A British tradition we really don't need.

For all of my whining about the Capital, I am eternally grateful to be Australian. My patriotism peaks yearly on Australia Day, especially when I think about how lucky I am to live in a country where we enjoy a government-funded nation-building music event (the Triple J Hottest 100). For all of our culturally ingrained suspicion of government, I am proud of our peaceful, balanced and secular political system. By international standards, we live in rather hospitable climactic conditions. We enjoy a high standard of living. Our distribution of wealth is fairly even.

So much to love. And yet, it’s in matters of ‘love’ that Australians seem to suck dirt the most. I travelled in South America recently and really enjoyed noticing the radical difference between their dating ‘game’ and the lack of it we inherited from the British.

I find here in Australia, that nobody actually asks each other out, or admits to being interested. To do so is seen as a huge risk to one’s self-esteem and we avoid it with vagaries and awkward disorganised interactions. Basicly, people:
1) meet at work or through friends,
2) circle each other awkwardly, agonising over whether feelings are mutual,
3) get drunk and snog,
4) get drunk and snog a few more times until a consistent pattern of interaction is formed and you can start tentatively calling it a relationship,
5) one person drops the ‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’ title and….bam, you meet the parents.

The big difference between the Australian approach and the South American approach is that Australians take rejection very seriously, ruminate excessively on the possibility and miss so many opportunities avoiding it. Whereas South Americans don’t seem to mind. It’s just part of the game, a fact of life and not to be taken personally.

Australians automatically presume rejection is about them, an injury to their self-esteem. Fair enough. However, people can decline your company for all kinds of reasons – they’re busy, they’re pursuing someone else, they just want to remain single…anything. It doesn’t have to be about their assessment of the ask-er. South Americans, it seems, don’t sustain such a strong connection between self-worth and your acceptance/rejection. And they ask you out directly, no overtures or games. They seem to have faith that what’s meant for them won’t pass them by. I found their directness so refreshing, and their gutsiness endearing. How could I say no?

But when I did say no, I learned that one has to be equally direct. Because I also come from the Australian tradition, I always feel like I have to let ask-ers down gently and avoid injuring people’s self-esteem. It’s customary to make an ‘it’s me, not you’ or ‘too busy’ explanation in our fair country. But blathering excuses while smiling kindly seems to simply confuse South Americans and they press on, until you’re forced into an undecorated ‘Si’ or ‘No’. I endured some truly awkward exchanges before I figured this out. It pained me to be so forthright. But afterwards, the conversation continues uninterrupted. No awkward exits or offense taken. And then they just ask again later. Or ask your friend.

As I’ve mentioned before, Canberra is not equipped with the population for dating experiments. But a male friend in the city pledged to experiment with the South American approach back in Australia and commit to just asking girls out directly. Without investing any sense of self-worth in their response. Without face-saving ‘just as friends’ facades or general aloofness. Without diluting romantic candidness by relying on group social events for contact with someone you wish you had the guts to ask out. From his interim results, it seems I’m not the only woman who approves!

Come on Australia – let’s be good sports, ditch this boring cultural inheritance from the British, embrace the traditions of our Southern Hemisphere amigos and get some game-face on.

Whose idea was this???

I am angry today! And what made me angry? Visiting the National Archives of Australia. I’m deadly serious.

I have often said that if I had one bullet, I’d go back in time and deploy it against that fellow with the brilliant idea to move the Capital of Australia from Melbourne to Canberra. Today, I found out just who I’ll go after when time-travel technology finally matures.

Because the explanation usually offered for the choice of the Capital’s location is that it ‘was agreed by the fathers of Federalism’, my one bullet would not have been too effective in changing the course of history. But after my visit to the Archives I now know that the hero responsible for the final push to establish Federal Government in Canberra was Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce – a name that now makes me shudder with rage.

At the time that this little detail was revealed I was in a calm and attentive state, casually enjoying a guided tour of the Stanley Melbourne Bruce exhibition. I was thinking ‘wasn’t this chap terribly accomplished and forward-looking’, when that special little factoid was revealed. Followed then by an enthusiastic explanation of the wall of photos commemorating this ‘achievement’.

My mood changed like the wind. Rage boiled within me. My face involuntarily twitched and contorted as murderous ideas roared across my mind. As my temperature rose, I sensed the discomfort of the guide, who must have thought I was having an aneurism. That bastard Prime Minister! What the f**k were you thinking?! From there on I couldn’t appreciate a damned thing this man had achieved!

So I’ve spent the last few hours googling research and development in time-travel, and how to acquire a single bullet. Although I must admit feeling slightly softened, after remembering that the establishment of our greatest hope for developing such technology, the CSIRO, can also be credited to Mr Bruce.

I’ve adapted this little quote from Goethe to capture the lesson I learned today: ‘He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living less pissed off.’

My brand new social handicap

I’m currently avoiding alcohol for health reasons and was surprised at how much angst bubbled up when I thought about initiating the drought. It wasn’t any regular reliance on alcohol that made me twitch. I am not a daily drinker, or even a prolific social drinker. It was my concern about this being a social handicap!

You might gather that I’m no party animal. However most of my friends here in Canberra drink-as-a-hobby. I don’t hold it against them. After all, something has to provide relief from the grinding ache of living in the dry, barren dead heart of the Australia. (My other social handicap is compulsively complaining about Canberra – I had hoped downloading my irritation here might help with this depressing habit…but nope.)

But I do find that lifestyle drinkers tend to look scornfully upon non-drinkers. I was feared responses like: ‘You’ve changed man. You used to be fun.’ And I wasn’t too far off the mark. While responses weren’t quite so forward, I certainly didn’t receive any encouragement for biting the bullet, even in the name of my health:

Friend: ‘What do you mean you can’t just have one?’
Quirky: ‘You’re pointing at one full bucket of well-spiked punch there.’

Friend: ‘Stuff driving, you can crash here for the night?’
Quirky: ‘Crash through the front of your house?’

Friend: ‘Just give yourself a break for one night!’
Quirky: ‘I am giving myself a break! My poor overwrought body needs this break!’

Friend: ‘Health reasons? Pfff. You only live once.’
Quirky: ‘So how about making it last a while?’

I was miffed. These guys are my friends! Why don’t they want to see me doing something to make my life better? Even when they realised I was now wearing a sign reading ‘Your Personal Taxi’ on my forehead.
I still lasted the night. I happily talked rubbish and smashed all of them for Singstar stamina. What was their problem?

My guess is that drinking creates a circle of trust for its participants. When you drink, you’re making yourself vulnerable to embarrassment and want everyone else to be equally vulnerable. And you want them all to be equally vulnerable to memory loss. And if not, you want to make sure that you might remember them doing something as outrageous as you did. If not worse. The risk of being drunk (vulnerable) in the presence of just one sobre person seems to alarm people.

Having already accepted that not drinking requires an explanation, I’ve summarised the effectiveness of various explanatory approaches here:

1.Health reasons: 7/10 – excuse typically flies with women but not with men. Elicits encouragement to ‘live dangerously’.

2.I’m driving – and bonus, I can drive you too!: Surprisingly 2/10. For all the public awareness campaigns, this is no acceptable excuse. ‘It’s Canberra – you won’t get done!’; ‘Get a cab!’, ‘Crash at my place, or just get really f*d up and you can stay in the lock-up for free!’

3.I have plans for the morning: 1/10. Interpreted as ‘whatever you have to shop for in the morning is more important than your mates, so stuff you.’

Basically, there is no acceptable excuse. But here’s what I might try next time.

Quirky: ‘Friend. Don’t fear me. My heart is filled with empathy for your drunken state. I too was once like you. I won’t think you are stupid, or immature. I won’t take advantage of you, nor remind you of your over-disclosures or failed pick-up attempts. I will still like you when I look upon you with my naked eye, beer-goggles surrendered. And even after I find myself mopping your brow as you spew, instead of laughing raucously outside your toilet door to the funny choking noises you make, I will still love you tomorrow.’

Not drinking is plainly a social handicap here in the Capital. Check back soon for further posts about me being excluded from events and enduring a shrinking social circle!

I hate Summernats!

It’s Summernats weekend in Canberra. The annual spectacular of burnouts, boobs and vile boguns.

I am unfortunate enough to live near the centre of Summernats action. My local shopping precinct crawls with groups of repulsive leering twats, whose viscous gaze hovers heavily over any female in the healthy weight range with audacity that only occurs because it’s Summernats – a celebration of thuggish bogun male heterosexuality. I felt like I needed to wear a burqa just to go to the library today.

Every street in Canberra is a dragway for the weekend. Participants and voyeurs prowl the city with blasting stereos and growling mufflers, yelling at women out of their windows. During this ‘family event’ held in an almost exclusively middle-class city, the adult stores and brothels have their biggest trading week of the year. Police brace themselves for widespread drunken violence and a rise in sexual assault and harassment claims. If I had a daughter, I’d lock her up. Hell, I lock myself up rather than endure days of being permanently nauseated by this rubbish.

So I’ve bunkered down for the weekend with the most contrary influences I could locate – romantic French films and modern philosophy books. I’m eating vegetarian food at home and abstaining from alcohol. Hopefully, by cushioning myself with all things feminine, intellectual, wank-ish and arts-ish I can feel insulated from the sound of burnouts and crowds of cheering just-out-of-jail morons in my street!

The non-partnering trajectory experiment

Quirkyalone. Ever heard of it? Dumb-sounding word but a very interesting idea.

Quirkyalones are people who enjoy being single, but are not opposed to being in a relationship. They prefer being single to forming relationships for the sake of it, or being in relationships which involve sacrificing an essential part of yourself. Quirkyalones are against compulsory dating, ‘settling’ or making an all-consuming hobby of finding someone. They tend to prioritise friendships, over romantic relationships and value their solitude. Quirkyalone-ness is illustrated by the book of the same title. It is a light commentary, humorously delivered and not self-help or instructional.

I identified quite firmly with the portrait of the Quirkyalone. I’d not given much thought before to the automatic coupling-trajectory so many of us assume in our twenties. Choosing to be single, and being single without looking, didn’t really occur to me. You were either coupled (to whatever degree), or you were looking to be. And then when you were, the next step was cohabitation.

Discovering Quirkyalone prompted me to think about this assumed trajectory and what my ideal alternative might be. This is what I dreamed up:
1. Presuming that single-ness is my usual resting state, partnering is not a goal nor a preferred lifestyle.
2. Partnerships are presumed to be impermanent and occupy a distinct ‘chunk’ of your life. They should not significantly erode or contaminate other parts of your life.
3. Friendships are the real long-term staple of your social interaction diet, rather than partners. They are presumed to be typically more enduring. I equally expect a partner to prioritise their friendships.
4. ‘Dating for sport’ – Dating without the intention of forming a relationship. If one happens, that’s ok. But dating is firstly just a vehicle for meeting people and being exposed to stuff you might not have otherwise encountered. You’d just need to be honest about that at first instance. Oh, and because we all need to have sex from time to time.
5. Non-cohabitation – I think nothing kills the fun faster than living together. It seems to get un-special really quickly when you don’t have to make an effort to see one another. When you have to wake up next to someone, rather than choosing to. When money, housekeeping and apportioning your time corrupt what was once just about how much you liked each others’ company.

These preferences rest also on the assumption that I won’t be having children. Plainly, people who would like to have kids will easily see the point of the ‘assumed trajectory’ I described earlier.

It’s an experiment in progress. Sadly, I can’t really say I’ve fully tested these ideas. As described in my earlier post, there are no single people in Canberra, except me, so the fourth point is largely redundant! I’ve yet to test non-cohabitation too.

Imagine also the chances of meeting potential ‘non-partners’ who agree to join you on this alternative trajectory, voluntarily being in a relationship that ‘goes nowhere’ by conventional standards. I’m making things extra tough for myself here, aren’t I?

Your thoughts?