This is my stop.

I just remembered something.
Last night, after having dinner with friends, I took a bus home. It was about 11pm, and the bus was otherwise empty. A few stops later, a man got on the bus. Despite the wide range of seats available to him (that is, all of them) he decided to sit right next to me. I continued texting on my phone without looking up.
"Hello" he said.
Sometimes you want someone to know you're busy and/or uninterested in having a conversation, without wanting to seem like a stuck up bitch who deserves to get stabbed. As a woman, this is a very tough balance to strike. Nice enough not to make a man angry, but not so nice that you're encouraging him. So, without looking up from my phone, I grunted a barely audible 'hi' through the scarf bundled around my face.

"You from the States?" he asked.
To be honest, I found this funny, because unbeknownst to him, that's a question I get quite often, but I really don't think there was a trace of an accent on my very muffled 'hi'.
Shook my head, continued staring at my phone.
"Really? Ya sound like you are."
He went on to ask me a ton of questions, which I answered with a series of nods and the occasional "mmhmm".
He was probably in his fifties, and not the most unpleasant person apart from the fact he was either unable or refusing to read the very clear social cues of the situation. I'm still not sure which.

Naturally, it dawned on me that he might get off the bus when I did to continue the interrogation, on the pretence of "what a coincidence!" but in reality to follow me home. I say naturally, not because I'm paranoid, but because it's happened before.
So, I got off the bus suddenly a few stops early in a strange, dark part of the city I didn't know and walked the rest of the way. Yeah, that's a thing I did purposely, just to be on the safe side. Read that again.

And then, before I had even reached my front door, I forgot all about it. I forgot about it and was only reminded tonight when a friend said something to me about accents. Because it's not note-worthy. And that, is a little bit note-worthy.

Write there.

Did you love the 90s?
Of course you did. Everybody did! I'm pretty sure Buzzfeed employs a person on a full-time salary whose sole job is to compile weekly lists of things we loved in the 90s, from Tamagotchis to Hey Arnold to Ring Pops. It was a beautiful time, when everything was neon and nothing hurt.

Some of the best 90s memorabilia -especially if you were a gender-conforming 11 year old girl - was the stationery. But, just for a moment, I want you to forget about Lisa Frank and the pointless gunk that was glitter glue (let's be real, that stuff's adhesive properties were nil).
Today I want to give a shout out to the one, the only, Squiggle Wiggle Writer*.
Otherwise know as My First Vibrator for adolescent girls everywhere.

"Banana" -really? The second most phallic word in the English language?

If you didn't personally explore your young, burgeoning sexuality by holding a vibrating pen against your crotch while the rest of your family were downstairs watching The Wonder Years, that's okay, but I guarantee you know someone who did. Ask around. You'll see.

That its vibrating motor mechanism was identical to the one used in my current, grown-up, purpose-built vibrator was a joy. That it was inconspicuously sold in the stationery aisle was a godsend. And hey, the colourful gel pens that came with it were cool too. It was the quintessential gateway sex toy, and boy did it do a good job. It was also completely un-sexual and un-intimidating in its presentation, you quite possible owned it for months before realising its true potential, and it was most likely gifted to you, quite cluelessly, by some kid your mom made you invite to your birthday party. If only they knew that years after the ink had wasted, it would still be one of your prized possessions.

I wasn't sure if it still exists out there in the world, so I just took a quick look and found it on Amazon. It gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars, though according to the reviews, its real benefits seem to have gone unnoticed -at least by the parents.
Well, here's to you, Squiggle Wiggle Writer. You really helped me to take my love of stationery to the next level.

*Battery Not Included

Marriage Material

One day I'll wed just so that when my husband comes home after a long day at the office, I can say "You work so hard, darling, let me draw you a nice hot bath!" 

And then I'll give him this and laugh.
#doodles #dadpuns #hedhateme

The n00dz world order

Scrolling through my newsfeed today, I came across the headline After a Break-Up, Germans Now Have to Delete Nude Photos. As a feminist and a horndog, I'm a sucker for any article on sexual politics and n00dz, but having spent the past semester lecturing university students on the sharing of digital information and their rights to information privacy -or lack thereof -I was particularly curious.

To summarise the article (but really, just read the piece by Kristen V. Brown), a German federal court has recently ruled that consent to an explicit photo ends when that relationship does. Essentially, those who giveth crotch shots may taketh away. It's an important decision, and particularly in these times of 'revenge porn' -a catchy name for what could be more accurately described as the epidemic of sexual harassment, blackmail and blatant misogyny, whereupon #notallmen post private photos of their exes to the internet for all to see. Currently, in many countries including the US, the classification of this practice as criminal depends on various details of copyright law and whether or not you can actually make out a nipple.
But now in Germany, it would seem, an individual has a right to demand an ex delete any intimate photos taken or shared during courtship, regardless of whether the photograph holder has any intention to share them maliciously -and this is what is so unique about this case.


Putting aside the question of how such a potential law could be enforced ("Hey, did you delete those photos?"    "Sure did."  "And the copies that automatically upload to your Dropbox?" "Oh those.. umm, yes. "  "Pinky swear?"  "Uh-huh.") -where does this really leave us?

Those who welcome the ruling draw the comparison to sexual consent. Sexual consent can be withdrawn at any point before and during sex, and likewise, someone who is happy to share intimate images with a partner during a relationship should have the right to change their mind when that relationship is over. I mean, it kind of makes sense?
Except I'm not really sure it does.
Yes, sexual consent can be withdrawn at any point before and during sex, but it can't be withdrawn after. Post-break-up, we can't just take back the gifts we gave that person, or the beers we bought them or the truly excellent head we bestowed upon them... so why should we be able to take back a picture?
Buttholes. Nipples. Taints. Everybody's got 'em. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Okay, so we unfortunately don't live in a world where pictures of women's buttholes are casually greeted with shrug emojis, and instead we live in a world where our bodies, and our sexualities are policed, and too often used against us and to control us. But if we want that to change, if we want to live in a world where our vulvas are only as scandalous and threatening to our reputations as our elbows, maybe policy should lead the way.


The other question, and this is one that is made explicit by German lawyer Katya Weber, is how do we define an intimate photograph? For a lot of people, maybe it's determined by the level of nudity. But who gets to decide that a photograph of a breast is more intimate than a photograph of that person crying, or a photo of them holding their newborn baby?
Moreover, and this is what really worries me, is the comparison made to data protection laws. Who decides that a nude photograph is a more intimate piece of information than a conversation? Whether it's some hot and heavy discussion of sexual fantasies, sharing our darkest childhood traumas, deepest fears and wishes for the future or just general shit talking about a mutual friend, we tend to share a lot of private information with our romantic partners. What else can we choose to revoke when things turn sour? Should we have the right to order an ex to remove all trace of our communication, or is that crossing into Eternal Sunshine territory?
Maybe we also have a right to hold on to the mementos from past relationships. We need to be allowed to to remember, to treasure the little things -the love letters, the locks of hair, the screenshots from that Skype chat when you were long distance that Summer. Or am I the only one who'd like to look back nostalgically on a photo album of dick pics in thirty years time, like I'm in a Barry's Tea commercial?

"Did dad take this?"  

"No, that was... someone else."

The girl is back in town.

I have been home about six weeks now.
Well, five if you take into account that the day after I got home I left to visit friends in the UK for a week.

It still feels a little unreal, in a way. I spent two years working with the same bunch of terrific people, meeting the same wonderful friends at the same favourite bars, and now that's all over, gone. That's a weird feeling. I know a lot of people talk about life being a series of chapters and how things change, but I think for a lot of people that's a smoother, more gradual process. When you're someone like me -and I refuse to call myself a traveller, as that conjures up images of someone living out of a backpack and scuba diving and getting one of those real, traveller tans -and that's not what I do.  I move to cities and I find an apartment and an ordinary job and I meet ordinary people and do ordinary things. And I love that! I love ordinary. But sometimes people confuse air miles travelled for adventurousness. So I don't ever call myself a traveller, I call myself a mover. And when you're someone like me, a mover, you get used to the chapters ending abruptly. Most of my chapters have ended the exact same. My dad picking me up from the airport. My mom making a big fuss over me and asking me if she can make me a sandwich. Us all in the kitchen joking about how the dog still seems to remember me, anyway.  It's the exact same every time, and the similarity is more remarkable than the frequency.

The first few days are all novelty. The first bag of proper chipper chips, catching Reeling In The Years on TV over dinner, the first trip into Penneys that I've been looking forward to for months. And then it normally gets old very quickly for me. Even if I have psyched myself up for the return home, the enthusiasm usually fades within a week. I'm not going to talk shit about Ireland. I've been asked a hundred times by a hundred different people why I keep leaving, and I don't think I've ever done a good job of explaining myself. I have just always been happier when I'm elsewhere.

And now something has changed. And for the first time in my life, I don't have a plan to leave. My cards are laid out on the table and I don't have any more visas or one way flights up my sleeve. And I like it.

Or at least in theory, I like it. In reality, I have barely seen any of my friends -that is the few friends I have that are still in Ireland - and I am ridiculously busy with work and more stressed than I have ever been in my life. I'm also paying more for rent in Dublin than I have ever paid in any other city, while making less money than I've ever made in any other city, but shur, what can you do and all that.

Still, having a job and a place sorted within a month of getting home isn't anything to complain about. Seeing friends -and, perhaps more importantly at this stage, making friends will hopefully come in time. And with no plans to leave, time is one thing I have plenty of.  What I know is I'm very happy to be here. I want to get to know Dublin the way I knew Chicago, I want to spend weekends exploring it like I did Seoul. I want to become as nostalgic for the Liffey as I am for Lake Ontario.

And it's already happening.

Packing #onemoretime