Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Last night I was a disappointment to this great sporting nation. Despite staying up all night, with Mark and Dan in the lounge room watching the soccer, I elected instead to read 'Valencia', a novel set in leso mid 90s San Francisco. I started at 2am and finished about 5.30 am, with barely a toilet break. Wish I had that kind of stamina for reading about law. Not that surprising though, given how fascinatingly, hideously, hilariously, familiar the whole story and characters were. Drunk dykes making out and breaking up. Anti-capitalist queers decked out in ink and glitter.

Guess it was a bit more Sydney than Melbourne, but i was still seeing all my friends, lovers and ex-friends and lovers in that book. Maybe that was what kept my eyes glued to the pages, despite the ducted dry heat being a bit vicious on the eyeballs. It wasn't till half way that i think i admitted that I was trying to deduce some kind of encoded meaning and direction from the book, like it was some kind of parable. Does recognising derivative and repetitive patterns of behaviour, across time and people, count as any kind of epiphany? If so, it was a mixed bag kind of epiphany. Kind of nice to feel like other people have made even bigger fools of themselves, kind of depressing to realise you're repeating mistakes made by millions before you. I must stop looking for easy answers i think. particulary since i don't think there are any easy answers when you've already opted out of the kind of relationships that are sanctified by the mainstream. *earnest moment over* the other meaningful lesson i drew from Valencia is that i definitely need to take more drugs and that if i can do that, i will have more fun and be hotter.

2 comments:

joe cupcake said...

eeks it sounds like you were really hoping for some answers there...

but do you think it's all mistakes in there or just part of the deal... i dunno, i had always thought i should be more romantic and impulsive like the valencia ladies but last time i read it i was struck by the fact that it all just seemed like a big messy drama that maybe i wouldn't really want to be a big part of.

oh what to choose - sanity and the fear of boredom or crazy fun and possible self-destruction.

maybe there's just something glorious about seeing messy messy drama filled heart-following urges romanticised so well..

crankypants said...

mmm, how wierd is it the way they all use latex gloves to fuck!? I told Dan i fully expect to end up lonely and diseased but then i realised I could very well end up diseased and not lonely at all, since we'll all have the same shit. I know people say gloves can be sexy, and if you use them enough you start to associate them with sex- is that the way that argument goes?- but i'm just not sold on it and not sure they even make that much difference. perhaps i found it particularly striking cause apart from the safe sex, the Valencia ladies seem pretty hedonistic right.