Petra likes Death!

A quick look at my vertical stack of DVD’s, I used to think, didn’t reveal much. Not only because I’m pretty resolute about refusing to believe that taste reveals much about people, but also because I really spend very little time watching films outside of the cinema, so I tend not to buy DVD’s for myself. The DVD’s I own are, by and large, gifts, and they’re usually from people who don’t know me well enough to know how little time I will spend watching them.

There are exceptions, stuff I grabbed off the shelf with genuine love and hunger and can’t live without. The Twin Peaks box set, Fire Walk with Me. Kramer vs. Kramer. Happiness I stole from the library; I literally couldn’t give it back. The Bjork documentary, the Lightning Bolt road film. Certainly not enough to construct an aesthetic, you wouldn’t think.
But the people who don’t really know me, it seems, have other ideas. Petra likes Death! they unanimously chorus. Donnie Darko, the Ice Storm, Magnolia, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, both Abre los Ojos and Vanilla Sky, Kids, Blue Velvet, the Straight Story - my DVD collection is the equivalent of a lesbian mix tape: a total thematic flatline. Every dark cinepop moment of the last 10 years or so has reminded someone of me. And it turns out they’re probably right.

I’ve noticed, only recently, that my interest in pop culture is a shade macabre. The art I like that’s glossy and cheerful always undermines itself, always eventually corrodes. Somewhere in me I knew it was ok to love Britney the mouseketeer. I felt the abject gutter slut lurking, dreamed of teasing her out. Beyonce will come to me, too, one day, just you wait. She’ll join me, Britney (whom I’m renaming Fusty Princess Fallopia) and Charlotte Church in a gigantic, underfilled waterbed, where I’ll throw them all around by their weaves and fist them with fried chicken.

My favourite songwriters, with the exception of Bjork, are all addicted, suicidal, mentally ill, or otherwise utterly miserable: Courtney Love, Kristin Hersh, Morrissey, Elliott Smith, Lou Barlow, Kathleen Hanna. (I like lots of bands that sound miserable too, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to think of an entire band as all sharing the same affective disorder.) Singer-songwriters are so genteel in their self destruction. Even Elliott Smith, who stabbed himself in the heart, makes despair sound effete. Perhaps I should stop being such a tasteful bourgeois coward and go goth. But I hate goths; I have all kinds of violent fantasies about them - about sawing off their awful long hair with knives, pushing them under buses, and otherwise punishing them for their weedy insistence on death as a familiar. I always thought I was offended by that idea, but maybe I’m jealous - too insistent on my superior understanding of morbidity: I’ll show you death!

It’s a running joke among my friends that my superpower is making people cry. I just look at them and they’re off. Even relative strangers get right to exhuming when left alone with me for 5 minutes. What’s wrong? I ask, and they tell me they don’t know why they‘re so upset, then out it comes, whatever it is. And my close friends - there isn’t one who hasn’t told me their most terrible secret. Come on, you know it’s true. I’m not a party friend. I’m the one with the flaming sword; the one you trust to go first into the dark. Right? Right?

Since you’re all, by default, asking the rude question, the answer’s this: yeah, you’re right, death is my subject. It’s my subject cos it’s my enemy, assholes. I have no intention of dying, and I know you can all smell it on me. I’m sorry it makes you all cry. I don’t know why it would. Is there something I should know?

my hips lie

without wishing to dry my knickers on your collective radiator, gentle readers, i'm afraid it's confession time again.

yeah, so i'm a prick tease. (no, there's no such thing as a clit tease. is there a fist tease? no. i'm talking about the philosophic vulnerability of erection. blood on the bone. it's specific, ok? bi five you later).

one thing i wish more men got: wanting to make out is not the same as wanting to fuck. and you bet if i think it'll make the make out funner, i'll moan in your mouth and roll all over you on the couch. go ahead and talk me into letting you stay. i'll talk you to sleep and then happily wriggle my bum against your morning wood (oh spoonicorn, how heartbreakingly unmythical your requirements are), scamper to the bathroom and get off in the shower. sorry and all. i'd try to muster some shame for all of you concerned that i make mankind just a touch more likely to rape cats on the way home, but those sluts can take care of themselves. cat penises have little barbs in them, you know. it's a hard knock life.

besides, i've recently seen the other side of my brazenly uncompromising coin, and it's as immodest as it is corrupt. 'my hips don't lie' is the most recent output from shakira, featuring wyclef, or wyclef, featuring shakira, i can't figure which. this is a marriage of equals. not one time is wyclef's trademark incomprehensible gurgle outstripped by shakira's mournful larry the lamb (complete with overdone shanks). the video, during which our heroes wander about in what are clearly two entirely different depressingly badly-dressed warehouses, looking for one another and instead finding 1) a child in a mask and 2) some pink sheets, is also less than illuminating, but it's the song's thesis that truly grates.

'ooh baby, when you talk like that', bleats shakira, waving her arms about and humping a chair, 'you make a woman go mad. so be wise, and keep on reading the signs of my body.' 'don't fight it, don't fight it', an enthusiastic clef advises his lady love, before mugging to camera a brief linguaphone course for date rapists: 'i never really knew that she could move like this. it makes a man want to speak spanish. como se llama, bonita? mi casa, su casa, shakira, shakira'. truly, the paraclausithuron is alive and well. shit, that door is wedged wide open anyway, and that's how shakira seems to like it, if, as she states, her increasingly frenzied hips are anything to go by. stoically ignoring attempts at interruption by a child in a mask, she tells her suitor she's aware of the movement of his body, 'half animal, half man,' (possibly my least favourite moment in pop culture since Mother Knowles designed those artfully ripped jungle bikinis for destiny's child). 'i don't really know what i'm doing, but you seem to have a plan', she continues cheerfully. at this point i'm thinking that poor kid in the mask may be played by the ghost of andrea dworkin.

all together now: 'ooooh, i'm on tonight, you know my hips don't lie and i'm starting to feel it's right.' i can't even remember the rest. something about having an infection, or giving your dad an erection, or something. slore. but rilly, you guys. you guys. come on. my hips don't fucking LIE? this is bullshit! and i don't want to hear about subtlety or bodily tropes or disingenuity. there are enough of us stubborn, honest prick teases out there that you should know by now where you stand. despite low slung jeans, affection, despite even enthusiastic kissing, despite all the spanglish you can chew, despite waving arms, humping chairs, whatever, you may go home unsatisfied while i happily and guiltlessly masturbate in my bathroom. that is just how it is, mr jean. i'm sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAbNWNn5DuE&search=wyclef%20shakira

BUNNY CARE!

Thank you so much for agreeing to look after the bunny while I’m away. I’ve covered my bed with the shower curtain so that he can safely be left in there while you’re having open house.
Bunny needs feeding and watering twice a day. If he is stressed by my absence, or acting up, I have left some of his tonic powder in the cupboard next to his food. This is to be mixed with his water, and it makes him feel better, but it’s rich, so he doesn’t need it every day. A couple of days in a row at most.

His box needs emptying every couple of days. It’s lined with newspapers, which are in the drawer under the fridge, and filled with hay, which is in a bag on top of the fridge.
My plants need watering every other day as well (particularly the one on the table by the window, which is a sulker).

The best way to keep him happy is just to pay him lots of attention. He likes to just show you things he's doing. He'll nudge you to let you know he wants you. Sometimes he wants fuss, other times just to show you stuff. He refers a lot.

I really appreciate your help and will bring you back something fab from San Francisco. I’ll miss you and be thinking of you in the run up to open house. I’m looking forward to seeing zest when I get back.

My email is ellencherry@gmail.com. I’ll check it regularly. I can still be contacted on my mobile, 07XXX XXX XXX. Or you can call me where I’m staying on 001 XXX XXX XXXX. If you need help with the bunny, my friend russell has offered to be a contact here: his number is 07XXX XXX XXX. Bunny knows him very well and he’s happy to come in and feed, fuss, or change the box if you can’t. The vet, Phil at St Francis Veterinary Centre, knows I'm going away and I've arranged for them to bill me for any treatment bunny may need in my absence, so don't hesistate to take him if anything's wrong. The number is 01273 770800.

Hope everything goes fab for you while I’m away.

xoxoxpetra