belle de jour -01.08.2004

Finally saw Igby Goes Down last night. The scene where he and Claire Danes are in bed together immediately took me back to what it felt like, being young and precocious.

vendredi 27 août
Finally saw Igby Goes Down last night. The scene where he and Claire Danes are in bed together immediately took me back to what it felt like, being young and precocious. I've had some amazing experiences after teenage years, fallen in love in my mid-twenties, and nothing felt as fresh and unencumbered as being eighteen. Once you've had your first time exploring a huge city, sleeping with a near-stranger, blowing off school to do nothing, can you ever approach it unencumbered by your past again?

HT Image

Failing that, is it possible to permanently disable the nostalgia gland until I'm at least eighty?

// posted by belle @ 3:04 PM

Minutiae...

1. Diablo Cody hangs up her spangly thong. The neighbourhood will be a far less interesting place without her. I'll miss the weblog, and am looking forward to her book.

2. Upcoming meeting with television production-types to talk about possible book adaptation. I do hope it's no one who's procured my services in the past.

3. Must get round to writing about the client who wanted to keep the lights off. Am not sure whether that was a comment on his own body image or his perception of mine. Or perhaps he was hiding something else in the room (pink wallpaper, dirty socks, shrunken heads...)

4. Today my hair looks less like a wig. Or so I keep telling myself.

5. Saw a little girl - maybe 10 years old or so? - walking in Green Park with her parents yesterday, wearing a pink shirt that had a picture of a bunny and the message 'Get Lost'. Was tempted to offer her money for it.

6. I should just admit it - I have a crush on SH's brother (whom I knew first). He's even-tempered where SH is moody, wickedly funny where SH is deadly serious, open where SH is secretive, light and fun where SH is heavy and sentimental. And is a better cook.

Okay, so he's practically a professional heartbreaker.

Massive crush.

Grass greener and all that, I suppose. But nothing will happen. Even I can see that train wreck coming. Just an observation.

// posted by belle @ 12:30 PM

jeudi 26 août
Note to self: If you really really need your hair cutting, but the usual stylist is away, WAIT UNTIL SHE RETURNS. No one else will ever understand what you mean by 'short but not too short.' And pulling at the hair won't make it grow back any faster.

The colour's rubbish too. No excuses there - same person as usual. You know the dingy look from too many hours in the swimming pool? It's like that. Why? Why???

That is all.

// posted by belle @ 10:02 AM

mercredi25 août
I met a client, but not for sex, simply coffee and a chat. An audition for a regular gig, if you will.

It became clear straight off that I am probably not what he is looking for. Physically, yes - but in terms of my availability, personality, and so on, no. Not a bit. But we had a nice time and a toothsome pastry.

And I discovered that I like smoking.

Not personally. I don't smoke. I don't particularly like when others do, but am loath to complain about it. I've dated smokers, some of my best friends are, and I think smoking restrictions are bordering on insane lately. But I have always found the habit slightly distasteful.

And now I know why. They were smoking all wrong.

This man - forties or fifties, Chinese - smoked like a character in a film noir. Elegantly. Beautifully. His hands held the cigarette just so. It was delicate yet masculine. Instead of blowing out a guilty jet of smoke to the side, he exhaled a beautiful silver plume around him. He was confident in his smoking, he liked his smoking, and he was unapologetic. He did not finish with the nervous tap-tap-squish of the teenage closet puffer who continued the habit into adulthood or the pitch-and-ignore of the furtive doorway smoker. He did it with a final and decisive chess move of extinguishment. It even bordered on sexy.

I wanted to ask if he was a secret agent in real life. This gentleman so needed to be in a dinner jacket stroking a white cat. It was unutterably cool.

// posted by belle @ 9:27 AM