As anyone who has followed this blog for any time will know some of the greatest detriment I have done to my own life is to have been afraid, primarily in two areas: travelling and relationships with women. In many ways in my teenage years and twenties, I was a very lucky man. Despite having some minor ailments, not being sporty; appearing very freckly, and gangly in how I walked, and having my self-confidence blown apart by my parents telling me I looked as if I was mentally disabled, girls/women of my age would ask me out on dates. These women were certainly not desperate for male companionship and when rebuffed by me, as was usually the case, went on to have other relationships. My fear that somehow they were doing it for dishonest motives or simply as a joke, was insulting to them but also meant I ended up lacking the experience of having youthful relationships which then meant I had little chance as a man in his late twenties and into his thirties to engage with these properly. Part of the problem stems from how I perceived relationships between young people should function and for this I have to blame, in large part, what was my favourite movie for many years: 'A Room With A View' (1985).
I was 17 when I first saw 'A Room With A View', so had already been making many of the mistakes I have listed above. However, at that stage things remain retrievable in a way they are not when you are 34. To put the movie in context, it was one of the most successful in the UK produced by the Merchant Ivory partnership (formed in 1961 of the two lovers, producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory) working with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. With 'Heat and Dust' (1983), 'A Room with a View' (1985), 'Maurice' (1987), Howards End (1992) and 'The Remains of the Day' (1993) at the time of the TV series 'Brideshead Revisited' (1981) and 'The Jewel in the Crown' (1983) [not made by them but of a similar genre], movie culture in the UK was defined as being focused on the period of the late 19th century to the 1930s. Subsequently with the very successful television version of 'Pride and Prejudice' (1994) for the following decade the focus stepped back to the late 18th/early 19th century. Perhaps in the grimness and rioting of the 1980s we were looking for escape to an apparently nicer middle class existence in which manners and behaviour were more refined, though certainly in many of these movies not all behaviour is like that; homosexuality, in particular is suppressed and women are fitted into rigid roles, though this was a contributing factor to the rise of Post-Feminism that personally I began to detect from 1988 onwards.
With my parents away on holiday I began going to the cinema alone to escape the tedium of what was on television, a habit I was to continue more vigorously from when I finally left home and lived alone, 1987-2005 . This was my first foray into that kind of activity, that you did not have to be with anyone to watch a movie, and, in fact, it could be better that way if the movie was what had drawn you rather than the social experience. I watched 'Mona Lisa' (1986) the week before seeing 'A Room With A View', so it must have been still doing the rounds from the previous year. 'Mona Lisa' is an unpleasant British movie, well made, but it left such a bitter taste in my mind that I wanted to blot it out with something more refined, hence going to see 'A Room With A View'. (I was to do something similar the following year, going to see 'Poussiere D'Ange' ['Angel Dust'] (1987) deliberately after being unsettled by 'Angel Heart' (1987)).
Of course, I was utterly swept away by 'A Room With A View' with its stunning scenery of 19th century Florence combined with stirring music which I have written about before. It is a funny movie in many parts but also a lovely romance. The hero, George Emerson (played by Julian Sands) sweeping the heroine Lucy Honeychurch (played by Helena Bonham-Carter) off her feet in a wheat field and them later sitting in the window with Florence in the background, kissing while Lucy reads a letter, were scenes that I loved and wanted to replicate in my own life. The tension comes around Lucy being unwilling to admit her passion for the unconventional young man who is of a slightly lower class (he works for the railways and his widowed father is a thinker and politically interested), but ultimately does. There is a wonderful range of quirky English characters played by skilled performers such as Denholm Elliot, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Daniel Day Lewis and Simon Callow which charm you too. I have always liked women with long dark hair and Bonham-Carter fitted that perfectly. She went on to appear in other period movies, notably 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' (1991 - from another Forster novel also set in Italy); 'Howards End' and 'The Wings of the Dove' (1997). Once I had the video I would watch it on my birthday and dream of such a romance. I could clearly post myself in the rather awkward, public servant, intellectual role of George Emerson and somehow anticipated women would love to be swept off by me even if I was not a fraction as handsome as Julian Sands.
Of course, I knew I was not living in the 1890s (and the director seemed to set it back in time a little from the 1908 source novel by E.M. Forster which features electric trams in Florence that do not appear in the movie), but had a belief I would meet a woman who would be intrigued by me and would not scream if I swept her off her feet in an Italian field. At this time, I did envisage travelling around Europe far more than I was ever in fact to do. My mother had always said that when she had been a teenager in the 1950s the way young people 'learnt' how to have relationships was through watching the movies which would show them how to behave and even how to kiss. She felt that the trouble with the 1980s was that too many movies showed abusive relationships in which sex was the key focus and so men in particular did not learn how to behave around women. In fact, for her son, the complete opposite happened and I ended up having my approach to women set by 1980s visions of late Victorian behaviour. This was exacerbated by my friends all being of the 'Dungeons and Dragons' types and not having relationships with women until they had passed thirty and by the fact that by the time I reached university it was beginning to fill (especially in my accommodation hall) with Post-Feminist women actually seeking not even a Forster-style relationship but an Austen-style one.
The trouble for me was that I knew that women did not want you to assert your desire for them and increasingly if you did, then you risked being charged with assault. We were advised that touching or kissing a woman even innocently, in the times of increasing litigation, was hazardous and there was talk of signed permission before sexual intercourse (I do not think some universities know how much they screwed up their students' lives). I mixed with too many people from private schools who were only encountering the opposite sex for the first time on a regular basis and who like me expected it all to proceed as if it were 1887 rather than 1987. I had no appeal for them, being from the wrong background and too politicised and yet I lacked all the tools to engage with the kind of women who might have liked me. There were no wheat fields, there was no time for walking in lush landscapes working up to ask permission to kiss the woman and yet, leaping in was clearly ruled out by what we had been told. Consequently years went by with no relationships and now that women expect a man to have a sexual CV by the time he reaches 21, I was increasingly ruled out on that basis.
Hampered by the Victorian approach that had shaped so much of the end of my teenage years, the relationships I ended up in were increasingly termed as 'Victorian', i.e. very chaste. I would go shopping with the woman, have tea with her, go and see a movie, but nothing else happened. I wanted to kiss her, but the chance never came up and the women themselves seemed to expect me to make a move and yet I feared they would then cry assault. Ultimately I ended up as almost a female friend, they would do domestic stuff with me then go off on dates in the evening with their boyfriends. They would come and tell me about all their difficulties with these men who were clearly so much more exciting than me, when in fact I wanted to be their lover. It took a woman who wanted me as 'the other man', i.e. to have an affair from her own marriage and was very straight forward about asking for sex, that managed to shake me out of the situation and get the tools to be more proactive. Though I did continue to have some Victorian-style relationships, funnily enough until I left London.
I suppose the lesson of all this, is do not live your life by how it is shown in movies. Perhaps we have gone to the opposite extreme from that period of the late 1980s/early 1990s when behaviour of the previous century seemed to be returning; the internet has had a huge impact on this both in terms of what you can learn and who you can meet. I have lost my affection for 'A Room With A View' though I still would recommend it because it is an enjoyable way to pass the time. I am angry now that I let it shape my expectations far too much, though I recognise it was not helped by having such critical parents and ignorant friends. The visuals and the music are engaging but it was a mistake for me to be seduced by them and then hamstrung in thinking that such a fictional approach would work in the late 20th century for real.
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Movies Giving A Realistic Portrayal Of Sex
Before proceeding, I have to point out that this is not a posting about explicit sex movies. In fact of the two movies I am going to mention, though one, has been rated an 18 in the UK it is rated 12-16 in other EU states and U for universal in France, the other has been rated 15 but as low as 11-12 in other EU states. Sex features in both movies, but it is not the focus and a lot of it is implied rather than observed. This posting builds on previous ones about advice to young people and also media coverage of the very distorted view teenagers, especially boys, are getting about sex and how this impinging badly on their relationships. Compared to even twenty years ago it is extremely easy for young people to view explicit sex on the internet, no matter what controls are put in place.
As was noted on the television programme shown in two series in 2008 and 2009 on Channel 4 in the UK, 'Sexperience - The Sex Education Show Vs. Pornography' the distorted picture that young people get from pornography gives them unrealistic expectations about sexual encounters they may. It was noted that teenage boys expect women their age to have artificially enhanced breasts of the size shown in such movies and that if their penis is not the size of the men shown then they are inadequate. In addition, the favoured approaches shown in much pornography especially ejaculation into women's faces is now often perceived by young men as the 'normal' way to have sex and so they bully women their age into doing such things that they (like the majority of women) are uncomfortable with. As the 'norm' is defined by such distorted portrayals, it gives force to peer pressure to behave in this way rather than actually what is more ordinary, typical sexual behaviour in the UK. Other impacts are poor knowledge about STIs and a feeling among young people that aggressive behaviour in a relationship is acceptable. Ironically, heavy sexualisation of our media is meaning that young people are ending up with misogynistic, unhealthy approaches of, say, the 1950s.
Reflecting on this and my recent posting citing Percy Sledge and William Shakespeare as two sources of what I feel is useful information for young people (partly with a thought about how I am going to be called on to advise the 8 year old boy who lives in my house in the future) I began thinking, what would I point to in terms of movies that I felt gave a better impression of what real sex is about. By this I mean all the aspects like cramp and farting and the fact that people's bodies are pretty ordinary and quirky and yet all of these things do not prevent you from having a great deal of pleasure, a lot of fun and vitally wonderful companionship and shared experiences with someone through having sex with them. I have come up with two examples I would start with. Being heterosexual I have gone for two heterosexually-orientated movies and realised just now that I have never thought of a good movie to point a gay young person at. At a stretch I would recommend 'Go Fish' (1994) and 'Rosebud' (1991) for lesbians, though people might say they are more romance than about sex, but for gay men I would be stumped. I leave such recommendations to those with more knowledge of gay-focused than me.
So, what are the two movies that I would direct a young man towards to get at least a half-decent realistic view of sex. Wanting to end on a happy note, I will mention 'The Year's Love' (1999) first. At the time this was categorised as a comedy in much of the publicity and in that way was as wrongly mislabelled as 'Muriel's Wedding' (1994) had been some years earlier. 'This Year's Love' is an episodic UK movie following the relationships of three men and three women living around Camden in North London. It is almost a downbeat version of romantic comedies of the time, notably 'Four Weddings and A Funeral' (1994) stretching between the break up of a couple at their wedding to their final reconciliation. Reviews of the movie often state that the characters 'swap' partners, but in fact it is nowhere as organised as this and the characters intersect with each other, drifting in and out of relationships. The tone becomes increasingly bitter with only a little bittersweet to lift it at the end. Some of the characters come off badly, notably, that played by Ian Hart, Liam, suffering a mental breakdown brought on by the difficulties of finding and retaining a partner. Marey, played by Kathy Burke, ultimately finds greater happiness in singing in a pub band than in any relationship.
This might seem the total antithesis of a movie about sex. However, sex does feature a great deal as it is a movie about relationships of sexually active people. A lot of the sex is imperfect and that is actually what sex is about, not the stylised, air brushed view off too much pornography. There is a warning for young men in the scene in which Liam is trying to conduct oral sex on Sophie, played by Jennifer Ehle (turning her 'Pride and Prejudice' role on its head). He is equipped with a torch fitted to his head, but despite repeated attempts only elicits criticism from the frustrated Sophie who anticipates perfect tongue action from her partner. Some women seem to think that this their right. Anyone engaging in sex needs to recognise that every partner, every time there is sexual contact even in the same evening will function differently. This is why the movie is so educational. It shows that unlike what pornography may tell you, even one-night stands do not happen in a vacuum. Sex happens in a context, almost a framework of not only interaction between the participants, but also fears, expectations and assumptions. If you do not engage with that framework and work at it properly then no good sex can ever come out of it. Trying to be anonymous lovers, passing strangers in the night having sex, actually needs far more work and care than simply ending up having a 'quickie' with your long-term partner once the cuddling on the sofa has developed further than usual. 'The Year's Love' might make young people feel that in fact sex is so over-rated that it is not worth the bother, though I imagine even with that dousing, hormones will have something to say about maintaining abstinence.
The other movie I would point to, is more accurately portrated as being a romantic comedy, but even this is leavened by certain aspects. This movie is 'The Tall Guy' (1989). In many ways this can be seen as a the mirror-image of 'Four Weddings And A Funeral'. It is about a romance between an American man (as opposed to an American woman in Four Weddings) played by a moderately successful actor at the time, Jeff Goldblum (actress, Andie MacDowell) and an English woman, Emma Thompson (man, Hugh Grant) whose parts had been predominantly historical (though Thompson had done some comedy she was best known for wartime set serial 'Fortunes of War') up until then. Infamously 'Four Weddings And A Funeral' is about a set of rich friends very few of whom seem to do any paid work. In 'The Tall Guy', Goldblum's character, Dexter King is a stage actor and Thompson's, Kate Lemon, a nurse. The movie charts King's troubles in dealing with his arrogant, bullying boss, trying to escape ex-girlfriends and build a relationship with Lemon while giving into temptation to infidelity with an actress.
There are comic turns and Geraldine James as a nymphomaniac turns assumptions about her characters, notably from 'The Jewel in the Crown' (1984) on their head. However, there are touching parts such as when Lemon gives King a toy pig when he has been inundated with toy elephants on his first night of appearing in 'The Elephant Man: The Musical'. The practical way they get down to sex and that it is a ramshackle affair sending them sprawling all over a flat is wonderful. It is not unrealistic sex (though it might be a challenge to reconstruct) but it is loving, nitty gritty sex of the kind that everyone has the chance to experience. This movie shows that sex, especially in a sustained relationship (and King learns the value of fidelity), is what can lift up the kind of ordinary lives we lead. It is not perfect and it may be messy but it is probably the most wonderful thing we can get up to.
I suppose movies are about escapism for a lot of people, but they cannot but help inform us, especially when we are young about life that we might aspire to. Even before pornography became so easily accessible and distorted young people's view of real sex, I remember my mother saying that these days, unlike in her youth in the 1950s and 1960s (she was 20 in 1958), a young man could not learn how to kiss a woman by watching a movie. All he learned these days was to slap her around and leap into bed with her for sex. Even if you are going to end up having sex there are numerous steps on the way there which there is minimal guidance on. Even if a young woman is going to ultimately do oral sex on you, generally there is a lot of kissing to tackle first. I am not saying that movies have to be instructional videos, I am just noting that given how much the media shapes our expectations and behaviours let us have a few more movies that show us something a little more accurate about sexual encounters.
As was noted on the television programme shown in two series in 2008 and 2009 on Channel 4 in the UK, 'Sexperience - The Sex Education Show Vs. Pornography' the distorted picture that young people get from pornography gives them unrealistic expectations about sexual encounters they may. It was noted that teenage boys expect women their age to have artificially enhanced breasts of the size shown in such movies and that if their penis is not the size of the men shown then they are inadequate. In addition, the favoured approaches shown in much pornography especially ejaculation into women's faces is now often perceived by young men as the 'normal' way to have sex and so they bully women their age into doing such things that they (like the majority of women) are uncomfortable with. As the 'norm' is defined by such distorted portrayals, it gives force to peer pressure to behave in this way rather than actually what is more ordinary, typical sexual behaviour in the UK. Other impacts are poor knowledge about STIs and a feeling among young people that aggressive behaviour in a relationship is acceptable. Ironically, heavy sexualisation of our media is meaning that young people are ending up with misogynistic, unhealthy approaches of, say, the 1950s.
Reflecting on this and my recent posting citing Percy Sledge and William Shakespeare as two sources of what I feel is useful information for young people (partly with a thought about how I am going to be called on to advise the 8 year old boy who lives in my house in the future) I began thinking, what would I point to in terms of movies that I felt gave a better impression of what real sex is about. By this I mean all the aspects like cramp and farting and the fact that people's bodies are pretty ordinary and quirky and yet all of these things do not prevent you from having a great deal of pleasure, a lot of fun and vitally wonderful companionship and shared experiences with someone through having sex with them. I have come up with two examples I would start with. Being heterosexual I have gone for two heterosexually-orientated movies and realised just now that I have never thought of a good movie to point a gay young person at. At a stretch I would recommend 'Go Fish' (1994) and 'Rosebud' (1991) for lesbians, though people might say they are more romance than about sex, but for gay men I would be stumped. I leave such recommendations to those with more knowledge of gay-focused than me.
So, what are the two movies that I would direct a young man towards to get at least a half-decent realistic view of sex. Wanting to end on a happy note, I will mention 'The Year's Love' (1999) first. At the time this was categorised as a comedy in much of the publicity and in that way was as wrongly mislabelled as 'Muriel's Wedding' (1994) had been some years earlier. 'This Year's Love' is an episodic UK movie following the relationships of three men and three women living around Camden in North London. It is almost a downbeat version of romantic comedies of the time, notably 'Four Weddings and A Funeral' (1994) stretching between the break up of a couple at their wedding to their final reconciliation. Reviews of the movie often state that the characters 'swap' partners, but in fact it is nowhere as organised as this and the characters intersect with each other, drifting in and out of relationships. The tone becomes increasingly bitter with only a little bittersweet to lift it at the end. Some of the characters come off badly, notably, that played by Ian Hart, Liam, suffering a mental breakdown brought on by the difficulties of finding and retaining a partner. Marey, played by Kathy Burke, ultimately finds greater happiness in singing in a pub band than in any relationship.
This might seem the total antithesis of a movie about sex. However, sex does feature a great deal as it is a movie about relationships of sexually active people. A lot of the sex is imperfect and that is actually what sex is about, not the stylised, air brushed view off too much pornography. There is a warning for young men in the scene in which Liam is trying to conduct oral sex on Sophie, played by Jennifer Ehle (turning her 'Pride and Prejudice' role on its head). He is equipped with a torch fitted to his head, but despite repeated attempts only elicits criticism from the frustrated Sophie who anticipates perfect tongue action from her partner. Some women seem to think that this their right. Anyone engaging in sex needs to recognise that every partner, every time there is sexual contact even in the same evening will function differently. This is why the movie is so educational. It shows that unlike what pornography may tell you, even one-night stands do not happen in a vacuum. Sex happens in a context, almost a framework of not only interaction between the participants, but also fears, expectations and assumptions. If you do not engage with that framework and work at it properly then no good sex can ever come out of it. Trying to be anonymous lovers, passing strangers in the night having sex, actually needs far more work and care than simply ending up having a 'quickie' with your long-term partner once the cuddling on the sofa has developed further than usual. 'The Year's Love' might make young people feel that in fact sex is so over-rated that it is not worth the bother, though I imagine even with that dousing, hormones will have something to say about maintaining abstinence.
The other movie I would point to, is more accurately portrated as being a romantic comedy, but even this is leavened by certain aspects. This movie is 'The Tall Guy' (1989). In many ways this can be seen as a the mirror-image of 'Four Weddings And A Funeral'. It is about a romance between an American man (as opposed to an American woman in Four Weddings) played by a moderately successful actor at the time, Jeff Goldblum (actress, Andie MacDowell) and an English woman, Emma Thompson (man, Hugh Grant) whose parts had been predominantly historical (though Thompson had done some comedy she was best known for wartime set serial 'Fortunes of War') up until then. Infamously 'Four Weddings And A Funeral' is about a set of rich friends very few of whom seem to do any paid work. In 'The Tall Guy', Goldblum's character, Dexter King is a stage actor and Thompson's, Kate Lemon, a nurse. The movie charts King's troubles in dealing with his arrogant, bullying boss, trying to escape ex-girlfriends and build a relationship with Lemon while giving into temptation to infidelity with an actress.
There are comic turns and Geraldine James as a nymphomaniac turns assumptions about her characters, notably from 'The Jewel in the Crown' (1984) on their head. However, there are touching parts such as when Lemon gives King a toy pig when he has been inundated with toy elephants on his first night of appearing in 'The Elephant Man: The Musical'. The practical way they get down to sex and that it is a ramshackle affair sending them sprawling all over a flat is wonderful. It is not unrealistic sex (though it might be a challenge to reconstruct) but it is loving, nitty gritty sex of the kind that everyone has the chance to experience. This movie shows that sex, especially in a sustained relationship (and King learns the value of fidelity), is what can lift up the kind of ordinary lives we lead. It is not perfect and it may be messy but it is probably the most wonderful thing we can get up to.
I suppose movies are about escapism for a lot of people, but they cannot but help inform us, especially when we are young about life that we might aspire to. Even before pornography became so easily accessible and distorted young people's view of real sex, I remember my mother saying that these days, unlike in her youth in the 1950s and 1960s (she was 20 in 1958), a young man could not learn how to kiss a woman by watching a movie. All he learned these days was to slap her around and leap into bed with her for sex. Even if you are going to end up having sex there are numerous steps on the way there which there is minimal guidance on. Even if a young woman is going to ultimately do oral sex on you, generally there is a lot of kissing to tackle first. I am not saying that movies have to be instructional videos, I am just noting that given how much the media shapes our expectations and behaviours let us have a few more movies that show us something a little more accurate about sexual encounters.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
What Would I Do Differently If I Lived My Life Again
I remember back in the 1980s in a Sunday magazine there would be a column about 'What I Wish I Knew When I Was Eighteen' and this post is similar though for me it goes back before that age. To some extent it was also influenced by the movie 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) an incredibly bleak movie (though it is now on to its second sequel). In contrast to the Catholic-orientated focus of Hollywood movies since the 1960s which I have commented on before, it has a more Calvinist, predestination approach that harks back to the Film Noir genre of the 1940s. It is a counterpoint to 'Groundhog Day' (1993). 'Groundhog Day' argues that if you work hard and keep persisting you can turn around a grim existence into something better. In 'The Butterfly Effect' in contrast, the main character has the chance to go back and alter parts of his past and tries to improve things for the people around him and in fact makes it worse and worse on each occasion, more get abused and injured and he is increasingly disabled. Ultimately he goes back to being in the womb and strangles himself with his umbilical cord and then it shows removing himself from the equation actually makes loads of people's lives better. Many of us feel that we are actually a discomfort to the world. However, that perception that your whole life from birth is not only a waste but actually damaging is pretty hard to swallow. I tend more to the 'Groundhog Day' approach and feel that with greater insight or even simply taking more time to consider things then I could have led a much better life.
The factor that confuses the issue is that the key way I would have lived my life differently is probably have to have killed myself when I was a teenager. I did not have a happy childhood but it just got worse afterwards. I know it would have upset my parents but given how they went on to humiliate me utterly and cause me to be ill in the subsequent years, I doubt they would have missed me long. Of course with me out of the way my younger brother may have suffered more such damage, but given his more laid-back attitude maybe it would have impacted on him less. I would hope that with my death my parents would have realised that they had been making my life unhappy and would have felt remorse, it is the least they deserve, though I doubt it would have affected them much or for long.
Of course, as has been proven in recent months, I lack the courage for suicide. I think that given the high rate of suicides among teenage boys in the UK, if I was going to be able to do it, I would have done it and so it would have happened for real by now anyway. If I cannot bring myself to do it as an adult with access to so many more means, then I was unlikely to do it when I was 12. So, assuming I bottled out then and stayed alive. What things would I have done differently. One thing is I would hope to have quite a lot more courage. I have noted before how fear has stopped me going to and seeing so many places and certainly stopped me having success with women. Even if I was courageous on say one out of ten occasions that I lacked courage, then I think my life would have been a lot richer and a lot happier. I never seemed to lack courage in standing up to my parents and that simply led to more condemnation from them and greater humiliation at their hands, but standing up for what I believed in at school and elsewhere would probably have helped me, it may though, have led to even more bullying. Given that I got bullying at all levels of my school life right up to when I was 18, I guess it could not have been any worse and appearing tougher may have scared off other bullies.
Though I think I would have benefited from being more courageous, I think I would have saved a lot of time, discomfort and money by realising what I was not able to do. As I have written before I was useless as judo, canoeing, fencing, go, aikido, ten-pin bowling and Chinese all things I took courses in, sometimes repeatedly for absolutely no benefit. I could have put my efforts into things that I have had more success at, generally nothing sports or language related.
I was unfortunate when a teenager to witness men on at least two different occasions being utterly humiliated when they asked women out. This scared me away from doing this and at least on five occasions I walked away from women who were asking me out. Of course, you are not going to succeed on every occasion and even when I gained some courage I offended one woman so much by asking her to go out with me that she demanded an apology. However, if I actually had had more dates and break-ups and new relationships, then I would a) have become more adept at doing it and b) more immune to the embarrassment it can bring. Of course I could not have removed the scars on my body which made me feel so awkward, but I would have sooner realised that women do not really give a damn about such things if the man treats them properly and seems to have had some confidence. I also think that if I had had sex before I was 34, then I would not have run into the problems with women despising a virgin in his 30s. There were certainly women when I was 18-21 who would have slept with me but I walked away from because I felt so inadequate. If I had more courage I would have also contested other men for them, rather than simply giving up on a woman when I saw another man interested in the vicinity. I also wish I had learnt far quicker to forget about the women I fancied in my youth and not agonise over what might have been. Also I wish I had understood that we are not living in a Jane Austen novel and women pay no attention to little notes of affection, these days they want to be asked directly. I wish I had joined a dating agency in 1994 when I first moved to London rather than waited five years. I had more success by far when I did than before and I could have had a great deal more in that mid-1990s period when okay I was not rich, but I was younger (27-32 in 1994-9), of course if I had had sex earlier and more confidence with women, then it would have increased my chances even more, but as it was I could have had a lot more dates (something I thoroughly enjoy), in a city I love, London, with so much to see and do there that is better with someone than alone. In general I wish I had had the courage just to ask women I fancied out rather than agonising over it until they found someone else. Usually the rejections have not been painful.
I certainly wish I had studied different subjects at school. I would have worked far harder at Chemistry and Physics and taken German rather than Latin, though given my difficulty with languages the outcome would have been little different. I certainly should not have taken English 'A' Level (which I failed first time and only scraped through on retake), I should have gone for Law and then applied for a Law degree and got a job in the law. It is an area which fits my personality and I would not have had the many years (up until I was 33) of earning less than £10,000 or periods of unemployment. Once at university I would have worked a lot less than I did. I worked incredibly hard, in the library most days until 9pm when it closed, and yet I still only got a 2:1 degree. I could have got the same and had more socialising and getting on with women rather than day-dreaming about them.
I wish I had never thought I could be a teacher. Taking a TEFL course was an error, partly done to keep my parents off my back, but it was clear I was useless at it and imagining myself in some remote East European city teaching English filled me with fear. Trying to be a school teacher was even worse. Even if I had not failed the course, the job would have stressed me out so much as to probably have led me to retirement from illness by now. Of course, if I had studied Law, then I would not have ended up in this awkward position. The alternative was to get into the civil service sooner than I did. Of course if that letter from the Inland Revenue had not been disposed of by my useless flatmate, I would have been at the exam and be a tax inspector by now, so even opportunities to get back on track failed.
Housing of course has been a bane of my life throughout. It was always something that alarmed me especially when applying to university. On each occasion I seem to have picked a place with a bad landlord/lady, in Coventry, in Oxford, in Norwich, in Milton Keynes, in all of these places I had to move on. Maybe it is simply that such a high percentage of landlords/ladies are bad and that I could not escape having troublesome ones. In recent years it has got worse as outlined on this blog, but in those cases there was little property to choose between. Of course I should have sold my London flat before they started dumping £14,000 charges on me, but that would have been counter to all the advice I had been receiving about renting out property up until then. Certainly in terms of flatmates I would have been far, far more careful, particularly in terms of the complete nightmare in London a man who stole and broke almost everything he came into contact, sub-let the living room and threw litter at our neighbours. I just wished I had waited for the woman who was coming to see me after him. I am very bad at picking people. Every removal company I have ever used has been terrible, even though in Milton Keynes, there is a large selection of decent ones. I always pick the worst from any list and so if I lived my life again I would rely on other people's opinions much more.
If I lived my life again I would buy far fewer non-fiction books and far fewer computer games. I tend to buy both as retail therapy and then they just gather dust. I have a few computer games I replay repeatedly over the years. Not buying these things, not drinking coffee daily from the cafe would have saved me thousands of pounds over the year (I had spent over £2080 on coffee at work since I joined the company in Summer 2005, which I could have made myself in my office). This money would have gone into holidays to places I want to visit and still have not done such as Budapest, Florence, Lyons, St. Petersburg and Japan.
If I lived my life again and had the chance, I would have gone to the weddings in Germany and Malta that I was invited to but bottled out of attending. They would have been fun or at least an experience to talk about. I could have attended the one in Scotland too if I had not done the TEFL course which started the day of the wedding (a Monday, unusually). On one-off incidents, I wish I had not taken the bus back from Coventry to the party in Oxford and stayed the night with the woman who had invited me. I had walked away from her when we had been on a date two years earlier when another man interested in her had shown up and started making advances (the whole relationship had been very hesitant as I never had the courage to tell her how I felt about her, and her friend said that because I was two years older, I was too old for her) and staying that evening would either had re-ignited the relationship or it would have snapped me out of the wistful way I thought about her for a decade later. I knew she was popular, but if she had told me right out, 'no', then I could have moved on. I almost jumped off the bus when it came to a stop and ran back, but it seemed too movie-like at the time. I have always been too romantic in an ineffectual drippy way and not in a robust, actually achieving something way.
I wish I had heeded the advice in 'The Guardian' in about 2003 about never going on holiday with your girlfriend. Every holiday doing that has been a huge mistake and usually ended the relationship. Weekends away are safe, but anything long is fatal and led to lots of heartache.
There are very few things in my life that I am proud of that I would repeat if I lived my life again. Of course, putting all these variations in would mean I would not encounter many of the circumstances, though, for example, in the case of housing, I am sure I would have had equally as bad landlords/ladies just with different names and houses. If I still ended up in certain circumstances in my re-lived life again then I would happily do them again. The first is help a woman with a child in her hands pull an elderly man who had fallen off the back of a canal boat in a lock on the Oxford Canal, out of the water. The second is, dissuade a woman who had been living with a man for many years, from trying to seduce me or trying to have sex with me. She went back to him and confessed her attempted infidelity, not something I advised, but a consequence of discouraging her from trying to have a sexual relationship with me. Obviously it would have meant sex a few years earlier than I got it, but I am morally proud of me getting her to do the right thing and remain faithful (ten years later they are still married).
I do not think my existence has harmed people. It has disappointed a lot of people, but in fact in most cases they have probably found better outcomes not being intimate with me than if they had done. For me though if I lived my life again, I would strive for a wider range of experiences at an earlier age, leading to a fuller engagement with adulthood at an earlier period (17-22 rather than 34-8) based on a better career plan and a mixture of greater caution and greater courage (I think the two go hand-in-hand as with the flatmate and removal company, having the courage to say 'no, you are useless, I want someone else'). However, I cannot get over the fact that actually removing me from the system would benefit a lot of people. I would not be taking up the job that someone could better use than me to lead a successful life. I suppose if it comes down to it, I do feel like 'The Butterfly Effect' character, if you feel your life is invalid then the best option will appear never to have started it.
The factor that confuses the issue is that the key way I would have lived my life differently is probably have to have killed myself when I was a teenager. I did not have a happy childhood but it just got worse afterwards. I know it would have upset my parents but given how they went on to humiliate me utterly and cause me to be ill in the subsequent years, I doubt they would have missed me long. Of course with me out of the way my younger brother may have suffered more such damage, but given his more laid-back attitude maybe it would have impacted on him less. I would hope that with my death my parents would have realised that they had been making my life unhappy and would have felt remorse, it is the least they deserve, though I doubt it would have affected them much or for long.
Of course, as has been proven in recent months, I lack the courage for suicide. I think that given the high rate of suicides among teenage boys in the UK, if I was going to be able to do it, I would have done it and so it would have happened for real by now anyway. If I cannot bring myself to do it as an adult with access to so many more means, then I was unlikely to do it when I was 12. So, assuming I bottled out then and stayed alive. What things would I have done differently. One thing is I would hope to have quite a lot more courage. I have noted before how fear has stopped me going to and seeing so many places and certainly stopped me having success with women. Even if I was courageous on say one out of ten occasions that I lacked courage, then I think my life would have been a lot richer and a lot happier. I never seemed to lack courage in standing up to my parents and that simply led to more condemnation from them and greater humiliation at their hands, but standing up for what I believed in at school and elsewhere would probably have helped me, it may though, have led to even more bullying. Given that I got bullying at all levels of my school life right up to when I was 18, I guess it could not have been any worse and appearing tougher may have scared off other bullies.
Though I think I would have benefited from being more courageous, I think I would have saved a lot of time, discomfort and money by realising what I was not able to do. As I have written before I was useless as judo, canoeing, fencing, go, aikido, ten-pin bowling and Chinese all things I took courses in, sometimes repeatedly for absolutely no benefit. I could have put my efforts into things that I have had more success at, generally nothing sports or language related.
I was unfortunate when a teenager to witness men on at least two different occasions being utterly humiliated when they asked women out. This scared me away from doing this and at least on five occasions I walked away from women who were asking me out. Of course, you are not going to succeed on every occasion and even when I gained some courage I offended one woman so much by asking her to go out with me that she demanded an apology. However, if I actually had had more dates and break-ups and new relationships, then I would a) have become more adept at doing it and b) more immune to the embarrassment it can bring. Of course I could not have removed the scars on my body which made me feel so awkward, but I would have sooner realised that women do not really give a damn about such things if the man treats them properly and seems to have had some confidence. I also think that if I had had sex before I was 34, then I would not have run into the problems with women despising a virgin in his 30s. There were certainly women when I was 18-21 who would have slept with me but I walked away from because I felt so inadequate. If I had more courage I would have also contested other men for them, rather than simply giving up on a woman when I saw another man interested in the vicinity. I also wish I had learnt far quicker to forget about the women I fancied in my youth and not agonise over what might have been. Also I wish I had understood that we are not living in a Jane Austen novel and women pay no attention to little notes of affection, these days they want to be asked directly. I wish I had joined a dating agency in 1994 when I first moved to London rather than waited five years. I had more success by far when I did than before and I could have had a great deal more in that mid-1990s period when okay I was not rich, but I was younger (27-32 in 1994-9), of course if I had had sex earlier and more confidence with women, then it would have increased my chances even more, but as it was I could have had a lot more dates (something I thoroughly enjoy), in a city I love, London, with so much to see and do there that is better with someone than alone. In general I wish I had had the courage just to ask women I fancied out rather than agonising over it until they found someone else. Usually the rejections have not been painful.
I certainly wish I had studied different subjects at school. I would have worked far harder at Chemistry and Physics and taken German rather than Latin, though given my difficulty with languages the outcome would have been little different. I certainly should not have taken English 'A' Level (which I failed first time and only scraped through on retake), I should have gone for Law and then applied for a Law degree and got a job in the law. It is an area which fits my personality and I would not have had the many years (up until I was 33) of earning less than £10,000 or periods of unemployment. Once at university I would have worked a lot less than I did. I worked incredibly hard, in the library most days until 9pm when it closed, and yet I still only got a 2:1 degree. I could have got the same and had more socialising and getting on with women rather than day-dreaming about them.
I wish I had never thought I could be a teacher. Taking a TEFL course was an error, partly done to keep my parents off my back, but it was clear I was useless at it and imagining myself in some remote East European city teaching English filled me with fear. Trying to be a school teacher was even worse. Even if I had not failed the course, the job would have stressed me out so much as to probably have led me to retirement from illness by now. Of course, if I had studied Law, then I would not have ended up in this awkward position. The alternative was to get into the civil service sooner than I did. Of course if that letter from the Inland Revenue had not been disposed of by my useless flatmate, I would have been at the exam and be a tax inspector by now, so even opportunities to get back on track failed.
Housing of course has been a bane of my life throughout. It was always something that alarmed me especially when applying to university. On each occasion I seem to have picked a place with a bad landlord/lady, in Coventry, in Oxford, in Norwich, in Milton Keynes, in all of these places I had to move on. Maybe it is simply that such a high percentage of landlords/ladies are bad and that I could not escape having troublesome ones. In recent years it has got worse as outlined on this blog, but in those cases there was little property to choose between. Of course I should have sold my London flat before they started dumping £14,000 charges on me, but that would have been counter to all the advice I had been receiving about renting out property up until then. Certainly in terms of flatmates I would have been far, far more careful, particularly in terms of the complete nightmare in London a man who stole and broke almost everything he came into contact, sub-let the living room and threw litter at our neighbours. I just wished I had waited for the woman who was coming to see me after him. I am very bad at picking people. Every removal company I have ever used has been terrible, even though in Milton Keynes, there is a large selection of decent ones. I always pick the worst from any list and so if I lived my life again I would rely on other people's opinions much more.
If I lived my life again I would buy far fewer non-fiction books and far fewer computer games. I tend to buy both as retail therapy and then they just gather dust. I have a few computer games I replay repeatedly over the years. Not buying these things, not drinking coffee daily from the cafe would have saved me thousands of pounds over the year (I had spent over £2080 on coffee at work since I joined the company in Summer 2005, which I could have made myself in my office). This money would have gone into holidays to places I want to visit and still have not done such as Budapest, Florence, Lyons, St. Petersburg and Japan.
If I lived my life again and had the chance, I would have gone to the weddings in Germany and Malta that I was invited to but bottled out of attending. They would have been fun or at least an experience to talk about. I could have attended the one in Scotland too if I had not done the TEFL course which started the day of the wedding (a Monday, unusually). On one-off incidents, I wish I had not taken the bus back from Coventry to the party in Oxford and stayed the night with the woman who had invited me. I had walked away from her when we had been on a date two years earlier when another man interested in her had shown up and started making advances (the whole relationship had been very hesitant as I never had the courage to tell her how I felt about her, and her friend said that because I was two years older, I was too old for her) and staying that evening would either had re-ignited the relationship or it would have snapped me out of the wistful way I thought about her for a decade later. I knew she was popular, but if she had told me right out, 'no', then I could have moved on. I almost jumped off the bus when it came to a stop and ran back, but it seemed too movie-like at the time. I have always been too romantic in an ineffectual drippy way and not in a robust, actually achieving something way.
I wish I had heeded the advice in 'The Guardian' in about 2003 about never going on holiday with your girlfriend. Every holiday doing that has been a huge mistake and usually ended the relationship. Weekends away are safe, but anything long is fatal and led to lots of heartache.
There are very few things in my life that I am proud of that I would repeat if I lived my life again. Of course, putting all these variations in would mean I would not encounter many of the circumstances, though, for example, in the case of housing, I am sure I would have had equally as bad landlords/ladies just with different names and houses. If I still ended up in certain circumstances in my re-lived life again then I would happily do them again. The first is help a woman with a child in her hands pull an elderly man who had fallen off the back of a canal boat in a lock on the Oxford Canal, out of the water. The second is, dissuade a woman who had been living with a man for many years, from trying to seduce me or trying to have sex with me. She went back to him and confessed her attempted infidelity, not something I advised, but a consequence of discouraging her from trying to have a sexual relationship with me. Obviously it would have meant sex a few years earlier than I got it, but I am morally proud of me getting her to do the right thing and remain faithful (ten years later they are still married).
I do not think my existence has harmed people. It has disappointed a lot of people, but in fact in most cases they have probably found better outcomes not being intimate with me than if they had done. For me though if I lived my life again, I would strive for a wider range of experiences at an earlier age, leading to a fuller engagement with adulthood at an earlier period (17-22 rather than 34-8) based on a better career plan and a mixture of greater caution and greater courage (I think the two go hand-in-hand as with the flatmate and removal company, having the courage to say 'no, you are useless, I want someone else'). However, I cannot get over the fact that actually removing me from the system would benefit a lot of people. I would not be taking up the job that someone could better use than me to lead a successful life. I suppose if it comes down to it, I do feel like 'The Butterfly Effect' character, if you feel your life is invalid then the best option will appear never to have started it.
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