Inside the mind of a woman, there is a perfectly sized space for a man to crawl into! This man is lithe, spritely, observant, effervescent, and possesses more than the occasional spurt of luminosity. This man, is mostly always, gay.

This aforementioned, eye candy and fashion hungry man plays a unique role in the life of his many a female counterpart. Not only does he listen, advise, encourage, laugh with a self deprecating appreciation of one who sympathises completely, he also does all the things a husband/boyfriend does not, within reason of course ladies!

Yes indeedy, the man loving man understands and empathises. And possibly best of all, knows how to tailor his graceful she-ra’s, from twinkling top to tap dancing toe. Now, of course, not all my compadries are as sumptuous as I, my little gemlets, and even then I’m still a few Gok’s short of perfect, but most members of the club I was born to be a member of will boost the confidence of the fair maiden temporarily locked up in the tower of despair by replacing a sullen frown with a glimmeringly hopeful smile.

Trust me. I know. If hair, make up, or attire is of the badly selected, out of date, redundant in last years skip, severely inappropriate kind, you can rely on your best male friend to let you know. I mean, let’s be fair, you love your hubbie, boyf, partner, whatever you wanna call him. But ask yourself, ‘Are you really with him for his sensitive fashion know how…??’  Yes, I thought as much. Remember girlz, the truth may indeed hurt initially, but once you have a breakdown, throw a tantrum, or eat a box of chocolates to make yourself feel better, once you really face it; the truth really does, set you free!

A splinter of a second after HE called I knew I had to do something drastic and quickly air brush myself into eye popping, jaw dropping gorgeousness.
It’s never good news when the ex comes knocking.
And now that SHE was……something had to be done.

A year since the man stepped into my premises no amount of coaxing, flattering, sweet-talking, back rubbing had smoothed him into talking about the mysterious ‘Former’. Sneakily I have often, I admit, searched through his wallet and papers in search of a stray love note or at least a toothy Polaroid which would give me a glimpse of what the lady looked like.

But all in vain.

Today a whole of 13 months, 2 weeks and 14 hours later however the curtain was finally to be raised. At last I was to rest my eyes on the Woman at dinner tonight. So effervescent was my excitement that I spent the entire afternoon speculating and getting drunk on an abandoned bottle of Vodka.

Speculation no.1
The woman was stunning.

She had to be.
Why else would he possibly keep me from the details?
Surely the guy was just being a sweetheart and saving me the heartburn.
Possibly because i knew her already.
Maybe she was a MODEL!
Maybe I had seen her already on a billboard or a magazine cover and salivated over her dress..or, worse, her perfect booty… in front of him!

He must have cracked into a nasty smug smirk at the very sight of my girlish envy!

God!

What would I do when she struts through that door looking like a groomed little peacock ready to perch on a catwalk?
I absolutely couldn’t be looking at her with puppy eyes between serving her appetizers and rummaging around the apartment for my autograph book!

That would leave him snugly satisfied with his prowess over women for the rest of the year!!!!!

Instead.
Instead I would turn the tables and make the gorgeous little thing go vra vra vroom at the very sight of me.

That’s what I would do, yes.

Tipsily I ran into the bath and turned on the shower.
With 2 hours in hand I still had enough time to transform myself into a strapping little Swan. I was a pro at conversions of the kind. Walk in the park. Piece a’cake.
One foot on the bathtub other on the shower floor I was squishily scraping away at my leg with a razor.

Quick.
Now the nail polish.
Toothbrush in mouth I tugged and pulled at my toe nails with clippers.

Maybe there was still time for a hurried visit to the beauty parlour for a nippy pedicure?
Maybe not.
Hurriedly, HURRIEDLY I jumped from one foot to the other trying to scrub my muggy looking feet into civility.
And that’s when it happened.

Well sometime around then anyway.

Speculation no.2

Daintily as i stepped out of the bath, carefully trying to get into character early and act as graceful as one can possibly look and feel in a hideous green bathrobe, I slipped on something….possibly some of the ultra luscious, super lubricating hair serum I accidentally dropped on the floor and landed, ungracefully, perhaps a tad pathetically, right on my head.

When I woke up I was in the hospital.

Looking concerned and with a buck-toothed, blinking girl, probably still in school, HE stood close by.
Through her mouthful of teeth the lady who had just cost me a twisted ankle, a couple of bruises, a nasty slash on my posterior and a visit to the hospital blinked and said

“I have heard so much about you.”

I grinned a toothy grin and wished I was in a state to bonk my head against the wall.

Hi everyone! Well, I’m sure you can’t have escaped the Big Brother mania that’s been sweeping the UK this week with the launch of Big Brother 9 last night. Seeing as how there’s so much to talk about I thought we’d make this week’s column especially focused on Big Brother so that we can get some early views of the show in and ponder over just what the BB Bosses have in store for the 16 unsuspecting housemates this year.

First up let’s talk about the house. It’s definitely bigger this year isn’t it? There’s elements of luxury like the gorgeous bedroom, but also a rather dull looking bedroom on the other side, I wonder how they will choose who goes in what bedroom?…. (more…)

Make no mistake, you can shove your relationship guru’s advice right down your kitchen sink, the one who makes the first after-fight call is the one who has Lost! (more…)

It was a simple case of ‘fabulous’ gone ‘frumpy’. The customary Friday night dinner had followed a movie. We cabbed it to our recent favourite joint and sat snuggled under a circular overhead lamp in a cubby, which eerily resembled an interrogation room. (more…)

Now that it is legal for lesbian and gay couples to marry in California TV Star and Host Ellen DeGeneres recently revealed live on her show that she and long term girlfriend Portia de Rossi will be getting married. Portia shot to fame on the hit TV show Ally McBeal and the two have been one of Hollywood’s most publicised lesbian couples during their relationship and are both apparently overjoyed at the fact they can now legally marry and commit to eachother fully.

Speaking of weddings, Ashlee Simpson and her Fall Out Boy boyfriend Pete Wentz have recently tied the knot at a private ceremony last Saturday at the Simpson family home in Encino, CA. This adds further fuel to the rumours that Ashlee is pregnant, although there’s still not been an announcement confirming this so I’m beginning to get a little confused as to who to believe! … (more…)

It was the 16th day of the month, a week and a half after the prescribed date….and yet…the blood had not come. Now, much as I’d like to believe otherwise such an anomaly tended to be caused by life situations I was not, by any standards, ready to handle. In other words, if I was pregnant and thus skipping out the old period routine I was in serious shit.

Till the 7th I was letting the ‘if’ factor provide some much required solace. There was absolutely no chance of it happening, I was repeating like a clockwork parrot. And the fact that I was sitting here, on my knees, unbleeding was just one of those unexplained things in nature…. somewhat like the Bermuda triangle, which would, no doubt, soon be rationalized in some long thesis paper by some old fellow sitting in a lab.

So I could sip my Bloody Mary with relaxed ease and throw caution to the wind. I told myself.

But the modern woman’s conviction tends to be shaken easily. Thus, the storm clouds of panic began settling in on the 10th. Something (I heard myself mumbling, reluctantly) was grievously wrong here. One could not blame me of having skipped any essential step. Every measure had been taken with algorithmic precision. Every advice followed with merciless exactitude. And yet……

Hamlet like I spent the whole morning expertly gnawing at my nails. ‘To do’ or ‘not to do’, that was the question, I had the preg test right in my hand. But I hadn’t the courage to carry out the judgment here in the apartment. If I fainted, or worse still burst a blood cell or had a heart attack I would probably stay stuck here till the neighbours dogs smelt me out.
Nothing doing, if I were to know I would know amongst other people, amidst the populace.
Swiftly I got my purse and hastened to the clinic.
No, I certainly couldn’t wait for an appointment till tomorrow I would sit here on one of these unwelcome looking chairs till eternity instead, I told the pink-clad nurse. She seemed amused (!!!!) and sent a creature of a clerk to note down my details.

“Praig-naint?” the creature asked joyously as if it were a source of personal triumph for him.
“No…” I said with a touch of vinegar.
“Then?”
“Just …checking”
“Oh!…………..” he burst into a flame of laughter. The man was certainly devoid of a trace of common politeness. “No father I am sure?” he added, once the cackle fizzled out.

Now, I did have a number of choice ideas which I would have easily suggested to the man as an answer to this inane question. If they didn’t suffice, I would have even willfully succumbed to my rather primitive instinct and stuffed his posterior with his punched in face. But I resisted the temptation and managed a hoarse “No” as an after thought.

“No matter” he said, still exuberant, “Lot of girls with babies and no father….all okay”.

After having enlightened me with that piece of precious information he went on to write down my name and address, occasionally interrupting his job to stroke my back, either to console me or to check whether I had a bra on under my shirt, neither idea would seem odd to him.

The results were to be picked up 4 hours later.
But I couldn’t wait.
I stayed put on the blue plastic chair watching bonny babies bobbing up and down at their mother’s bosom. The whole place was grotesquely covered with baby wallpapers. Babies in diapers, in nothing, on toy carts, with pouty mouths stared sachharinely out of glossy pics.
This was going to be one looooooooong wait.
Coffee and cigarettes flowed like a running nose.
A baby.
A baby?
A BABY ? *&^%$
My head was throbbing with the pounding of my heart.
Pacing around on the balcony I was trying to propose the idea of motherhood to myself as cozily as I could.
Motherhood = Pastel shades
I was mumbling like a clown.
Motherhood = empire line dresses
Motherhood = ice cream at 4 in the morning
Utter buffoonery!!

When the test results came I was busily telling myself that labor doesn’t hurt anymore, what with the water bath and all………..
The caffeine had made me so sick I could hardly read the results.
It was a negative.
With a sigh of relief strong enough to have shaken the Great Wall of China…. I stamped out of the dreary place.
Empty-bellied, I was a free woman again.
Sipping my customary glass of Bloody Mary at night, I went to sleep, a satisfied, unmothered, unbleeding girl.

Peace is often just a blood drop away.

So, now that IT was officially over economic profits had to be made out of it, I decided.
All those dinner dates, ferry rides, long telephone calls and cigarettes I had been affectedly financing over the past few months finally needed to be replenished. It was a fair deal. The skull beneath the skin is always economic, and someone always has to pay.

Accordingly then I began on the plan the week after he made the announcement over the phone. It was essential that the possessions be distributed astutely. There were pertinent questions to be asked. (more…)