On The Brink

This is the thing with my degree, see. You study, in massive detail, all the things that can possibly go wrong with the human body.

It’s not the pathogens that bother me, I’m not worried – as yet I’ve never caught anything too serious (apart from a bout of food poisoning this year related to, well, the state of our kitchen *grumble*). I’ve got a pretty tough immune system by and large, and anyway, there’s not much in terms of random illnesses you can contract in the UK. Nothing as bad as the Ebola virus, or E.Coli, or whatever.

I worry a bit about cancer – one in three of us will get it, after all, but equally the chances of an individual cell in your body turning cancerous are miniscule, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

There’s also nothing I can do about the bit that does bother me: genetics. Except, kind of, there is. Because I won’t know until it happens that I’ve got cancer, or diptheria, or tetanus. There is nothing I can do to prevent those things from happening except do my bit to prevent those things happening like take a reasonable amount of exercise, not smoke, and read the Daily Mail obsessively, of course. But it’s not me that I’m worried about in terms of genetics – it’s what am I going to pass on that I don’t know about yet? What currently silent heterozygote mistake do I carry – one gene fine, the other containing a terrible deletion or insertion or repeat, which, when I was put together, could be safely ignored because the other gene for whatever-it-is was fine, and won out? What if I just happen to fall in love with someone who also happens to have that error, and there it is? I want someone to sequence my whole genome and just tell me the worst, tell me that I carry genes which will give this child short sight and loose tendons (duh) and probably a mild scoliosis and/or spina bifida (but not the really bad kind) – all that I know I definitely or probably carry on my genome and that’s fine, that’s not caused any big problems for anyone in my family. It’s also possible, but quite a slim chance, that I carry something else which has had terrible consequences within my family; and this frightens me in the dead of night sometimes or when I’m not expecting it to frighten me, and it’s difficult to remember that it’s a very rare thing to carry and I will hopefully not have the bad luck to ever have children with a fellow carrier. And then there’s all the things I don’t carry as such but who knows what will happen, what instability and fragility there is in my genetic code, which, completely unpredictably, will cause all kinds of problems for a child of mine?

And yes, I say I’m not worried about the illnesses I may or may not have, but honestly, I’m terrible, I’ve had headaches and started to worry about tumours; there’s an odd lump on my elbow I keep meaning to get checked out and it’s almost certainly nothing but I’m sure it’s grown; I spent a good proportion of the last year wondering – academically – if I had MS, although why is, well, a story for another time. Let’s not go there…! I wasn’t actually frightened about it, more just drawing parallels and spotting symptoms and adding things up and it came to a fairly reasonable ‘what if’ which concerned rather than frightened me, but I don’t want to go to the doctor’s about it because it’s just too much like hard work to schedule an appointment and register at a surgery (that’s right, I’m not currently registered anywhere. Well, no, I am at Uni Town, but… well, that’s a rant for another day. The UHS is the Fort Knox of bureaucracy). And then you start spotting random symptoms which are almost certainly just nothing but could be Something Fairly Serious… if combined with a whole bunch of symptoms you don’t have. I know too much not to think about it all; and not enough to know for certain that I’m being seriously daft.

And then I think about the level of hypochondria in intelligent friends who do completely unconnected degrees – English, Engineering, Maths, Philosophy, Chemistry – and I realise that actually, I could be so much more concerned about so many more illnesses. I must have some reasonable level of knowledge after all. And at least I don’t know enough about helicopters to convince myself that they’re suddenly going to remember that according to Physics they have no good reason to stay in the air, and just land on my head.

I’ve just read this article, in the Guardian. It’s all about the trend for skinny skinny skinny male models. And it’s very interesting in that it shows that men’s bodies these days are starting to be public property in the same way that women’s bodies are (no, seriously – as the author of this article quite justifiably points out, addressing, one assumes, all of male humanity: ‘Do you know what it’s like to turn 12 and find your body subject to the scrutiny of the entire world? Do you know what it’s like to be constantly judged by the opposite sex and (perhaps more harshly) by your own? To be conditioned to view your body in such a way that you regularly find yourself in a public space (a park, a train carriage, or walking down a street) rating the legs, or bellies, or upper arms of everyone you pass in terms of the merits and failings of your own? Do you know how self-conscious that makes you, how disarmed, how confused, how dissatisfied, how unbelievably freaking vulnerable?’). Which is obviously terrible, because the human body should not be objectified, judged, dissected and criticised like that the whole time, no matter your gender or size.

But anyway, what I mainly wanted to say was this: I really do not understand the attraction of skinny guys. I just do not get it. I find skinny men utterly weird in the same way that I find completely cleanshaven men slightly creepy. I do not get the attraction so many women seem to have to David Tennant or Matt Smith. I like a man who is bigger than me in all dimensions (I really have no objection to men with bigger boobs than me – if I did have such an objection I’d be right back looking at the skinny men and well just no). I like a man who is stronger than me, and a bit of fat never went amiss. Seriously.

Other than that I’m not particularly fussy about men. Or rather, I guess I am, but I have some slightly unusual ideas of what makes a man good-looking. And to be honest – as, again, the author of this article mentions – women actually don’t care that much about the looks of their man. We would all rather have someone with a good personality, who makes us feel good about ourselves and who makes us happy and who is happy when he is with us. Clever, funny, caring, and frankly it’s a massive turn-on to be wanted by someone. And actually, in the past, I have liked and gone out with and been attracted to skinny guys, because I’m fickle like that. But if you asked me to describe my ideal man in terms of looks he would be taller than me by a few inches, probably, broad-shouldered, strong, but not utterly ripped. And I know a number of girls who really really fancy skinny guys and I simply do not understand it, so having seen this article I wanted to register my confusion with the world.

Now let’s all have a nice long feminist-centred debate about manorexia, male grooming, and the pressure to look a certain way, and whether, after all these years, men possibly deserve it…?!!

If you haven’t seen this film and want to, look away now. It’s not really about the film as such so much as the concept. But what I’m going to say in this post will almost certainly tell you everything you really didn’t want to go in to watching the film for the first time knowing.

Right, you’ve had your warning. Basically it’s about memory, and about a service which removes peoples’ memories of a certain person or event. So of course it is primarily used by distressed ex-lovers trying to get their beloved ex-girlfriend or -boyfriend out of their head in order to move on with their lives. And as you know, I hope, two characters erase one another and then one way or another discover that they have erased one another, discover where all their old memories are, and fall in love again. I can’t remember whether they actually regain their old memories of each other, or merely discover that they had them – it wasn’t made clear, and I wasn’t concentrating. Anyway, there you go. I was watching this recently whilst doing some boring room-sorty thing, and it made me think a bit. One obvious question: if there’s a reason why you broke up, surely if you can’t remember anything about your entire previous relationship history is basically doomed to repeat itself and you’ll end up going through the same break-up and then probably discovering this memory-wiping service again… and so it goes on.

But the other thing that really troubled me was this: every time I’ve really fallen for someone, they’ve usually had a big influence on my life, as a friend or a partner, whatever. I’ve learnt a lot from those people and experiences about myself, and I’ve learnt some valuable lessons and changed a lot as a result of those relationships. Anyone you’re close to like that, be they a best friend or a boyfriend, will change you in some way, not necessarily in a bad way, just in that everyone we meet affects the course of our lives and the way we think about stuff in one way or another. We learn valuable lessons from the people we encounter all the time. So if you wipe the memories of that person, who or what do you become? If, as a result of your relationship with a person, you’ve become more confident and trusting, say, do you carry on being more confident and trusting – or, with no known reason to have those characteristics, do you lose them because they no longer tie in with your personal narrative, do you forget those lessons because you no longer have the memories of having learnt them and therefore to all intents and purposes never did learn those things? To be honest, I think the latter is more likely, though I couldn’t say why.

I wouldn’t change a second of my life, really. I’ve made some stupid choices and I’ve met people who have hurt me a lot and whom I have allowed to hurt me. I’ve had bad days and good days, bad years and good years, I have regrets, we all do – but in a world where all of those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be who I am today. So, given the choice, I’d keep those memories. What do you think?

P.S. I’m getting confirmed today. So that’s the subject of my next post, when I get the time… .

I wasn’t sure if it was him, walking towards me. He had the same arrogant lumbering gait, all testosterone and shoulders, and the friend with him also looked familiar, and I was somewhere where I would not have been surprised to see him. For a few seconds all I was aware of was how my heartbeat seemed to be making time slow down, every sound muffled, my mouth drying out. I nearly turned round – wanting to run I would instead have just walked, fast, in that way you do at school because you’re late and you’re not allowed to run in the corridors. But I thought, no, don’t be daft, and I kept on walking, and it wasn’t him, and gradually the rest of the world flooded back into focus.

I read on The Forum Whatever about Rapelay, a Japanese video game which, well, read the article here, which will tell you no more than you need to know.

The thing is, though, it’s a game where the aim is to rape people; why is it that that seems so much worse than games in which the idea is to gratuitously kill others who are unarmed? I don’t have a problem with violent games in which you’re actually in combat with others who are also armed and it’s kill-or-be-killed, because there is an objective to your violence and it’s not absolutely the entire point of the game. The point of the game there is your own imaginary survival; fair enough. But when you’re not at risk from the people you’re killing how has that become acceptable (e.g. in Grand Theft Auto) when surely it ought to ring as terrible as this rape-simulation game? Or is there a reasonable justification for feeling that a game centred on raping girls and women is in some way morally worse than a game which is primarily about killing innocent bystanders?

And what about films? When is it acceptable to portray graphic, violent rape scenes, and what do we mean by ‘in the name of art’? Is it OK if you’re trying to shock your audience, but not if you know they’re just going to get off on it? And is that the true difference between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture?

There are some strange things out there. That doesn’t mean all Christians are strange. But I think this is pretty strange, and this is even stranger, and if you need a good giggle, or just to raise your eye-brows in mild shock and consternation, or just the excuse to stop reading about mast cells, Major Histocompatibility Complex proteins, anything with weird greek letters in, or your packing list (yeah, you think your day was bad?), well, click on those links. You’ll get the idea pretty quickly.

Oh post-scheduler, you save my life once again.

Anyway. Procrastinating found me this quiz. It shows you the percentage of votes one way or the other for each individual question rather than giving you a breakdown at the end, so look out.

Basically I am apparently abnormally naked. There is nothing I will not do, or have not done, whilst naked – with the exception of cooking. Somehow that seems to me just a bit weird. Also I’m convinced I would scald my stomach or get hot fat spat at me or something, somehow. So logistically it’s stupid and it would feel very odd. But skinny dipping, sunbathing, night swimming, sleeping, check check check check. I enjoy and will happily do all of those things, at least, on my own or in the presence of similarly-minded friends. I will get naked in the pool changing rooms, which are communal, without a qualm, though there are cubicles if you want them but the floor is wetter in there because they’re nearer the showers and they’re dark and I’m too blind when I take off my glasses.

Don’t go thinking I wander round naked all the time. I don’t. I just don’t have a problem with it.

Apparently I will happily talk about me being naked on my blog. Oops. Whilst I’m at it, I’ll also tell you about my new stockings…

(jokes. I have no stockings. I have no idea how to wear them without looking like a goth, or one of those people who thinks vintage clothing is for actively recreating a sort of 1950s-fakery-arcadia, or a prostitute or something and I am none of those things. It’s a shame because I think they’re kind of sexy but they’re probably a nightmare to take off in a seductive (or at least not actively off-putting) fashion especially if like me you’re about as dexterous as a mentally challenged goat).

Well there’s a title which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Anyway. Yesterday I went to a night hosted jointly by the LGBT society and SCM, the Student Christian Movement. There was stew and crumble and things and then there was a talk and discussion with Sarah Jones, the parish priest in Ross-on-Wye. Who, if you didn’t know, which to be fair you probably didn’t, used to be a man, and spent most of her twenties coming slowly to the realisation that actually, mentally, emotionally, she felt more like a woman. So she had a sex change before becoming ordained as a priest.

So for all sorts of reasons she had a lot to say. About coming to the realisation that she was transgendered (she asked us, ‘how do you know that you are the ‘right’ gender?’, pointing out that it’s a hard thing to think about, really, it’s not as simple as ‘just knowing’), about how people think transsexual and imagine some kind of panto-dame/drag-queen overly-made-up-and-coiffured caricature, when actually she was a perfectly ordinary, quite plainly dressed woman, with no make-up and sensible Ecco shoes.

She also talked about how her Bishop is quite conservative and yet was happy to see this as a medical problem; what he can’t get his head around is the fact that she is also gay, and this does then mean that she cannot whilst in this particular parish have a sexual relationship with another woman, because she would just lose her job, straight out, while in other parishes this might well be overlooked.

She praised the open-minded-ness of the Church of England – believers within the church of England really do fall on a massive spectrum between those who point accusingly at Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and those that say more forgiving things, quoting the story of the eunuch in Acts or the centurion and his friend/servant/lover in Matthew. It’s a church which can, with surprising ease, welcome those who believe (like me) that civil partnerships should be honoured in church and that gay marriage should be possible within the church of England and can’t really understand how you can make any other argument on that score, and can also welcome those who still believe that women shouldn’t be allowed to be priests and that homosexuality, let alone gay marriage, is a sin against God.

She talked also about being outed, about how one day the Daily Mail rang up seemingly out of the blue, and how she had rounds of press conferences to give and of course how then her whole parish knew and how they gradually came to terms with this, how it does now mean that literally everyone in her town knows and how in some ways the worst thing to bear is the children who have called her names in the past; but then she also talked about how she sat them down and gave them a good talking-to and how now when she passes them in the street they’ll cheerily call out, ‘morning, Vicar’, which I think is nice, because that’s a sentence I struggle to imagine any thirteen-year-old lout on a BMX uttering in most normal places, but then I guess Ross-on-Wye is probably a bit like the town where I grew up and that probably wouldn’t have surprised me too much there.

What I really liked about her was her absolute and utter honesty – she really was happy to talk about more or less anything that we wanted to ask her. Perhaps not the course she would have chosen in life – it’s like me having to spend the entire rest of my life with everyone knowing that I Used To Be Depressed, except more so – and you don’t really want that to be the defining feature that everyone knows about you – but I guess once that is why you are known, she has stood up to the plate and stood up for her cause and got on with it, and, well. I was inspired. I was really glad to have met her. And she made me realise that actually, if it annoys me so much that people make assumptions about me and about depression, then I bloody well need to step up and say so, rather than just…lying about it. Or rather, omitting the truth. I can’t carry on saying, when people ask me what year I’m in, ‘oh I was ill last year’ and leaving it at that. I always feel guilty when I do that but at the same time it does seem like sharing a bit too much (apparently I do have at least a shred of that English reserve, after all).

Anyway that’s definitely not what I came here to say. Also the food was delicious. Also I then went to the pub with some of the people who were at the talk, and then I went to meet up with the debating lot in the Union, and things got rapidly more insane from there until A and I left for chips. Oh, chips. How glorious. And then I went to bed at two and why-oh-why did I wake up at half past seven in the sodding morning? Bleh.

…have some of the Notes I found on my phone.

Nine:

Rob says: “PESSAMIST: DIFFICULT IN EVERY OPPORTUNITY.

OPTOMIST: OPPORTUNITY IN EVERY DIFFICULTY”

(I love him but he can’t spell).

Six:

I wonder what of the music being made now will stand the test of time:? I have a theory that by and large the music that hits the charts now from less popular genres has broken through that particular barrier so maybe they will last?

(As you might have guessed the time stamp on this one is definitively the wee hours).

Eight:

I have actually developed a minor crush on that last guy becuase he takes photos of his pets and flowers :S !

Renegade Brass Band.

(talking to H at photosoc one night. Well, writing her a note, anyway).

Four:

Some kind of emotional dive bar I crank out the same feelings like cheap spirits or piss-weak beer in seedy profligacy. Discounts and doubling up so you get twice as much cliche for your cash and could drown your wretched face in the brine spilling from my eyes.

I imagine my heart skittering across a tiled marble floor – black and white, Italian, leaving a trail of shining scarlet blood, gappy, clotted, lumps and gouts and thin translucent trails between, and the toe of your shoe as you walk away, red on brown leather, pointed, shining.

(Jenny goes all emo ‘n’ ting).

Three:

‘Course you’re not, you’re not scared of anything. Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish custard!’

(The first episode of the latest series of Doctor Who. As if you didn’t know).

Ten:

“…and every time we did it, it was destroying me inside…”. X’s testimony. Sex. Guilt. Oh, help.

Five:

Stressed is Desserts spelled backwards.

Seven:

Random Man At Bus Stop: What he’s looking at is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, yet he can’t quite believe it and however much he loves it it hurts his eyes as it – she? – and now (if I ever wasn’t) I am extrapolating wildly, from my mute seat here in this bus in the slowly waking springtime heart of the city – walks towards him. The end. The beginning. Chapter One.

(Please tell me I’m not the only one that makes up stories about the people I see waiting for buses/on trains/on other journeys?)

Two:

You are the person that I love most that I’ve ever met. Shofolk sandals, £125.

(No, I don’t know either. I think one’s a quote from what is quite unreasonably one of my favourite books, and one is, well, shoes).

The rest of my notes are excruciatingly dull, the end.

Yes, I did. It was set in space. There was a fantastic vintage clothes shop, which did more hippy vintage and a quite a lot of English rose kind of floral tea-in-the-garden Edge of Love vintage dresses and stuff – i.e. my kind of thing entirely. That bit, I think, was on earth. Although the streets were sandy like you imagine them being in the American West and there was way too much sunshine and the shop was immense. And I was in there shopping with A and his friend who looked exactly like Bill Bailey except scaled down to about four feet tall. Weird. He honestly was like some kind of doll.

And then you appeared and whisked me off, leaving A behind, and me and you and H and M were on some kind of space shuttle number – it went so fast through all these tunnels and exploding out of the tunnels into space – but that’s when I realised it wasn’t really science fiction at all, it was just all the ordinary human dramas played out again, confusion and lies. Completely weird made-up human dramas, but human dramas. And then I had to slam on the brakes and woke up with a massive cramp in my leg. I have never had such a bad cramp in my legs. Sometimes a litle bit in my foot when I’m swimming, but this time, wow. Ow. And all I was doing was dreaming!

I hate my dreams.