Still from Wangechi Mutu’s film showing at Victoria Miro Gallery, part of “Sirens and Serpents.”
The Predate Vlog
In recovery mode again, the Unconventional Woman quickly schedules a gallery crawl with someone in an antimessaging state of mind.
The Post First Impressions Vlog
The Unconventional woman is butting heads with her date in the pub over questions of art and politics. How romantic!
The Post Date Denouement
A second date is mentioned in passing, but The Unconventional Woman suspects there is too much intellectual incompatibility to move on from this point. At the same time she is impressed by his low key vibe.
I’m still uncomfortable with some of the language that’s being tossed around but after communicating my inhibitions I am ready to go on a second date. Part of me is just breathing a sigh of relief that I don’t have to go on another first date.
Post Second Impressions Vlog
I’m really enjoying every minute of this evening.
So I pop out of the loo at the Curzon, and I’m the very last one. “Did I take too long? I was last in the queue!”
He says, “Where do you want to go now? There’s this bar near Canary Wharf with good cocktails.. There’s also Beaujolais..” We’ve already talked about going to Beaujolais, a French wine bar near the theater, and I’m kind of creeped out by the bar in Canary Wharf coming from now where….he not so subtley sent me his address in South Quay when we talked about which cinema to go to…..as if trying to make it relevant information. He shows off his French with the barmaids and orders pate, but we don’t talk about France. I tell him the first time I had pate was in Vietnam.
We talk about going to India……he dated an Indian woman before, someone from Mumbai, and visited her family there. I try to get information about his past relationships….how many long, how long, with who? I want to see the patterns or atleast a learning process. He refuses.
He impresses me by giving me his angle on Indian politics, and sort of horrifies me by having a different opinion on Arundhati Roy, but then I’m just impressed that he’s constructed an opinion.
I ask about his mom, who he claimed had ‘a political past.’ He describes his family moving away from Brixton to the suburbs after the first two years of his life and his mom becoming disconnected and depressed. I wonder if that means he would never isolate a woman. His parents called it quits when he was 16 after he decided to go to school in Wales. Then I realize that he’s lived most of his life as an only child, and something clicks for me. His personality is very,very, much like an only child..and so is mine. I once dated a middle child who I thought was very attentive and a good listener, until he told me how self absorbed and obnoxious I was. I fantasize that the GC and I could be tremendously entertaining as a partnership of obnoxious only children, colorful internal monologues crashing against another as we wrestle for center stage: like a reunion with an unknown sibling or a phantom limb. I see us together, not ‘only’ anymore.
I’m already worrying about telling him of the blog. There’s something excitable and self important about his personality that I feel might not take it well, and I think that little high voice shouting at me would be quite upsetting. I ask him, “So what would make you angry?” He says “That would be telling wouldn’t it?”
It’s 11 pm and Beaujolais is closing. I feel high in the moment and I don’t want things to end just there.. .I’ve just started to feel hope that this is going somewhere. We could stay out another hour and I could still get home on public transport. He mentions the bar in Canary Wharf again and I let myself trust him this time.
Getting Carried Away Vlog
The worst thing that happened: he was on top of me trying to do something I did not want him to do. I told him to stop and that it hurt. He talked to me like I was a seven year old getting her stitches out, telling me that I was a good girl and I was doing very well. He did not stop until I resorted to biting him and pinching him as hard I could.
When he was lying in bed I told him that he was very pretty and looked like Adonis. He said that I had to stop saying that and tell him that he was handsome. I understand why he kept asking if he ‘dominated me’.
I told him I liked him three different times, looking into his eyes. On the third time, He said “I know, and I said I like you too, but If you say that again, you’re going to scare me.”
I liked seeing him in his boxer briefs making breakfast for me in the kitchen, strutting like a redheaded cupid. It made me want to distract him endlessly with my lips and finger tips. It also made me want to cook him breakfast, a lot of breakfasts. There were boxes of dosa and uttapam mix on the side of the hob. He spread his father’s fruit confit on my toast.
We had a long, complex, kiss good bye. I told him he looked snappy as he went to his interview. He said he would miss me.
I waited 3 days before I sent him a message about a Truffaut film playing in Brixton which would be introduced by Richard Ayoade. We had both agreed at Beaujolais we would be interested in seeing this. He did not respond. I spent the rest of the day and part of the next two crying.
In my research, I have only discovered two types of men in London: those who don’t want to be around me, and those who pretend that they like me long enough to sleep with me, and then notice, quite casually, that they don’t want to be around me.
You can follow the Unconventional Woman on Twitter @LeUnconventional
Is it disappointing that I dropped the ball on the psychotherapist?
I was thinking that he would see right through me. I was afraid of that.
I was also thinking that I wasn’t hopeful enough about this date to merit talking about it. By chance I was able to schedule another date for the day after that I was more excited about after I had already agreed to date the psychotherapist. With all my experience of being on the receiving end of fickle, I can’t feel guilty about this.
He was 43, this was the first man in my experiment with ‘dating over 40.’ He looked a little like someone I had dated before, but I had a feeling that on meeting I probably wouldn’t be attracted to him, and I wasn’t. Where have all the hot 40 year olds gone? They’re married you idiot! I’ll make sure to tell you when I find one.
So on to Mr. Multilingual, there’s an interesting story to tell here. I’m still trying to digest him!
Date #13, Mr. Multilingual, The Predate Vlog
The Unconventional Woman can’t get a question in edgewise because Mr. Multilingual is so busy trying to figure her out, but the style of interrogation is enough to make her want to meet up.
Post First Impressions
The Unconventional Woman has landed in a Jazz bar, and she seems pretty angry about something.
The Post Date Denouement
The Unconventional Woman reflects that she might have been too harsh in the Mid date vlog. She reveals mr. Multilingual’s very exciting profession, and why she might confuse ‘sparring’ for flirtation
Yes, date #11….This is date #11. I wasn’t able to report on 8, 9, and 10, but I’m counting them in the count, because I made the effort to message them and meet them….They count as the labor that this process takes, the labor of the outsider trying to make meaningful connections on the inside, not having the privilege of being introduced by friends of friends. They count as the labor it takes to get out of your social context. Date #8 stood me up for brunch…first he made me wake up early on a Saturday then he stood me up. Date #9 left when I went to the toilet…around this time N wrote me an email about how I was exploiting these poor guys sincerely looking for love. I don’t think that guy matched my level of sincerity. Date #10 wasn’t as bad except he sort of thoughtlessly asked me to meet him a the London Eye on a weekend without any plan after that, and we ended up at the Waterstones near Trafalgar square, so I didn’t even have a toilet to do my my post first impressions vlog in. Yes, that’s the Waterstones the American tourist was locked in over night this week.. That’s a good measure of the quality of that date actually.
The Predate Vlog
Earlier this year Mindy Kaling wrote an article in the New Yorker about the sparkling science fiction world of Romantic Comedies. I imagine the world of my blog as the ugly step child of this world… with all of the desire but none of the easy happy endings and vapid stupidity. Instead there is a lot of toxic reality, and my fight to find hope in it.
This is what Mindy Kaling said about architects:
“Whenever you meet a handsome, charming, successful man in a romantic comedy, the heroine’s friend always says the same thing: “He’s really successful. He’s”—say it with me—“an architect!”
There are, like, nine people in the entire world who are architects, and one of them is my dad. None of them look like Patrick Dempsey.”
There you go… architects are gold dust from Rom Com world
This is the first time I’ve dated an architect, and it’s no wonder, because as a profession architecture is first to fall victim to a recession, and the last to recover later. That’s the real reason architects are gold dust, because Romantic Comedies are constructed from post war fantasies of success that are actually pretty dated.
So this is the first time I’ve dated an architect…I’m not a willing victim to Rom Com world, but I do have some romantic associations with the word. As an artist I’m always trying to balance creative and practical traits in the men I meet. If my partner is too practical, they won’t understand my impractical professional, something I’m passionate about and a reason I’m swimming up the stream of society most of the time. If my partner is too creative, he might also be constantly swimming up the stream…his instability might make me less stable.
But besides his profession, do I have any reason to like this guy? Either he’s too busy to build rapport in messages or I am. His profile was good…in a generic kind of way. I’m just hoping that IRL could be different.
Post First Impressions Vlog
So I realized a long time ago that red wine is not a good look on me, but I’ve started to resent the idea that someone would hold the way a specific type of alcohol changes my appearance against me…even in my video log…no it was the lighting, definitely the lighting! Anyway, what about the guy? “The length of the date bodes well, but the Unconventional woman’s voice is detached as she describes the feeling of pleasantly gliding along the surface.”……Not exactly a reason to skip the red wine.
The Post Date Denouement: Reflections on the Intimacy Machine
I should say up to this time a lot of my dating theory has been based on something I call the intimacy machine…The intimacy machine is not physical, It’s mental, but it might be neurochemical. When you open up to someone, it’s like a dare for the other person to open up. I found the machine on accident because I like talking to people, but I hate superficial conversations. Often the machine resembles the tropes of pillow talk or kiss and tell, there’s mutual vulnerability and an emotional bond is formed. It’s a dangerous place to be in: you might find someone’s deep dark secret and realize you shouldn’t be in the intimacy machine with them. It takes a lot of strength of character to climb out of the machine once the process is initiated. I’ve been telling my friends about this machine. My position has been if you don’t turn the machine on during your date, nothing happens, so it’s a risk worth taking. Some people have suggested that I turn the machine on…a little slower.
I tried that on this date. I’m not too sure about the results? I invited my friends along for the post date vlog to get their take on it.
You can follow me, The Unconventional Woman, on Twitter @ LeUnconventionl
I wasn’t totally honest in the post date vlog of 4# and 5#, the Tall Irish Vegan…I was still negotiating how my privacy might exist in this project, and as we all know, it doesn’t. Or at least, I am still in the process of experiencing the technical difficulties. I keep tripping up on the fact that these things, the very private things, matter. They are both the gateway to the way we connect to each other and our power relationships. So on date #5, what should of been a lovely romantic venture in Kew Gardens, I was exhausted… The week of precarity had just happened…and I was an hour late and ruining my date with the Tall Irish Vegan by bitching all day about J. W. and 19 year old Yuki. We managed anyway to have some nice moments. The Gin and Tonics garden in Kew was like a Wes Anderson movie: The set up, the barmen. the music even. We swore who ever the manager was must of been insane for Wes Anderson, probably put a call out just for these types: tall gawky Englishmen with awkard noses, add a lanky Indian with shiny long hair. Dress them in flowery shirts. Afterwards we went to a pub in Kew for Dinner.. we got vegan meals together. The pub had much better lighting than our cozy Scrabble pub in Dulwich,.. and was mostly attended by Grannies. We just wanted a little privacy to kiss again like we did in Dulwich.
I have to say that the project has been distorting my attitude towards these ventures. I want to know too quickly the yes or no. because if it’s no, I don’t want to waste my time, or break with my project.
So we had the talk about flats…He had some visitors at his: not enough privacy. I was very ashamed of the mess in my room… most embarrassingly I really needed to clean the sheets. We came up with a solution..a blindfold. Then the idea was just too hot to put down. We started talking about honey.
I think he took a bus home at about 12 am. In the morning when we weren’t in touch I started to feel that I had messed things up. Of course it’s a self infliction of sexist standards that I blamed it all on myself. He called me back at noon, and we talked about the fact that he would be traveling most of September, and we should keep things low key, with no labels. In a way this is exactly what I wanted. There was a chance I could go on 30 dates before he came back..or at least 20? So if he really liked me we could start things in October.. If he actually liked me. I was also suspicious that the words no labels are just a way to make a graceful exit.
I started to think the latter when our communications cooled off significantly…after a few days I did the post date vlog.
Anyway I just talked to him on Skype. He called me up to say he found the blog a week ago. He was hesitating out of curiosity to hear what I said, but felt it was important to tell me before I wrote about him. He said he was okay with the blog. He wasn’t confrontational, but gentle, and respectful. It was good to see his face. I got that feeling you get when your mind is arranging itself around the appearance of someone you have growing affection for.We talked about the meaning of the no labels statement, and the cooling off. It was just a knowledge that we needed to slow down things a little (something I already stated in my vlog). So we will definitely see each other again….at the same time he’s cool with the project and the idea that I will be seeing other people. He feels like I do, that he’s doesn’t have to ‘own me’ for me to know that I like him more others. If I do end up with someone else in the process than that’s meant to be. I feel at peace with this, and I’ve much warmed to the Tall Irish Vegan because of the way he responded…in the right way… I’m now looking forward to seeing him again much more than I was. The boy with the Thailand tattoo texted me this morning and said ‘I wasn’t right for him’. I can’t know if he found the blog. I emailed this morning to make the leap of faith and tell him about it, and also ask if we could be friends. But if he found the blog, wasn’t cool with it, didn’t tell me, and won’t respond to an email…that just shows he wasn’t the right person for me.
Higher than average personality and ambition but low on the hotness scale, the Unconventional woman speculates whether they have the ingredients for romance… but first let’s see if he can fit a date into his busy schedule.
Post First Impressions
When is a radical outfit not enough? The date went where you can expect a date to go if you don’t make a tenable plan, meandering dismally in the streets, in high spirits from conversation, the Unconventional Woman reflects on how to send the secret message “Don’t ask me out again!” and have fun at the same time.
The Post Date Denouement
I wasn’t the best version of myself, I was the ranting, raging version of myself. Well, some people think this is the best version, (; Anyway I wasn’t “the girlfriend version.”
Follow me, The Unconventional Woman, on Twitter @LeUnconventionl
Usually a woman sits down with her date, and she is able to assess that he is either physically less attractive, less intelligent, or lacking in emotional intelligence, availability, and confidence. She sees this and knows that because of the sexism shaping the world around her, he may be judged as equal or even better than her in the pluses and minuses of things. He will have more economic, social, and romantic opportunities. She knows that he also will judge himself by this outside system, not seeing her true value, and feel more entitled than she does. She knows it is in her best interest to find out what she can love about this person despite his flaws…and love is still possible in this way. Loving past the flaws can be joyful, fulfilling, and sexually rewarding. Her agency lies in the possibility of quality partnerships, not in a total insistence on equality, which seems impossible to achieve in the short amount of time she has to exist in both a mature and attractive adulthood. Still, after she is given the opportunity to invest physically and emotionally in him, when he abuses her (during the break up) and devalues her ( by moving to another country to date a 19 year old) it is a slap in the face. It will be hard for her to let go of the anger. This is not just an event or his personal choice, but an expression of how she is always playing a game she cannot win in a machine built to systemically devalue her mind and body. She loses pieces of herself in the process.
But today a rare event occurred. I was outclassed. I was thinking am I smart enough, pretty enough,and emotionally mature enough to have a chance with this guy?
I said before he looks like my dear friend Min Wei, from the pictures. I think I find him more attractive. I think I find him more attractive in person. When a guy does not have hair or height on his side, but is still handsome. it’s exciting. You know that nature has not given him any ‘easy in’ and his handsomeness is totally his own thing. And when you can see the subtle shape of muscle under a button down shirt, that is his personal achievement. I don’t often fetishise accents because I’ve heard so many, but the Glasgow accent was starting to trip me up.
The first thing I said was can I look at your tattoo? And usually a tattoo is such a banal, hackneyed thing. But this tattoo was an intermingling of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic design culture. He called it ‘sacred geometry’ i told him the intermingling of those design cultures was my obsession when I was 19. Tantric Diagrams, Mandalas. It was a Thai tattoo. We have to tell the story of our lineages because I traveled towards the Thai tattoo in my lifetime, instead of being born near it. His story is better than mine. He is Italian, Spanish, Scottish, and Chinese. Pirate? I said. His grandfather was from Shanghai, a sailor in the Merchant Navy. He had a family in Shanghai, Nepal, and Scotland. He was a love pirate. I wonder if the genes went down the family tree.
I was really struggling to get my head round this and the world of the political underground that he inhabits while trying to understand all the information in the Disobedient Objects exhibition. I don’t get how something like decentralized technology matches up with socialism, even though I did the predate Google. I still don’t really get what a crypto anarchist or a cypher punk is. It’s mysterious and sexy, and I want to be the type of person who might meet these people? He has personal stories for at least a few of the objects in the exhibition, and I think where have I been living? Not on the ground. When I know about the Guerrilla Girls and he doesn’t, It’s a relief. I had something to add. Apparently his mum taught textiles at Goldsmiths and is ranty (a sign!) and I say, can’t believe G.G. got left out of the rant. In the pub with a drink in me I feel less stupid. We talk about conformity, shame as a tool for social control and classism (the swimming pool story), and who is actually happy in this system, not the producers, not the consumers..not the consumers at any level. He recommends doing ayahuasca to all my anxious, sad friends because it turns a mirror on your self and gives you insight on a path towards change. He says he did this and it worked. I said my friends are slowly trying to get a grip, but I’m not sure they can handle seeing the whole mirror. They might kill themselves. He recommends I try Jujitsu for my problem of over empathizing and being turned off to my emotional self. To learn how to be a fighter. He does kick boxing and Jujitsu, that’s why his body is like that. He gives me the down low on the Scottish referendum. If Scotland stays in they lose their free health care and education, and become a testing ground for all the shittiest laws before they come to England. If Scotland leaves they stay Scottish and socialist, and England becomes irretrievably Tory and corporately fascist without their influence. He says he will move to Berlin within 9 months. I start laughing. You too he says? Fuck tories, and marriage, me too. He has to leave for a meeting…he texts his mate for an extra hour but we still only get 3 hours together. In a final stroke of questionable genius, I explain how Tess of the D’urbervilles killing her rapist is a lot like Dave Chapelle’s series “when keeping it real goes wrong”.He does seem to find it impressive. I tell him he is fascinating as he is about to go..no way could I play it cool at this point. He says I am fascinating too, but we don’t make plans. He goes.
I text Shannon ridiculously ” I think I’m going to die of hotness.” I go to the toilet to do my post first impressions vlog. I go to the Speed Listening event I have been looking forward to. There’s good music and people sharing it. I try to enjoy it, but I go home half way through. I just want to sit in my room and remember 3 hours passing.
After lengthy messages that she was never sure would culminate in a meeting, the Unconventional Woman is trying to bounce back from some bad energy by seeing through the text to her next date…He’s very engaging..on the edges of show off. When he describes his circle of friends the Unconventional Woman is tantalized by hearing about an unfamiliar side of London.
Post First Impressions
The man was a lot more than the messages promised, certainly hitting the top 5 first dates ranking…but he left after only 3 hours. The Unconventional Woman fears she has been outclassed!
I am afraid I am not the Unconventional Woman anymore. I am becoming the short term dating girl. It’s not what I intended to do, it’s just feeling a lack of hope in a future. Even though I know the short term dating girl has no future, at least she has fun sometimes. The Unconventional Woman believes in love, she waits for it, she reveals it like a diamond in the rough. The short term dating girl takes what she can get and leaves. She knows she won’t that get much.It would be a waste of time to wait for the plus to turn into a minus.
The commodity, like the sign, suffers from
metaphysical dichotomies. Its value, its truth,
lies in the social element. But this social
element is added on to its nature, to its matter,
and the social subordinates it as a lesser value,
indeed as nonvalue. Participation in society
requires that the body submit itself to a
specularization, a speculation, that transforms
it into a value-bearing object, a standardized
sign, an exchangeable signifier, a “likeness”
with reference to an authoritative model.
Commodity—a woman—is divided into two
irreconcilable “bodies”: her “natural body
and her socially valued, exchangeable body,
which is a particularly mimetic expression of
masculine values.
It means my only value is a mimetic of expression of masculine values. This is why J. W. thinks that only girls just out of adolescence are the right person…He can superimpose all the liberal minded traits like intellectual development, life experience, and self-knowledge. His ability to sublimate and project is all he needs.
It also means the ten years I spent curating my experiences, and becoming more aware of myself and what I wanted, overcoming challenges, finally getting into school and doing my masters…it was a minus…I have less time and money now, and I do not express masculine values, I’m going on less than nil. I didn’t read any feminism in my BA. I honestly thought when I got to the ‘real world’ of the city that people would be so cosmopolitan and smart they would have moved past this old fashioned nonsense…so I let myself grow without reference to these structures, without even referencing economic structures.
When I asked 5 men to write profiles of me for my paper J. W. wrote the best profile…and I wrote I am afraid this is a mirror.. He’s just so good at telling people what they want to hear. He never looks within himself, at least if he did, he’d never tell you what’s going on there. He’s a manipulator, and he’s after any one naive enough not to uncover it. There are no good profiles. There is no man in the world who could see or value my ‘natural’ body.
N@gmail.com August 31st
to me
I, You are lovely.The truth is, your sample of men is shit, that’s why love doesn’t compute in the way you expect.
Me, overly self-controlled to the point of being repressed, slightly
masochistic Austrian guy who is still in love with his ex-gf that he
drove away by being indecisive.J. W., a skinny English guy who preys on foreigners by using the
English charm, or on younger women cause they are the only ones who
think he is cool. Married once already to an unfit woman who quickly
got bored of him. Hasn’t learned anything ever.
Matthew, the Irish banker who gets off by having sadistic sex with damaged
women. You had not much in common at all with him, and he
won’t miraculously become intellectual over night.
All three of us, stuck in the past, not yet in the future, just
behaving reckless but glossing it over with “charm”.
The truth is, you are fine, but we are all a bunch of total losers.
We are all blessed that you give us your friendship, but if I were
you, I would stay away romantically as far as I could from any of
these individuals. If they were old-fashioned they would already be
married, or marry you and you would live unhappily ever after with
them.
As for your non-sense on the economic side of your self development,
respectfully and all out of the blue… I slap you hard in the face
that it hurts and push you against the wall and I choke you and then
kindly whisper into your ear: shut the fuck up, bitch. Because you are talking mega-bullshit. You have made the absolute right decision to live your life as you have. Your degree programme has now come to an
end, and its normal that you are anxious because of the uncertainty.
May I remind you of three things: Firstly, you really enjoy what you
are doing and in this respect you have already had a more fulfilled
life at your age of 30, than 98% of the world population will ever
have. Secondly, who knows how the next 60 years will turn out? Nobody
does. Whether you will make it or not, depends on luck – if you
continue trying. If you don’t try, then you can’t even hope for luck.
If you find you need to do something else for a while, so be it! You’ll do something else, but you always have yourself and you’ve got your brains and your boobies, what else do you need? Thirdly, don’t
honestly tell me you want to have the life of the other boring North
Carolinians? That’s what I thought. Sorry that I had to slap you hard,
but you need a physical brain shake up. Your neurones of self perception are misaligned.
[29/08/2014 06:22:07]: I am literally handing in my final paper, and putting my work in storage, thinking my mark is irrelevant if I don’t find some way to survive financially and stay in London, basically having a panic attack…N has been evicted from his flat and goes on two weeks holiday, telling me that his company will leave him like a bad dream while he is away, J. W. takes me to dinner, and I think it will make me feel better but I also mean to ask him if he would mind being a better friend to me by spending time with me occasionally and more often, and not dismissing everyone who actually does as unethical from his high socialist feminist perch at the Guardian. He notifies me that he is trying to go on sabbatical and move to Japan so he can date a 19 year old Japanese girl who recently gained entry into the undergraduate school at the place where I just did my masters but cannot attend because her English is not good enough to meet the Goldsmiths IELTS standard. There are a lot of tears and feminist book throwing and I keep repeating I’m not the short term dating girl and it does not matter if that’s the way he sees me, and he says I’m making unfair generalizations. There was no generalization, I was talking about specific people and events aligning to destroy me. I don’t sleep well. I check my whatsapp at 5am. Matthew, the Irish Banker, most stable and reasonable of exes, says good news, I’m an artist too. I quit my job.
The Reality Checks
Sometimes when things are surreal and you feel like you’ve just been fed a shovelful of horseshit you talk to other women, and see things through their eyes.
“Oh my god, so she doesn’t even speak English, and she’s 19. And he thinks he likes her enough or connects with her enough to go to Japan and essentially quit his job…I’m thinking of some people on our course who barely speak English and they passed the requirements. So they can’t be that strict…That is so sad he needs so much ego boosting he needs to date a 19 year old who barely speak his language. He’s really insecure. Just leave him”
on language differences : “So their connection is telepathic!”
on age : “How sweet, he’ll watch her grow like a flower.”
The Flashbacks
He says to me , “I don’t know why you’re worried, my female colleagues aren’t.. they just figure they’ll get in on a second marriage.”
So he thinks his female colleagues, who he often admits are more educated and ambitious, and by extension myself and his peer group, should be shopping around for second marriages. Meanwhile he shops around foundation courses and finds whatever foreigner has started menstruating most recently. Then he gallantly proclaims “She’s the One, I just feel it!”
When I started to date the Irish Banker he told me “What you’re doing is really unconventional, usually it’s the man that’s more intellectually developed.”
Fifty Dates of Grey 