A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

The UC Octet: making me want to have a eight-way sex marathon since 2008

Once a year, during my High School days, I would be overcome by the most soul-destroying jealousy.  I thought that as the years passed, the intensity of my nasty feeling would decrease.  And yet, each year, the green monster reared it’s ugly, neighbor’s-wife-coveting head from the cesspool of my most unappealing emotions.

And the reason was this: each year one of my school friends would play host to the Harvard Krokadiloes.

To the uninitiated, the Krokadiloes are but one (albeit among the most Ivy League, elite examples) of the many gimpy singing groups that confound and delight Universities and lucky outsiders around the world.  And it is within this particular context that any standard-bearing feminist drops her ideological problem with anything exclusively male, and just embraces the vision of a group of men dressed in tuxedoes or baggy beige pants – walking Tommy Hilfiger ads, all of them – while hearing the most delightful a cappella singing that the ear can stand. Whatever variation we’re talking about, whether we’re in the spires of Oxford, or the halls of Harvard, or the quadrangles of Yale – or even in light-hearted and sunny California – let’s be honest: a cappella performances are aural sex.

But it’s not canon!

I have a confession to make. I read fanfiction, and, occassionally, I write it too. This isn’t something I’m particularly proud of, and I like to tell myself it’s because I like to broaden my writing horizons, practice it, and also read some good yarns. (Which is complete bollocks because I can categorically say that 99.999999% of fanfiction is rubbish.) But, really, it’s to indulge my romantic-sensibilities as a TV fanatic. And, by that, I mean that I heavily invest in TV romances. We all do it, and TV will usually anoint a ‘Chosen Couple’ in order to exploit our unhealthy fixation on these characters and their relationship, in order to get us to keep watching, by building up sexual tension, getting them together, breaking them up, getting them together, and breaking them up again like the emotional tug-o-war it is for a viewer who’s a closet romantic, because TV is a sick, sick, sadistic bastard.

So, in the absence of closure, or in an attempt to fill in the gaps and ‘fix’ anything we may find wrong with the current state of the relationship of the Chosen Couple, we turn to fanfiction to create our own – and we’d like to think, a better – revisioning of the saga between these characters [1]. Unfortunately, a lot of 13-year-old girls with access to the Internet think the same thing, and you’re left to find the proverbial diamond in the rough as you attempt to dig through bad grammar, unrealistic plots, and poorly written sex scenes, those of which are written by people who’ve probably never actually touched a member of the opposite sex [2].

Unfortunately, Weasley fans did not get the memo.

There is a reason why the word fan takes its roots from the word ‘fanatics.’ And when you delve in to the scary world of the Harry Potter fandom, it becomes apparent that there are some seriously fucked up kids out there. Most of it is harmless, others are just. Wrong. *cough*Snape/Harry slash*cough*. It goes without saying that in this particular fandom there is a blatant disregard for canon, the beacon of guidance for aspiring writers. Usually, all fiction must operate within the parameters of the canon. Those who attempt to deviate from it may suffer the backlash of readers and fans alike. One such example being Smallville fans, who want everything in the series to follow the canon of the original Superman mythos, and don’t take in to consideration that Erica Durance and Tom Welling have the chemistry of a plank of wood. Truth is, some of the most interesting relationships aren’t canon at all.

Queer Pairing

Girl germs

I’m sure you’ve all been there.  The long-awaited, I’ve-heard-so-much-about-you…possibly-more-than-I-really-wanted-to-lots of-guys-have-the-same-problem meeting of the boyfriend.  This particular meeting wasn’t that uncomfortable; I had very little invested in it, and am not so close to the girl that I’ve heard every gory detail about the guy’s performance in the bedroom.  All I knew was that he was a real-life 40 year old virgin (ok, not quite 40, but if a blog can’t be the home of hyperbole, what can be?), with very little in the way of professional prospects.  Already a winning combination.  On meeting him, however, he seemed personable, cute (if you’re into that lanky faux-emo kind of thing), and sweet.  Sighs of relief all round.

There were sure as hell more uncomfortable meetings at this particularly party.  The evil spawn little sister of the hostess for example.  In between spewing vitriol, slamming back vodka with the zest that only a 16 year old can muster, and swearing for absolutely no reason, she slurred at me that she thought there was something odd going on with the new boy on the block.

What the Korean romantic-drama-dy has taught me about love. (Or, why crunchyroll ate up all my bandwidth.)

In 'My Sassy Girl' the doormats get the girls.

For some odd reason there was a time last year when I was addicted to Korean romantic comedies slash dramas (because their films can’t belong to just the one genre), I don’t even know why or how I got hooked on to them. And, no, it wasn’t because of the re-make of ‘The Lake House’ which had just been released, nor was it because of the buzz surrounding ‘My Sassy Girl’, which I picked up from reading blogs about J-Pop (don’t ask). Actually, I think I stumbled upon a link on YouTube of a trailer in English for ‘Ditto.’ You know how it is, you just keep clicking links on the Internet and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and you find yourself watching reaction videos to 2 Girls 1 Cup, and then curiosity gets the best of you and so you actually watch 2 Girls 1 Cup, and it’s from that moment on that you realise you have a stomach of steel because you managed to sit through the whole thing without being affected.

Trove: dedicated to my one, true, trove Joel.

I left my heart in Robert Downey Jr's pants.

In a small hotel room in Pisa, after missing our train to La Spezia, and after haggling for a better price for said room, Joel and I were lying in bed talking about stuff. More specifically, falling in love whilst overseas, and whether it was actual attraction or love, or whether the conditions of the situation heightened everything, and put it all on fast forward. It was different to all those random hook-ups you had on your trip. What is this feeling called, we asked ourselves. After a few seconds of silence in the dark, I finally said: Trove. (Three guesses how I came up with that.) Joel replied by laughing hysterically.

All my friends are getting married. I’m just getting drunk.

Financial Liabilities

There’s a group on Facebook I’ve joined titled, ‘All my friends are getting married. I’m just getting drunk.’ It’s crazy, really, that this should be relevant to me. I’m only 21. In my high school graduating class of 2004, Facebook tells me a size-able percentage of these girls are in long term relationships, are married (or will be soon), and have kids (or will be having them). For someone who considers kids as dream-killing, money-suckers, it truly boggles the mind that my peers could be so, well, ‘adult.’ I question whether this is a matter of their being grown-up, or whether I’m complacent in just being a perpetual kid and being selfish.