Female Ejaculation: So easy according to the LA Weekly Backpages

I don’t think equality is the same as “being the same” – not when it comes to orgasms. I have had entire orgasms without touching myself. I have known men to get hard while feeling nothing. I think this means we are different and this weird diagram stuff just inspires idiot guys with dirty fingernails to think they can follow a set of Men’s Health instructions and make us cum. It’s just not true. It’s more interesting than that!

I wish they included a diagram of my brain.

This is what the site you go to promises. Apparently some British guy knows it all. And he’s made over 300 women squirt. That’s a lot of laundry.

The Far-Out Factor: Los Alamos, CA

I stopped in Los Alamos trying to find a hamburger place and wound up booking into the cheapest motel in town … The Alamo. A shower. A bed. After sleeping in my car at a music festival campsite I needed that.

I also still needed a hamburger. So I crossed the street to one of the town’s three bars – the only place apart from Subway that seemed to be serving food. You can see the lights of it to the left of the motel sign.

A basic American Motel. $55 a night. Comfy and relatively quiet except that it’s next door to a party with live tuba music tonight. Not complaining – I don’t mind noise so long as it’s not a lawn mower or a car alarm.

It’s a classic old place, called 1860, run by two very nice people. The woman is called Ana. The guy’s name escapes me. The Barman, Manny, is awesome. It’s a genuine old saloon and the hamburger was amazing. They have local craft beer on tap, and fast internet. After 36 hours offline during a time when I can’t really afford to be, it was incredible to be clean, showered, fed, sheltered and drinking cold brew.

Local people at the bar were friendly and through my travel-tired haze I managed to carry on a kind of conversation about whatever… you know. Touch typing. South Africa. The World Cup. Music Festivals. Motels. Beer. I was pretty happy talking to strangers and catching up with friends on facebook.

That is, until the town drunkard decided to take a seat next to me. He was drinking something bright red and seemed to have nothing better to do than ask me inane questions.

“Working hard?”
I shake my head and smile.
“No, facebook,” I say, ruefully, guiltily.
“Having fun, sweetie?”
His breath smelled of 20 toasted cigarettes and stale booze.
I smile nervously, and turn back to the screen, hoping he’ll go away.
He leans in, reading past my shoulder, one of the posts on my page.
“Why do you have it at that angle. Can you see better?”
His nose is packed with popping veins from what appeared to be his primary social activity: Drinking heavily.
I realise I have to answer him, or seem rude.
“No, it’s just to keep the light off other people, and for privacy.”
He scowls at me and almost shouts: “I wouldn’t want to look at that stuff. Why would I?”
So why do you? I want to say. Instead I just say “Okay.”

He keeps going, with one dumb comment after another, touching me sometimes as he speaks, and is really beginning to remind me of one of those old men who stare at your tits when you’re jogging and call out: “Having fun?”. I always want to stop, and say “No, but I’m glad YOU are!” And then smash their testicles with a rock.

I realise he’s not going to quit, so I wave at Manny for the check and shoot my boyfriend a quick message: Being harassed by a guy here, so going to go back to my motel. Will reconnect there. Small towns… ha.”

Distracted by another (very nice) old guy to my right, I lose track of Red-Nose Redneck for a bit. Next thing I know I catch his hand on my keyboard. He’s pulling a maniacal face and miming banging on my keyboard. I slam it shut. “Stop it!” I say.
“You stop it. Sitting here playing games and talking to someone in FRANCE. That’s not real life” he shouts.
His equally booze addled old buddy joins in: “This is a bar, not a coffeeshop”.
“I don’t think that means I have to talk to you,” I say. “Just leave me alone.”
“That’s not life,” the guy keeps shouting.
“So what is? Alcoholism?” I ask.
And that sends them both over the edge.
Manny tells me to take it easy, and them to leave me alone.
They ask for the check and say they’re never coming back. I ask for the check.
They keep shouting at me. I keep telling them to leave me alone. Assholes.

Manny brings me the check.

I pay and find myself suddenly in tears as Red-Nose Redneck leaves and his creepy old friend stays and keeps hurling comments at me. I shout back, calling them assholes. Why didn’t I just laugh it off? Don’t know. Overtired, I guess. And surprised. I know the type, you see, the type who’d call you rude for refusing to talk to a smelly old stranger in a bar one minute, then accuse you of being a slut for speaking to him at all the next.

Ana the host and the owner tried to persuade me to stay – and drink a beer alone in a lounge. Last thing I felt like… sitting in bright light alone. They’re sweet people though. Not their fault who drinks there.

Instead of staying to please them, I walked back to the motel, calming down realizing that tonight’s drama had brought me full circle. I needed really badly to get away from technology for a while. But the thing is, there’s only one thing worse than the constant assault of information, the noise of constant communication signifying nothing, the gaggle and the disconnect, and that, unfortunately, is being around people who use it as an excuse for their inability to function, who never WERE ON the grid, who haven’t liked a new song since they turned 30 – who’ve become their grandparents.

I hope that when I get really old I’m not old that way. I hope I don’t simply reject whatever I don’t understand.

Finding beauty

I just had to go somewhere. Screw classes. Screw film school politics. I can sleep in my car. Drove past Santa Barbara to a state park beach. $10 – I’ll nap til the afternoon and be on my way.

Cause I’m dead if I find what I’m looking for: Joshua Tree

Joshua Tree isn’t my favourite U2 album. Boy is. But it has a song on it that means as much to me in my thirties as it did when I was a teenager. It’s like the Teen International Anthem (and just as cheesy.)

It’s like the Karoo. You can see forever. And there’s nothing.

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.  When I thought I had, I always turned out to be wrong. So now I assume I haven’t and, when I remember, I keep looking.

The danger of film school is, well… film school. You get so obsessed with making films that you forget that you need to keep experiencing life, keeping your eyes fresh, so that you can make films worth watching. At least that’s the theory – I may have just been skiving off from writing my thesis feature screenplay when I signed up for this day hike. And I don’t know yet whether any of the images I absorbed or stories I imagined will come to anything. But here, for the record, are a few of them.

If you’re trying to find what you’re looking for, Joshua Tree is a bad place to lose it. No water, spiky plants, hot hot heat, peyote… and it’s damn easy to get lost. Luckily that’s exactly what most of us need in a world jam packed with useless instructions.

At the base of Ryan’s Peak, people are encouraged to post haikus about their experiences. I nearly posted my favourite one, but it’s not related. Still here it is: Haikus are awesome / But sometimes make no sense / Refrigerator

OPEN HOUSE: Stunning views! A fixer-upper on prime real estate, surrounded by nature. Very private.

“Partially furnished.”

So… old burned out car. a tree. Some sand. So what?

Look closer. There’s a glove lying on the ground. What the hell is that doing there? Is it connected to the next photo?

… and if the glove IS connected to this photo… doesn’t that hurt?

The only thing still working here is the brakes. This is one of three cars we found abandoned in a 2 mile stretch of desert. Nearby to the house. And a broken wind-mill. And a failed mine. There’s a story in there somewhere.

Here is where Worth Bagly bit the dust at the hands of W. F. Keys May 1947.

“Desert rose, dreamed I saw a desert rose / dressed all in ribbons and bows / like the silence she called to me”

I didn’t quite make it up. I refused to take a hand-up – I’m like that with rocks. But I did discover something. If you put your ear to the rocks, it’s dead quiet inside them.

That’s not the only new thing. I saw my first blue jay (the bird) and my first chipmunk. I thought chipmunks were a made-up animal. Turns out they’re little grey things.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Anyhow. Against all odds, I wound up in Joshua Tree – a place I never thought I’d visit.

I’d forgotten how good walking was for my head. On the drive home, I dozed off in a state of semi-conscious bliss and coming home, solved a problem with a script that had been driving me insane for weeks.

And along the way, another story.

Not even in the town of Joshua Tree but about 3 miles outside it, stranded in the middle of nowhere… Sushi? It’s closed. And for sale. But someone thought they could persuade the people of Joshua Tree to eat Sushi. Someone had a dream. It’s like Salmon Eating in the Inland Empire. Just as crazy and beautiful.

I wonder if this is the secret of great artists – continuing the exploration and the journey. Now all I need is the great art to go with it right?

America’s political confusions

I find myself confused today, about America. Surely by now, they must know what’s right and wrong? But no, they’re human too.

The Anti-War people. They’re not going to oppose the war, per se – that would never wash. They have to paint it as selfish or they’d be mauled. America has become more conservative in many ways than in was in the 60s (when it comes to this issue, not race, or gender, or sexual orientation.)

This means someone’s son or daughter is over there, dying for the cause of… please remind me what it is, cause it sure as hell isn’t freedom. It’s not me who’s being disrespectful here. It’s the person asking someone to give their life for no good reason.

 

The pro-war people. Do they seem to have more expensive banners – or am I imagining things?

A car in the expensive film school I go to’s parking lot. I thought, being left wing, that “Miss me yet” was sarcastic. Turns out it’s pro-bush. Ridiculous.

But I guess if you go ski in the aspens and your parents bought your car for you, you would be a republican.

Oh, and this is the same car. The guy is also anti-gay – unless he’s a pro-gay scout fan. I remember being forced to learn Die Stem at Brownies in South Africa. Whites only brownies. The Scouts should be ashamed of their history, but weirdly are not. If homophobia is timeless… I have no words.

 

Kasra Shokravi’s pictures of beautiful Tehran

People here in the USA just see Iran as this Bogeyman. Remember, when you argue that Israel is right to want to initiate war, that this is what you are bombing. A place with real people in it. With beautiful people in it. It’s not right to say “it’s worth it” as if the value of 10 people killed could be weighed against the value of a theoretical 200 saved.  I have never been so recently sickened as I was when someone I thought of as a friend argued that the USA, in the greater scheme of things, saved lives by nuking Japan. Highly unlikely that this is true.

A G-Cleff – a musical symbol I sometimes still draw kinda squonk. Music, somewhat universal if you allow for the misunderstanding of quarter tones, has always driven cultural revolutions. Alienate the kids who drew this by killing their famalies, and it’ll drive them against you too.

Kasra says this writing says: “Kamiar” and “Maziar”. They’re names. Probably a couple of neighborhood kids.

I want to go there. Don’t mind covering my head. Just don’t want to have to duck and cover.

I’m not a fan of any kind of fundamentalism, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Atheist or anythingist. I don’t believe in stoning a Woman to death because the Bible, Q’oran or Bahagava’d G’ita says to do it. I would never kill people. NEVER. This is because, unlike most people, I’m not some kind of selective psychopath who believes war is necessary, and that killing is noble because of some theoretical life saved.

I’m no fan of Iran’s policies towards women, or even the rest of the world. I don’t think Iranian people will change their minds about your political opinions because you bomb them though.

That’s not how it works.

Vendetta: Misogynist women who manipulate men using sex and say “I’m not a feminist…”

I’ve waited a long time to write this blog, because, well, because I’ve always known I was too angry to write it safely in the past. Now, I feel I’m ready because I’ve recently risen above what would have been some of my old-school knee-jerk responses to the bitches in question. The Bitches? But aren’t I a feminist? Sure I am. That’s exactly why I make a special case for certain girls: a special case for casting them out of my professional circle of trust, forever.

Very very easy – and all too common.

There’s a certain type of woman I’ve had the misfortune to work with a few times. They remind me of this world traveler type, a mutual friend of my Mom and my Dad’s, who stayed in our house once when we were away. We came back from holiday, exhausted after hitch hiking for two days, to find our home a complete mess. My mother took it up with her. I was in the room as they shouted at each other, each giving as good as they got. Both crazy women, screaming. Nasty stuff. Then… my dad walked in. This woman instantly turned on the waterworks, acting like my Mom had attacked her cruelly. Next thing? My dad was comforting the bitch – even though he was just as angry with her when we first arrived. My mother stood there, flabbergasted, staring.

I’ve had numerous colleagues like this. They generally sucked up to the male boss to get the job, then sucked up to him to keep it. They tended to ignore the women in meetings and flirt like mad with the guys. Call them on it? I tried a few times. They cried a few times. Guess who got burned?  These are intelligent women. I got burned. I got burned, bad.

Lately I’ve had to deal with it at film school with one person, who only works cooperatively with male directors, and who flirts with the professors. She sat next to one professor all semester (a particularly insecure and egotistical little overgrown boy of a man) and actually played with his hair, during classes. I bet she got an A. She boasted to me about how she was a another professor’s “favorite” to me in an almost threatening manner after causing huge trouble for me on both occasions we worked together. Who knows what effect that had. Another person she worked with, who used to be friendly, doesn’t smile at me anymore. And you should hear what she told me about what he said about other people on his crew. It’s not like he should be trusting her!

I thought perhaps I was angrily imagining just what I wanted to see. Then She came into a class recently and told the professor “You are my favourite professor. You are the best ever.” You should have seen him smile. They still exchange little flirty comments in every class. She expresses her cute, helpless confusion every now and then, earning a loving chuckle from him. She’s pretty. She’s clever. She’s talented.

And she’s lazy.

Don’t get me wrong, the men who play this game are just as pathetic and just as much to blame – not less so because with no exceptions, they’re the source of the problem.  These girls are all, in my experience, wealthy daughters of powerful fathers who were busy a lot of the time, earning money. Instead of being real fathers, they just gave their daughters whatever they asked for. You can tell these girls grew up with servants, with pocket money, and with the knowledge that they’d never want for cash.  They are either designer hippies or brand whores. They waltz right in and buy the exact car they want, brand new. When you tell them they can’t have what they want right now, they give you a look that says “If you tried that where I’m from… my Daddy would kill you.” And he would. Every time the little darling cried, she got just what she wanted. And every time she cries, she still does.

Just an illustration, pinched from sparklife.com.

The less cute girls, or the girls with morals, or the girls who pay their own way? Well, we don’t have to rely on the sympathy of men to get our work done. Of course, our success doesn’t flatter these insecure men, because they didn’t give it to us. They are so insecure that they like the ass-lickers more. And so they ask us to befriend the backstabbing chicks. And they accuse us of “jealousy” if we don’t girl it up with them. Jealous? Seriously, I fail to see what we should be envying here. These girls are are pathetic. Their actions degrade our professional ethics. They’re playing the stereotype we are longing to escape. They turn our stomachs. They roll our eyes. They insult us to the core.

We shouldn’t have to put up with and hire the kind of insufferable little brown-nosers who make a joke of feminism, of hard work, and of pride. We shouldn’t have to respect the men whose egos perpetuate this bullshit. But sadly, we do have to. Because the men who buy their crap are still our bosses.

…and I’m done for now.

Nobody really wants to be fat. Not really.

Sure, ideas of beauty change, are constructed by society, and even the biggest supermodel will go mad if she compares herself to others in order to assess her professional worth. But you know in your gut if you’re just – I’ll say it – fat. Yes, you do. Oh, yes you do.

This is good to bear in mind. The so called hot people are freaks of nature. Most of us are just beautiful in our own ways.

I find it very hard to believe people who tell me they “love” their bodies just the way they are three times a day while hiding them under great big T-Shirts and refusing to go to the beach for shame. I also think we give ourselves a hard time about how we look for all the wrong reasons sometimes. I have no doubt that ideas of beauty are constructed. Yes, they’ve definitely changed. Allow me to illustrate:

Beautiful. These days she couldn’t get a modeling job – not even as a plus sizer.

Beautiful. But today she’d spend her life thinking she had “fat arms”. Which is bull.

Beautiful. In some times, places and cultures, some people still can’t see that. Like John Mayer for instance.

Beautiful. But when you google Meryl Streep the most suggested (i.e. poplular) search phrases are “Meryl Streep Young” and “Meryl Streep hot”.

But the fact that what’s considered “beautiful” in magazines changes doesn’t mean that doesn’t mean being so fat that you can’t walk to your car, or so fat that your knees are caving in, or so fat that you have veins in your ankles by the age of 25, is something anyone chooses.

There’s a fetish for everything, including dandruff. But I struggle to believe that the woman suffering from obesity pictured here actually wants to look like that, but more importantly it’s hard to believe that she wants to FEEL like that.

This isn’t beautiful either.

It’s become fashionable to cater for obesity, to treat it as if it is not a problem, the same way we cater to anorexia as if it isn’t a problem. Now, I know being mean to fat people wouldn’t help at all. But overeating is an addiction. So I’d vote for being nice to people who eat too much, just as I’d vote for being nice to heroin addicts. But I’m not going to pretend I think a giant camel-toe is attractive.

Fact is, getting fat happens slowly. I learned this recently, over the two and a half years I’ve lived in the USA. I arrived here at a healthy weight, initially lost a few kilos because I didn’t have a car, and then slowly but surely went from lean, to padded, to plump, to actually, very nearly medically overweight. I noticed when I went to the clinic for a checkup here in California. The doctor said nothing about my weight gain. I was relieved, until I realised he was just scared of offending me.

What was next? I wondered. Full-on obesity? Fuck that for a joke.

So at the risk of being politically incorrect, I’ve downloaded a calorie counting application for my cell phone and started exercising, eating healthily, and… yes it’s working. In about five weeks, I’ll be able to look at myself in the mirror without wincing. In two months, I should be able to stand how I look in set photographs. The best thing about it actually is that it provides an outlet for my competitive, OCD nature, a focus for my stress about other things. Instead of wondering if I’ll ever make a truly great film, I just get to feel good that I had strawberries and yogurt for breakfast and it only cost me 200 calories. Silly? Yes. Shallow? Oh, most definitely. But sometimes it’s important to be shallow, like when you break your leg, or get maleria, or gain 8 kilograms your body really, really doesn’t need.

What do the Cape Town shark flags mean? Nobody knows! Allow me to clarify.

I’ve swum in the sea in Cape Town at least once a day since I arrived home a month ago and guess what? I’m still not dead! Not only am I not dead, I still have all my arms and legs.

I mention this because I’ve asked a few of my friends, many of whom are regular beach goers, what the flags mean. They all agree that the Black flag with the white shark means a shark’s been seen in the bay. The others… they’re not sure really. They all agree the red one means danger and the green one might mean there’s a shark. They’re all understandably confused, because the flags are stupid. They make it look to anyone driving by as if Cape Town’s sea is infested with great whites. In fact, it’s not nearly that dangerous.

This is one scary flag. What does it mean? Answer: NOT that there is a shark in the water. It means that visibility is poor and the shark spotters can’t guarantee they’ll see it if it’s there. This is the case most of the time.

Now you know.

Okay, apologies for the poor color. South Africa has always been rather bad with colour and don’t care for it much, so the sign is a little faded. A GREEN flag is the best. It means it’s safe to swim and the shark spotters up on the mountains will probably see the sharks in time to sound a warning. The BLACK flag is second best. It means they can’t see for sure, but they probably will. And the RED one is actually not the end of the world. Means there’s a shark cruising around in nearby beaches. WHITE is bad news. That means there’s a shark. Don’t swim. Even if only out of courtesy to the poor shark spotters, who hate it when you die cause then people think they didn’t do their job in time.

When they see the black flag – or any of the flags with sharks, my friends do one of two things, assuming it means “there’s a shark and the surfers are only out there because they wanna die”:
1. Turn round and drive home.
2. Drive to a beach that doesn’t have shark flags at all. Cause what you don’t know won’t hurt you. UNLESS IT’S A FUCKING SHARK. Duh.

A fun sign explaining surf etiquette to beginners and Ubuntu to everybody. Muizenberg has some great waves, but is also known to be a beginner’s beach. It’s the best place imaginable to learn to surf, and well-serviced by the shark spotters, who have a great view from their station, high up on Boyes Drive. The water is also warm. I’ll never forget my final sunset swim with my mom, the clean white foam, the soft salty light.

Signs of South Africa

South Africans aren’t rude. We’re just overly familiar and brutally honest.

Newspaper posters on the lamp posts: It has been an insane year in SA. And WTF is now in the dictionary (the Oxford is always a few years behind – they’ll catch up one day.)

We tend not to respect celebrity for its own sake. We tend not to respect authority for its own sake, either. After all, Apartheid used to be law. Nowadays, driving over the yellow line is illegal. Anyone here never done it?

The upside: Cars don’t have to sit behind you on a single lane highway for 3kms. Downside? It’s illegal? Upside? Nobody cares. Downside? Over 1200 road deaths this holiday. Upside: Fast traveling and fun times.

Cape Town is famous for the fact that you can come here and… be completely ignored no matter how famous you are, except maybe if you leave the city or want to fuck girls from Camps Bay who wanna be famous too. Colin Farrell spent lots of time here cause he could walk around without his sunglasses on (not that he did, his eye would hurt, cause Cape Town parties hard and drugs are fresh off the boat). But mostly he was here cause Capetonians think they’re special. They’re like, “Oh, you’re Colin Farrel? Really? Well fine, but I’m from Cape Town.”

Celebrity Rehab? Come here and get sober. We don’t care how who you are, or how wasted you are.

I think these signs from all over South Africa exemplify this point. We’re special. We get to say it like it is. Take…

OLD AGE

So I took a tour of an old age home, looking for a friend of my Mom’s who she hadn’t contacted in a while. She was freaked out – being about 24 years closer to death / urinating on herself, than I am. But this sign in the complex made her laugh.

And laugh again.

And this is what you get – I think this is a lovely way for an old age community to remember you. I think it’s okay to laugh in the face of death. Perhaps it’s even often fucking essential.

DEATH

We dare it. We double dare it. We’re not like Americans; scared to venture from our car to our apartment if the “air” isn’t already on on a hot day. Sweating never killed you… except when it did.

Okay, it’s unlikely that today’s cell phones could cause a gas tank to explode… but it’s still annoying to the petrol attendants when you use yours. Same reason why they pretend it’s dangerous on airplanes BTW. “If you use your cell phone now, nobody may ever talk to you again.”

Now actually, lighting a cigarette at a gas station is actually genuinely stupid. If you do it while you’re on your cell phone you will also be sneered at while you die.

WE DON’T CARE WHO YOU ARE

Aaaaand back to that.

Real reason for this sign: Grapes close to the road get covered in dust and are hard to make wine with. Other reason: People who live on farms feel free to drive really fast and ignore speed limits and this farm is surrounded by other farmers.