go to this: WE SEE YOU HAITI. L’union Fait la Force

I hardly ever write about events on here anymore because I'm trying to stay on topic, but please indulge me in making an exception this one time.

Come out next Thursday January 28th  to help raise money for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti.  All proceeds will go directly to The Red Cross.  

Thursday January 28th 10:00pm

Wet Bar, 106 Peter St

Featuring DJ's - Dr. Jay, Agile, P-Plus, Grouch, Lil Jaz, Dopey, DJ Riccachet & DJ Therap, Paul E. Lopes, Son of Soul and Dj Bunitall
Hosted By: Arcee and dscratch

Minimum $10 donation will be accepted at the door

If you can't make it, the lovely ladies over at coco&lowe have a list of sites where you can make donations. And a riveting blog, I might add. 

Meet the Family

With the holidays just behind us, family is a bit on my mind. I have a kind of love-aggravation relationship with my extended family and usually feel sick with dread when I know I have to spend time with them, but then when I actually see them I have an awesome time and love them so much. But my family is kinda...weird, to say the least. Which should mean that I fit right in but somehow doesn't quite work out that way.

Now in my family we have three kinds of people; stars, black sheep, and nonentities. I’m sure you can guess which I am. And this past year one of the brightest stars our family has ever produced got married. She brought her new husband to Toronto for the holidays (they live in DC) and my greatest Christmas joy was watching him watch us.

Although my family is a save haven for strays – at any gathering I will encounter at least two people I’ve never laid eyes on before - as a rule, we don’t bring significant others to family gatherings unless they are for real. There are a few reasons for this.


First, in my (extremely Christian) family, casual sex relationships is not the done thing. So when we’re having casual fun (which please believe we all are), trolling the evidence around for all the aunties to see is the quickest way to get your ass relegated to black sheep status (and no, that’s not how I did it).


Second, anyone we bring around the family is subject to so much SCRUTINY (it’s so bad it has to be all caps) that it’s just cruel to put someone through it if they’re not in it for the long haul.

Three, my family is a vortex that sucks in unsuspecting significant others quicker than you can say “hip hip hip hooray!”. One minute you’re a guest at Thanksgiving dinner, the next you’re making a presentation at the family meeting. Or in charge of planning the next family trip.  And once in, there is no out. My cousin’s ex-wife retained her star status after their (gasp!) divorce while I – a fully born Greene – am still a black sheep.

There’s one more reason we don’t bring SO’s to family gatherings until we have to and that is this: my family is effing weird. If you’re not Trini, not Christian, and not at least a little bit uppity you are going to a)stick out like a sore thumb and b)spend your day giving out side-eyes galore. No amount of preparation will equip you for the phenomenon of walking into my Auntie’s house on Christmas day expecting to open gifts and realizing 5 hours later that it’s not even close to gift-opening time. No pre-holiday pep talk is going to prepare you for the moment when you’re asked to make a speech, play an instrument, do a dance or distribute hand-outs. And nothing – but nothing – is gonna prepare you for the moment when my 300+ lb cousin comes crashing to her knees during Oh Holy Night.

Way back when I was too young to know better, I brought Snickers to a family gathering. It was a BBQ in a park and he wore a track suit. Makes sense right? He’s an athlete, we’re in a dirty park sitting on dirty picnic tables, what else is he gonna wear? But that outfit elicited such an enormous side-eye from our Chief Auntie that I never ever considered bringing anyone around again.

Now you would think, given all the craziness that goes on, that the idea of marrying and having an alternate family with whom to celebrate the holidays would be enticing. But for some strange reason, it’s not. In 34 years of life I’ve only spent one Christmas away from my aunties and it was no fun. I’ve spent more Chrsitmases away from my mother than from my aunts and cousins. So if I ever become seriously involved with someone, he’s gonna have to either accept the fact that we spend holidays separately, or get on board the crazy train. We welcome strangers, the weirder the better. But please believe I will wait until the ink dries on the marriage certificate and both rings are welded to my finger before I expose him to the crazy; just in case coming from an intensely Christian, amazingly weird, ridiculously formal family is a dealbreaker for him.

Is that wrong?

In through the Out Door

When I was young, oral sex was the thing no one admitted to. No self-respecting Black man would admit to ever eating a woman’s fruit – much less beg her to let him do it. And no good girl was going down because, of course, that’s nasty. These days oral is a no-brainer, or it should be anyway. To the point where I’m some women are getting bored of it. It’s too mainstream now. There’s a new player in the sexual liberation game and its name is anal.

It seems the world of women is separated into three groups – the have’s, the haven’ts and the would-nevers. Those who have have earned the right to feel smug and superior to those women who haven’t or won’t – by allowing their exit to become entry they have forever secured their spot in the world of the sexually uninhibited; no matter what else they will or won’t do. The would-nevers are probably smug in their “good girl” status. It’s nasty and they don’t do that so go find some hoe off the street if that’s what you’re looking for. The haven’ts are gnashing their teeth trying to figure out where they fit in…they haven’t, but does that mean they wouldn’t? Is it something to squander on a night of drunken after-club sex when you can blame it on the alcohol? Or something to be saved for that mythical magical one – the husband, the soul mate, the only man who has ever been up the bum?

These are the things I ask myself sometimes.

I have a lot of dirty male friends. And for whatever reason, we talk about anal sex a lot. No matter how many times we discuss it, I can never get over the fact that sometimes a girl will let a guy go up the bum the first time she f*cks him. Really?? Just all willy-nilly like that? But at the same time, I turn up my nose scornfully when I hear stories about women who are like “never! I would never! Just – ew!”. Amateurs.

My mindset lies somewhere in between. I’m not giving up my primo virgin um, territory to just any random that comes along (it’s the last piece of innocence I have left and I’m clinging to it for all it’s worth). But at the same time, I’m certainly not saving it for a husband who may never materialize. There has to be a middle ground and so I’ve compiled a list for you of the Top 5 Characteristics of the Ideal Ass-Taker.

1. The ideal taker of the ass-virginity is somewhere between a random and a soul mate. I don’t want to give up the ass to someone who will later break my heart so that for the rest of my life I have to say “and I gave him my VIRGIN BUM!”. But at the same time, I don’t want to give it to some random who probably collects asses like playing cards. It has to mean something to him.

2. The ideal ass-conqueror has to be persistent, but not pushy. I’m probably not going to say yes the first time around, but I’ll probably give in somewhere between ask #3 and ask #74. So he can’t give up, but he has to know when to ask.

3. The ass-explorer must be gentle. If you go tearing through my shit (pardon the pun) all roughshod I will stab you in the eye. While I’m all for a little rough-and-tumble at other times, this is one time where I want you to go all Brian McKnight on me.

4. The ass-breaker cannot be too well-endowed. My 8-inch plus guys are going to have to step to the back of the line on this one. Sorry guys, you know how much I love you but I can’t use you for this one. Where are my 1 and 2 inch willies? I have a job for you!

5. The ass-winner must be discreet. First of all, word on the street is that there can be some um, mess involved with this job. I need you to handle that on your own without mentioning it to me. I’m no would-never, but that’s nasty and I don’t want to know about it. And secondly, if you go to the sports bar with your friends talking about how you took Max’s ass last night I will, again, have to stab you in the eye. Discretion is the better part of ass-f*cking my friends.

Now you guys have been kinda quiet lately, but I want to hear from you on this one. Ladies – are you a have, haven’t, or a would-never. (If you're a punk shy you can just answer the poll in the right nav) And men – what say you on these requirements? Am I asking too much?

The Way Men Think Part II

Yesterday's post was rattling around in my brain for quite some time before my life calmed down enough to give me time to write it. While I was marinating on it, I came up with the idea for this post which I also wanted to call 'The way men think' and there you have it - a two-part series. Anyway. Here we go.

As a perpetually single hot girl with a...shall we say somewhat "open" point of view when it comes to sex and relationships, I've collected more than my share of two things - guy friends and disrespect. And how these two things play off each other is quite an interesting phenomenon...but I'll get to that in a second.

Disrespect is something I don’t blog about very often…mostly because it’s subjective. What to me would feel like a slap in the face is to other people noting more than a harmless joke. Case in point: a woman I know once casually mentioned to me that she doesn’t wear capri pants because her husband said they make her legs look like tree trunks. I asked her if she punched him in the face when he said that and she just gave me a puzzled look. See? Disrespect is in the eye of the beholder.

There’s no way a woman can be single and getting her swerve on and not run into disrespectful behaviour every now and again. Eff what you heard, most men cannot handle a sexually liberated woman and will do what they can to make her feel like a ho. They key is to remember that he is participating in the very same behaviour for which he is judging you. In other words, if I’m a ho, what does that make you?  Men never realize that while they’re removing a woman from their potential wifey list for being too easy that the woman might be doing the same thing back to them.

Anyway. The thing about most of my male friends is that they are also the perpetrators of the greatest disrespects against me. Without getting into detail in case they’re reading this, let’s just say that collectively they are guilty of the most grievous crimes ever committed against me. Why then, are they still my friends? A good question and another post for another day, but what it basically comes down to is compartmentalization.

Now one of my most favourite things to do in life is to tell my male friends stories about rude things that other men have done to me. Ladies if you’re looking for a knight in shining armour just try this out: think of the worst thing a man has ever done to you. Now go find that man and tell him a story of some other bad thing another dude did. The level of outrage and righteous indignation that you will see come out of him will make you feel like Dakota Fanning in that movie where Denzel Washington was hired to protect her. I tell you – it feels great.  Until you start to think about it.

The way men think is that there’s no issue with getting on their moral high horse when another dude does something f*cked up to his female friend…even if he’s done the same or worse to her a million times. More than that, they way men think is that it’s okay to also judge said female friend for understanding or forgiving the f*cked up behaviour of the next man, all the while conveniently forgetting that that same forgiving nature is the only reason he’s still around. I think of this as the male version of cattiness.

Now I should note here that I’m not in any way condemning men for their way of thinking – some of my most favourite readers are men and I certainly don’t want to piss them off. I’m just saying.

The Way Men Think Part I

Happy New Year Everyone!

I promised I'd be back in January and here I am. Things are finally settling down over in the three-dimensional world and now I can give you the attention you so rightly deserve. Hope you haven't given up on me!

Anyway. Okay so about a month ago my sister and I were headed to Jully's show at Nathan Phillips Square but when we got in her car it wouldn't start. The lights and the radio came on but it was just making some kind of weird noise and that's it. Now I'm no Monalisa Vitto, but I do know enough about cars to have at least a vague idea what's wrong when one dies. So when we called my dad to get an over the phone diagnosis, I was a bit skeptical when he started telling us it was the battery. Okay, I damn near shouted 'LIAR' into the phone. Despite my protestations that the lights, horn, etc. were functioning normally, he insisted that I bang on the battery cables with 'something heavy' and when that didn't work, call my ex-un-boyfriend/roommate/bff to give us a boost. We didn't.
Fast forward to the next morning when Marshie-poo and I call the tow truck. The driver comes and asks us what the problem is and we tell him it won't start but it isn't the battery. And what does he do? Spends about 10 minutes banging on the battery thingies and another 10 trying to boost it. While we stand around waiting in the freezing cold I might add.  As the long dramatic saga of getting the car fixed went on, various men that we dealt with persisted in investigating the health of the battery despite our - okay my - repeated assurances that we did not have a battery problem. 48 hours and a lot of standing around in the cold later, do you want to know what was wrong with the car? It was the starter. Yup.
Now if you read this story and thought that it would turn out that I was wrong all along and the battery was the problem, guess what? You're a man. That's just the way men think.
I have only one rule that I actually stick to in my dealings with men. I don't discuss cars, hip hop, or sports with them unless I agree with them or know nothing about the specific topic. Why, you ask? Because 99% of men do not give a woman's opinion on the aforementioned subjects any credence whatsoever. That's just the way men think. No matter how flimsy their knowledge of the subject may be, no matter how well-thought out and researched your argument is, that man is programmed to think that what you're saying is bullshit and he's either going to argue with you to the ends of the earth or wait until you're gone and spend hours looking for research that supports his flawed point of view. Either way, it's pointless.  Take my advice ladies, and hold your counsel when these topics come up in mixed company. Unless you feel like banging your head against the wall. In which case you should just do that. It'll hurt less.