"In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw."

Years ago, I argued with a friend online about memoirs.  Why did every single memoir/autobiography have to talk about their awkward coming of age sex?  It was pretty much all the same, forgettable, awkward, unfortunate, or embarrassing, and so this meant that it probably wasn't true, in which case, why include it?  OR, it was true, and the person that they're describing KNOWS who they are, in which case, why include it?  (Exceptions, when it was exploitative, and therefore a major plot point.)

She didn't really have an answer, because she hadn't looked at the point of view of the writer.  She'd always been the reader, who was reading a lot more queer coming-of-age and YA stories than I was, and felt that those stories were important as reflections of queer experiences and voices.  I would agree that's important, but I still can't forgive David Sedaris any story he has ever told about anyone he has ever had a sexual encounter with, and hope that all of them are lies.

As always, I have a wealth of knowledge, but dearth of experience- 11 years with one person will do that to you.  Well.  If that person is basically selfish.

It didn't start out that way.  Exactly.

I don't intend to tell a bunch of awkward sex stories, not involving anybody else, anyway.  I've read enough to know that mine are mostly unremarkable.  The most unusual one only serves as a warning had I known enough to recognise it.  It's hard to recognise unusual when everything around you is the weirdest thing you've seen outside the Internet.

This is the flip side of the previous entry.  In spite of being absolutely terrified, I'm not any less curious than I've ever been.  And still more knowledgeable.  Having a casual conversation with a friend, and you have to stop in the middle of a series of "OK, this conversation is going here," jokes and explain one of them.

Back before birth control was covered by my insurance, I ran a cost analysis on the pill vs. condoms and worked out that to break even instead of buying condoms, it would require more than once a day.  This was at a point in which I was making much, much fewer tick marks on the calendar than thirty.  Oddly, this was the reason I was doing the analysis- keeping track of two irregular cycles synced on an off-set lunar phase on a calendar was the only way to rule out the possibility of error (which is a complicated and euphemistic way of saying, "when you only have sex twice a month AT BEST and your period's irregular, it's really, really fucking hard to be relatively certain that you're not pregnant").  The complaints about the calendar led me to say, "OK, fine, the pill is more effective than condoms.  If you feel like I'm judging you, let me determine whether it's worth the money to find something more effective, or I can keep using the calendar."

This is an area of my life where I don't want to have the kind of control I have over every other area.  I don't want it to rely around spreadsheets and calendars.  That's how I work.  I'd rather have sex the way I read, but that's a metaphor I don't think I want to continue to explain.

It's frustrating.

Timer's Running

"What's the worst that could happen?" I ask my theatre kids. And they say they could die, or sink in to the floor or forget their piece or fall over the judge or throw up or any number of things that won't happen. Except Emily, who said she could get a two. Yes. That would be the worst thing to happen. I told her nobody says that.

So what would be the worst thing to happen to me if I touched somebody? None of the things that aren't going to happen are going to happen. But what might happen is that I do it wrong. Or that I'll tell someone more than I want them to know. I can control my mouth, my eyes are harder. But then there's my body, which has its own ideas and I don't know how to keep it from... from doing what? What does it matter? It matters because people will judge me.

Will they? Or is this just a thing you've imagined. When did this start? It's the electricity in another person. That spark of whatever it is that means they're alive. I don't want to get too close to that. Because if I can feel theirs, they can feel mine, and I don't want that.

Why? Why don't I want to give someone that power? You already did, and you took it back and it's yours. You don't love him, you don't care. He knows things that nobody else knows and are you going to let him be the only one? Does he deserve that secret? No. Is it a secret? It's private. It's... it's the kind of thing that not everybody gets access to because... because why? Because... I'm not sure.

You had sex with the guy, and you know it doesn't matter because he didn't care. He didn't care the same way he didn't care that you didn't like pink or hearts but that was the only way he knew how to tell you he cared, not by paying attention to you.

So what does it matter, really? Why are you OK with sexting guys who won't get your real name or know what you look like? But you're too afraid to find someone and make a genuine connection with them?

*ding*

A List

Having a digital archive of three years worth of my brain means that I can keyword search myself.  I can watch my fears and wants change, and I realised that, by now, I could collect a list of every single time I've identified what I want in a relationship.  Two things repeat over and over and over again: respect and trust, so I've boiled everything down to the things that are different.  Since those two were missing from my marriage, it makes sense that they might be a little important.  A lot of the others feel like a tall order.

Someone I can respect and be proud of in spite of also knowing most of their faults.
Someone with the ability to listen and say the right thing.
Someone I can give myself to.
Someone I trust.
Someone to fill in the gaps of my analysis, turn it around and show me what I’m saying so I can see what doesn’t work.
Someone I’m not competing with.
Someone who can challenge me without making me worry about it.
Someone sexually improvisational.
Someone who will tell me when I’m being stupid, and remind me when I’m smart.
Someone comfortable.
Someone who deals natively in action, but still understands my motivation.
Somebody I can trust to anticipate me.
Someone willing to come with me on an idea.
Someone to play with.
Somebody who does something well, and they value it as much as I do.
Someone quietly, intensely, powerful.
Someone who doesn’t make my life unnecessarily complicated.
Someone who sees through me and encourages me to do the things I want to do, in spite of myself.
Someone to be my person that I also get to do art with that isn’t a jerk.
Someone who knows what I need and whose needs dovetail up against mine.
Someone I can talk to about everything who will actually participate in the conversation.
Someone who makes me go, “hey, I know him.”
Someone whose ambitions don’t depend on my doing all the work.
Someone who encourages me to be my best and calls me on my bullshit.
Someone more responsible than me.
Someone who isn’t as focused on their family.
Someone whose religion and sexuality aren’t frightening.
Somebody I am actively attracted to.

Changing the Game

This post will probably be added to the pile of unpublished, abandoned, half-finished drafts.  Or maybe it won't be.

My world got too big for the Internet and I filled page after page after digital page of the private journal with words that reveal much better than this ever will how wildly I was off balance.  And the unposted posts do the same, glimpses of a girl who was worried about something that didn't even matter two days later.  So much has changed that none of it matters now.

How odd there's very little to show for it.

Who am I this time around?  I have a new name and an ex-husband, at last.  Or rather, I regained the old name and have mostly only used it when I'm busy being someone I'm not quite.  Sorting out Who I Am is a project that takes a backseat to sorting out What I'm Doing.  Which is probably how it ought to work.

I have seen three of the Great Lakes in the span of three days.  Having seen Lake Michigan a handful of times already, this leaves only Superior.  At 16, I saw the Atlantic ocean from the air.  I ferried across the English Channel.  I've seen so little of the world since, it's nice to be 16 again and to go and see it.

All I can be certain of is that I'm uncertain what's coming next.  I have to be OK with that, because I certainly don't like where I am.

Subatomic particles don't exist until they interact.  I'm not sure what a subatomic particle IS before it interacts, but I have a pretty good idea how it feels.