Yesterday i watched BBC4's Women documentary. It was mostly very good. It was really exciting to hear all these women from the beginning of the movement speak, and some of the old footage was fantastic. I had i bit of a problem with the film maker though. (Vanessa Engles, i think?) This probably isn't actually the case, but a lot of the time she seemed quite unimpressed with it all. In particular i found her very patronising when talking to Kate Millett, (I had to look her up. I don't really know enough about all these people, and only had a slight awareness of any of them.) talking to her like she was a senile old woman, when she was clearly still extremely intelligent and cogent. The first we saw of this interview was Engles complimenting Millett "I like your crocs." Perhaps i've missed the point with this. Was it meant to be humanising? Perhaps it was to show a feminist philosophy towards clothes? Maybe, but i found it hard to take it as either, and it just felt like an attempt to display this woman's eccentricity. I don't like to accuse her of belittling Millett, but i felt this was edging towards a rather negative portrayal.

There were a few other moments were the filming felt rather sarcastic. Asking various of these feminists about the state of their sex lives, Engles seemed archly surprised at the reluctance some of them felt to discuss it. And her approach to the interaction between lesbianism and feminism seemed not to be all that constructive. Addressing the pressure on women to adopt a homosexual identity in the early days of the movement, she seemed sneering. With some justification, of course. I find this quite a wrongheaded approach, certainly in modern feminism, but it's easy to see why people felt like this then. Quite apart from its political connotations in terms of feminism, this was really the first time women were presented with lesbianism as a viable identity. These women, suddenly able to express this part of themselves, may have been overzealous in their expectations of others, but all of a sudden these long-suppressed desires were permitted and even rationalised by the movement. I know that the time of my coming out was accompanied by expectations of upheaval in the ways i interacted with people, and changes in how i saw myself; coming out on such a massive scale can only have multiplied this.

Engles, talking about this trend, paraded women who'd flirted with lesbianism only to discover it wasn't right for them, saying how much easier that might have made things, implying they felt they'd let down the movement, before finally moving on to her queer interviewees, leaving the viewer to surmise that these women could only have adopted this sexuality out of a sense of obligation, rehashing the idea that lesbianism exists only as a political identity. I may be making a few too many assumptions about her intentions here, and any implications of this were certainly mild, but i did feel they existed.

But while i had a few problems with the documentarist, the feminists interviewed represented themselves fantastically despite these difficulties, (which i am perhaps exaggerating anyway (although i think now i just sound like i don't have the courage to stand by my convictions (is that interpretation wrong?))) and it was fascinating to see them, and to learn about a movement which i only really know in its modern, rather flaccid stages.

I'm stuck in Aldridge right now, and i hate it. There are two places in want to, much better, more exciting and interesting places, and i feel like the longer i'm stuck back here in a backwards place, (backwards in the same that it was a BACKWARDS step to return, not in the sense that they murder gays or whatever.) the more the other places slip away.

Le Mans is becoming less where i want to be, partly for external reasons, but mostly because of the way my stupid head takes these external reasons and twists and distorts them until i can only think depressing things, and things that really are unfair to other people, because i apparently have trouble trusting people to not be awful.

In a similar vein, i have apprehensions about going back to Sheffield, but in this case because i worry it doesn't want me back, not because i don't want to go. It's all part of my silly rules and protocols and not impinging on other people, which ends up meaning things like i have to wait for someone to say they want to see me about five times before i'm willing to believe them and not just think they're being polite. And it means asking to go visit people can be horrendously awkward, and so i end up putting it off until it's too late anyway.

IE THIS WEEKEND. I wanted to go to Climax, but don't have anywhere to stay. And i couldn't bring myself to ask till just about yesterday, meaning that when both off the people i asked said they couldn't i had no further options.

Anyway, yes. I want to go back to Sheffield, but i worry everyone there will have moved on and won't want to be friends with me anymore, or that they will even have moved on in a more literal sense and won't be there for me to be friends with at all. Plus, of course, there is the fact they i may even RIGHT NOW be fucking up my chances of getting in. (If i haven't already screwed myself over with that 2:2)

All this worrying, though, could be got rid of, at least for a while. I'm just bored, really. I need to go out, except most of the time there's no one for me to go out with, and when there is i always seem to be too busy. SIGH.

Last time i did go out, though, was a lot of fun. They played Deceptacon AND Burn Don't Freeze, so that was fantastic. Plus, my new crush was there, which was exciting. His name's Ptolemy. (Except obviously it isn't really. This is what i call him for now. (And for ever, probably)) He's cute and awkward (Which is hot, obviously) and has been wearing floral shirts the last two times i've seen him. (That plural is a bit of a lie. I think it was the same shirt both times.) I tried to smile at him last time, but who knows what i actually managed. Anyway, my new resolution, if i actually manage to keep up blogging, is LESS BOY TALK, especially when it's just "He's so dreeeamy" over and again while never getting anywhere with them, (Ptolemy isn't actually dreamy, though. Dutch Boy was, last year, but Ptolemy is yet to scale those heights) so that's enough of that!

I did actually see a few of the people i'm worried about last time i was up, and it is true that they didn't seem to hate me, and were in fact quite pleased to see me, so i am perhaps giving up too soon.

It’s struck me that around this time on a Friday, every week, (pretty much) i would sit down and write. That’s over now, so i wonder if it might me useful to transfer these attentions to this blog. Silly and irrelevant as what i used to write was, the very fact of making it, and having it read was, i think, quite enjoyable, and perhaps healthy. The calming influence is something i would find very useful today, as i once again draw closer to fucking up.

I used to write the update for LGBT committee. As ever, i’m wary of saying nice things about myself, and i don’t want to sound bigheaded, (Which is not to say i’m not bigheaded, of course.) but the fact remains that people enjoyed my updates. This was a weekly email detailing the events committee had planned over the next couple of weeks, as well as whatever else i felt like throwing in there. And people would actually make a point of telling me they liked what i wrote. Given my slightly secret hope of one day writing, (I realise this is extremely unlikely, which is why i don’t really tell anyone anymore.) this is exciting.

But now i’m no longer on committee. As this is my final year, i was obviously ineligible to restand, and my place as secretary has now been filled. It does feel like a departure from something that’s been a huge part pf my life for some time now. I came to an LGB meeting (as it then was) in my first week at Sheffield, joined committee a couple of months later and now, five years on, i’m only giving it up because i don’t have a chance.

Well, that may not strictly be true. Five years later, i do think things may have run their course for me. I feel committee needs to move in a direction that not everyone seems to agree with. And since, in this regard, i’m a minority with little chance of convincing the others, my leaving would have probably been the best thing, whether or not it was already necessitated by my circumstances.

Committee, to me, now feels stagnant. Zombified. Little has moved on in my five years, and i now feel there are ways in which we are seriously failing, and unwilling to change, perhaps due to some inertia, or an obligation to previous incarnations of committee. My main problem is with our socials. For a long time, we have held a weekly Tuesday social in the evenings, each week a different event. In theory, this is not terrible, but the problem is that the socials generally are. Ill-thought out and poorly planned, the last one drew in three people who weren’t already on committee. Of committee, the people who are pretty much obliged to make an appearance, it drew less than half.

Previous rationales have discussed the inevitability that things will tail off as the year progresses, but i no longer buy these reasons. We are failing, and failing badly. At the end of last year, i remember discussing the same problem, and pointing out that if we obviously can’t even draw in people from committee, something is definitely not working. Then, my feeling was that we weren’t providing good enough socials. Now, i feel that the system itself is rotten.

We’ve tried to provide good socials. Occasionally we’ve even succeeded. Sometimes we’ve had quite the crowd. (Some might this as justification of the theory that numbers shrink as a year progresses, but i still see that as something that itself needs explaining, not as an answer of itself.) But that isn’t enough. They need to be good on a weekly basis in order to justify their existence.

Some seem convinced that we shouldn’t really mind too much about the dropping off of numbers, but i disagree, so much. Our role is primarily one of welfare. The other two strands are vitally important, but i believe that both socials and campaigns exist to feed into this are. (Not that this adequately explains the interconnectedness of all three.) We need to present a welcoming, exciting face, not to be just very obviously going through the motions. I’m not saying we need to have fifty people every Tuesday evening, but the Tuesdays need to be attracting more than just the three people coming out of habit.

My interpretation of the problem is that we rely too much on each weekly theme, without ever bothering to put any effort into it. And my solution, which i’ve proposed before and made no headway with, is to simply scrap this. The Tuesday socials, as they are, need to be done away with.

I still believe there should be some equivalent, but without this structure of panicking every two weeks because we’ve nothing planned one of suggestions, which failed not because of anyone else’s hostility towards it, but because at the time it was inoperable, was to convince some coffee shop or other to take us on a weekly basis. We already do this, in a way, with our weekly engagement with the Lion’s Lair, (An awful gay pub – another problem i have with the status quo) but it’s very important that we have non drinking socials, for various reasons, too obvious to go into.

As i’ve said, at the time it was impracticable, but i stand by the basic theory of this. I also feel it would free us up an awful lot. We waste time every week debating what’s to be done in each social – if they followed the same pattern this would free up so much time to talk about things that could actually matter.

It would also, i feel, free us up to put on events we’re actually passionate about. In the past we’ve had meetings on sexual health and coming out. This year we didn’t, partly through my efforts. I objected to the structure of these meeting, to the way they felt like AA meetings or were just plain boring. More than anything, i didn’t like the way they were just used to fill up the gaps in our schedule. These meetings were planned the week before, never, it felt, out of any genuine concern for the problem, but because we had nothing better to do.

I do think these are very important issues, and i feel the best way of addressing them has never been discussed. I don’t think a Tuesday social is by any means an adequate forum. I did once suggest that sexual health might be better dealt with in some kind of all-day workshop. There could be professionals, and perhaps even a time allotted so people could actually get checked for STIs without having to visit the GUM clinic, which is certainly something i’d be a bit nervous about doing. This was very quickly sot down, though, by out then Men’s Welfare rep, who admittedly is likely to have been the one who’d have had to co-ordinate it all. Still, i maintain that the idea holds water, and should have been at least considered.

Currently we are shackled to the Tuesday socials. Not only are we forced to spend probably a third of our time together as committee planning them, but we are often afraid to plan anything outside them. The things we do on Tuesdays – talks, trips – might all benefit from being treated as one off events rather than the next in a series of ideas how to fill an hour and a half. They could be better publicised, more thought put into them, and if we felt that something wasn’t going to work, there’d be no obligation to run it.

I truly feel that this approach could do a lot of good for committee, and i don’t think it’s terribly radical. But for whatever reason, (It may merely be my own inability to express myself) committee seems unwilling to take this on. I think the longer i was on committee trying to make this point and getting nowhere the more frustrated i’d have become, and the more annoying for everyone else. So i think it is for the best that my time on committee end now. (Is that subjunctive? I’ve put it as one.) Besides, i want to come back in a years time, and maybe to get back on, bringing myself to seven or eight years (on and off) contact with committee, and that’s not going to happen if i’ve burnt all my bridges with everyone.

I went into Decathlon today. I felt so out of place, surrounded by all these sporting goods. I kept going round, laughing at it all, saying things like “Golf? As if!” (Erudite commentary) And for some reason the staff all wear these odd sporty tops, with netting and fancy waterproof fabrics, as if they might all go off on a potholing expedition at any second. I’ve no problem with sport, but it’s very incongruous with my own sense of who i am. I, of course, wasn’t in there for the football or the canoeing, but for the least sporty of activities they cater for. I needed some walking shoes.

As i was doing this, i was sort of thinking in blog. This has been happening quite a bit lately. My thoughts always run in imaginary conversations, or diary entries, and recently i’ve been thinking of my blog again. This is J’s fault. (Coming back on here, i’ve wondered about if i should maintain those initials. It seems a bit silly now, and mostly i won’t bother, but i wasn’t sure if J would mind me dropping them for real names. Mostly, though, i won’t be bothering. (If this becomes a habit again)) He mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he’d been looking through this again. I then read a few entries myself. They were, of course, completely unbearable, but apparently i’ve decided to come back.

I’ve seen quite a bit of J lately. Well, more than in the last four years. (Proportionally) We (LGBT committee) do this thing where we go talk to schoolkids in PSHE lessons, and i invited him along. He came, and all of a sudden was one of the gays!

That, of course, is an exaggeration. He hung around a bit, afterwards, but it wasn’t immediate. The following week was Climax, and he came, and fun was had. And now, a short time later, he’s been voted on committee.

I don’t really know how to feel about it all. I get confused about what the nature of a friendship with him should be. We were close, very close, i think. I did love him, however confused i may have been about the nature of that love. And in a way, even when our friendship lapsed, (For whatever reason. I don’t think trying to puzzle out why can really achieve much, (Not that i’d normally let that stop me)) i didn’t always feel i’d lost him. As i said, in my head, i think a ,lot of my thoughts in imaginary conversations, (Sort of. The coparticipant tends to be fairly silent, perhaps because i’m too selfish to put all that much effort into fully characterising anyone else.) and J’s always been one of the people i have those imaginary conversations with. So while in some ways it feels like revisiting things after very sparse contact, some part of me’s been talking to him all along, and i feel sometimes like i can just pick up with the familiarity we had and not have to worry about navigating this.

But i’m sure he’s changed. I’m certain i have. We can’t just settle back into things. For one, a lot of our friendship back then was based on MSN, and that just wouldn’t work now. Topmost in my concerns, though, is a worry that it may not be worth it. It’s nearly the end of this year now. Next year, if i were around, i’d likely see a lot of J, what with him being on committee. But i won’t be. Or at least i don’t want to be. The following year, when i hope to be back here, he’ll have gone. I get the impression he wants to stay around Birmingham, whereas i would never dream of moving back to Aldridge. I’ve known for a while how bad i am at keeping up a friendship over any kind of distance - (Fiona moved to Derby and i’ve seen her three times all year. Though, that said, when she lived five minutes away, we didn’t do brilliantly either) J was kind of the test case for this.

Last time we split up was horrid – a lot of the melodrama and teenageiness of it all being due to the fact that i was at the time a melodramatic teenager, but i don’t know that i’ve changed all that much – and it hardly seems worth being proper friends again for the next few weeks only to then part ways for ever..

Not that i should assume J even wants to be friends in anything like the way we were. But it does seem like a possibility. In the past, i’ve made attempts at rekindling things, (I feel a bit silly that i keep couching all this in terms perhaps more suited to a romance, but since i’ve never actually experienced more than a crush, i tend to value my friendships over that kind of thing anyway.) but they’ve felt unreciprocated. I could have been imagining things – i have a fairly bizarre internal etiquette, i think – but it felt like i was always the one trying to initiate things, and i shy away when i feel that i’m the only one who wants something. But lately it has felt a bit more like the old days. There was an awkwardness, i felt, before, partly due to my not knowing how to react to his liking God, and then liking girls. (I did worry there might be a connection, but i was right to think better of him than that.) That was my fault, though. I think i made assumptions when he told me he’d started fancying girls, and i did feel rather deserted when suddenly my best (And pretty much only) gay male friend suddenly wasn’t. And as for God, well, i have views on him. So i was maybe rather standoffish too. But now it seems that may be over, and we could almost be close again. Just in time to split up.

I’ve thought through these things fairly often recently. In writing it down, as ever, i’ve forgotten things, and jumbled others up. I just hope this is fairly coherent.

As for the shoes, i’ve found some that might do. They’re not attractive, (No even remotely like what i had in mind – a nice leather (Or at least convincingly faux) boot, to go with my tweed jacket.) but they’re cheap, and this is a major factor.

So, that whole Carthaginian thing is long over. I've just read my last post. After that he did tell me about that new boyfirend of his, in a very nice way, and i felt quite a bit better about things. But that wasn't the end of things, at least not from my side. By the time i was back in Sheffield, not long after, he was already in the process, i think, of breaking up with this guy. I had some awareness of this at the time, but, alythough there was what might have been a chance, and a moment, and certainly a willingness and a want, (for my art, at least) i did nothing, since i was only in Sheffield a week. (This on top of all my problems with confidence and all that.) And then the next time time i was back, returned from France for good, he had a new boyfried, and damn it all if this one wasn't cute and nice. I couldn't even be jealous, which was a blow.

And there we go, Persian is in a relationship.

I've felt worse. Other rejections, from boys who've shown less interest, have hurt more. Perhaps because this time was so gradual. Perhaps because the actual rejection hasn't come yet.

I don't intend to contact him now. There isn't much point. I have a fair idea now where i stand. Perhaps if he never gets in touch to call it off i'll ask why, but that sounds like it may lead to the depressing realisation that he'd never actually known my intentions.

Assuming that isn't the case, i'll actually be pretty annoyed if i don't get some explanation from him. Not that i begrudge him all this, (Well, obviously i do really, but i'm trying not to.) but he must have realised i'd see everything he put up on his facebook, so to parade all this under the nose of someone he knows is interesting, and knows believes he is too, seems a little cruel. Not that i'm vain enough to think it's actually malicious, but it's still a little thoughtless.

I think i may have a goth day tomorrow. This is possible now i finally have black nail varnish.

Sorry these posts are a little disjointed, but so am i.

"Mesopotanian is delerious from lack of sleep and overwhelmed by the sexy guy sitting in his room."

That's fairly unambiguous.

I want so badly to find out where i stand, but i have no idea how to without coming across as an utter freak and ruining any chance that some small part of me is clinging onto still. But his doesn't seem any longer like something i can just wait out. By this morning i'd already nearly convinced myself that it was all still going to be fine, we'd go out when i came back and then who knows? Now that looks less likely than ever.

And for another thing, even if we were still on, if he perhaps planned to wait and make some comparison between the two of us, how am i ever going to compete with 'overwhelmingly sexy'?

I really don't know how to handle this. I imagine i'll do my usual thing of bottling until i get roaring drunk, then absolutely put my foot in things and make a fool of myself.

I did have more worries to list about the date with Egyptian, but it's starting to look less like i'll have to. Not for remotely good reasons.

I'm teetering on the verge of one of my sloughs of despond. I'm really not terribly happy today. And i can't even really talk to anyone about it. Partly because i feel a bit silly, and i'm fairly certain this reaction isn't entirely justified, but mainly because i'm just not very good at talking about my feelings, and particularly bad at bringing up the whole subject in the first place. So my usual technique is to mope as visibly as i can, and try make sure everyone sees how down i am. The problem with that, though, is that i'm not very good at keeping in a bad mood. I think, much as i like to whine, i'm essentially a fairly cheery person. Once i'm around my friends it's a challenge to keep up a scowl for more than ten minutes, so i give up and just go for punctuating my grins with dramatic sighs. (Except not too loud, because for fear of not being taken seriously.)

So today i had a day of wandering round in town. I found another nice place to sit and be quiet and alone. I always feel so pleased to find these places. Actually, it reminds me quite a bit of my nook back in school, except less suitable for cold and wet weather. It seemed quite a good secret place, since the wall's at least waist high all the way round, and the way in doesn't look like it goes anywhere much. The graffitti proclaims that 'punx not dead'. I found somewhere to sit where there seemed to be less fresh spit. It seemed quite a good place to have a bit of a party, really, epecially in the summer, although that clearly won't actually happen outide my head. If i were a more inspirational person, or if this were a town where people were more inclined to actually have fun, perhaps, but neither of these is the case. It would have made a good place for that fantasy i talked about once on here. That fantasy that i was beginning to wonder if i might have found the other person in.

Except now i'm thinking (Not that i was ever hugely confident) that this may be less and less likely. A few days i read on facebook that Egyptian had a date with some guy in Sheffield. Not happy news. Since then my stalking has produced no word of whether or not this went well, but what he is looking for on facebook has changed from dating and relationships to just friendship. This, then, is the reason for my feelings of general shitness.

Of course, it is slightly possible that this means nothing at all, or that i still have at least some chance. He hasn't yet called off our date. For the moment, to save torturing myself, i'm going to assume that eventually he will. But if, by the time i go back home, i still haven't heard anything, i may let myself hope again.