What Women Want.

Posted by alexandrajeancoffey on April 12, 2010 · 7 Comments 

I was approached yesterday via email by the producer of the SBS TV program, Insight for my ideas and thoughts on What Women Want.

Which reminds me to correct the great number of typos I have in this blog now that you know, a lot more people are reading it.

So I’ve spent a great deal of time since reading that emailing trying to think of a response.

I thought of Woody Allen’s feature film ‘Vicky, Cristina Barcelona,’ and Cristina’s character, played by Scarlett Johansson, who only seems to be able to articulate what she doesn’t want.

I then thought of what I have wanted in the past, and tried to draw some parallels between then and now. See what’s shifted.

I then realised that I was only really thinking about what I wanted, which was hardly the question posed.

So what do women want?

I thought a big, obvious one might be monogamy.

I’ve always wanted monogamy. But then I thought of my single, celebate and seemingly happy polyamorous friends and decided that ultimately we can’t all want the same thing.

I don’t actually think polyamory works. I’ve seen it in motion amongst my own friends and amongst an older generation of family friends. And it seems pretty fucking complicated and ugly if you ask me. I think it takes a great deal of courage and creativity to make a relationship work with just the one person. The kind of courage and creativity I really admire. Plus, this was how I was raised.

My parents have been together for 30 years. They’ve shared a bed, a business, they’ve raised three children and three dogs. And they still like each other. And I have, from a few recent encounters, learned that they’re still quite sexually active.

But not everyone wants what their parents had. We all know that for certain.

So what do all women want?

I had the rousing misfortunate of having to walk through Kings Cross to Elizabeth Bay on Saturday night to meet up with a friend.

Now there is a place where there are indeed plenty of women, most of whom, I thought at the time, were probably still very much in the throws of figuring out what they wanted. Not yet quite sure.

The Cross has always struck me as a pretty ugly place. Not quite as ugly, however, as Tokyo’s red light district, Roppongi.

Roppongi is really ugly. Really dark. Really sordid. I worked there for 10 days once upon a time. I’d answered an ad in Drum Media for a cocktail chef position in a western bar. Aware at the time that the job may have been bogas I had a plan b in the likely event that things turned pear-shaped. And they did.

Women don’t make drinks in Japan. They hostess. You can make drinks but you’ll never make any money out of it and no one ever tips.

I’d finish my shift at this bar around 5am every morning. I’d walk to the train station through the streets lined with gommi, watching these masssive black crows rummaging through the rubbish for feed. They’d squark loudly in a tongue I was certain was English. It often sounded like they were saying, “Death, death, death…”

After 100 hours in this evil, evil place I announced to the owner that I didn’t really think Roppongi was a place for women. Or at least, I didn’t really think it was the place for me.

He laughed at me.

He said Roppongi was full of women, and made for men. That women could capitalise on this. That this was how the system worked.

I highlighted the fact that that was precisely my point. That I hadn’t moved to Japan to capitalise in on being a girl. I’d moved there to write.

Again, he laughed at me.

And then refused to pay me.

I was chasing that money for weeks and weeks and weeks.

I eventually, under the instruction of my gorgeous flat mate and new found friend, Shun, approached the Labor Administration Board in Shibuya and filed a complaint against the establishment. A letter was sent to my charming British manager within 24 hours instructing him to pay what I was owed or face libel as I was, at the time, only 19, a minor in Japan.

The legal drinking age in Japan is 20 and they knew that they could get in to a lot of strife as they were breaking all number of laws operating that establishment the way they were.

There were loads of ugly happenings going down in that particular part of town which I will detail further in my book, not here.

So anyway, the owner eventually agreed to meet me late one night to hand me the 100,000 yen he owed me. Some $AUD1,500. at the time.

I insisted we meet somewhere neutral in broad day light thank you very fucking much.

A Ghanian man pulled up outside Almond Cafe, a rather famous meeting spot at Roppongi crossing, late one afternoon in a big black van with tinted windows. He wound down the window and called out my name. I walked over to the van, stared at this guy, hoping this would surely be the end of this particular saga. He handed me an envelope and said, “Count it.” I did. He then said something that kind of took me be surprise. He said, chewing his tongue, as Ghanians in Roppongi tend to do, “I have a sister. About your age. I wouldn’t let her work here either.” And with that he wound up the window and drove off.

I was young at the time, but the experience really did start me thinking about what I actually wanted out of life. And how things were different in Japan for women. How things were actually probably different for women all over the world.

Really different.

I still think you’re better off being a homosexual black man in that country than a Caucasian western woman, but again, a story for another time.

My boss actually stalked for a bit which was weird. I think he was a bit besotted by Australian women, and he did do a lot of cocaine, something I knew very little about at the time.

He’d phone me late in the night and tell me that I’d never find what I was looking for. Never get what I wanted. I found this kind of behavior odd because he was married, and because he’d never really asked me what I wanted.

So back to the question.

And perhaps let me attempt to answer it with another proposition of sorts.

Let’s forget that men are supposedly from mars and women, each and every last one of us, supposededly from venus and consider this for a moment…

I think what women want is actually what men want.

I started this blog this afternoon following a light lunch and a morning yoga session. A good friend of mine, gawd bless her little cotton socks, has been driving down from Newcastle to try this Mystery Wonder Thang and has, in the past week, made the sojourn down the F3 to get all hot and sweaty with me in The Torture Chamber on three separate occasions. Impressive. I know.

I had to make up a session today by doing a double (as I’m doing 30 classes in 30 days as part of this 30 Day Challenge)and I skipped yesterday due to a rather banging hangover… so… today I went twice.

This friend and I came back to my place following this afternoons class, sat down to a pot of macha and some how got on to the topic of dissociative behavior.

She’s currently reading my favorite book of all time– Oliver James’ ‘They Fuck You Up.’

http://www.selfishcapitalist.com/they_f_you_extract.html

James starts the book by relaying an anecdote about a friend and colleague of his, Rufus May who developed schizophrenia in his late teens– as most schizophrenics due– and consequently managed to complete a degree in psychology, keeping his illness a secret– and reversed his own schizophrenia.

Since the publication of James’ book May has written and published a memoir of his experiences with schizophrenia, which I am yet to read.

James begins the story by writing about May’s ultimate dissatisfaction with his life, which he, May, believes lead to his creation of a Fantasy World.

Initially, he writes that the fantasy was born of boredom. Boredom at work, boredom at school, boredom in life.

Out of this boredom he, May, created a dissociative reality to cope.

He didn’t work in a factory, he worked in a detectives office. He wasn’t sent out to collect parcels and milk, he was sent on very serious and important secret missions. The fantasy, he writes, escalated as the boredom continued, ultimately reaching a point whereby he was convinced the fantasy world was in fact his Reality.

Street signs were secret messages, written just for him. A stranger scratching his nose on the tube was another secret message, intended just for him.

I’m sure you get the picture.

I’ve experienced very similar states of boredom myself and when ever I’m asked why I chose– at the ripe old age of 19 to relocate my entire life to Tokyo without knowing a soul– my answer is simply– I didn’t want to be bored anymore.

Which is true. I didn’t. And I was. Very much so.

I’ve also been acutely aware of my own Fantasy World and the dangers this kind of fiction can perpetrate in my own Reality.

Just prior to resigning from my full time job recently I was establishing all number of wild fantasies– and I knew why– and I knew where this kind of behavior would lead me.

I don’t want to spend my life imagining.

I don’t care to spend my days fantasising.

I don’t want to walk through the city with my iPod on, imagining I’m a published author, imagining a life in Europe, imagining a dream partner and a nice garden full of beautiful, living things.

I’d actually like to live it.

And I actually think that that is what both men and women want. An exciting Reality.

My old man emailed me today about my blog. Said perhaps it was time to go find Leonard Cohen.

I have just now got off the phone to my chuffed 6ft2 girlfriend. She asked me what tonights blog was about. I told her. To which she said, “Speaking of fantasies, my friend… I think you’re old man might be right… Go get Leonard Cohen.”

Hydra.

NB: Can someone remind me to write about fantasy and music tomorrow?

oyusami. x.

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