Come and Gone Again

It's an odd feeling having your significant other with you for a week at a time, every few months. This long distance relationship stuff isn't fun. It's gotten easier, for sure. One and a half years later and I've become accustomed to being alone. I even enjoy it. In fact you could say I need alone time now, and I rely heavily upon movies to fill those evenings when I just want to recharge my batteries.

The boy came a week ago, and left this morning. Since I moved to London, his visits have been highly anticipated, and his departures dreaded. But today- for the first time- I didn't cry when he left. I napped and watched Dr Who instead.

I always stay up late the first night I'm alone. I readjust by avoiding my bedroom and any remnants of him being here- like the fact that there are two water glasses on my bedside table instead of one. And the one sock he forgot to take home. Or the receipt for the dinner we had a few days ago.

It's so weird, this cross-Atlantic romance of mine.

White Girl at White Mischief

A friend of mine puts on a club night that I FINALLY went to last night- White Mischief. It was their 3rd anniversary and the party was EPIC! Any event where you get to see these acts is an automatic happy in my book:

The Dream of PanPan

Last night I had a dream about a giant snub-nosed monster named PanPan. PanPan roamed the countryside eating top-of-the-class art students. When not eating students he ate dim sum pastries, and turned people into scary but harmless zombies that required poking with a sharp stick twice to unzombify. 

It was also a musical, starring Julie Andrews. 

PanPan could smell the scent of spray mount from miles away, and so Julie Andrews bravely sprayed a trail away from the students and into the woods. The spray mount trail led to a box of dynamite, packed within the corpses of  drowned students. (There was a touching musical number here involving the singing, walking corpses being led to their explosive second death by Julie Andrews who all the while sang about how their sacrifice would save future generations of aspiring artists and designers.)

In the end Julie Andrews (in a white and black frilly dress) and her chorus of the drowned saved the day, and PanPan, though not blown up, was too scared to terrorize art students again.  

The Maiden Voyage of Kinky Salon London

KSL was a huge success! People are buzzing about it all over the internet. We've gotten all sorts of thank you notes and excited people wanting to volunteer to be a part of the event. It has been called a new London institution, and the Must-Go Event for pervs, and the common through line in all the excited chatter around the web has been, "I've never been to anything like it."

I am proud to have been a part of the original team starting the event, even if I was just head of decor. But I know what I'm doing now, and I am stepping up. The next KSL will be even better, and I will have lots of Kinky Salon news to share with you soon, I am sure. :)

PS- I didn't get any full body photos of my costume, but I went as a windup doll. I wanted to be human Twister, but ran out of time. So I pulled this together last minute. The strap on harness was used to wear the key on my back, which was made of a toilet paper roll, cardboard and gold paint. There were gold hands sewn to my very short skirt to hold it up and show blue glitter thigh highs and blue plastic Vivienne Westwood shoes. There were also clockwork pieces on my bow tie and on my earrings.

Pretty Much Sums Me Up

Costumes and Debauchery Await

There is much to tell, but I must to bed. Tomorrow is a big event I've been helping organize. And by "helping organize" I mean stressing out, being lame, running around like mad, pretending to be useful, and then doing things last minute.

What is this event, you ask? Kinky Salon London, a unique party that began in San Francisco has arrived in London through the hard work of a group of volunteers (including me)! Our first event is tomorrow night and I am one of the hosts as well as "head of decor" (see above for details on how I "organized" that). What is KSLondon? Read the website if you'd like. It's all good debaucherous fun!

My original idea was to make myself a Twister costume for our themed ToyBox party. But when that fell through I came up with something very quickly using only what I had in my closet. My new costume involves gold metal hands, cardboard, paint, plastic shoes, toilet paper roll, a bowtie, clockwork gears, and a strap-on harness. Yet it is completely innocent. Well, mostly.

Intrigued? Photos will be taken and I will share later.

Wish us luck! Tomorrow we have a lot of decorating and setting up to do.

Reappearing Act

The ones you love most are always the ones you have the most tumultuous relationships with. It was that way with my very best friend through high school. She and I were inseparable, and we brought out the worst and best in each other. So when the tiny cracks between us began to widen, it was a dramatic, horrible ending. We haven't spoken in about four years. I knew that so much of our falling out was my fault, and I wanted to let her know that I was sorry. But I had no idea how to track her down. She had no web presence, I didn't have any phone numbers that worked, and we didn't have any mutual friends.

To me, she disappeared and was never heard from again.

Just before I left for London I found a blank profile on facebook registered under her name. She has a very unique name and so I sent a quick note just to see if anyone would respond. But no one ever did and the profile remained blank. I often wondered what happened to her. I worried about her. I hoped she was well and happy.

Time passed, I went to fashion school, my boyfriend and I became a proper couple, I moved to London, I went to CSM, I left CSM, I started a whole new life, I've made new friends, but she has often popped up in my thoughts.

Two days ago I received a response to that facebook message, accompanied by a friend request. It was her! (Turns out she didn't know how to track me down either, and never uses facebook.) She is alive and well and felt as awful as I did about how things ended. We both just want to catch up and hang out again, even if we can only do it via email for the time being.

To me it feels like she just came back from the dead. I am giddy over her sudden reappearance, and I've just hit Send on the first of what I hope will be many, many emails with my long lost friend.

Never Have I Ever

I have never had a graduation of any kind. Not once.

How did this happen? I tested out of high school a year and a half early. I had to leave art school for financial reasons. I left my technical fashion school a few terms early so I could go to Central Saint Martins, which I then left after a year because it was a joke of a school.

So I've never gotten a piece of paper neatly framed or tied with ribbon, and never worn that silly cap. And although I hope to someday get my Masters in footwear at Polimoda or the RCA, I will probably never get my Bachelors.

I guess I just don't like to do things the normal way. When there is a straight and narrow path, I always pass that up for the spiraling path with lots of hills and valleys. What can I say? I just like the scenic route.

Keep Calm And Don't Let Me Near the Internet

Whatever you do, don't tell Matt Jones:

On Matters of the Heart and Hair

Open relationships ares a lot like hairstyles.

What you were born and raised with might not be what suits you best. Against the wishes of the people in charge, you cut or dye it. You change the colour and you change the shape. Sometimes it looks fantastic, and sometimes you have to wear a hat.

Perhaps you experiment a little too much and find you have destroyed you hair. And maybe you cut it all off so you can start fresh. But it is still your hair, and it grows back and looks plain but familiar. Only when it has reached a suitable length can you fiddle around with it again.

If you experiment enough, you will find the perfect red dye and the perfect bob. You'll change it slightly every now and then to keep it interesting, but you'll begin to define yourself by the new hairstyle. And slowly- very, very slowly- you find that the mousy brown you were born with is beginning to seem ill-suited to your personality.

There is a catch though. Once you've found the perfect colour and cut, you have upkeep to deal with. This look isn't what comes naturally to you. If you don't maintain the red dye and cute bob, the vibrancy fades, the haircut becomes shaggy, and it never seems to look good anymore. Red hair and fringe take a lot a maintenance.

I still don't think my hairstyle suits me. There are days when I want to rip my hair out, and bang my head against a wall. There are days when I have done exactly that. In fact most of this past week I have been doing that. But I am still in search of that elusive red dye, and that indefinably perfect hairstyle.

My hope is that when I find the look that suits me, I will gain confidence in knowing that it is all good, and it is all safe.