tell you you’re ‘innocent’, ‘childlike’, ‘fragile’, ‘delicate’, ‘breakable’, ‘exposed’. Lines that are well practiced and well placed in Mr. Adjective’s game of seduction. He’s smart enough to understand these words evoke a need for protection, and who better to provide that protection than the very man seated before you telling you how strong and sexy you are. ”And yet, how oddly ‘fragile’ you appear to be.”

It’s relatively simple: He’s a predator, and he’s supreme at what he does.

I’ve been lucky because I’ve had one such experience which I recognised immediately and so was able to avoid (as it was being executed rather poorly by a man I am inclined to call a mental handicap).

A small aside to any women currently suffering the aftermath of Mr. Adjective: What he doesn’t know yet is that he’ll peek and then drop as soon as he hits 40, due to the repeated intake of antibiotics used to fight his many S.T.Ds.

Your role in Mr. Adjective’s game
The problem with Mr. Adjective is that whereas he may be playing you (& recall: “Players only love you when they’re playing”), Mr. Right will also throw adjectives around because he means it. Whereas the former is somewhat of a loser in need of validation received from throwing his d*ck in anything that moves, you will genuinely enthrall the latter (how could you not?). You have to learn to differentiate and to hold Mr. Adjective at arm’s length. For the most part, Mr. Adjective will make a killer friend because there’s a lot to learn from him in terms of male/female interaction (just as there is to be learned from Ms. Player where men are concerned).

Unfortunately, there’s no equation here. There’s no simple word or moment or indication that will help you differentiate between Mr. Adjective and the nice guy; it’s a matter of trusting your gut instinct & your intuition and ultimately, of learning how to be a good judge of character. If you’re Ms. Player, it’ll be easier for you to pinpoint Mr. Adjective, understanding his game and seeing his tactical moves before he does. Ms. Player will play it back in spades. (e.g. evoking what every man wants to hear about himself: strength, alpha, provider, protector, etc.)

Be the smarter woman and know what’s happening as it’s happening. While doing this, permit Mr. Adjective the illusion that you’re falling for his every word. Essentially, let him think you believe what he's saying to you (because being seduced by Mr. Adjective is really quite lovely). Then move on.

The aftermath of Mr. Adjective
If you fell for the seduction willingly or otherwise, your interaction with Mr. Adjective will be short lived. When all is said and done, he’ll do one very particular thing: he’ll insist that you call him. Over and over again, he’ll insist that you call him. This happened to F and I had to sit back and watch it without saying a word because she wouldn’t allow any of us to ‘slander’ the boy in question. The fall out from that situation was devastation where she was concerned, but she’s a better woman for it today.

Understand that he’s not asking you to call him because he wants you to call him. It most definitely is not because he wants any sort of a relationship with you. It is his way of pussying-out. And by ‘pussying-out’, I mean he doesn’t ever have to call you. You may call five times or maybe even ten times. Every time you speak, he’ll tell you how happy he is you called; he’ll tell you how great it is to hear your voice; he’ll tell you he’s sorry he’s not called but he’s been so busy that he’s not had a moment to “even” shine his ego. He’ll never commit to calling you, not even at the end of that conversation…instead, he will ask you to call him again.

Mr. Adjective never wants you to think ill of him. He never wants you to discover he's an asshole, and so he always wants you to walk away thinking he still wants you "if only". "If only" he had more time. "If only" he didn't have such a busy schedule. "If only" he got that rash cleared up. "If only" he wasn't such a gigantic enormous leech on your emotional well-being.

That’s his hook, because it validates what you were looking for: That he wanted to hear from you, and you can’t be angry with him because he was happy to hear from you. Wasn’t he? I mean, why would he ask you to call back if he wasn’t happy to hear from you?

There are two things Mr. Adjective can't handle: (1) you discovering that he's an enormous d*ck; and, (2) a woman sharp enough to know what he's trying to do. Re the former, if he showed you he really wasn’t pleased with your call, you’d think he was an asshole. Re the latter, he will immediately back off, not even attempting to pursue Her because she's not good for his ego. He won’t be able to seduce Her, and that would be a huge defeat where Mr. Adjective’s concerned.

He feels good when he seduces you.
He feels good when he wins at his own game. (He's a winner!)
He feels good when you call him.
He feels good because he never has to feel guilty.
He feels good because you pay him way much more attention than he ever deserved.

In closing…
If he wanted you, he would have come after you and nothing in the world could have gotten in his way. That’s the bottom line with men, and if they’re incapacitated and incapable of pursuing what they want (you), you don’t want them anyway. Don’t kid yourselves about Mr. Adjective; he’s a messy variation of ‘p*ssy’ because he doesn’t have what it takes to play you and walk away from you like a real woman. Instead, he half-asses it and plays you while still wanting you to like him and think he’s a nice guy. I actually can’t help but feel sorry for Mr. Adjective. But I’m arrogant that way.

Never believe that you’re the exception to the rule but always know that were he lucky enough to bag you for the long haul, no body else could compare.

Don’t sit around waiting for him, because he’s not thinking about you. (Sweetheart, he’s too busy trying to find an acceptable adjective for ‘underage’.) Believe what he says to you in the moment because you are all those things, including fragile and sexy and sensual. Because Mr. Adjective may have been lucky enough to hit the nail on the head thanks to his bedside thesaurus, it doesn’t make it’s reality any less true.

It’s very nearly Saturday evening and a nice guy is waiting for you to step into his life as Mr. Adjective sits at home and applies his ointment. Get out there and have some safe fun…

i promise to write something new soon

...hitting that block again, hence the avalanche of recent photos...soon, soon, soon, I promise!

Happy Birthday (to me)

It's tomorrow, but the celebration was last night, and one made up of Indian cuisine, Jackass 2 & The Burboun Band.

This was the first birthday in nearly 10 that O was a part of. It's good to have you home, baby...


The Girls (-C making sandwiches & -T in Florida)


& this one I'm adding because I'll appreciate it when I start to wrinkle...


(thanks to everyone I've never met but somehow remembered to send a little note...)

Friendships = "Grande non-fat no-foam triple shot latté, please"

.1. Happy 1st, baby:







Daddy manages Ottawa's baseball team and so we had the entire Lynx Stadium to ourselves. In tandem, this was creepy and exciting.

.2. For the past four evenings, I’ve spent my nights with some of the most important women in my life. Over wings and drinks and coffees and cakes, we’ve spent hours pouring over our loves, hearts, politics, friendships, children, fathers, dreams, fears…everything.

It feels like a sort of marathon of friendship as of late; like we’re trying to make up for lost time and break a record all the while making certain to fill a quota in terms of conversational capacity. Reality dictates that much of this has been happening because I am the guilty (& still not satiated) instigator of these evenings…

I’ve refused to spend any time alone and so chose to instead surround myself with a warmth that can only come from my animated girlfriends. Needless to say, we’ve likely consumed unhealthy amounts of chicken wings this past week.

.3. Last night was a serendipitous sort of evening. O & I had finished up at DM’s and were heading out when I ran into a very old and dear friend of mine from a group I used to hang out with nearly 12 years ago.

A mutual birthday shared, a few of them were out celebrating and M invited me along to say hello. I planned on popping in briefly, and ended up staying the course of the evening instead. A friend owns the restaurant and so we literally locked the doors after the last customers and enjoyed the space to ourselves.

Here’s a snippet of one conversation:
Maha: “How’s your grandfather?”
M*: “He died about two years ago, Maha.”
“Oh my god. Jees. This is awkward, eh? I'm such an idiot.”
“Way to place your foot in your mouth.”
…insert extreme laughter from both, and then the ensuing banter…
“And your mom? I hear she got out of those shoplifting charges pretty easily...must help that you're a cop!”
“Yeah, totally. And my dad? He's been able to put that sexual harassment case behind him.”
“Excellent! How’s your sister doing after that abortion? Did we ever figure out who the dad was?”
“No, not really. No one cares...abortion was okay, it's the herpes that are killer!”
“I bet!”
"This is good, getting caught up like this. Mom still hooking?"
"Absolutely. This is fun. We should take this on the road."
"Let's."
"OKAY!"

It’s amazing how quickly and comfortably we can fall back into friendship. Although last night was a welcome and heartwarming evening, it’s probable that I won’t see most of them for years to come. Regardless, all involved are like huge warm blankets well worn and of the perfect fit, memories of them I’ve carefully tucked away and of which I’ve taken very good care. Life dictated that we would drift apart, but last night was a clear indication that no matter time and space, they still fit and they will always fit.

Blue Days outed

I figured out that my first ever real & true Blue Day wasn’t in March but rather in December of 2005. My writing then was much more sporadic and without the usual comedic overtures. When I wasn’t at work, I was at home. I refused to talk about what was happening (partially because I didn’t know what I’d say other than: “I’m sad”) and it took a lot to get me out of the house for a solid month or two. Things climaxed when my best friend called me crying because she didn’t know what to do about ‘me’ and couldn’t understand why I wanted to be left so completely alone by everyone. I asked her to simply support me through it because the last thing I needed to deal with at that moment was the guilt of pushing people away. She did.

There were a lot of factors to contend with and which led up to that tiny little time in my life. I had just turned 31, I was unhappy with my surroundings, I was unhappy at the office, I wanted out, an escape, a different life, a different everything, really. The catalyst was a Man Boy; I’d spent seven years prior keeping myself safe and my heart in my hands, closed. I chose to open my hands up a little bit and to let go of that safety net; for all of the wonderful and incredible moments experienced within that freedom, I experienced its equal in grief.

Within a moment, everything exploded all over me & my life and it was all just so sticky and impossible to wash off quickly. And so I cocooned. I went into myself and shut everyone out including my family. I needed to change something inside of me before I could address my environment; both of these I eventually did.

With equal vigor and quickness, it was all gone; One afternoon, all of my grief just lifted up and away from me. I wasn’t myself, but rather, I was someone inherently better, more secure, confident, together and aware.

This time as with last, there are a multitude of factors creating the foundations of this Blue Day, many of which are similar to last year (e.g. the same Man Boy) and some that are not (e.g. yet another Boy & my time in Beirut). So, whereas last year I chose to wallow in whatever it was that was holding me in, this year, I’ve decided that won’t be the case. It simply can’t be; being a different person than who I was last year dictates that I am to deal with a situation differently.

So I’ve been going long and hard every single night and I don’t plan on stopping until I either completely burn out, or I’m seeing pink again. I figure that at this point in my 31 years, I should try a new route on for size. So far, so good, because it’s allowed me to avoid dealing with the roots of Blue Day, and the longer I can put that off, the happier I am. If there is blowback to my chosen course, it may not be so great, but at this point I couldn’t care less. And ultimately, the last thing I want to be is alone right now…so my friends are seeing a lot of me and for this, I am grateful.

Having written that and before moving on, I have to say ‘Alhamdulilah’ for every single thing placed in my path, no matter how blue or pink that may make my day.

Blue Day

I’m having a Blue Day; something that’s not happened in quite some time. (Think the last Blue Day I had was in March.) There’s nothing to be done about it which I’ve not tried to do already. I’ve always kept myself busy as sort of a general rule of thumb about how I want to live my life…and when I sense the coming onslaught of a Blue Day, I usually work doubly hard to be even more busy than the norm (hence the mania of posts and energy as of late).

This time it’s not worked, and so here I am firmly entrenched in my Blue Day. Weather seems to agree with my mood as it is pissing rain, cloudy and cold. Seated in Bridgehead earlier today, I had to control myself so as to not cry into my latté. I made it to the washroom and sniffled quietly away as I reapplied my lip-gloss.

I’ve already watched the entirety of Season 6 of Lorelai & Rori and have nothing warm to cozy up to this night. Mum’s in Dubai for the next three weeks and although I have the full of 24 hours a day to do anything my heart desires, I have no desire to do a thing. It’s moments such as these when I wish a boy would close the world, pull me in, cover me up and tell me everything was going to be ok.

Bet you’d have never had me pegged for such a completely foolish romantic.

The IKEA Matrix

I spent my day reorganizing my closet and throwing out all sorts of unnecessary garbage. I even got crafty and made these two beautiful things, for which the name – although am certain it exists – I haven’t a clue. I threw all of my agendas and writing books in the top one, and my letters in the bottom one.



Then I took the decision to buy the IKEA ektorp single reading chair, which I’ve been eyeing for quite some time. I drove out to IKEA totally psyched to buy it, bring it home, put it together and start reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty this very evening. The chair and matching footrest I wanted in this fabric:



I saw it, I sat in it & I thought: this is my chair. It is this chair that I will take with me to my new home and place on my porch, along with others in different fabrics so that when people come and visit, they too will be seated in comfy sinky cozy chairs made for coffee and tea, cookies, cakes, good conversation and long lasting memories. And when my daughter has her girlfriends over, she too will be able to sit out on these very chairs and talk about boys and actors and shit poetry and all of the things neither her father nor I should ever know about. I was so happy, that I thought the two individuals seated on the ektorp sofa next to me cuddling in the store were sort of precious in their own unique weird way.

But then I made the fatal mistake of asking the boy who worked there to show me the matching footrest.

Fatal mistake because apparently, there is no matching footrest. Apparently the Swedes don’t think you need a matching footrest for this chair. They instead want you to purchase the leaby red footrest. And by leaby, they mean slutty. Behold the shade of red fashioned after the very lipstick Madonna wore throughout her Blonde Ambition tour:



What am I going to do with that shade of red anywhere in my home? My daughter will be a raging whore if I put something like that on my porch. Honestly, it may not appear as large a travesty as it really is, but it is. Especially when I had my heart set on that beautiful chair and it’s matching footrest. I stared at the boy incapable of comprehending what he was saying because I could not register: NOT AVAILABLE. He kept pointing at the hideous Leaby Red and declaring: It’s made to match. I couldn’t even look at the footrest, the red was so blinding and my eyes quite nearly started bleeding.

I said: “dark, rich red?”
He said: “leaby!”
I said: “No. That’s a really cheap brothel red.”
“Leaby?”
“That can’t possibly be the only matching footrest you have. Why doesn’t it come in the same fabric? It would be so easy to make with all of your cheap slave labour in China.”
“We use cheap slave labour?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t everybody? It sounds right, don’t you think? I mean Swedes don’t make this, do they? It’s probably poor blind children in Cambodia somewhere.”
“I thought you said China?”
“I said: ‘I don’t know’. Maybe India? And why are these two sleeping on your couch? This isn’t a home. Is it? Is this some Swedish guy’s home and I’m here by accident?”

…and the conversation just spiraled into stupidity from there.

Deflated and without a chair, I decided to leave my memories of a porch and children behind at IKEA. Only, if you’ve been inside of an IKEA store, you know it’s not made so that you may walk out at your leisure. Instead, you have to follow the rabbit out of the IKEA Matrix or else you will be swallowed by one of the ektorp chairs and as you’re being swallowed, they will take a picture of you and then frame it and stick it in one of their faux living rooms on display.

Did you really think those photos were donated? No. They are photos of people who get lost in the IKEA Matrix, my friends.

After bumping along and going back to the same damn spot 12 times, I found the arrows on the floor and followed them out. I swear there was a guy behind me with a camera.

Beirut Reunion no. 2

Among the many people who worked together in Beirut (many of whom came in from our Embassies abroad), eight of us are based at Headquarters, and one miscellaneous who resides in the same city. Unlikely but true, we all got along and genuinely enjoyed one another’s company. While in Beirut and after coming back from a lengthy workday, our evenings started at 7 or 8 and ran until all hours of the morning.

Coming home at staggered times, we’d promised to keep in touch and see one another on a relatively regular basis. Last evening was our second ‘Beirut Reunion’, which at our last dinner, we agreed to hold on the first Friday of each month. Best about last night was that the MCO of the Beirut Embassy (the beautiful girl in pic no 5) was in town and joined us. It was quite surreal to see everyone in Ottawa, more so with her there because she really is Beirut.

Because of the nature of our work, conversations that run the course of our evenings are exceptionally politically charged, very aware, relatively progressive and always well articulated. Last night provided 4 hours of the same...

Although not everyone’s photographed, here are a few of the people involved.

S&G








G & A


JG


S& Maha; Look, I have a bald spot that no one ever knew about and that seems to have only appeared in this one photo. We spent the next five takes trying to figure out what was wrong with my camera that it made me appear to have a bald spot. Notice all the laughing which ensued post the "there's treatment for that sort of thing Maha" & "it's not too late to remedy the problem" & "receeding hairlines among women is all the rage in Europe. It's totally hot!".

A Man In Need of Validation: War of the sexes part 2

You can find part 1 here.

I wasn’t going to write about this until the shit hit the fan quite recently. A few of The Girls and I were out and ran into two of the three people I discuss in this entry. They’re the two individuals I dislike.

Recently, one of our dearest girlfriends was overlooked by a man for whom she deeply cares. No matter what we say or offer, try to understand and make sense of, she sees none of it.

All she sees is that: he chose another over her.

Unfortunately, and bypassing all of the excuses we try to make, we tend to agree. We were witness to their interaction and to the energy and chemistry that resonated from them when they were together. From the moment they met, their chemistry was instantaneous and obvious to all of us in that room.

This is a woman who is brilliant and gorgeous, witty, educated, elegant and dangerously fun. She has a smile that brightens any room she walks into; a room she immediately owns even when she knows no one. She’s also confident, sophisticated and isn’t easily intimidated. And therein lie the rub(s), which I will get to in a moment.

I won’t deny that he too is an attractive man, intelligent, worldly, well read, and extremely engaging. They made a handsome couple.

All The Girls can manage is a small fib of: He’s just not that into you? I hate this sentiment because it renders men 1-dimensional, and although it should be helping her, it’s not because we all know it’s a lie. We just couldn’t understand his actions…

Until we saw him with his new girlfriend. Unfortunately, our girl wasn’t with us; unfortunate because she would have walked out of that restaurant disappointed but understanding her real worth.

I write the following with the full recognition that we were only witness to their interaction for one evening, and we were in public.

The one thing that screamed out at me was that his attraction to Her is solidly rooted in the validation she gives him. Until that moment, we’d known nothing about Her. Watching them interact was like watching, in slow motion, an episode of How To Disgrace The Sisterhood. I also watched how she moved and walked through the crowd, how she interacted with others and her reaction to attractive women.

Naturally, I was also eavesdropping. Look, the restaurant is so small that they were both practically sitting on my lap. It was astonishing to note that she had no opinion, there were no questions posed, no challenges made, no intelligent remarks, but rather simple “uh-uh”, “oh wow”, “oh my god” peppered among the “you’re so clever”, “that’s so smart!” and of course “you’re so funny, tee hee.” My fu*king ears almost started bleeding. I’m still flabbergasted, and not by any stretch of the imagination am I a woman who is flabbergasted easily. Oftentimes dumbfounded with the appearance of stupefied, yes, but not ‘flabbergasted’.

I was also so completely disappointed in him. What a shame that this is the boy he turned out to be, when I thought my girl had given her heart to a man.

Because I’m the bestest best friend in the whole wide world, I immediately rang his best friend (who remains a relative good friend of mine) and told him what I’d seen. He agreed, and not reluctantly, he confirmed that she was a Yes Girl. Not very confident or terribly smart, simple, not a challenge and most definitely not someone his best friend was taking seriously or contemplating committing to.

My best friend, on the other hand, was all of the above. Granted, ‘unsophisticated’ does not necessarily mean it’s a situation from which one can’t experience pleasure…it just means that for me, I’d get bored much too quickly. My attention span and level of patience are severely short and so sophisticated is what engages me. If we were in a craft store, I’d be haunting the Logic Puzzle aisle, while He would be in the paint by numbers area.

This incensed me because I sort of went through this once (but nowhere near the same degree). Another of my best friends went through this and she was – physically and emotionally – ruined. I watched my mother go through this when I was 13. I watched her try to make sense of losing the only man she’s ever loved, I watched her fall apart as my father packed and left. At one point later in the timeline of each of these stories, the men regretted their actions and asked to be let back in. (Mine, moments before he announced his engagement to another woman.) Unfortunately for them, we’re not cut from the same cloth as the ‘simple’ ones; with us, the door is open only once, and when it’s closed it disappears completely as though it never existed. Simply stated, women like us don’t wait around.

Validation comes not from men, but rather from our achievements. Men, although still a necessity in terms of intimacy and love, strength, protection and all wonderful masculine qualities offered, are a bonus. This I truly mean in the most complimentary way possible. Ultimately, I believe that to be wanted when you’re not needed is much more satisfying and heartwarming than to be wanted only because you’re needed. There is a level of desperation in need, something that’s never served me as an aphrodisiac. Compare it to free will; I choose, rather than I need. Which would you rather?

Are a boy’s insecurities so great that he can’t see this?

All of this I raised with baba when we were dining the other evening; he was very forthcoming with me because he was once a typical boy. I guess that, for the most part, I think that my dad’s right about boys. I think he’s spot on…and I like men because they’re confident, aggressive, proud individuals who demand only the best from their partner because they return it in kind. But I really don’t want to date a 60 year old. So what do I do?

Skinny gummy trollops

.1. If you are a boy over the age of zero you should neither own nor ever contemplate owning 'skinny' jeans, unless your name is Sid and your girlfriend's name is Nancy and you sometimes happen to write excellent music and you're dead.

.2. I was about to eat gum last night, only I threw the Chiclets in the general direction of my mouth and missed. One hit my cheek and the other ricocheted off my glasses. Sadly, I watched as my last two pieces of Chiclets fell away and on to the dirty street. I woke up with a welt on my face.

.3. In order to improve my colloqueal French, I am going to spend the rest of my lunch hour completing a questionnaire in the French Glamour. This questionnaire is going to tell me about how my childhood has affected my adulthood and my sexual something-or-other. Doesn't matter that I'm a 'V'; to Glamour, we're all trollops. I'll share the outcome with you later this afternoon...

Them Euro-peen-r's’r Weird

Or so I believed when I was 16 years of age. I didn’t walk around declaring “European folks are weird”, but earlier today I recalled a vivid memory which clearly indicates that I held this very belief.

When we were 16, we used to hang out at the hottest club in the city called Deluxe. It was when the rave scene was huge and when house was making its entry into mainstream clubs. I knew the owner ‘P’ and C’s brother’s best friend ‘V’ was the head bouncer at the club. Both P & C knew that none of us drank, but we did like to dance. (Besides, my curfew was 11:30 and so we all left together at around 11.)

They’d always walk us in, let us dance for a couple of hours while keeping an eye on us and making sure we were safe. P wouldn’t take our money for cover and the servers wouldn’t take our money for coca-cola and we got to dance to the best music by the hottest DJ around.

Aside: We are were relative geeks, anyway. Deluxe had toilettes that were for both men and women, and a couple of stalls where the doors had been removed. We thought this was a mistake and told P, who just shook his head and laughed. I never actually understood what those toilettes signified until last year. C, T & I were so grossed out by the idea that there were boys in the same washroom as us that we never returned to the toilettes at Deluxe . Serious geek-age, kids.

One evening, we were seated by the window with our collective coca-colas chatting away about Jason Gedrick whatever it is that 16 year olds chat about when two couples stomped into the club.

The couples were in their early 40s. One of the men was wearing a beret and one of the women was flying loose in a moo-moo. As soon as they stepped foot in Deluxe, they started whipping one another around in what can only be described as a ‘frenzy’. To the naked eye, it appeared as though they were interpretive dancing to wanker music that only they could hear. It was such an intriguing scene that people in the club stopped talking and instead stood around staring at these four individuals. Eventually, the DJ stopped spinning. Unfortunately, they kept going.

T turned to me and said “I think they’re on drugs. They must be on drugs. Cocaine?”, and with all the authority and confidence I possessed as a 16 year old girl, I replied “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think they’re on drugs. I think they’re just Europeans. Actually. I’m pretty sure they’re just Europeans. Yes. From Europe.”

The Doors sang it best

Because people are strange. God damn it, what’s wrong with people?? This, this is not a rhetorical question. I’m really quite aggravated (spelled with an ‘a’ and not an ‘i’) at the moment.

In school, we have study time. STUDY TIME IS NOT A TIME FOR JABBERING. And I don’t give a rat’s ass but no one is so important that they need a bazillion headpieces and phones so that they can “always be reached”. Fucking Bush wasn’t reachable when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were being nailed; What makes you think you’re SO important that you need to be on the phone during STUDY TIME?

STUDY TIME = QUIET TIME

I was trying to STUDY during STUDY TIME, only I couldn’t because Mr.I’m Much More Important Than You And I Know That Because I’m On The Mobile Six Out Of The Seven Hours We’re In School was on his mobile. We were seated in the QUIET STUDY ROOM, with all of the QUIET STUDIOUS PEOPLE who were trying to STUDY, when Mr.IMMITYAIKTBIOTMSOOTSHWIS was JABBERING on his mobile.

And you know what made it worse? He was fucking fake whispering, because STUDIOUS people = dirty people who don’t clean the wax out of their ears and so Mr. Cleverosity decided that fake whispering would amount to his ugly fake whisper slipping and dying inside of our waxy dirty ear canals before it had a chance to reach our eardrums where it would vibrate and a thing called HEARING would occur.

But I can tell you that phone call WASN’T SO IMPORTANT that it couldn’t wait. Because shit like “yeah, it’s study time right now so I was bored” ISN’T IMPORTANT, YOU MORON.

I was so – and obviously am still – perturbed that my heart started racing and I had to leave the room. My friend A was there, killing himself laughing because he thought my completely irrational reaction was just that funny. If A weren’t cute, I would have maybe drop kicked him for calling my reaction “adorable”. Adorable? WTF?

Anyway. The Fake Whisperer I couldn’t see at first because he was seated behind a small Chinese wall. But I was pretty sure I knew who it was, because I already dislike the guy. And yeah: I dislike him because of his face and his demeanor and the fact the he uses way too much gel in his hair and wears turtlenecks in summer. That’s not cool. That beatnik meets Antonio Banderas meets Asshole look doesn’t = cool.

Wanna know how I knew who he was? Apart from smelling the hair gel across the room, I knew it could only be the same guy who always sits outside and TALKS ON HIS RAZOR MOBILE. Every. Single. Time. I see him. He’s on. That Razor. And today, it took everything out of me not to haul my arse over to him, rip the mobile out of his hand, rip the ear piece out of his head and scream into his over-gelled hair that HE WAS ANNOYING THE ENTIRE FUCKING STUDY ROOM. And the fact that he’s always on the phone makes him pretentious. THAT’S MY JUDGMENT CALL TO MAKE. Don’t like it? Maybe today’s not the time to tell me, because I obviously am not in the proper mood for a disagreement right now.

As I was leaving the no-longer QUIET study room, I whipped around the corner of the Chinese wall and stared at him for a good seven seconds. We made eye contact and I shot daggers at him, with my eyes. I know he totally got it because he slowed down his speech pattern for those seven seconds while I was shooting daggers at him with my eyes. Then I whipped around again, nodded at A and left the room.

And there were two other ‘strange’ people in my path today. Look: I have a migraine today, and that means that I’m already a little edgy and tired. Now, for the record, when you’re with someone who explicitly tells you that they have a migraine and just need quiet, then you really should think about shutting the fuck up. You don’t understand that? It means BEING QUIET. It means NOT TALKING. It means NOT TELLING THEM STORIES ABOUT YOUR LIFE. This person clucks, too, which is horrible. He clucks when he speaks: “When my wife had our *cluck* first kid *cluck*, I was so happy. Your eyes are rolling *cluck* back into your head Maha.”
“That’s because of the migraine I have. That I told you about.”
“Migraines *cluck* suck.”
“Yup.”
“So, I was telling *cluck* you about my first kid. *Cluck* *cluck* fuckity *cluck* *cluck* *cluck*.”

Which leads me to the third and final weirdo in my path this day. The guy who was seated next to me whispering to his computer screen. He scared me so much that I almost wet myself. I backed away from him and very nearly fell over the garbage can.

All this to say that at several different moments today, I wanted to drive my face into a desk or a computer screen.

Conversation with baba: War of the sexes part 1

I will provide you the context of this within the coming little while…

(Meet my dad, the feminist.)
“How could he possibly be interested in a woman that’s so obviously there ONLY to feed his ego? He’s so smart, dad.”
“There’s a reason why the female archetype is ‘The Blonde Bombshell’.”
“Times are a changin’ baba! Blondes are out.”
“(laughter) Ok, Maha, but it’s the sentiment that still exists. At the end of the day, men within a certain age group don’t want a terribly sophisticated woman. They need someone who will validate them, someone who will make them feel stronger and smarter and the best thing in the world.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. A man doesn’t want to be challenged.”
“You didn’t. That’s why you left mom.”
“That’s right. I can admit that now. I needed a different sort of woman.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m nearly 60, Maha. Now, I know the only sort of woman I can be with is a woman who challenges me. Through challenge, I become a better man.”

(Meet my dad, the guy who forgot my 31st birthday.)
“So where does that leave me?”
“You’re going to be 32.”
“No way! When?”
“October 16”
“Rock on.”

(Meet my dad, my number one fan.)
“Maha.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m being serious.”
“Yes. Of course. Sorry. I like pink.”
“(laughter) That’s part of the reason you’re having trouble finding a good and worthy man. You’re surrounded by boys who are intimidated by you. You’re too much for a boy. You need a man.”
“So what do I do? OH MY GOD, I should date 60 year olds like you?”
“No. You have to find a man whose not intimidated by your beauty, wit and brains. You have a rare combination and you don’t know how to tone it down. Nor should you have to.”
“(pause) I like pink.”
“You’re a strange kid.”
“Like a goat?”
“Maha.”
“I like goats, baba. But not as much as I like pink.”

A Banana Tree & The Invite to NYC

As mentioned earlier today, I am redecorating my room. I decorate from the corners and work my way out, and so I started with my favourite intimate corner which has always struck me as a little exposed.

In keeping with the theme of Occupied Bombay, I knew I needed a Banana Tree. Banana Trees are quite underrated, folks. Apparently, they’re also a rarity. I hunted everywhere for one, and finally found the perfect Banana Tree for my corner.

Please say hello to Tilda, my Banana Tree:



Isn’t she beautiful?

My outstanding list of items is now narrowed down to:
- Wire backed chair
- Reading chair
- Ottoman to match the reading chair
- One large tapestry
- A chandelier
- I’ll be removing three massive panels behind which resides my wardrobe, because I’ve decided to instead hang very heavy drapes in their place (shades of reds & golds)
- Miscellaneous items such as candles, frames and at least three mirrors to slip above my headrest, to reflect the proper light.
- That’ll leave me with one wall empty, a space I’m as of yet unsure how I’ll work with…

I wasn’t joking when I wrote “42 years”.

&

I’ve accepted an invite to NY for my birthday. Only, I won’t be going on my birthday but rather the weekend following.

It took me some time to make up my mind, but now that it's all made up I’m terribly excited & consequences be damned. My heart's a mess, anyway.