Thursday 29 October 2009

Lie #2 - Prince Charming


The hiatus is over; the blog has returned.

Picture the scene. You are wearing your new sparkly party dress, heels you need painkillers to walk in and a smile that says, “I am me. I am incredible. I can take on the world.” You are chatting with your friends as you walk through the bar, you toss your hair back and laugh attractively… and just then some absolute scrotum of a man grabs your head and mashes his mouth up against yours. Delightful.


Now I am not one to deny I have had a fair few (insert shameful number here) cheeky snogs in my time, but none of them involved raping the face of an innocent bloke plucked from obscurity by my vastly exaggerated sense of self worth. It seems the right cocktail of testosterone and trebles can convince any man that we are back in the Stone Age – and I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy being dragged back to some guy’s cesspit by the hair.


Now before the menfolk start wailing, I am not suggesting women are any better. In fact we are just as bad. We totter around in heels and mini skirts, made up to the nines and drinking fruity little drinks, while eyeing up the talent (or lack thereof) on display. A few drinks later and we find ourselves grinding with some guy nicknamed Banana who does architecture and plays cricket on weekends. And you’re lucky if you get that much information.


A drink or two after that and you will be mashed up against Steve/Bob/Fred/your-best-friend-Helen, furiously making out as if your lives depended on it. (NB: this sort of face-rape is acceptable; non-consensual face-rape is NOT) For some people, the night ends here; for others, it goes further. Regardless of your personal taste for casual snogs/sex/fumbles-in-the-taxi-home etc, it has come to my attention (only now, after two years of uni) that romance didn’t die on its own – we killed it.

When we are little boys and girls, we are taught that when we grow up, we will find someone perfect, marry them when we turn 20 and then have a host of kiddiewinks and live happily ever after. How old are we when we realise that it’s really a load of bollocks? 10? 15? 20? Does romance even exist? It seems to me that we signed up for unicorns and ended up with horses – they get the job done but they can’t fly, they can’t heal wounds and they aren’t even remotely sparkly. We still got the horn but it’s not exactly what we were looking for either.


The beauty of fairy tales lies in the fact that they make children hopeful – imagine how disappointed they would be if they knew what we all get up to on a Wednesday night in Tiger Tiger. And there is nothing wrong with it, but in the harsh light of day, it makes me a tad jaded to think of all the strangers I have pulled – kisses which should be passionate end up as carnage of the mouth, chemistry is just a subject you did at GCSE and the stranger you are locking lips with probably has a hairy back. When did we start settling for hormones and stop thinking about love?


Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but it sure would be nice to get to know a boy before I get to know his tonsils. I would be a hypocrite and a liar to say it’s not fun, but I can’t help but wonder, when do we settle down? When do we stop grabbing strangers in bars and start having conversations that end in a polite, gentle lip-lock at your front door? How am I going to find the right man if my mouth is otherwise engaged with some nobody who just happened to be there? If you have the answers, I am willing to hear them. Seriously.


So thanks Mum and Dad, you promised me Prince Charming and all I got was thirty three (unanswered) booty calls and saliva on my chin.