MEN! MEN! MEN!

Dating was awful. I had fully committed to the game, and it wasn’t something I enjoyed. I think I just enjoyed feeling better than all these boys who were mid enough to swipe yes on my profile.

In the years of 2022-2024, I dated and swiped and messed around like it was my hobby. You know that feeling when you download ALL the apps and you’ve seen all 4 variations of the same profile because it’s all these losers that end up on your radar anyway. No hate (absolutely ALL hate) to the men who just stumbled upon me on the vast, embarrassing wasteland of Hinge, Bumble, OkCupid (no Tinder because I got banned for trying to reactivate a dormant account).

I’ve met boys who couldn’t hold a sentence together, insisting they were meeting me on a date to teach themselves how to socialise. I’ve met boys who lied about their height, face, occupation (working in finance is not the same as being an insurance agent). I’ve met boys who think coolness is drinking craft beer, listening to DeathGrips, staying largely silent but not having a single opinion on anything. I’ve met boys who insist that Nicole Liel and I are the same person (do not associate me with that influencer please). I’ve met boys who say they exercise but haven’t for the last 6 months because of a slip disc (and still tried to put his hand on my thigh).

Then I downloaded this fuckass app called Pure.

No more profile pictures. Everyone just there to try their luck. 8:1 man to woman ratio.

Instantly I felt wanted. It was the desperation to know what someone who could converse like I did looked like. It was the silver lining of finding a needle in a hay stack- that the man chatting with me secretly had tattoos and abs, that a man who wasn’t emotionally available could fall in love with me.

It was a discrete app for hook-ups that men had to pay for and women could use for free.

It was how I lost my virginity (it went moderately well thanks, till today I’m convinced he ghosted me because he liked me too much).

It was how I learnt that at one point of my life, I was desperate enough to go searching for true love like it was a dumpster dive.

Pure was very dangerous. Please never attempt it. But it put me at the frontline of danger, and it made me feel super ultra mega sexy! And it was free to use, so, cheers to that.

But it was through this fuckass app that my neurons lit up - my brain made the connection with my eyes and my eyes made a connection with my heart and depending on my mood, the rest of my body would light up accordingly. I was often glowing so bright, that red flags looked like stars, and “no” sounded like “maybe we’ll meet on the train and pretend we don’t know each other”.

Obviously I can’t share the devious details of my time on Pure. And read that as: obviously I cannot doxx the men I slept with

But it is where I learnt how sex is a dangerous thing. How the female mind is so capable of building mountains out of absolutely nothing, and the sheer talent I have within me to write SKIN.

If I showed you the photo of the man I wrote the song about, you’d divorce me. Thankfully I don’t remember his name; only that he had a receding hairline and that he still took part in cheerleading as a 30 something year old. Of course I started sleeping around only after him, but that man taught me a thing or two about having no boundaries and self respect.

I don’t look back on that time with pride (anymore), but I don’t regret it. My good friend Yasmine says that you should never regret things that you actively made a choice to do.

So yes. I don’t regret it.

I do regret working with another producer for the first version of SKIN. The version that, if you’ve heard before it was officially taken down from streaming platforms, had the MRT announcement in it. Talk about dancing with the enemy. I don’t like to talk about that version of the song, mostly because there isn’t much of a story beyond the fact that I decided to distance myself and my work from certain circles of people after my experience in the music industry.

So welcome to SKiiN. My attempt at rewriting a period of my life that was fraught with bad, worse and ghastly decisions. I have my favourite people on it now - Bani, my long time producer, Ben from The Astronauts, and Doja Cat, whose latest album heavily influenced this remix.

The Astronauts and I go way back. We’ve been around each other like orbiting planets watching each other smash into meteoroids, and not do anything about it but trust that we would be where life would take us.

There are moments in my almost decade of knowing these guys that I wish I could redo or undo, but time does not work like a Marvel movie. But I just love these guys and what they’ve made for themselves - their growing lives, the people they love, the crafts they pursue and the things they’ve had to let go to grow.

I am honoured to be a friend and proud of myself to have grown from being their stupid, scared manager into having shared stages with them, and now, having them feature on a song on my own album.

It’s just, it’s life you know?

Anyway, behold, one of the press kits I designed for the guys way back when: