Warning: Political incorrectness and explicit language (= great fun)

Finally, I have arrived in gay Paris and the sun is shining (which it wasn’t about an hour ago, but let’s not ruin the romantic image). I am currently in the funky Bastille area in a friend’s humungously big apartment that makes me want to run bog laps around the living room.

I flew in from Glasgow today, after having presented a paper at a conference there. It went down fabulously. Not one person fell asleep during it! I couldn’t say the same for some of the other papers I saw during the few days at the conference however. Some academics bored me to tears. They should be laid out to pasture (I also say that so I can get their job one of these days: it’s a cut-throat business, baby you better believe it).

I had an insane amount of fun and met some great people. I should mention at this point that the theme of the conference was ‘queerness’. Make of it what you will (I certainly did, my paper had nothing to do with queer theory whatsoever). I was part of the minority – the straight contingency constituted about 15% of the populace, the rest were GBLTs (gays, bisexuals, lesbians and transgenders). I died and went to heaven once again where everyone talks about film, and all the men are simply faaaaabulous! What a faghag I am.

You know how there is always the token ‘black guy’ in a teen film? Well, I was the token straight female in what I like to affectionately refer to as my Glasgow Glamour Boys (GGB) – a party of absolutely gorgeous guys from all over (UK, USA, Italy, France – you name it, we had it). When the boys are prettier than you are, you’re in good company (until they start cracking onto men that you think are hot – then we straight girls definitely lose out). I’ll be catching up with some of the GGBs in Paris and London. One of my newfound friends, Sergio (hello there!), is going to take me to a gender fuck club in swinging London. I misheard him the first time and thought it was a sex club. He quickly corrected me there. My virginal eyes and ears would have had a conniption. I think this is the start of the Mis-education of Christina. There’s a first for everything!

I have never been to a conference where academics talk about ‘assholes’ and ‘fucking’ more times than the whole series of Queer As Folk put together. This conference gives a (w)hole new meaning to “asshole fucking” (there’s my ‘explicit language’ reference).

At one point, one of the plenary speakers got up to discuss Gus van Sant’s Elephant and how the camera is forever focused on the backs of characters so that we are essentially given a rear ‘asshole’ view (hence the queer connection). The speaker did his whole talk with his back to the audience.

“How dramatic and poetic – he’s showing us his asshole too”, I thought.

Then he said he had his back turned because he likes to hide from the audience. There goes the poetry of the epistemology of the ass (I’d like to footnote Chris for that one). I felt like a fly on the wall during the conference. Instead of a sweaty locker room, it was a flirty (and sometimes dirty) dance hall with a very big disco ball. No big hair though.

Back to the present: in less than 2 hours in Paris, I’ve seen more good-looking men than I have seen in 2 years back in Perth. I counted seven on the subway and at the Metro exit alone (even the ones with big noses look better than the ones back home). Time to start importing the foreign talent to break the ‘man drought’ to Australia. I’m getting whip-lash doing double takes. In my next life, I want to come back as a Parisian woman, or a very good-looking gay guy. They have all the best choices.

I think I’m going to like this city a lot. Correction. A LOT.

And for the record, I went to Glasgow hoping all the men would look like Gerald Butler or James McAvoy. Instead, they all looked like cousins of Ron Weasley…

P.S. If you cross-bred a midget with a lego set, you'd get the Glasgow subway system.