Other People's Lives

I have had a horrible alcohol depression in the last 2 days. Today I feel ok. As I walked in the back gate at work this morning I felt happy. Sometimes it is so intangible and fleeting, but it is there nonetheless. Perhaps part of this shitty feeling is due to wiping the weekend out from drinking so much on Friday night. And I went somewhere that doesn't make me happy. But it is fascinating. But at some strange person's flat at 7 or 8 in the morning I felt sad. I looked out the window into an amazing hard and windowed space and thought about what it means to live in the city. And these people, the people who were there just struck me as lost, sad, lonely and desperate. There was debauchery, drug use and drinking at 8am, and I lay down and fell asleep. Funny how often you realise what you don't want to be by seeing others do it. They seemed to be living a horrible night time existence, that is unsustainable and uncomforting. I suppose we often play at being the things we are not. There were silly girls who reminded me of ** (a mythical name these days) with their ridiculous and embarrassing frilliness and their on the floor girl-play. It reminded me of parties I went to with **, and she was such an idiot, and performing the cute girl for all the boys, and I hated it, but they loved it. I hated it because I was too serious to be cute, and I wanted to be liked but was never prepared to sacrifice anything for it. And now I am all grown up, and looking at these girls and feeling repulsed and slightly angered, and eventually they will probably be embarrassed by it too. And then there are the men who fuck them. I don't want to make a judgment, but gutfully, I feel that it is horrible and sleazy.

I don't know why sleaze is something so abhorrent (perhaps that is too strong a word?), when often it is indefinable and almost invisible. It seems to be a presence, or something that you sense, without seeing. This word can make us ladies so angry with men, because we often refuse to recognise it in ourselves. We posit ourselves as powerless victims of sleaze. I know I have participated in my fair share of sleaze, albeit obliquely. But is it something we are repulsed and embarrassed by because we are always on the verge of it? Are we all prone to sleaze, the way we are prone to indulgence, selfishness, violence? Is it something we are scared of because we only just keep it at bay?

And guilt. Which sometimes seems like a quaint and anachronistic feeling, but which creates a position of power. I was thinking about this on Sunday, as I looked out the window into the garden. Sometimes I think I feel guilt as a form of control. If I feel guilt, then I must have some control over the thing I feel guilty about. Does the presence of guilt somehow negate or at least slightly alleviate the sleaze. I know people who feel no guilt about being sleazy, and that is scary, because it means unrestrained desire.

I don't actually know what sleaze is, but sometimes I sense it in people (including myself). Perhaps we find it repugnant because of the quality of desperation it carries with it. And I'm not sure why desperation is something that scares us and disgusts us. I sensed it everywhere on Friday night, in all those half smiles and meaty stares. And who can resist the allure of cheap charm in the middle of the night? Who can say that it doesn't feel good to be desired (actually, I think I can, but then I'm really fucked up about that.....)?