Fact or Fiction

Like most things in life, it's fun to figure out the rules as you go along, but I'd like to make it clear from the outset that this my bloguette is a blend of fact and fiction... have fun while you try figuring out the difference. To help you get started, here are a few FACTS and a few corresponding FICTIONS

1. I am gay
... therefore I believe that what Madonna produces is music.

2. I was born in Ireland
... and I'm a recovering alcoholic who is not longer Catholic and feels guilty about it

3. I am living in Paris
...because I can only live in cities with a thriving gay subculture

4. I’ve lived and worked in the Netherlands, England, Scotland, the United States, Russia, Australia, Spain, New Zealand before coming to France
... and it bothers me that in putting those countries in the order which I lived there, my list is not alphabetical

5. I’ve had three serious relationships; the first, with another student on an international exchange, lasted for six months; the second, an on/off affair with a work colleague, lasted for two years; the third, with a man that I met on a beach, lasted for three years
... and I’m getting better at serious relationships

6. I’ve never met anyone in a gay venue that I’d want to have a serious relationship with
... just as well, since I’ve ever met anyone in a gay venue that wanted to have a serious relationship with me

7. I ended all three of my serious relationships
... in a mature and sensitive way, at just the right moment, when the time had come for us both to move on

8. I quit a lucrative profession and sold my home in order to be free and travel, living life to the full each day
...and I am free, travelling and living life to the full each day

9. I’m quite happy to kill, clean and cook the animal, but don’t like the taste of meat (especially poultry) I love fish and veggies
... and a veg-aquarian fart is less objectionable than a carnivores’

10. I hate ice cream. It’s not so much the taste as putting something cold in my mouth, then feeling it go warm
... and I hate putting warm things in my mouth and feeling them get harder

11. I was a geeky teenager
... and I’m not a geek anymore

12. At school in the 70s, you got a beating if you didn’t declare yourself as a Mod or a Rocker. When asked by both gangs what I listened to, I thought I'd be clever and tell them the truth, that my favourite musical artists were those my mother and aunts listened to; Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, and (wait for it) Barry Manilow
... and the beating I got didn’t hurt a bit

13. My first ever live gig was… Five Star at the RDS, Dublin (I was 11 years old, okay?)
... and that is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever admitted to

14. My musical taste has improved. If I like what you do, I buy everything you’ve ever done. New Order, Prince, Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Ani DiFranco, Ryan Adams and Sufjan Stevens have been subjected to this treatment (that list is not chronological or alphabetical, obviously: system for catalogue? why, in order of discovery, of course)
... and my flatmates have all appreciated my taste in music, particularly that tendency to obsessively collect and overplay what I like. It has not contributed to the end of my relationships.

15. As a teenager, my favourite writers were Thomas Hardy and Fydor Dostoyevsky...
and I was cheerful and well-liked as a teenager

16. My favourite writer is Virginia Woolf. Other writers I appreciate include Shakespeare, Blake, Austen, Dickens and (still) Dostoyevsky
... and being Irish, I appreciate anything with a new take on the theme of exile, repression, alcoholism, Catholicism, guilt, sin and death

17. If pressed, I admit to admiration of particular works by Joyce, Yeats and Wilde
... but think that Irish authors contribution to world literature is disproportionate to the size of the country and the misery of those living in it

18. My favourite living authors include Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, Patrick McCabe, Ian McEwan and Annie Proulx
... all of whom I admire unreservedly

19. Before sleeping, I need to read something… anything
... but if I am sharing my bed with a sexy man, the reading requirement is waived

20. I last watched television back in 1992, while still at university. Of course, there are occasions (in airport lounges, at a hotel) where it’s there and switched on, so I don’t object. But I don’t have one in my house. I’ve never seen a single episode of Friends, Sex in the city or Desperate Housewives
... and life is much duller, and you're so much duller, if you don’t have a television to watch. Conversation with other people become stilted because you have nothing to talk with them about. Television is vital and important.

21. I have always enjoyed having sex in unusual and public places
... and I have fulfilled all of my sexual fantasies

22. I don’t find big-dicks are a great advantage. Quite genuinely unimpressed! There’s only so much you can do when it reaches a certain girth/length
... oh, but of course, I’m VWE myself

23. After my prostrate, the most sensitive part of my body are my ears
...and when it comes to sex (and hygiene) my ears get more loving care and attention than my prostrate

24. When I find myself attracted to men, 9 times out of 10 they have a particular shape ear
... and when I find myself attracted to men, 9 times out of 10 I do something about it

25. I am ticklish when nervous, something that has always made one night stands difficult
...and I am difficult when ticklish, something that has always made one night stands nervous

26. Great sex isn’t about the body, it’s about the mind (although a good body and a nice behind certainly help to get in the right frame of mind)
... and I’ve had so much great sex that I’m getting bored with it all

27. I don’t smoke. I never have tried and never will. Disgusting habit.
... and so I’ve never fallen in love with someone who smokes

28. I drink alcohol, and I’ve tried hash, speed and ecstasy (on one occasion each) However, I’m naturally curious about most things, and unnaturally cautious since I come from a long line of alcoholics and fear that addictions run in the family
Taking drugs has really changed my life. If you try speed or ecstasy, clubbing will never be the same again. Oh, and cocaine users make really interesting friends; great conversationalists.

29. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day: a good one night stand is not complete if you’re not given a decent feed the morning after. (I’ll have some muesli, followed by poached eggs and toast, then fruit salad with yogurt. And then, if we’re still in France, some decent pastries… or stroepwaffles if we’re in the Netherlands. Oh, and lots of coffee please, as long as it’s not instant or filter, in which case I’d rather have Earl Grey tea)
... but I’m not fussy about what I eat in the morning, whatever you've got in the fridge is fine.

30. I don’t consider myself to be romantic, but friends all say I’m the most romantic person that they know- worrying, I reckon- to the extent that they’ve copied things I’ve done for my lovers birthday or Christmas gifts since they can’t think of ways to impress their own significant others… for shame, for shame!
For my ow part, I become more romantic and less cynical as I get older

31. Of all the gifts I’ve received, my favourite is a painting given by my family on my 21^st birthday. It shows a scenic hill near to the village where I grew up, a place where I used to go walking with a man who was like my father (who died of lung cancer when I was only 11)
The love you take is equal to the love you make

32. Oranges are my favourite fruit. I love everything about them: the smell of their skin, the taste, the texture, the colour. Heck, I even love paintings of oranges. Did you know it’s possible to give someone a hard-on just by peeling an orange?
God is an Orange

33. Paris is my favourite city in the world
... but I’ll end up living back in Ireland again someday

34. I am thirty-four years old
... but of course I look much younger