#therealbbyron

[justinripley]

Tits or GTFO.

hahahaha! is this in response to the butts thing?

[shurgs]

Walks, cities, dawn.

It's 3:30 am. I'm not tired. I won't even feel sleepy for three hours, and I've yet to clean up dinner. Insomnia isn't the word for it, though: I sleep plenty, and when I am asleep I can hardly be woken. No, I sleep wrong.

Sometimes it's a curse. I wake up when everyone winds down. I peak when everyone yawns. I fall asleep to the birds at dawn.

I used to hate dawn, actually. People associate dawn with hope and beginnings and Weetbix and the sort of soul-affirming runs generally performed on commercials by women with cheery smiles and absurdly supportive bras, but for me dawn had a horror to it. I'd done it again. My early night has failed. It's come to this. I'll suffer tomorrow. Dawn used to be a cosmic Game Over screen.

But while I disagree with the Sultana Bran connotations, the one thing I do agree with on dawn is that it is undeniably pretty. 

When it's cloudy, the sky at dawn is a shockingly deep blue. I cannot understate the blueness of predawn light. It doesn't just sit there quietly. It invades your personal space. It slathers itself over everything it touches. It's like the whole world is swimming, right outside your window.

But when the sky is clear, the sunrise is colourful. I don't know why it is, but I've rarely seen a fiery dawn: they're almost always pink, or purple. It's a generally magenta experience. It even feels wrong. Reds and yellows and oranges are for dusks. Dawn is blue.

And that is the benefit of a fucked up sleep cycle. 

I can go for a walk at bedtime and see the city wake up. Locations change so completely you could swear they were different places. Martin Place at five, six am is full of joggers and old men. Fitness freaks and women with dogs. The people who'll go home shortly, and shower and change and leave for work. Three hours later though and it's like a different city.The tourists and businessmen arrive. The park becomes both more diverse and more united. Ethnic minorities with cameras and families with children start walking through, along with black-suited nine-to-fivers with frowns and coffee.

It's become a hobby of mine. I love the exhaustion of a five hour walk, and the dilation of time. I'm scared of the day I decide to leave the house and find I've run out of places to go. I love seeing new places, and seeing old places in a new way.

Today I'm going to the coast.

[shurgs]

The Strange Love Doctor, or How I Stopped, To Learn Worrying and Bomb Love: A post in five parts

I don't know what I'm supposed to be writing here. Digital therapy sessions? Deep-held secrets, revealed at last? Pseudo-meaningful quasi-insights on the shape and direction of the world? Thrilling accounts of how my date last Friday went? All of these?

I'll go with all of these, but very briefly. I don't want to emphasise any one aspect, so each one will be about one hundred words.

Well. Exactly one hundred words. You guys better appreciate how difficult that is to pull off. (It's difficult.)

Part One

Thirty-three blue metres

Want to know a secret?

I can swim. Through eight years of well-meaning programs, I always failed to learn. In high school I stopped trying. Half-way through I found I could actually swim fine, which forced me to lie.

In summer afternoons, whole dorm buildings would empty into the pool: echoing splashes and shouts were inescapable. It just wasn’t a sound that tempted me.

Swimming isn’t scary for the nudity or water. It’s trust. For me, swimming in public is helplessness. Being held under, ignored, or pitied. But mostly, it is one sentence:

“How don’t you know how to swim?”

Part Two

I am alone with the things I have done.

I quote that line a lot. My ears hear it mean different words to the ones written. They hear the one reason to improve yourself.

I am a self-perfectionist. Isn’t everybody? If we were rich and funny, fit and loved, attractive, motivated then we’d get what we want, right? When you look in a mirror, you might not mind the sight, but you’re never quite the person you want to be.

The idea: to ‘love myself for who I am’ galls me. It misses the point. Accepting myself now might mean giving up being someone better.  Maybe someone enough.

Part Three

In which I apologise for the angst.

Although really now. Just because someone appears to be a reasonably grounded human being doesn’t make them one. You guys know I’m a neurotic iceberg with an inferiority complex, depressive tendencies and Daddy issues, right? That hasn’t escaped your notice behind the well-groomed facade of faux-confidence and extroversion, has it?

It has?

Oh jeez, man. How to break it to you.

Problem is, I don’t know what else to talk about. No long-running relationships to heal and my social skills are quite good, so little traction there. What am I supposed to write? “Today I didn’t leave the house again?”

Part Four

Stephen wanted to know how to ask a girl out except he asked me instead of someone who knows.

I am blatantly using titles to cheat on the word-count now.

Step one: meet all your friends’ friends. The easiest way to meet eligible (wo)men is move in many circles, because talking to attractive strangers is hard and scary.

 Step two: be somebody. Not a witty or important somebody: just the best, most somebody-ish ‘you’ you can be. This is not to woo them. That’s in the wind. But only your best ‘you’ can move to step three.

Step three: “Hey, you want to meet up for coffee sometime?”

Step four: meet up for coffee.

Step five: fuck it up.

Part Five

How to fuck up a date: observations.

 If she suggests “The Spot” and Google Street Maps marks a cafe, assume that cafe is “The Spot,” and not the district.

Wear the best Person impression you can, then silently beg each other to be first to end the horror.

Girls who read widely and watch nothing and boys who watch widely and read nothing may between them lick platters clean, but they can hardly discuss meals.

  How to measure success: “It was lovely... catching up. We should...

  “...

    “...

  “...do this again.”

   Completely absent physical contact is a surefire sign.