Tag Archives: London

Glamorous Homelessness

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I’ve disappeared.

Some people have been asking me where in the world I currently am. I also have a hard time following my own peregrinations. Things didn’t quite turn out the way I planned.

So. What happened?

I last posted in November from Buenos Aires, at the beginning of my Latin America adventures.

Then.

In a nutshell: I went to Brazil. I proposed someone to marry me. She said yes. Actually, she said “Of course!” And everything collapsed in front of my eyes in the course of 7 days. I left Brazil at the beginning of 2017 to explore Patagonia alone. I had big highs and big lows. I hit the bottom of sadness as I hit the bottom of the world, in Ushuaia. Because I couldn’t go any more down geographically and emotionally, I knifed my way to the surface again.

From the Land of Fire, I jumped on a plane to Buenos Aires. There was a heat wave in the metropolis. One day, as I was walking to the Recoleta cemetery to visit Evita’s grave, I was hit by the certitude that my trip was over. I had seen what I wanted to see and lived what I had to live.

I prepared my emergency exit, spending hours figuring out how to get my ass to Europe ASAP. Anywhere in Europe. The cheapest destination occurred to be Paris, my birth place. The day after, I was flying back “home” on a two day journey via Atlanta and New York. Trump was omnipresent in the background of my US stops. I realised it wasn’t a joke anymore.

I landed in Paris-Orly on a Tuesday morning at the end of January. It was my first time landing in my home country since 2009. First time I was lining up in the “Citizens” passport check in 8 years. There was a cold wave. I had no clothes with me, just a little backpack, cause I have left all my stuff in Brazil. My belongings are scattered across 3 countries.

I contacted a very few friends to open me their door because I don’t have a home right now anywhere in the world.

My friend C welcomed me with croissants for my back home breakfast and gave me tights, socks and an adaptor to charge my phone. That was 23 days ago.

Since then, everyone has been donating me clothes. Beautiful ones. So I feel like a super glamor homeless.

I’ve been hanging out in people’s homes while they’re working. I’m offering myself the luxury to process my emotions as a full time job. I’m not trying to distract myself. I barely go see things or do anything. I’m spending most of my time seating alone to preserve the exact nature of my intense emotions. The last few months have been the most extraordinary, challenging and earth-shattering of my life.

I’m writing this in London, at the Circus Cafe in Crouch End. London is one of my energetic centres. There’s 6 years of my life here. I sleep in a whole lot of different beds and sofas. I love it. I am surrounded by an army of good souls who open me their door and provide me with everything I need, may it be a bed for the night, breakfast, words of comfort or Dragon Red Chanel nail polish. In exchange, I tell life stories, listen to life stories, and do the washing up.

I’m also hanging out in London to consult a transgender woman therapist. She’s bad ass. I pay £97 per hour and she holds the sessions in socks. I take off my shoes too and we become super casual. She told me that she revealed herself in Berlin in the 80s, “like David Bowie”. Everyday after work, she would take off her male suit and hang out at the Kit Kat Klub where she grew to be the woman she was born to be. I adore her already. She says that I become animated when I talk about my writing. She told me: “You’re going to write that book and I want a copy.” So I must do it.

I’m going to experiment glamorous homelessness in Berlin next. I’m going on Tuesday. I have no plans. I want to spend my days in free art galleries and write my book in cafés. And maybe reconnect with my queer dancer late at night in interlope clubs?

This is my life as of now. I love it. I love my life. I’ve never felt that much centred and that much awake in the present moment. I know I’m on the right track, as in MY track.

I’ll return to a more structured life sooner or later. I was proposed a flat-share in Paris. I said YES! So, by the spring, all my scattered belongings will converge to the 13th arrondissement. I’ll store my suitcases under my bed and I’ll have an address and a job again.

I’m truly excited about that perspective.

Till then. Anything can happen. I’m wide open. Life is fab.

I Go Out On Friday Night And I Come Home On Sunday Morning

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Picture by Eliza Goroya

There’s been this charming queer weekend recently where I wandered around the city and ended up in random situations with loveable creatures. My lifestyle in a nutshell.

I left my house on Friday night with my toothbrush and fresh knickers in my handbag, because I knew it would be one of those anything-can-happen weekends. As I was getting ready, I felt that delicious rush of passion in my veins. Drowning in the urban unknown with its infinite possibilities of encounters and situations. I live for this.

I normally get lost in the metropolis when I travel. Away from home, adrenaline and novelty make me go through days and nights without sleeping. It is always more difficult to do so in the city where we live, because we get caught in repetitiveness and fatigue. Too often, I forget to look up and around in London. It is such an incredible human landscape, though.

On Friday night, I met up with friends and we talked and giggled till late. I had sex till the dawn of Saturday was breaking. I was simultaneously super intense about the present moment and outside my body, miles away from what I was doing. It was an unusual sensation. I am not sure why?

The day after, I was invited to a leaving party in a flat attached to the Barbican (a famous London multi-arts centre). I didn’t go back home to wash away my smell of sex. I went straight to the art centre and hanged out there, aimless, to kill time. I stayed in the bathrooms for a while. They make me happy because each door has a different colour. I just wanted to pee a million times to try out every shade of paint.

In the main hall people were resting, working or having coffee on the big fat sofas. I lay down to watch them and nap intermittently. It reminded me of my youth, of my first life in London back in 2004, when I moved here and found it so tough that I gave up after six months. I was struggling with money so bad that on my days off, I was going to the Tate Modern gallery which has free entrance and I was napping on the sofas to feel surrounded with the murmur of the crowd. It was soothing me. It had been a long time since I hadn’t napped in a public place (except for airports). My bohemian side is getting pale. A man sharing my sofa suddenly starting puking his guts out. He wouldn’t stop. I went to get him a glass of water and left to my party.

I was the first guest to arrive. The flat was stunning, seventh floor with an amazing view of London from the bay window. I told the host that I wouldn’t stay long because I was behind in sleep. I didn’t know anyone apart from her.

And then, the hours passed by and I got dragged into joyful extravaganza with the queers/butches/fems/creatures/etc. We put some wigs on, I got the long blue one. I took off my top to cover my breasts with the long fake hair, like a queer Venus being born. A very pretty creature whom I was referring to as ‘he’ but I was told to use ‘they’ borrowed my Chanel lipstick and my leopard print fur coat. They looked better in them than I did, but I was excited rather than jealous.

We had the key to the garden of the Barbican Centre so we went in the middle of the night with wine and blankets. We must have been a beautiful procession of extravagant people in crazy outfits, about twelve of us. We sat down under the stars, near the water. I was familiar with that place by day, as it is a public spot where I come once in a while, but it felt extraordinary to have it privatised at night with a handful of attractive total strangers. I suddenly felt very much in the moment. Someone launched the idea of passing the bottle of wine around in a circle whilst telling stories about our respective life. Most people didn’t know each other, so it was an interesting exercise. One of us had just been randomly picked up from the street and dragged to the party just like that. I hate speaking in groups, but I made an effort. We went around the circle several times, and we went deeper at each round.

We all exposed our relationship to London, and it broadened my perspective on why I landed here and why I am staying after all, despite my love-hate relationship with it. Like often here, almost none of us were British. We were Greek, Canadian, German, French, South African, American. London in all its splendor. It is unique in the world to have that level of peaceful diversified cohabitation. We all moved here because we were suffocating in our countries or we wanted to live harder, faster, deeper. To embrace our different selves more. Everyone had incredible and different life paths to London. It seemed like all the awesome people’s roads lead to London. One person said that their visa was expiring soon and that they didn’t know yet whether it was going to be renewed or not. I was suddenly grateful for being part of that crew of human beings. The queer-landing-in-London-in-search-for-more crew.

We went back inside when our ass was about to turn into a block of ice. I finished the night in a big bed with three other lovely people. We took off our clothes just to hug and cuddle, to feel our super soft skin. Why not? Two of my bed partners woke up early on Sunday morning to go sing at a church choir. I wish I had had the guts to sing too, but I don’t like my own voice, whether it sings, screams or speaks.

I went back to the Barbican instead, to try new colours at those funky bathrooms. I went to see an exhibition by a Pakistani artist. The gallery was completely in the dark and there were fake blood stains on the floor. It really impressed me. I thought of the November Paris attacks. I think I had a different perception on art after two sleepless nights.

I finally came home on Sunday morning, tired, but bubblying and happy, reconciled with the city where I live. On the way back, I was singing the Nouvelle Vague cover of The Specials, ‘I go out on Friday night and I come home on Saturday morning‘, but I replaced Saturday with Sunday.

I took a shower.

Unravel

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I was born in July and all my life, my birthdays have been in different cities/countries, with different people. The context of my life anyway changes dramatically from one year to the other.

I love it.

This year, my birthday consisted in two sleepless nights. Saturday night was warehouse partying: home made semi-failed mojitos (I am terrible at crushing ice) & home made candy kebabs*. It took me an hour to put all the damn gummy bears on the skewers. My flatmate had a suspicious look at my fabulous creations and said: “Happy 5th birthday!” I liked the joke but felt misunderstood, just like my spiced berry kirs were. It turned all good in the end. We laughed a lot, debated about prostitution and feminism, I won the blind test, and we have candy kebabs for the rest of the month.

I spent the actual day of my birthday in bed to recover from the craziness and from life in general. The following night was what I call impromptu awesomeness.

My cult camera operator friend H was in town from Los Angeles to shoot a film in East Sussex. She was in London for one night only before catching her plane back to America, and out of all the days which Universe could have picked for this magical catch up to happen, it actually chose my birthday. Our friendship is sewn with threads of that Impromptu Awesomeness.

I met her at sunset in the East London hipster hotel where she was staying with the director of the movie she’s working on. He’s a super cool guy from Oklahoma who makes marriage sound fun and who promised to put me in contact with an astrologer/wisdom teacher/feminist writer/lesbian-gone-straight-gone-lesbian-again badass woman in her 60s. I am thirsty for some spiritual witchcraft guidance since my witch grandmother Paulette passed away.

I found myself face to face with H around midnight. I hadn’t seen her since we went down the aisle together as a bridesmaids duo for ε’s wedding last October. She was holding me back because I was walking down the aisle too fast and we were trying hard not to laugh.

We went to the photo booth of the hotel lobby because it is a tradition in our group of friends to immortalise every time that at least two of us are in the same city. We are so geographically scattered that every encounter counts as History.

We went to her room which had a huge sofa, mountains of cushions and diverse props and gadgets. We giggled at the hispter cheesiness of the decor. She had to wake up at 6 to go to the airport so we decided to talk through the night.

She sat on the floor and started packing her luggage. She asked me how I was. But in her own way, really meaning it and expecting a proper answer free from bullshit. She was packing her underwear at the same time. She was rolling them instead of folding them, and I first got intrigued, then hypnotised by the speed of her gestures. I was watching the rolling choreography of her hands as she was unravelling me. As if she sensed that she had to create a diversion for my focus in order to make me shed my resistance.

I am not a girl who verbalises much ; which certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t express myself. I just have the hardest time articulating things in a face to face dialogue, although I paradoxically write letters where I strip naked to the core. I have no scruples either exposing the most intimate details of my life into nebulous virtual networks. (It is actually not paradoxal but coherent).

I am shameless in writing but I need serious trigger into speaking. H led me softly into it. When I answered her first question, everything else followed. I understood at that moment that she really understands and cares for me. She just knows.

Our conversation got so deep and intensely in the moment that I felt in ‘Thelma & Louise’ for a second. I don’t know why. There is a scene where the girls are already on the run from the police, and Louise has a now or never type of conversation with her boyfriend in an anonymous motel room. They are seating face to face. She rethinks her whole life and their relationship because they have only a few hours ahead before dawn is breaking. She senses that she may not see him again. It is an irrelevant comparison at the extent that H & I are not planning to jump into the Grand Canyon, but as we also had a countdown against dawn, we had an emergency to spit out the real stuff about ourselves.

It’s interesting what two girls coming across as strong and dominant but claiming their right to be vulnerable talk about when they are meeting. When I met H, I almost instantly related to her experience of the outside world, of how we are white canvases where most people project their believes of who they think we are ; because we are blonde and smooth at the surface. But we are fucking ambitious and have our very personal vision of the world on the inside. And we are dying to express it.

We fell asleep in the end, for an hour and a half. I helped her carry her sophisticated camera operator gear downstairs and I hugged her in the London rain of July. I said one of the coolest lines ever: “See you in Los Angeles!” I am going for her birthday in the fall. We visit each other in our natural habitats for our big day. How does that rate on the scale of fabulousness?

I fucking love that girl.

The title of this post is an obvious tribute to Björk – Unravel (cover by my dear friends So & Lo)

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Dancer In The Dark

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In April, my faith took a break in the dark.

I spent most of my free time sleeping, not out of tiredness but out of general demotivation.

Then, I got the visit of a bunch of old friends who revived me to the core. My main husband λ came with his husband and we laughed and giggled. We went for a casual Sunday walk and ended up on an adventure in the middle of a magical forest and in the fields. The three of us together bought the most WTF dress ever, original vintage from the 50s & rainbow coloured. It was in the window of a gift shop with no price tag on it, because they probably never expected to sell it. It certainly did have a tag with my name though. I now deserve my own float at the Gay Pride, as the Godmother surannée of all the gay people in the world. I feel that the dress needs a second life after being stuck in the conventions of its original era – but after all what do I know? Maybe it was worn by the inventor of LSD.

I went with λ for a walk on a golf course in the WTF dress (there’s no better way to describe it) and I got stuck in brambles. He had to rescue me. He told me off because I wear my unbelievable clothes in the wrong context. He doesn’t know what it feels like to spin in a fluffy dress in the nature though.

α3, one of my iconic American friends, dropped me a kiss in London in between planes. We were 5 people for my queen size bed so I made a sleeping rota.

I’m writing this at Heathrow airport. My flight to Tel Aviv is delayed. Airports and transportations of all type are my favourite places to write. As soon as I feel the motion, ideas hit my head.

I woke up at 5am and headed to London City Airport. I saw the industrial buildings of the docks bathed in the light of the early morning. I remembered the couple of months when I lived there last summer. I’m more aligned with myself now.

At the airport, adrenaline for the adventure finally kicked in. I saw on a TV screen that it’s Eurovision tonight. Eurovision in Tel Aviv! I never forgot Dana International in her Gaultier dress with wings.

My first flight was delayed by 3 hours so British Airways gave me a food voucher and put me on a taxi to Heathrow with a bag of goodies and another guy heading to Israel as well. We had the best sightseeing tour of London ever, following the Thames river and admiring the legendary monuments. We got stuck in traffic by Big Ben at 10am sharp, so we could enjoy the sound of the bells. I hadn’t heard it since I moved back here in 2010.

I told the guy that I loved being a tourist in my city, to justify the silly pictures I was taking.

Now, that’s it, my flight is delayed again. I’m wearing my Virgin Mary earrings for protection as my colleague told me “Have a blast in Israel!” when I left work last night. It made me laugh. I’m not really scared.

My main worry now is that I’m going to miss the opening ceremony of the Eurovision.

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The Pina Bausch Series – Episode #1: Nelken

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This is the story of how Pina Bausch irrupted in my life, turned it upside down and inspired it for ever after.

It’s been 10 years of awesome relationship.

It all started in February 2005. I had been living in London for 3 months, working in an organic grocery that I hated.

I got involved a little with a customer who was an American university professor in his 50s (and a foot fetish but that’s a different story).

He knew my passion for dance as I had recently graduated in contemporary dance myself. One day, he came to the shop and told me that I had to go and see this famous German choreographer whose company was performing at the Sadler’s Wells theatre. I knew her name from my dance history course, but I had a fairly blurred knowledge of her work. The guy really convinced me. I don’t know why I took his advice although I otherwise didn’t have an immense respect for his opinion. This man only entered my life to point me the direction of the TanzTheater Wuppertal and vanished.

After work that day, I queued outside the theatre hours before the show, hoping for a last minute ticket as it was obviously sold out. I had £25 in my pocket. I couldn’t go beyond.

While I was waiting in line, a cab stopped in front on the main entrance and a very thin and pale lady dressed all in black got out. She had a little grin on her face. Someone said: “That’s Pina Bausch!” I saw her in the flesh twice in my life, and that was the first.

As time was passing by, I was renouncing to ever be able to make it to the show that day. Suddenly, someone touched my shoulder: “Are you by yourself?” Of course I was. “One ticket is available. It’s £25.” Bingo. I was holding the precious ticket like Charlie did when he got his toWilly Wonka’s chocolate factory. I still remember the name of the original owner in print on the magical door opener: “Cohen“. Bless you Mr or Mrs Cohen. Your no-show changed the course of my emotional life.

I was one of the last people to get in, and I was still breathless from rushing up the stairs when they turned off the light of the room. The stage was entirely covered  with a field of fresh carnations. Music from the 20s started playing. Women in long shimmering dresses appeared on stage carrying chairs. They put the chairs down and sat on them. Then, nothing. They were sitting still, looking at us with the old music crackling in the background. I got the goosebumps and a rush of tears, just like that. I felt so close to the dancers all of a sudden that I could smell their hairspray from the second circle. I got hit by proper genius just as if I got hit by love at the first sight. My life was taking a turn because someone was finally talking to me.

When the giant Lutz Förster performed The Man I Love by Gershwin in sign language (see video below), that was it, Pina had just put a ring on my finger. I never took it off.

It’s been my strongest theatre moment so far – and possibly one of my strongest life moment. I’m not exaggerating. I never want to see that show again because I want to carry my initial memory of it on my death bed.

After that night, I was ecstatic for a few days, life was suddenly wonderful. People around me didn’t quite get my excitement for what they thought was a dance show – solemn and pompous. I kept saying: “You don’t get it guys, you don’t get it, I can’t explain. You have to see.”

I vowed to see a Pina show every February of my life. I’m proud to say that I only missed 2007, 2010 and 2011.

But I compensated by going multiple times other years.

I saw Ahnen on the stage of the Sadler’s Wells last night. That’s the fifteenth piece I’ve seen in ten years. The dancers feel like some kind of family now, I know all their names, I see their evolution. I notice the newcomers. I’ve been in their trail for so long.

I wouldn’t miss for the world my yearly rendez-vous with the TanzTheater Wuppertal and the spirit of Pina.

Seduce & Destroy

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That’s one year ago that I flew to New York to escape a love story that screwed me up.

One year later, I’m writing this on the pebbly beach of Brighton, facing the silver sea. I’m on the run again from a sentimental mind fuck. How? Why? The damage is minimal though so I’m only taking a couple of days out of my regular life frame to recover.

It’s this girl, the Death Expert (see previous post). She got into my life 13 days ago, threw a couple of bombs and got out of it as brutally as she burst in. Oh dear extremes. I cherish you, you know that, but I wouldn’t be against a bit of balance too.

I saw her Monday through Sunday and everytime we had sex it was going spiritually deeper. She was opening me new mental spaces, I was surrendering the whole of my body and soul underneath her. I was giving into her to break all the remnants of my boundaries. It was an insane cerebral and physical journey, and I know it was mutual. It felt like there were no limits on earth within the time-space we created in my minuscule bedroom. I really was falling in love with her through the mental freedom that our sexual connection was inundating me with. I never experienced that before. Falling in love with someone through sexual chemistry. Our connection was paving the way to so much more. We could talk about so personal stuff, intimate stuff, real stuff, in ways that I wouldn’t have in another context or with another person.

Those 7 days were so fucking special.

Last time we had sex, between Saturday and Sunday, it was hyper emotional, and I never say that. I tend to keep away from emotion, because I don’t like being disturbed or needy or dependent. But we were kissing in ways that rocked my world, I felt there was so much more to it. I was entirely present to myself, my head was turned off. Oh my God. I’ll remember that.

After that night, I didn’t see her for 3 days. Late on Wednesday, she finally invited me over for tea. I thought she was inviting me for “tea”, cause I know how our cuppas were always ending. 50 Shades of Earl Grey.

I knocked her door right before midnight. It was the first time I was seeing where she lives. She looked different when she opened. She had been snorting coke for I don’t know how long. It wasn’t the girl I had met the week before and started seriously falling for. All night, I was the helpless spectator of her coke addiction. She snorted line after line in front of me for 3 hours. Every time she had a line, I had another lemon and ginger tea. It didn’t even seem to be that fun up there in the artificial paradise.

I left at 2.30am when the gram was gone. She gave me a strange look in the door frame. I knew she knew that she had lost the plot with me. And I felt for the first time that evening that she really really liked me as much as I liked her.

The following day, she texted me incoherent and aggressive blame around mid-day. In a nutshell: “My flatmates and I thought you were a bad-mannered straight slut last night.” Yeah, it took me a while to understand that she was accusing me to have hit all evening on her male flat mate wearing a robe. Needless to say I didn’t get into the debate. “OK. Thank you for the fun. Bye now!”

The most raging was to see my sexual orientation being challenged by the lesbian stoner who fucked me all week. If someone on earth knows what I like in bed, that’s her. Beyond the injustice of the situation, it hurt me that she used my femininity and sensuality to make me doubt about myself, like the average macho dumb guy would do at the local pub. You’re pretty? You’re a minx. You’re feminine? You can’t really be gay.

That was so fucking violent.

Ironically, I had this conversation with her on the day we met, in her car. I explained her with humility that my main struggle in life was resisting what people project on me, cause I get perceived the wrong way all the time. I seem to mirror their shit to a lot of people who don’t particularly like it and choose to attack me as their best defence. I know that song so well that these lost wankers just scratch the surface of my skin now. I know it’s kinda empowering to put me down, because I’m wild and healthy and my life is fabulous without any substance up my nose or down my veins. I’m not patronising about drugs, I don’t give a shit if people enjoy mistreating their body. Just don’t blame me about it.

In situations of crisis, I have my personal life saviors in the person of my gay husbands. λ, my Paris hubby, sponged the first wave of shock. I always cry in his bosom first. He was following the action live, like he’s been doing with my life drama since 2007. We always end up laughing about it, especially when it is not funny. Then, I organised my escape to Brighton to see Í, my Brit hubby. I knew his beautiful soul would recharge me and cleanse me from that unnecessary noise and dirt. God bless the awesome gay men who console my heart and play with my hair.

Í‘s flat is full of odd antique toys. We decided to bake a beetroot and chocolate cake cause he never baked a cake his whole life, but bought a cake tin 6 months ago. We went to do groceries like a funny little couple. We did pastry, watched the movie Magnolia in each other’s arms (which gave me the title to this blog post). We took a burning bath. He’s the only man that I love to see naked. He took the measuring glass and inundated me with hot water, saying: “Love and intimacy”. He knew I was aching. He’s searching his happiness too. We scrubbed each other’s body very gently, with all the care we have for each other.

Then, we took our slutiness out. We dressed sexy with Britney Spears tracks in the background to get ready for dancing all night at the Bulldog. He has incredible pieces of vintage designer clothes that he wears or doesn’t. He gave me the most fabulous circus jacket ever. I’m hawt in it. Man. I don’t know, I’m a cool girl. I don’t think I was ever bad to anyone. Why would people treat me like this?

With every new slap in my face, I feel a massive mutation to my real self coming closer.

My Life is a Teenage Movie

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The last week concentrated the intensity of at least two regular months of my life – although there is no such thing as a regular month in my life. As intensity and I are old road buddies, I apparently always say “It’s been the most intense week ever!!!” My friends sweetly make fun of me when I come up with that statement.

But this time, it is true.

It all began on Monday evening. I was at home writing a letter to H, sketching the portrait of a character that I want to develop for our next script. “I don’t have her name yet, but it should be a morbid and poisonous, maybe latin sounding name. She’s a thanatologist, a death expert. She studied the sciences of death.” 

At about 10pm, I put my pen down, and without knowing why, I downloaded a stupid dating app on my phone. A girl contacted me right away. I remembered liking her on another app a few days before so we started chatting. We shortly found out that we were neighbours. She lives in the block of warehouses right next to mine, but as our buildings have separate entrances we had never met each other.

She asked me what I was doing right now. It was about midnight. I traded my pyjamas for jeans and she picked me up with her car in the middle of the night. She had brought take away tea. “How many sugars?”, had she asked on the chat right before I left the house.

We drove to the woods.

She put a CD with hits of the 90s, we smoked mint cigarettes. “Who said romance is dead?”, she said with a laugh. I was feeling like a teenager. It was awesome, because I never felt like a teenager when I was a teenager. I’m discovering the butterflies of adolescence in my 30s.

Then, fate hit me. She said she was a funeral director and had studied anatomy and mortuary sciences. Her name could have matched the one I was seeking for the character of my movie. I had manifested her.

On the side of living in the same spot of earth now, we had lived or hanged out in the same spots of earth before. New York, Brighton, and she wanted to travel to Iceland. She had something to do with most of the destinations I write about on this blog.

After a couple of hours unravelling our respective life story and being amused by all the coincidences, I spitted my gum so she could kiss me. I eventually got my belt undone. Yes. We did have car sex in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods.

All of a sudden, we saw car lights coming in our direction. They got closer to us. Really close. It was a police car. We covered ourselves as fast we could, both panicking and giggling. Thank God the windows were all steamed up. “I am providing a training at 10am tomorrow, I can’t afford to be arrested!” I said, putting back my sweater inside out. The car went past us and they lit the blue police light when reaching our level. They surely guessed what was going on inside, but chose to leave us alone.

We got back home at 4am. I slept 3 hours and went to work with a dumb smile on my face.

Since then. I saw her the day after, and the day after, and the morning after since she slept over that night, and the day after again. She crosses the yard in the middle of the night and pays me visits at indecent hours. Whatever part of her boyish tattooed body I touch, I ask her the scientific name for it. She told me: “If I opened up a body for you, I could teach you the name of every single muscle.” It killed me.

She always comes to mine since her bedroom has no walls.

My bedroom does have walls which are witnessing our sleepless deep human connection.

Everything’s Breaking

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In the last years, my mental health was relying on an unfailing trinity of certitudes: my warrior identity, my queer identity, and the security of the corporate world. Over the course of a few weeks – between December 18th and January 12th to be precise – everything has been breaking.

I’m standing at a strange turn of my life. I’m feeling my old self stripping off my soul and I have trouble distinguishing what my new colours will be like. It is scary. I have no security of any kind beyond the integrity of my body and the money I get every 25th of the month. Both can stop any minute. Security doesn’t exist.

This morning I got in my office – the fantasized temple of my safety – and my manager since 2 weeks came to me and said that my desk was no longer my desk because a new starter was going to seat at my place. I’ve worked in this company for almost 3 years, and my contract stipulates that I’m a remote worker. I can therefore work from anywhere I want on this side of the planet. When I’m in the office – more often than not these days cause no one is waiting for me outside working hours – I’ve never really had an allocated spot. Even in the corporate, I am the gypsy of the gang, which I find hilarious. About 6 weeks ago, I finally got a place of my own and I started storing shit in my drawers, such as hand cream, tea bags and tooth brushes. It felt like I had an extension of my home in the centre of the city. This was temporary joy, since I got evicted this morning. I stored the shit in a plastic bag to clear the space for the new hire. I have to say that I felt a thrill along my spine emptying those premises, as if it was a rehearsal for when I leave for good.

Parallel to the work drama – I mean, there has been proper drama, personal attack and legitimate defence ; the drawer disappointment is anecdotic – my end of year boy fling continues playing with my head & body. I don’t recognise myself and most of me doesn’t like it (the remnant of me is overexcited).

Now. Another layer added to all that fun. Last week, someone told me something about myself and I don’t know whether it is fiction or reality. I’m not trying to be mysterious. I just don’t want to ramble about something that may or may not be. I have to hunt for the truth before divulging anything. Whatever the outcome, it fucked me up for the time being. I am writing this typically to get it out of my system. I’m looking back at the 3 decades of my life and I wonder if I was someone I didn’t suspect all that time. My first reaction at the news was to deny it. My second reaction was an urge for Krav Maga. Since then, I’ve been contemplating this possibility, and for all I know, it would explain why I see myself like a vampire and why I am intrinsically violent. I’ve been spaced out, my body intermittently freezes, I lose sense of space and emotion. I’ve been forcing myself to eat well and hug trees to balance things out. I’m looking forward to the future.

I hanged out at Starbucks for a long time after work today, I don’t know how long. I sat in the window to observe the ballet of people on the street. The darker it was getting outside, the more I was seeing my own reflection. I love the new lines at the corner of my eyes, because I carry evidence on my face that I start having a clue about life. Of course, I am scared of them too. How long before my marginality is no longer “sexy” or “fascinating”? How many years before I become at best invisible, and at worst, pathetic?

I didn’t let my mind go down that road of thought, though. Whatever happens, I’ll be inhabited with my vibrant joie de vivre which is stronger than anything. My nature grows back like weed over every shock and every punch.

When I finish this new mutation, everything will be even more awesome.

I left Starbucks and I went to buy a sweater on sale with Snoopy on it, and 2 jeans for £5 instead of £55.

At least my usual good star of fashion is shining. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Corporate Days, Movie Nights

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December has always been a month which levels up in intensity. I don’t know why. My heartbeat accelerates. All my desires manifest at the surface of my skin and fantasies come true. That makes me sleepless, like when you’ve just fallen in love and adrenaline rushes in your veins. It is the month of life-changing events. This is my own Christmas celebration: being shaken to the core to find more clues about my place on earth.

December 2013 was about fighting. Love drama. Yelling. Last Christmas Eve was indisputably the day of my life when I said “Fuck” and “Fuck you” the most. Cinematographic scenes. Now, I am smiling at these memories.

This year is about creativity and career shift. I barely slept over the last week. My days are full and my nights are equally full. My personality split – or less dramatically, my double life – has been at its paroxysm lately.

From 9 to 5.30, I am corporate – I’d rather say, I am as corporate as I can be, because I am an anti-corporate archetype. It is not because I don’t fit in that I don’t love it or I am not good at it. I work with extraordinary people for the most part. Behind the corporate varnish and a certain style of bubble-wrap communication, everyone has unusual life stories and there is genuine connection between us.

My Boston-based CEO was in town on Wednesday, just for a few hours. It was the first time I was ever getting to see him in real after almost three years working for him. I have an endless admiration for him, because he’s a visionary and he’s a business artist. He quit everything when he was 35 because he was frustrated working for others and he launched his company at 37. At the beginning, his company counted 5 people working above a depressing-looking pizza place, and 11 years later he got into the stock market. Successful creators and inventors just have me, whatever field they play in. I am equally fascinated by business genius as by painting or choreography genius. It is the fact of creating something out of nothing and pursuing a vision with tenacity that I admire. Some people are really touched by grace, they are so driven. I want to become one of those.

So, I was hanging out with big business people during the day.

But when dusk is coming, I am turning into the real me, the sensual and opiniated girl who also has a vision and irrepressible creative pulsions. Late at night, my movie life is starting. Filmmakers have been chasing me since last year, since H got into my life.

I now live with two of them – one director, and one special effect guy. They recently shot scenes of a webseries in our flat. I got hired at the last minute to play the barista in my own kitchen, and to be part of a crowd in a funeral scene. That was so much fun. I lent my black tights to the lead actress and I never got them back. Oh, cinema drama.

This week, I was working on two different projects with H. She asked our group of friends to submit her a Christmas video with marshmallows. We had entire freedom about the concept, as long as there were marshmallows featured. I did a parody of the rose petal scene of ‘American Beauty’ with marshmallows instead of flowers. I called it ‘European Funny’. I laughed my head off doing that. I had to shoot it alone with an iPhone and whatever props were in my room, and it was a great creativity challenge to get the result I had in mind with no equipment.

But above all, it is the real meaning of my life that kicks in when my movie night is starting. I am brainstorming a script with H for her short movie at the moment. She’s applying in January for the Directing Women Workshop in LA and I am co-writing the scenario. We have fabulous middle of the night (London time) creative sessions. Laughter and depth. We trigger each other’s creativity. We think the same things at the same time, only she describes them as a film director with technical visual terms and I do as a writer, with words and literary structure. Our brain and sensitivity are wired in the same way: we both have a mathematical way of thinking, as if writing a movie plot was solving an equation. We both get turned on by scientific theories, which is obviously not the first thing one would think when seeing us. We are driven by the same problematics and topics – the challenge of achieving your ambitions as a little pretty blonde girl in a male-deciding world. But we also are fucking funny. Yeah, my humour and my ambitions are ten times as big as my boobs. We decided that we are brain soul mates and that we are starting the revolution of the women in the film industry. Blonde brainy hurricane washing over Hollywood.

That’s strange when it finally happens – the mental relief of teaming up with someone in such a strong way and feeling understood, seen and heard after years of search.

This relationship is crazy.

Oh my beloved December effects.

El Dia De Los Muertos

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There was a woman in the 5 Rhythms workshop in Philadelphia who told me her story at a Mexican restaurant one night. She had burned out because she had always been pushing herself too hard. When her nerves collapsed, she became so sensitive that she could walk around strangers and pick up fragments of their life, reading their aura. Simultaneously, some bruises started appearing on her body and she found out that she had been going for years with bone fractures she had never acknowledged.

If all my moral bruises were suddenly showing on the surface of my skin like her fractures, I would probably look like a Smurf. Maybe everyone is a Smurf on the inside from all the metaphorical bruises we get. Some people bruise more easily than some others, though.

I came back from America on Monday, replied to a house share advert on Tuesday, visited the place on Wednesday and moved in on Saturday. It was my dream home: big artist warehouse outside London, high ceiling, natural light, creative peeps, etc. My housing lucky star was finally back into action after months off. One of the flatmates told me that there used to be a brothel next door, and that he was meeting hookers on cigarette break in the corridors. I’d love to have hookers as neighbours. They don’t judge.

There was a Halloween party thrown by a street artist in the flat upstairs on the first night in my new home. I found myself with lots of strangers in fancy dress among which Hulk and Frida Kahlo.

I lent my maid of honour dress to a friend of my new flatmates who really wanted to be costumed as a girl. I love boys in dresses and I kept complimenting him about how he looked better in it than I did.

I was the first one to go to bed. At about 5am, I got woken up by someone shaking my leg. The dude in dress was standing at the foot of my bed. He was stuck in it and asked me for help to remove it, which I mechanically did because I always help. Once he was standing in knickers in my bedroom, he invited himself in my bed and his hand invited itself under my top before I even realised what was going on. When he got all over me, I raised my voice and I had to insist several times that I didn’t want him to touch me. He finally emptied the premises of my intimacy, leaving me in a weird state of mind.

I woke up disturbed and felt fucked up for a couple of days. Just as I was starting to find the affective sanity which had deserted my life for a consequent chunk of time, just as I was starting to pave the way to healthier relationships, a random asshole was ruining the faith that I had been struggling to build step by step.

I wasn’t only aching for myself but for womanhood as a whole. Many new questions were arising in my head. I was thinking of the number of stages to my legitimate space this guy had violated: my bedroom door, my sleep, my bed, my judgment, my clothes. I wanted to be in his head for each of them, just to get a sense of how people grant themselves a moral or physical right on others.

I was considering for the first time the actual meaning of rape, the ultimate stage, when someone gets inside your body against your will. I thought of the girls I know who have been sexually abused. I have never been afraid of rape, and I am not going to start after this. I don’t take inconsiderate risk, but I refuse to be run by fear and this will continue, because I think the threat of rape is one more way to control girls. Whether you are afraid or not, I realised how quickly and unexpectedly it can happen to anyone though: a drunken guy who thinks it is funny and that’s it.

This man wasn’t particularly bad, I believe. I don’t think he would have been physically violent. He apologized the day after, put it on account of alcohol. Oh yes. I get drunk too and I don’t pay midnight visits to strangers. I didn’t want to get overdramatic about it but I tried not to minimize it, and I said with a smile that he’d better not do that ever again.

I went to the local cemetery that day. I wanted to see trees, for they were the healthiest creatures in my immediate surroundings. I hanged out with the dead for a long time. At least, they had quit behaving like assholes a while ago. I went through contexts in which the boundaries of my intimacy had been crossed over the years, starting when I was 11, then 14, until now.

On the way back home, I entered the anglican church. There was an office in memory of the people who passed away over the last year. Some nice old ladies talked to me and I decided to stay to be physically surrounded by family-friendly vibes. I sang all the songs. There was a gathering with tea and cakes afterwards. I found myself in a circle of old lovely stereotypical Brits. I was glad I was wearing the pink angora cardigan which my aunt gave me, to blend in more. I was only trying to dissimulate the skull buttons which I had replaced the original ones with. People asked me who was the person I lost. They didn’t quite get what I was doing there, but I didn’t either so everyone was happy. I got a lot of attention from kind people and this is what I needed in that moment, along with kickassing pastries and Earl grey tea. I understand people who turn to church or traditions, because freedom (which implies loneliness) is terrifying.

Later that night, I told α my misadventure and my day randomly dedicated to the dead. She replied: “Haha. El dia de los muertos!”