Commodity

I’m back, and I do not necessarily like it. The cruise was simply fantastic. I was awfully contemptuous of cruises initially. Why be out at sea when you can barely feel like you’re out on the water? It’ll be just like staying within hotel facilities for a number of days, which is really rather silly. But thank god it was nothing like that.

I wasn’t paid anything –aside from a small token allowance- but got to stay in a suite, was consistently offered champagne all throughout the day, and was fed far too much good food so much so that I found myself sun-bathing nude on the balcony the last afternoon, feeling fatter, but in a good sort of Renoir-esque way.

The maid came in to make up the room and saw me lying about naked and left in a fine shock, apologizing profusely. I told her I didn’t mind if she didn’t, and proceeded to lay down on my stomach, leaving her up to fixing the dining area.

You know how of late, there’s been a proliferation of diaries journaled religiously by call-girls and social escorts, and they’re always being invited onto fantastic holidays with guys who pay them for it. Of course it sounds appealing to me, aside from the fact that sometimes the men you’re going to have to sleep with might just look like a human disaster, bereft of an essential component of procreative functioning (i.e. features that look screw-able).

But this was about as close as I would ever come to that. I wasn’t expected to do anything with him, certainly. I was invited to help the crew with a porn-film, the orgy-astic sort that involved… no wait, that was the G-Spot, more on that later. What happened was an invite to help out with a documentary on South-East Asian art. For me, it was an incredible learning experience. This time, it was only a sampling taste, but he promised it was the hors d’oeuvre to more.

Initially, I was assigned a really crap cabin to share with another girl that wasn’t part of the documentary. No idea what she did, possibly some sort of event organizer, but it doesn’t matter. Of course I wasn’t happy, so I played a couple of flirting cards and he eventually let me stay in the suite.

He’s a really good friend of mine –I’ve known him for a couple of years already- and is just about the only accomplished artist I know. A quasi-iconic surrealist with a regular job for a media company. He was supposed to do a Jack and draw my portrait, but there simply wasn’t enough time. If we weren’t filming or he wasn’t entertaining clients, there just simply seemed to be far too much to talk about for anything else. We’d sit about on the balcony, late into the night, talking over hot tea (a necessity after too much wine –and I still did not feel I drunk enough; there was such great exquisite variety offered-) mangoes and jaffa cakes.

Of course there was alot of talk about art politics. It was insightful, to say in the least, about talking art to someone really accomplished in his craft. He suffers much disdain for art critics and told me how he had a field day with the radio stations, telling everyone that the huge banana he'd painted, that looked like a massive errection, had nothing to do with Genetic Modification. That was sometime back, for an international fine-art competition which he won a prize in and wondered for awhile why he did, since he didn't think his submission was fantastic, until he read the review. People really do read too much into what is supposed to be essentially, only, aesthetically attention grabbing.

I asked him if he thought I was small-sexy-cute-smart.

‘ Perhaps, something-of-the-slut… I’m so full of everything S, aren’t I.’

‘You got it wrong.’

‘Oh? You don’t think I’m a slut then.’

‘No, I mean, cute doesn’t start with S.’

I know he’s liked me for a long time, not a great deal, but enough such that he never forgot me even when we hadn’t talked for awhile. (But then again as Mr. B told me –perhaps I forced it out of him- I’m not quite someone people just forget easily. Too much of a triple A battery: Always Attracting Attention, indeed.) He liked me for all the reasons I’ve heard before, among which, that I was really weird. Well, I suppose I was, but only because he started it first. I could behave with poise if I needed to, but since he didn’t seem to care, I didn’t bother.

I felt rather useless handling the camera: the purpose of me being there was essentially to frame up shots and shoot things, something like Marianne Thornberry in one of my favourite cartoons, but since it was honestly the first time I was doing anything like it, of course I was rather mediocre. He didn’t get upset or anything when I flubbed up some things though, and treated me consistently well though out, always asking me what I wanted to do when we were not within work schedule. I couldn’t help but feel a little smugness. Everyone else was listening to him, and he, he was listening to me.

He told me straight off he thought all women were commodities, and liked the fact that I admitted it and played my cards relatively well. I told him everyone was a commodity, not just women. Everyone is selling themselves for something, in my case, it’s experience. I’d do anything to get the adrenaline rush of a new sensation, and of late, it does seem to be working incredibly well. I seek excitement, and it finds me.

I told the G-Spot that; calling him the moment I got reception on my phone after seeing how I’d missed a couple of his calls. Now That guy is really something else. He was supposed to return from Athens a week back, but ended up staying a week longer, possibly maxing out his credit cards, for the sake of playing sound-man in a porn film. It is so insane and I am duly envious. It was one of those Italian directed orgy fests (actually, I don’t really know what that would mean, but it just sounds really risqué put that way). There were a bunch of B-Grade Olympic contestants, the sort that got kicked out even before anything started, running about oiled and naked in the background, to give the impression of a haphazard, frenzied orgy.

And my dear Mr. G was *laughs* -I love this one- holding the boom and the loobe. So it was a clinical case of ‘hold the boom steady and pass the lube, please.’

I cannot wait to see the footage. It must have been a riot.

But back to the Quasi-iconic surrealist.

He promised he’d call me when he got back in town (He's gone off to yet another exotic location). Although I have absolutely no idea what might happen, because I’m simply not attracted to him. He’s fantastic as a friend, and I made him promise to take me for more trips, preferably somewhere exotic, to film the wildlife, or whatever. This way, I get to learn how to make films from a professional for real-life entertainment and not some silly school project, and all within an incredibly short time too. He has a way of forcing people into doing things fast and well, and I do believe I’ve learnt more in a few days then most people would learn in a couple of months at media school.

But other than that, while he’s great, and I can tolerate the fact that he is absurdly weird, I’m simply not attracted to him. When I say he's weird, I really mean weird. Not quirky, or a pretended eccentricity, but the genuine problem of being so out of place up to the point of intolerance. When local guys tell me they don't love a demure girl, and do not care if I eat like a mess (and I am a messy eater) it's all under a pretense to try and break out of convention. (It happened to me once. 5 minutes later, right after he told me just that, he said he couldn't stand it when I talked with my mouth full!) This one proceedes to compete with me at who can create the bigger mess.

He was right when he said women are far more ruthless then men when it came to trading themselves. I am absolutely sure he will treat me very nicely always. On my part… I suppose I wouldn’t be so willing to en-treat him with, well, whatever I have to offer, unless he has some things I want. But then again, he didn’t and doesn’t expect anything sexual. There is a difference between wanting and expecting, and I liked that.

***

And just because this is a fantastic piece of terribly exciting news, the Girlfriend’s boyfriend (who left the country about half a year ago to work in Zurich) has bought her a one way ticket to Switzerland! Well, it’s not one way, but I do not reckon there’s a fixed due date on the return. Bloody hell. Lucky bitch eh!

xoxox