Yup, finger on the pulse. That's
me.
But this nugget of information
struck me as something quintessentially true for all the parties I went to, in
company or alone - the only difference being, that in my case the handsome boys
were conspicuous only by their absence. Shameless behaviour, I say.
I am sure, Alex Turner for all his
wit (and bonus material I am equally sure) should have no trouble in the
flirt-department. (I mean, he used to bed Alexa Chung for crying out loud.)
Alas, it seems Master Turner can only get his flirt on with a pretty girl. Sissy! We are not even talking
smart, intelligent, funny. No we are concentrating purely on looks alone. Ah,
the unfairness of it all!
Ha, I say. Come to my end of town
and I show you what I have to put up with.
The nasty boys, the stupid boys,
the infantiles, the boys who’ll be boys, the chatty boys, the idiots, the
wankers, the ones that can’t dance, the ones that won’t dance, the outright
rude ones, the stalkers, talkers, the drinkers, the drunks, the bad kissers,
the pests, the machos, the show-offs, the uglies, the fuglies, the loonies, the
Roonies, … By Cooper, she’s starting to rhyme…
Anyway, you get the point. It’s
like we’re continually out of “handsome”.
Oh, and you can forget about “smart”, “intelligent”, and “funny”, too.
It kind of makes you want to say, get
a life, Alex! You’re a singer in a band, the songs you write are pretty good,
too. They’re the kind that are either quietly to the point or so poetic that
despite their obscurity the tug at one’s heartstrings is unmistakably felt and
not easily forgotten. You’ve got that rock ‘n roll je ne sais quoi. So what
exactly have you got to complain about, huh?
Oh right, no pretty girls at the
party.
Well let me tell you something. Here
in the world of The-Sad-End-of-Thirty, there’s no fucking pretty and there is no one flirting
anymore either, alright.
At least, most of the time it seems
that way. And you can “still feel younger than you thought you would by now” but what
good is that in the face of time’s cruel jokes on women’s bodies. And no, my
maturity did not get me over the fact that the older a woman gets the less she
is seen, as in noticed and appreciated.
There’s none of that, mate.
There is, however, a time of day
that’s called the Wallowing Hour. You know why? Because without it we would
simply jump off a flippin’ bridge or something.
It’s in this short hour that all
the frustration comes out, all pettiness, all the heartaches, the worries, the
paranoia, all the insecurities and pain.
And then one gets on with it again
as if nothing was ever wrong. That is after all what one does these days. Despite
the fact there are no decent men in town, despite the fact that one is turning
into one’s mother, and despite the fact that one feels damned inadequate and a
bloody failure.
(Oh, haven’t you heard?! Yeah,
teenage angst never really goes away.)
Really, get to my fuckin’ age and
tell me again about “pretty”. But the sad fact is you’d probably still believe
the world owes you pretty girls. And even sadder: you’d get them, too.
