Introducing...Ann* (not her real name). And Tom Cruise* (not his real name either).

You know your reputation is in the toilet when someone sends you a tale of bad sex, unsolicited.  Why, you ask, would a lady feel compelled to do this?  That's exactly what I asked her, once I was done laughing.  She proceeded to point out the numerous tales of bad sex on this here blog, to which I responded, aha.  Ladies and gentlemen, my lovelies, this is now, officially, where (y)our bad sex comes to die.  It's bloody brilliant!  Or not, who knows?  Moving swiftly along.  This tale; it's short, it's not sweet, it is hilarious and it's oh so sad, but only for Tom Cruise*.  Ann, short for anonymous (she has no intention of sticking her name, real or imagined on this little piece of brilliance), is one of you silent lurker types who like to wander the corridors all stealthy like, apparently taking notes to use against me at a later date when I run for president (evil little buggers).  This is her contribution to the sewer, a refreshingly honest take on sex between consenting adults and all (well, some) of the perils that lie therein.  Don't be scared, this tale is neither crude nor rude (who knew it could be done this way?).  Enjoy, then dive into what I suspect may end up being quite the raucous conversation down below (my hand is already in the air, I have muchos questions...).

Disposing of...

So I rise to go pee and in my toilet bowl, there is a used condom staring back at me. I am stunned. No, not at the condom, but at the location. Who, in their right mind, disposes of a condom in the toilet? Well, at least he didn’t flush the toilet so it is easy to wear a plastic bag, and dispose it properly. Oh wait, this hits me that he didn’t flush the toilet! Now I am wondering which is worse... is he one of those people who don’t flush the toilet after peeing? But at least the non-flushing will not lead to a clogged up pipe system in the future... So why did he just leave it there, like seriously, where does he expect it to go? Sigh. There is so much to teach this guy, I thought he was a man, but it just hit me he is a boy.

Wait, I just got a flashback. We have been walking the corridors of the workplace, and sometimes he pops into the gent’s and each time he comes out, his hands are completely dry. Which is odd because our hand driers take forever to work; there are no paper towels to be seen around! What a pet peeve! A non-flusher and non-hand washer... I should have known, but perhaps lust, like love, is like wool over the eyes of the beholder. I should have known he was a boy and not a man!

Okay this post is now becoming bad poetry so let us get to the crux of the matter. After all the preliminaries had been set aside, we set a date and time. My place. We had dinner that I had made. We started making out. The kissing wasn’t too bad, but you could tell he has been watching too many movies because, ladies and gentlemen, kisses shouldn’t start all at once unless you were out somewhere building it up and the passion is bridling. But from a banal dinner (there were no candles or such), the tension should be allowed to build. Our movie star firmly planted his mouth on mine and we could hardly breathe. Naturally matters progressed to the bed where you think, okay, slow down, but no, the scene has to act out like in a movie, clothes are being pulled off faster than the speed of light. I tried to put away my glasses safely on the table, but Tom Cruise was having none of that, on the floor they went (he, later on, stepped on them on the way to un-flush the condom). The lady received one lick of a nipple and that was all that counted as the foreplay, before our hero swiftly wore the said condom and in the same manner proceeded to thrust for at most 4 minutes. I thought he had stopped to, you know, change position or something, but no, it was over.

I guess it is partly my fault too, I should have taken control, slowed Tom Cruise down, showed him how it is done. He has potential, I think, but I don’t feel like teaching a man who is around 30 the basics of sex (you can’t learn these things from movies guys, the movies are edited!). However, I am still recovering from the trauma of a condom in the toilet, unwashed hands (I picture crawlies on unwashed hands, is it just me?), movie-star tendencies of breathless kissing and flying clothes, consequently, shattered glasses (do you know how much a decent pair of spectacles cost?), and worst of all, I still can’t get the question of “Hii ni nini?” in response to the salad that I served, the man has never had raw vegetables. Gosh, I thought that we are now all beyond the village ways and into the world of sophisticated dining, Caesar's salads et al? This is where you just ask, kai ni kii?

From now on, the get to know phase will include questions like, do you know what salad is? How do you dispose a condom? I need someone to help me wrap it all into diplomatic language. Suffice to say, there were no sleepovers that day. This post (This is about (bad) sex) should all make us better lovers, I hope. Happy sexing ladies and gentlemen.

Knocking on Heaven's Door.

I don’t handle grief well.  I'm not sure anyone does, but I am particularly bad at it.  I alternate between wallowing in sadness for a few minutes, then I forget all about it for days, blocking it out completely.  It's not conscious, I think, I suspect it's how I process loss, putting it off until I'm finally ready to deal with it.  Problem is, I'm never ready to deal with it, and I don’t think I ever will be.

Mama, take this badge off of me,
I can't use it any more,
It's getting dark, too dark to see,
I feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door...

I've been working like a dog for the past couple of months.  Long days, working weekends, working nights, the works.  I haven’t had too much time to sit and think too much about everything that's been going on, and while part of me was happy for the distraction, part of me knew it was temporary.  Eventually, Francis was going to catch up with me.  That's his name.  Francis.  An old friend, brother almost.  Our relationship was one of crass humour, brutal honesty and more alcohol than is considered wise by saner (read, sober) people.  He was my brother's friend, which would make him my brother by extension, except Francis wasn’t, how do I say this, very brotherly.  He was that smooth pal your brother has, the one who you were always warned to stay well away from, because he was a bit of a ladies' man (read, man whore).  Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.  Listen here, every woman has that friend of her brother's she crushed on hopelessly when she was a teenager, the hot one who had loads of girls.  Usually said friend didn’t know you existed, being that he was older and unconcerned with the little girl making doe eyes at him, but as you got older, young adult rather than teenager, these boys/men started to eye you back, but only eye, because the bro code and such barred them from making moves on baby sisters.  Didn’t stop them from flirting, that alleged code, but it almost never became more than that, did it?  Wait, did it?  Maybe it's just that my brother's friends that were restrained that way.  Or maybe they weren't really flirting?  Oh my...

I'm laughing and crying right now, picturing him laughing at my nonsense.  He got my nonsense, Francis, he understood me.  Yes, I am mocking myself, and he would too, if he was reading this shit.

Francis was my brother's sexy pal, the one I crushed on as an awkward 18 year old, then got to know better, properly, as a 30 something year old.  He become that friend I could talk to, really talk to.  He was family, but not family, close enough that I didn’t have to pretend to be anything more than I was, but removed enough that I could talk about the more intimate bits without blushing.  We could talk about our personal drama in a way you simply can't with family, or even close friends; family don't need to know about the sex you had last night, no?  He did.  He knew about my errant escapades and my deep, dark secrets, some of them anyhow (no one knows it all, not even me).  And it was the same for him, he'd talk to me about the shit going on with him, things he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk about with those closest to him.  Like I said, he was family, but not family.

And now he's gone.

I'm getting to that part of life where we start to bury our friends, our parents, our siblings.  In the past five months I've been to four funerals, three in one month.  Thing is, before Francis', his was the last, the other deaths were somewhat removed from me.  I was sad, but I wasn't grieving, the people close to me were.  I moved on, life continuing with barely any change apart from the occasional woiyee in my head, when I remembered someone else's loss.  The arrogance with which we think life happens to everyone else but us.  After Francis, I continued as before, the occasional woiyee to myself, brief failed attempts at talking about it with friends who didn’t, couldn’t, understand my ramblings.  I was rambling, struggling to put this strange, vague feeling into language someone else could understand, something I could label neatly and file away, a picture I could frame to look at later on when life wasn’t quite so hectic and the wound wasn’t quite so fresh.  That's how I process, I file shit away, neatly.

As it turns out, grief has its own rules.  

And it is seldom neat.

Fast forward a couple of months.  

OGAO and my big sister have me hooked on The Voice, an American TV talent show with amateur singers and whatnot (like Idol, but without the irritating British dude in a tight t-shirt).  These two evil women have slowly but surely managed to turn me into a country music...I was going to say fan, but that would be too strong...admirer.  Stop judging me, country music has its charms.  I'm still trying to figure out what exactly they are, but at least now I know they're there, so, progress.  One afternoon a couple of weeks back, I went off in search of Blake Shelton's music (he's one of the judges on the show), this after OGAO sent me in search of his version of 'Footloose', a cover that is possibly the happiest song I've heard this year (watch it and tell me you weren't tapping your foot and grinning.  I did 'The Carlton', that's how happy it made me...).  Being quite impressionable and suitably smitten by Mr Shelton, and calling OGAO bad names in the process, I found a playlist of his older albums and set it on loop in the background as I pottered around the house, picking up clutter and randomly cleaning dusty surfaces, until a song came on that stopped me dead in my tracks.

You know when you hear something that cuts through all the noise in your head?  It's like someone suddenly muted everything but this one noise, a voice, a melody, an instrument...  I don’t have moments like this very often these days, a lot of the 'new' music I've been listening to is quite old, or a remake of something old, or something deliberately made to sound old and thus not new to my ears, not really.  These days I tend to get that 'Fuck me sideways!' feeling only when I listen to unfamiliar musicians in genres that are alien to me, like metal, or rap, sometimes pop, or, as was the case that afternoon, country.

I already knew the man has a gorgeous voice, I'd been listening to him for close to an hour, but something about the lyrics slapped me still.  Something about the longing, the loneliness...the sadness is almost tangible.   It took me back to a conversation I had with Francis, towards the end of last year.  We were in the bar up the road from my house, a ka nyama choma joint with old men watching news at the counter, and he was trying to convince me to get into country music.  He absolutely loved the stuff, as does any self respecting Meru man, and to make matters worse, he lived in Texas for 10 or so years.  “Country,” he drunkenly declared, “is in my blood.”  He then insisted I YouTube a Kenny Chesney (or someone such like) song, proceeding to narrate the song to me, using the video, explaining the 'great emotion' (his words) in country music.  We were in a bar, remember, at around midnight (it may have been closer to 2:00 am, but that’s beside the point).  We argued about country until he wrote me off as a useless philistine, making me promise to go learn more the following day.  I never bothered, for the record, I was content to hang on to my proud (read, ignorant) anti-country stance, partly to spite him.  I don’t know what exactly it is about this song that took me back to that particular conversation, but in those three minutes all the things I'd been carefully filing away started popping out of their neat little boxes.  I thought I was done grieving for Francis.  I thought, for some absurd and likely arrogant reason, that I had come to terms with the fact that he was no longer here.  But standing in my living room, listening to a song that eerily mimicked one of the last conversations I had with him, in said living room, well...

And I feel just like I'm living someone else's life,
Its like I just stepped outside,
When everything was going right,
And I know just why you could not come along with me,
This was not your dream,
But you always believed in me...

Last year we were both in transition, coming to terms with this age that sneaked up on us.  Our individual issues were completely different, but the underlying sentiment was almost identical.  The thing with getting older, in as much as you're proud of what you've achieved, most of us seem unable to shake off that picture we had of ourselves when we were young and idealistic, dreaming of a shiny happy life where our hair would never turn grey, our backs would never ache and we would never have to take jobs we detested to pay bills, hell, we would never have to pay bills period.  In your 20's the world is your oyster.  In your 30's the world could still be your oyster, if only (insert your choice excuse here...).  In your 40's the world is an oyster, but it's definitely not yours, and it never will be.  I'm not sure what the 50's bring, but from the wazees at the counter in the aforementioned bar, I suspect it has something to do with telling the oysters to go fuck themselves.  I can barely wait.  I'm swiftly headed out of my 30's and into my 40's and Francis was in his early 40's.  We were suitably morose at our prospects, which is to say we were fond of drowning our (real and perceived) sorrows with Jack and Freddie Jackson.

Slight detour.  This idiot pal of mine loved to taunt me with the fact that my Freddie is not a tall man.  Useless bugger.  Francis, not Freddie, Freddie is a small god in my eyes, quite literally now thanks to Francis, evil little shit.  Francis, not Freddie.  Ah!  Do you see what he havoc he wreaked?  Bloody nkt!  The moral of this story, don’t fuck with my small gods, yes?  Yes.  Detour over.

Another winter day has come and gone away,
In even Paris and Rome,
And I wanna go home,
Let me go home,

And I'm surrounded by a million people, I still feel alone and I wanna go home,
Oh, I miss you, you know...

I was growing old with Francis.   Those of you of a certain age will understand that vague statement.  Friends are harder to make and keep as you get older, friends who know who you used to be, and who you are, and who you want to be.  Who you've always wanted to be.  Those friends are damn near impossible to find later on in life.  He was one of too few friends who was willing to see all sides of me, especially the fragile, sometimes broken, always mending side of myself, the side I try my damnedest not to show.  And he was one of too few friends comfortable showing me that side of himself, making me feel better about my stumbles, if only because I no longer felt alone.  I miss him terribly.  More than I realised.  More than I can explain, despite my best efforts.

Mama, put my guns in the ground,
I can't shoot them any more,
That long black cloud is coming down,
I feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door...

Today's soundtrack, and the title of this post, is Bob Dylan's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'. This is what got me talking about Blake Shelton.  A couple of his contestants did a duet of the song on The Voice, a stunning rendition of a classic I thought I knew so well.  Now I'm a bit of a weepy bastard when it comes to watching things on the TV (don’t laugh, its a genetic trait. I get it from my pa, the old man cries at the drop of a hat. For real...), but even I was surprised at my reaction to this particular performance.  It was like they were singing to me, specifically.  At the time I didn’t think much of it, blaming my tears (yes, I cried, and no, I am not ashamed) on my father's dodgy influence and the brilliance of the two voices I was listening to.  It wasn’t until later that I realised this was the song that cracked the dam, put me in a grief frame of mind, so to speak.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door...

Francis is possibly the least likely candidate for heaven I have ever known, but I figure if any misguided deviant has the balls to knock on that particular door, knowing full well he has no business up in all of that (points heaven-ward), it would be him, bless his irreverent ass.

Day 7: Asante.

I have never been so happy it's Sunday evening.  Not even the thought of Monday morning tomorrow can bring me down.  Ladies and gentlemen, this little experiment is finally over, and the end couldn’t have come any sooner.  I didn’t think I'd live to say this, but I am all talked out.  Wait, that's not entirely true.  I have a few choice things to say about the idiot MPs who felt the need to act like fools last night, but that can wait.  Apart from that I have nothing to say.  Although there was this brilliant article I read about porn addiction and how its complete bollo...no...nothing to say tonight.  Tonight I let other people speak.  

I present to you part of my current playlist, inspired/created almost entirely by the brilliant people I follow on twitter (while it is still the work of the devil, I've finally accepted that I have sold my soul, and embraced it.  Most of it.  Well, about a tenth of it. I've digressed...).  I'd love to take credit for what you're about to see and hear, but save for putting them in some sort of discernible order, this list has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the kindness of strangers.  

That's also a disclaimer in case you get offended by something and you feel the need to rant huko chini.

First up, Ms Eartha Kitt.

Have you ever listened to someone and you sat up straight, goosebumps on your arms, back of your neck tingling?  That's what happened when I clicked play on this clip.  Ms Kitt speaks with such clarity its a little frightening, no one should be this sure of themselves, right?  Wrong.  We should all be so lucky to know our minds this well, and speak them without fear.  When I finally find the documentary from which this clip is taken, you best know I will return to this most fascinating woman.

In keeping with the theme of women speaking their minds, Ms Janet, who's been on my playlist since December.

I'm not sure how to explain just how important Janet, last name Jackson, is, I suspect I’ll have to do a separate post on her.  This woman was and still is the shit.  Ignore the dodgy Tyler Perry movies, her genius is almost as great as her brother's, hell, she only loses points because his voice was in a class of its own.  'You want this' is what a sexy video should look and sound like, oh ye younglings fond of girls shaking their thonged asses for the camera. I'm just saying, Nicki ain’t got shit on Janet, never has never will.  Useless fact, back in the day we all wanted to look like Janet. We didn’t have the body, or the face, but we had the braids, dammit.  Another useless titbit, I can still pull off the MC Lyte rap perfectly and my sister still does that kuteremka dance step like the aspiring video vixen she was back in the day.  Yes, my family is a bit special.

Special, in a good way, describes this chap quite aptly...

I had never heard of dub poetry before I played this clip, now I can't get enough of it.  This was a bit of a mind fuck for me, reggae plus rap/spoken word.   Its gorgeous music and words that make sense.  Brilliant, and so confusing to my lover's rock loving ass.

Speaking of spoken, this is my latest crush...

Smart, articulate, gorgeous, funny as hell, and she swears like a sailor.  How can I resist Staceyanne Chin?  I've had her playlist on in the background while I work for the past two weeks.  I think I love her.

I also love these two...

This reminds me of the Whedon version of 'Much Ado About Nothing', the one in B&W.  It's the rapid dialogue cum poetry, fascinates me to no end, probably because I talk quite slowly (because I think even slower).  I figure if poetry reminds me of Shakespeare, good Shakespeare, and mind you I struggle with the bard, then it's a keeper.  These two are brilliant.

Speaking of brilliant...

So I've been getting music lessons of sorts from these two junkies I follow, they who like to fuck up my playlist at random, because they can.  Its a bit fuzzy how I ended up at Chuck Brown (it probably had something to do with Chef, the movie), but I’m glad I did.  This is funk, pure unadulterated funk.  As is this one...

You know how you click a link to prove someone wrong?  I clicked on this because I thought there is no way it could be anywhere near as funky as he claimed it would be, its a random white dude for crying out loud.  I now have all of Mayer Hawthorne's music.  Woi.

I could keep going, but I suspect I’m already pushing it. One last one, to say asante, for keeping me company this week.

Thank me later.

Day 6: syn·co·pa·tion

Ooh, I miss that syncopation,
I guess I'll never really understand,
She gave no indication,
that she was loving any other man...

Folks, these musicians have been lying to me all my (not so) innocent life. When I first heard this song, 'Syncopation', I thought the word meant in sync, as in, together. It's a bloody love song, for crying out loud, what else could the word possibly mean? Then I'm googling the lyrics, last year, getting ready to stick it in a post and lo and behold, that is not what the word means, at all.

syn·co·pa·tion [sing-kuh-pey-shuh-n]

noun

1. Music. a shifting of the normal accent, usually by stressing the normally unaccented beats.
2. something, as a rhythm or a passage of music, that is syncopated.
3. Also called counterpoint, counterpoint rhythm. Prosody. the use of rhetorical stress at variance with the metrical stress of a line of verse.

Simply put, syncopation is a general term for "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur."  Wikipedia 

Now I ask you, how does the man miss a disturbance? Is a disturbance not a bad thing, sir? Bloody nkt! I'm starting to wonder about his Caribbean woman now, in light of his comprehension problems, perhaps she was from Sudan or something. Don’t look at me like that, you don’t know where I’m coming from. Billy Ocean practically a small god when I was growing up. When this man sang about the mythical love zone, I was the idiot looking at his curly kit and thinking how lovely it would be to pat (dry). This man was the man! And this song was a lovely tale of longing...

When she holds me, her body does strange things to mine,
When she loves me, then I know she's one of a kind,She's really special,

She knows what good love is all about,
Ooh, yeah...

Happy love song, without a doubt. Or not. In verse two he reveals...

I can't imagine, my baby with somebody new,
Oh, no, no. I'm so confused, that I don't know what to do,
I took love for granted,
and now I'm left here all alone,
Alone and crying,
You're all I'm wanting,
so girl won't you come back home?

Clearly my attention span as a child was wanting. If I had stuck around long enough I might have realised that this was not a happy love song, more a tale of abandonment, and longing. And it was a bloody riddle.

I wrote that intro ages ago, and then I tossed it in the trash once I realised the song and the post didn’t fit together. Problem is, as with all good songs, Billy was stuck in my head, and the bloody word with him. It's such a lovely word this, syncopation. Musical, no? It got me thinking about music, and why we love what we love, what makes one song a good tune and the other a mess of sound. Don't fret my pet, this post isn’t about music, it's about dating. Why do we pick the people we pick to date? More to the point, why are we often syncopated with the people we date? (Syncopated is a real word. Yes, I saw you frowning.) Is that disturbance in the rhythm the key to a good rhythm?

Do you ever get the impression you and your lover are not in sync? I do. All the time, man. If I had to point out the one thing that went wrong in my relationships over the last couple of years it would be this, we were not in any sort of rhythm, all the damn time. Sure, there were odd moments of happy melding of mind (and body...), but for the most part I felt like I was in a reggae song and the bugger was playing classical music (I can't think of two more different genres). When I was getting excited and falling, he was getting cautious and pulling away. When I was hesitant, he was barrelling full steam ahead, scaring me off with his enthusiasm. When I was committing, he was still playing the field. Any example you can think of, odds are I’ve been there, done that, read the book, saw the movie, went to the damn theme park and bought the fucking t-shirt. And why exactly do I tend to end up with discordant partners? This is where it gets good. I’ve always believed that the best matches are two people who are happy to be together while remaining individuals. That 'and two shall become one' story has never held any appeal to me. Why would I, fully formed brilliant creature that I am (ahem) want to become part of some mutant creature with 'one heart'? Then what the hell have I being doing with my life all this time, I ask you? I should have just stayed home knitting sweaters, no? Before you laugh, I’d just like to point out that I can knit like a mother..., but I still went out and got me some other interests and skills, because that's what life is about, no? I figure, until I'm a complete person, only then will I be able to have a complete relationship.

Yeah...no.

The more complete I get, the more I find out I will never be complete. There’s no end to this growing (up), is there? I’m pretty sure I will never get to that day when I can sit back and say I’m done. Strange thing is, I’m fine with that, these days anyhow. I have to be completely honest with you, these days I love knowing I don’t have it all figured out, it means I get to keep learning, plus I can't be held criminally liable for any of my frequent fuck ups (ignorance can be a defence, if you play dumb enough, and flash some bosom). Haven’t I told you how much I love to learn? That's how I finally figured out that the complete relationship is a bit of a myth, like unicorns, only less pretty. Complete implies finished, which implies static, which implies dead. Dead relationships aren’t relationships. That analogy may have run away from me, and disturbingly fast. Moving right along. My (possibly misguided) independent streak is why I always look for similarly minded independent types, which would be great except for the minor matter of, well, independence. People who don't want to couple tend to make lousy coupling partners, if only because they don’t see the need to couple. Folks, stubborn and stubborn rarely make a good match, is all I'm saying, but dammit if it doesn’t always make for interesting matches. Troubling matches, but interesting all the same.

For those of you playing the song (all two of you), listen to this bit at 3:19 (ignore the lyrics, listen to the music)...

Ooh, how I miss that syncopation.
(Baby's found another.)
(Baby's found another.)
(She's found another lover.)
Ooh my baby.
Woooh, how I miss that syncopation...

My understanding of syncopation is that 'tripping over itself' rhythm, kinda like they're skipping beats every so often, like a scratched CD, but somehow not skipping anything. It sounds broken, yet whole. This is not a technical description, clearly, but it might be the closest analogy to the nature of relationships I've made yet. This is what my relationships feel like most times, skipping, tripping, slightly unpredictable, not entirely settled. When I was 10 years younger and much more dramatic, it was the most exhilarating feeling ever. I loved the inherent instability of the awkward pairing of two idiots who wanted to be together, yet didn’t, it made me feel blissfully untethered. These days, however, not so much. Listen, I'm all for a little disruption once in a while, but tripping all day every day? No. That requires way too much effort, effort my old ass has no time for. These days my theory is simple, if we're not in sync, then maybe we shouldn’t be syncing.

Or not.

I’m not sure.

I started this post off as an anti-syncopation ode. I was ready to declare that in the year of (y)our lord 2015, I was no longer going to date buggers who couldn’t match my rhythm perfectly, nor I theirs. To hell with this never ending quest for like minded independent (read, stubborn and unyielding) spirits, I was convinced that I was going to change my ways and become a 'one heart'-er. In this year of (y)our lord. Then I sat back and listened to Billy a couple more times. The reason this song is so brilliant is because of the syncopation, without it this would be just another bland love song, monotonous woowoowoo bullshit. Put differently, breaking the rhythm makes the rhythm better, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. See, now I finally understand why he's pining for this woman...

You see I never had a lover
who could make me over like this, like this...

Billy didn't lie to me (thank you, gods of all things R&B), disturbance is something worth pining over. Disturbance, it seems, is a good thing. Lovers don’t have to be perfectly matched, if anything they work better when they're not. Ignore everything else I may have said tonight to the contrary.

Day 4: I CAN make you love me, if...

I knew if I waited long enough, and prayed to my gods hard enough, that one day someone would figure out how to make a man (or a woman, who knows?) fall in love with me. I knew this day would come, and it finally did. Strictly speaking, that day came 20 years ago, but let's not split hairs. It's official people, a couple of questions and four minutes of gazing into someone's eyes is all you need. Can I get an amen?!

As tempting as it is to use Foreigner as today's soundtrack, I shall curb my fondness for 80's pop ballads and use a 60's soul classic instead. Granted, I'm using the cover done in 1982, but it's not a ballad so...

I need love, love, ooh, to ease my mind
And I need to find time
Someone to call mine

My mama said...

Back in 1997, a couple of scientists conducted a study on close relationships, not specifically on romantic relationships, eventually creating a set of 36 questions that, when asked in sequence, create closeness between the respondents. Simply put, the questions help in bonding. Dr Aron explains (36 Questions for Intimacy, Back Story):

The basis of the 36 questions is that back-and-forth self-disclosure, that increases gradually (not too fast), is consistently linked with coming to like the other person you do this with. We just made it a systematic method that could be used in the lab. In more recent research by Harry Reis and colleagues, another factor is also proving very important - being responsive to the other's self-disclosure! These factors are important for both starting a relationship, and even more important, for its continued quality.

She then goes further to explain that this is not a recipe for love...

We had not created the 36 questions to help you fall in love. To do a good job of that we would have needed to do a study with people who, above all, came into it really wanting to fall in love, and we were not in that business!

The reason for that disclaimer is this article, causing a great deal of buzz the past two weeks, To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This, in which the author describes trying out this experiment, albeit in a more casual setting, and falling in love.

I first read about the study when I was in the midst of a breakup. Each time I thought of leaving, my heart overruled my brain. I felt stuck. So, like a good academic, I turned to science, hoping there was a way to love smarter.

You can see how I got hooked by this article, no?

I explained the study to my university acquaintance. A heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors. They sit face to face and answer a series of increasingly personal questions. Then they stare silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The most tantalizing detail: Six months later, two participants were married. They invited the entire lab to the ceremony. “Let’s try it,” he said.

You're loving the science too now, aren’t you? But wait...

Let me acknowledge the ways our experiment already fails to line up with the study. First, we were in a bar, not a lab. Second, we weren’t strangers. Not only that, but I see now that one neither suggests nor agrees to try an experiment designed to create romantic love if one isn’t open to this happening.

And so it came to pass that 36 questions later, plus the recommended four minutes of staring into each other's eyes, the happy couple was suitably enamoured with each other and are now in love. Aaaaawwww...

Now, the romantic in me was slightly wet of eye at the end of that article. The cynic, however, she that writes this blog, she was having none of it. '36 whatnow?' she scoffed. I went off in search of the questions, and the original study, convinced it was all a load of guff. Not so much as it turns out.

The questions are grouped into three sets of 12 questions each, of slowly increasing depth, starting off with a simple, 1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?, graduating to 13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?, with the last set starting off with, 25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling ...” By the time you're on the last question, 36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen., you've pretty much gone past most of the boundaries you normally maintain when you meet someone new. The idea behind this is quite simple, the mutual self disclosure creates a feeling of intimacy between you. Incidentally, I can't find any reference to the eye gazing in the original study, but I skimmed through most of the methodology, so perhaps it's in there somewhere (shakes head vehemently). I'm leaving that bit out, it sounds a little creepy, even for me who loves to stare at people.

Question is, does this intimacy created by the question and answer sequence lead to attraction, or does the attraction need to be there from the beginning? Put differently, can you ask someone you like these 36 questions and get them to like you back? Come now, that's all we really want to know, isn’t it? The short answer. Perhaps. What's important is both parties have to willing to open up for this exercise to work, which then means you can't ambush that guy you've been stalking with a bloody questionnaire and expect the magic to happen. That said, assuming both parties are genuine and don't hold back, then, voilà! You'll fall in love like the author of that lovely tale, or, as was originally intended, you become friends. 

 The scientists issued a disclaimer at the end of their paper:

So are we producing real closeness? Yes and no. We think that the closeness produced in these studies is experienced as similar in many important ways to felt closeness in naturally occurring relationships that develop over time. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the procedure produces loyalty, dependence, commitment, or other relationship aspects that might take longer to develop.

You can't sue them if it doesn’t work. Now you know.

You can't hurry love

No, you'll just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
But it's a game of give and take

You can't hurry love
No, you'll just have to wait
Just trust in a good time
No matter how long it takes...

Can you make someone fall in love with you? 

 From the NYT article:

Most of us think about love as something that happens to us. We fall. We get crushed.

But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action. It assumes that what matters to my partner matters to me because we have at least three things in common, because we have close relationships with our mothers, and because he let me look at him.

I wondered what would come of our interaction. If nothing else, I thought it would make a good story. But I see now that the story isn’t about us; it’s about what it means to bother to know someone, which is really a story about what it means to be known.

It’s true you can’t choose who loves you, although I’ve spent years hoping otherwise, and you can’t create romantic feelings based on convenience alone. Science tells us biology matters; our pheromones and hormones do a lot of work behind the scenes.

But despite all this, I’ve begun to think love is a more pliable thing than we make it out to be. Arthur Aron’s study taught me that it’s possible — simple, even — to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.

Ms Catron seems to think so. 

I’m inclined to agree.

Don’t look so surprised.

What they describe here is not too different from what you experience during online dating, or a holiday fling cum love affair, or a long evening with good company. That intense rush you get from getting to know someone very well, very quickly, this is what its all about, see? This is why, she wags her finger, meeting strangers on the internet is so bloody dangerous, its an experiment! Wait, no, sorry, that's my conspiracy theory gear kicking in. Ignore that bit. Seriously though, internet dating, much like all dating, is basically one long questionnaire. You start off on favourite colours and before you know it you're talking about your pet dog Simba who was run over by your father that evening he came home drunk, and all this in a matter of hours. It's the Aron experiment, on computer. Same thing happens when you have a mind fuck night, talking into the wee hours with a (former) stranger about anything and everything. The questions themselves are not the point of this exercise, what matters is the order in which these, or any other questions are asked.

Dr Aron explains:

...please know that those 36 are only suggestions. If you are going to use this approach with more than one person, or more than once with a particular partner, you may need to make up new questions so your answers don't become rote. Whatever questions you use, they should gradually escalate in personalness. If you don't want to rewrite them, you could use every third or fourth from the list of 36, one or a few from each of the three sections, but always include the ones that build the particular relationship, such as the three things you both have in common.

What she's describing is exactly what we do when dating. We ask questions to find out about the other person, the questions getting more intimate as we open up more to each other, and the questions tend to focus on finding commonalities. All this experiment does is expedite the matter, says the non-scientist with a degree in google. It also explains why we bond closely with people who, a. ask us about ourselves, b. listen to what we tell them, and c. tell us about themselves in return.

No, I can't bear to live my life alone
I grow impatient for a love to call my own
But when I feel that I, I can't go on
Well, these precious words keep me hanging on, I remember mama said...

You can't hurry love...

Bottom line.  Dear Phil Collins, mama lied.  Love can in fact be hurried along.

Line after the bottom line.  Yes, I can make you love me, if, and only if you want me to.

Line after the line after the bottom line. I've been right all along, you foolish buggers, asking questions is the secret to love and happiness. If only you could hear me laugh my evil laugh right now... For the record, I am going to milk this story the entire year. Don’t look at me like that, this is manna from heaven, no? Exactly. I'm thinking a new Dr A series...