Let's talk about sex, baby...

8 octobre 2011

Let's talk about sex, baby...

Over the half-term holidays, I accompanied a school trip to Austria and
Germany and I had a fantastic time. Let me stop you right there: it wasn’t a
German trip – my school doesn’t teach the language – but a music trip, which
made it so much more exciting, and it was with sixth formers only... Bonus! I
could swear like a bitch without feeling bad about it! We had many activities
and visits linked to the music world, and the students were so into their music
that they would randomly sing or play something on the bus or while waiting for
our train... It was such a cool trip!

In Vienna, we visited St Stephen’s Dome, the houses of Mozart, Haydn,
Strauss, Schubert and Beethoven, the Winter Palace, the Summer Palace, we
attended concerts (Mozart and Strauss) and we saw Rigoletto at the Opera House.
In Salzburg, we visited the Cathedral, Mozart’s birthplace and we attended an
organ concert (Bach). In Germany, we went to Neuschwanstein to visit Ludwig’s
famous castle dedicated to Wagner. In Munich, we just chilled and went
shopping! Yeah! Ok, we also attended the city bells ceremony...

Now, as great as the trip went, I must say I felt really old during
these holidays. The students and we – as in Stephanie (the music teacher) and
me – kept on playing music quizzes. Basically, someone had to say a word and
you’d have to be the first person to sing a song with this word in the
lyrics... Simple, right? Well, every single time I sang a song matching the
word, the students would look at me blankly because they did not know the
song... And NO, it wasn’t because of my singing, thank you very much! They just
didn’t have a clue about my music references and I felt really shit about it...
And we’re not talking about random geeky Year 7 students who were born
yesterday, these guys have been on this planet for 18 years and they study
music! I mean, come on, they have never heard of Cher, Natalie Imbruglia, S
Club 7 or Wet Wet Wet... Ok, my references may be quite shit, but in my
defence, when S Club 7 were around, these kids were probably the main target
market – as they were something like 8 – and as for Wet Wet Wet, who hasn’t
seen Love Actually?! I mean, even if you’ve never heard of the band, you surely
know the song from the soundtrack, right?... And, wait for it, my biggest shock
came up when someone said the word ‘black’ and I started singing ‘You gooo back
to her, And iii gooo baaack tooo black’ and they all looked at me in a WTF
way... Come on, she died last summer, you just had to turn the radio on at the
time to hear any of her songs!... Anyway, I felt completely out of it and
stopped playing after a while, as it only made me upset...

Something I found really funny on the trip though is that all these big
18 year-old lads every now and then were coming to me to talk about girls and sex...
Can anyone be a more wrong person to ask?! They were asking questions such as:
‘Do you fancy Asian girls?’, ‘Have you ever dated two girls at the same time?’,
‘Girls prefer it when boys are shaved down there, don’t they?’... And I was
just like: ‘Well, boys, let me put it to you that I am a big fat gay and I only
do cocks!’... AS IF! I was so embarrassed about these questions that I would
give very ambiguous answers: ‘Well, I am not so keen on Asian PEOPLE... I am
too good to do such ANAL things as double dating... However, I do like nice
shaved balls, it’s easier to play with! Ha, ha, ha...’ And they would just
laugh along, thinking the latter answer was a joke... Bless. I don’t know why
but I think they had in their mind that I was this big time player, some kind
of expert in all things feminine... Well, they were not that wrong I guess...

Anyway, I found it really amusing, until our flight back to Shanghai. On
the plane, a rather pretty woman sat next to me, and we started chatting about
Shanghai, as she was going to live there for the first time, and I could relate
to her feelings, as I was in her seat two months ago... OMG, if you had seen
the boys behind her as I was chatting, I could barely follow the conversation:
they were making unsubtle gestures about her being fit, about how I had to ask
her out, about how we could make out in the toilets, etc. It was SO funny, I
couldn’t look at her without laughing, and she probably thought I was a weirdo
for laughing out loud when she told me how she decided to take the job in
Shanghai after breaking up with her boyfriend... I felt so embarrassed!