You Remind Me of The Babe

We'd had the conversation before we were married.  I didn't want children.  He was OK with that.

The second year we were married, I got a job in a portrait studio at the mall.  I started in September, and went through my first holiday retail season.  I was sick with the flu for most of November.  Around Thanksgiving, he was the one to notice.

"Have you...?"

I had to check the calendar, because I hadn't had time to think about it, but, no, I hadn't.  Stress always messes with the cycle and so did being sick, and I hadn't been particularly regular all year, and anyway, we always used condoms, so.  No.  There was no way.

As the first week of December ended, I started to worry.  I was working part time, he was in grad school, we were doing OK financially, but not great.  Pregnancy was not only something I did not want, it was incredibly stupid.  That was the month I found out the nearest Planned Parenthood was two hours away, in Saint Louis.  Having always lived in towns that had them, I was suddenly at a loss.  What would I do if my fears were real?  Would I drive all the way to Saint Louis, or would I have to find someplace local?  Or what?

So I ignored it.  I was wrong.  I was sick, I was stressed, I was not pregnant.

New Year's Day brought some of the most horrible cramps and bleeding that I have ever experienced.  There was a lot more... stuff than usual.  Sure, it'd been ten weeks, but also, it'd been ten weeks.  I can never say for sure what that was, but I have my suspicions.

During that same long week, when I felt like my insides were trying to claw their way out of me, he said to me, "I hoped maybe you were."

I still remember how terrified I was in that moment, the certain knowledge that we were vaguely aware of the exact same possible situation and holding opposite points of view.  I was too scared to even write about it at the time, but I remember.

As spring came, he started bringing it up, more and more.  We should have a child.  I would be a great parent.  Didn't I want to have a kid?  I asked for three years to think about it.

I still have the document I started.  May, 2009.  It's a list of names, calendars tracking when certain milestones would occur for various dates of birth, information about labour and delivery and decisions I'd made about the circumstances under which I would agree to this.  In 2012, I'd said, "OK, let's start thinking about this and taking the steps we need to make this happen."

My dreams were full of dead children.

I wouldn't find out until 2014 that he'd been sleeping around since October of 2009.

When I found out, I said, "You've been doing this while I've been trying to decide if I should have a child with you?"
"You said to give you three years, and then nothing happened."
"First of all, at the end of those three years, I said to you, 'prove to me that we can afford this, and that we can live a life that will be conducive to introducing a child and we'll do it,' and that never happened.  Second of all, you didn't even wait six MONTHS before you started having sex with other people.  Please don't lie to me about your motivation.  What if we had a five year old now?"
"I probably wouldn't have done it."

It still makes me absolutely petrified, the idea that I could have had a child I didn't really want, but had been willing to consider having with him anyway.

I wonder if that was the change, if he decided he needed to tick another box on the traditional life goals check list and when I didn't want to contribute to that, he decided not to be with me anymore?  I don't know.  It's another one of the many, many things I never get to know about whatever our relationship and marriage were.

Why did I try to trust someone who didn't deserve it?

Hieroglyphics? Let me be Pacific

There are a lot of tastes that I'm sensitive to; bitterness is hard to tolerate and pre-cum might as well be broccoli extract.  The moment I made that discovery (well, after I stopped gagging and uncrossed my eyes), I proposed options:  we could buy flavoured lube; he would have to be willing to try to return the favour; or we could not do this.  I was over-reacting, apparently.  He'd had lots more partners than I had and I was the first to have that particular reaction.  Since I was also the only person he'd been with who hadn't done it before, I must be the problem.  "You've tasted yourself, then?" I asked.  "No."  "Since I'm the only one familiar with both of us, I don't think you get to judge what my tongue knows."  This never changed.

So we tried things.  That would be the first and last time we ever used lube.  I think the tube is still in the box of other stuff he was too scared to take to his parent's house when he moved out- some VHS tapes I've never seen, a pile of old porn magazines and print outs and his hentai comics I read once.  It would be over a decade before I knew that lube shouldn't have glycerin in it, or parabens, and I'm willing to guess this has both.  However, the fact that it was cheap, not-so-body-safe lube was not the problem.  I liked it, it was enough to mask the taste and that's all I asked.  He didn't like it.  I never got an explanation why, but, OK, we tried that, he didn't like it, so we'll stop trying that.  But he still wanted blow jobs.  

We tried flavoured condoms.  I preferred this to lube because it was the only way I could achieve a Mortal Kombat fatality.  He didn't like it.  This was a sensation argument, it didn't feel the same, and since it wasn't a pregnancy risk, it didn't feel worth it to him.  OK.  We tried that, he didn't like it, we'll stop.

I kept trying anyway.  I thought maybe I could get used to the taste, and I can't, which means finishing isn't an option.  He was OK with the compromise.  This was the only thing he was willing to admit that he liked, that I was good at.  I think now, though, that it's because if he came, that was the extent of his participation.  He claimed a refractory period of anywhere between 15 and 24 hours.  My subsequent reading on this subject suggests that he is either a liar, or he's an outlier.  Wouldn't it be funny if, in the midst of all the other lies, this one was the one, odd truth?

He wasn't interested in giving, just receiving, and never tried.  That's not to say I didn't ask flat out, or make strong hints, or otherwise make it incredibly easy for him to try, but there was always an argument.  "But I'm tired now."  "No, I don't think I'm going to like doing that."  "No, I'm a guy, I don't *have* to shave, but maybe if you did..."  "No, I like how it looks, and I like that you did, but I don't think that will fix it."  "Get off my chest, I can't see what you're doing."  *shrug*

It's a question I see on Reddit from time to time, and that I see in articles about self-love and stuff, "What makes you feel sexy?"  And I always wonder what that's supposed to mean.  The definitions are basically, "erotic or sexual self confidence," and I think this may be as close as I can get.  I carry around the knowledge that I'm inexperienced, not very good at the things I have experience in, and I'm not attractive or overtly sexual.  But in spite of the taste problem, I like giving oral.  It was the only thing I could do that elicited any kind of clear reaction, and when you understand you're basically terrible at anything, to know there's one thing that's appreciate even if you know you can't do it "right," it feels powerful.

So Long As I'm Dreaming

Dear Theatre Company,

Hello! I have been an admirer of your work for some time and, in light of your up-coming tour, am interested in serving as an intern with your company for the summer.

The theatre I am most passionate about creating exists beyond the proscenium. It begins in census records and old newspapers, in myths and legends, it is performed in canoes and in cafeterias and asks the audience to actively participate in the experience. I challenge myself to work outside of the confines of the theatre structure while utilising dramatic structure, analysis and research in creating works that show multiple perspectives rather than tell linear stories.

In various professional capacities, I consistently demonstrate effective communication skills and show initiative in intense environments. I have served as a professional stage manager, technical director, dramaturg, director and playwright and could bring all of these skills to a small tour. I am an ideal collaborator:  organised, punctual, take direction well, and can create a detailed itinerary. I have some familiarity with the particular style of work you do and can offer an extra set of eyes and hands throughout the tour season. I also possess a valid driver's license.

I am most interested in the process of coordinating and carrying out an extensive tour, as well as learning hands on how to create and sustain an audience through marketing and social media. I would be excited to watch how a touring performance evolves and changes as it travels, and in learning the ins and outs of working with venues to implement a touring performance.

While I understand that yours is a small company, I would like to assure you that I am willing to accept an unpaid internship. The experience and potential contacts to be gained through this unique opportunity would be compensation enough, and I would be prepared to cover my own expenses for this time, as well. I already possess a background of research, analysis, creative impulses and a background in theatrical skills. I ask, through interning with your company and providing excellent assistance, for the opportunity to focus, experiment, discover new ideas and practices to see what more I am capable of bringing to the conversation.

If this partnership seems beneficial to you, I would love to speak with you more about my unique qualifications and strengths.  Thank you for your time.

Hero of My Own Story

When I was seven years old, I remember walking across the playground at school and suddenly thinking of myself standing on an endless yellow-green field in a high wind, the sun is warm.  Some moments, you know you'll remember.  This was one of them.  And that memory comes back to me.  Because it wasn't imagination, necessarily, it wasn't something I was pretending.  My memory is mostly narration, but sometimes I get recurring images that I'm not in charge of creating.  There's another one of an endless purple universe all shot with silver streams of light.

I don't know where they are, or where they come from, or what they mean.  They're vivid colours, but a world that I can't recreate like a picture, because I can see all of the horizon at once.  The field is one I've come to think of as my own character establishing long shot in the movie (except that it's definitely an impossible crane shot).  I just don't know what it means.

Since I don't wonder what the words in my head mean, this probably means that I'm primarily a logical thinker, and the images I generally get are the result of words, and these unbidden ones are the way visual thinkers experience the world.

I always identify with the protagonist.  I didn't know for years that not everybody does.  This explains why I keep waiting for the universe to remember it decided I was the chosen one.  That's a slight exaggeration, but, really, get it together, universe.  I've got things to do once you let me get through all these momentary obstacles.

Put a Spare Bulb in My Hand

At one point, I determined I was going to have to get used to the fact that I wasn't going to feel the way books and movies told me I should feel.  On the basis that I'd lived 18 years on this earth and never experienced it, it followed that there was no such thing as fireworks and the other uncontrollable elements of love, attraction and passion.  I was a silly, romantic, dramatic teenaged girl to hope that it did work that way and I needed to get over it.

How better to practice this than with someone who I didn't really find attractive, but who seemed to be vaguely interested in me?  Because that friendship was getting difficult to have.  He wanted to be in a relationship with me, but he wanted to be friends with me, but...  Something had to be done.  I'd been carrying on a ridiculous long-distance, correspondence relationship with a guy from Chicago, and determined that I would rather have the bird in the hand just to see what would happen.  

What did he like about me?  He didn't know.  Sometimes he'd tell me he liked that I put up with him.  Now, I think it was just that I fulfilled his needs in a socially acceptable way.  He told me often enough that I wasn't attractive.  Which made sense; I didn't think I was and I saw the porn he liked and two previous girlfriends.  I was unable to compete, but I reasoned this was OK, because I didn't think all that much of him, either, though I didn't make it a point to tell him.  

This is what love and relationships were like when you were an actual adult and not a book character, I decided.  That you tolerated each other and that was enough to call it love.  I am probably wrong about this.

I have a few good friends.  I absolutely rely on them, appreciate them, respect the work they do and the people they are.  They represent the best social relationships of my entire life.  I was initially going to say, "I know they're there for me when I need them, and when I don't actually need them, which is more important."  And thought, "That's stupid."  Then started doing the research and discovered, no, it turns out that the knowledge that you have support from someone is actually just as strong as when they actually do help you.  That's not stupid, that's literally the difference between a stranger and a friend.  

I think about Harry Harlow's monkeys, though.  It doesn't take much to make a monkey socially well-adjusted, you basically just have to feed them and expose them to other monkeys sometimes and they come out OK.  And you can do a lot to screw with a monkey before you damage its social functioning irreparably.  Even male turkeys have been found to respond to a potential mate that's literally a stick with a turkey head on it.  They prefer it over a headless body, suggesting that while turkeys may want to tap that ass, they'd rather see her smile.

So what's the difference between love and friendship?  Studies about friendship generally focus on how these relationships are an extension of yourself- that you are extremely likely to imbue a friend with the same opinions and perspectives as you have, because it reinforces the process of becoming friends:  recognising that there's something in this person that is similar to you.  The study of friendship is relatively new, and the studies I could find generally include pairs in supportive sexual relationships because these studies also look at primates.  They include the animal versions of friends, friends with benefits, and family relationships.  One of the studies basically stressed that fuck buddies, pairs who interact solely for sex and not at other times or for any other reason, are not friends.  And allegedly that's true whether you're a bonobo or a human.

So love and friendship aren't a whole lot different as far as the brain is concerned, but the creation of friendship seems to rely in a larger part on *existing* levels of oxytocin.  Oxytocin's the chemical behind eye-contact, physical contact and empathy.

I read that love is initially related to the creation of dopamine in combination with oxytocin and is, essentially, part of our lizard brain.  This process related to the same processes as fear (actual fear, not low-lying every-day anxiety, but fight or flight terror), but it triggers the reward center of the brain, the same thing that allegedly happens when we eat or have sex:  "Good job, you're surviving, keep doing this."  That's mostly dopamine, and oxytocin kicks in to say, "Hey, yep, lizard brain is freaking out right now, but we're keeping an eye on things."  Trust and happiness.  The process also has the added side effect of decreasing seratonin, a neurotransmitter that normally regulates moods and keeps human beings basically calm, stable, and rational.

Apparently, fireworks are a thing.  Chemically.

According to researchers (I could do the citations, but, c'mon, really, what is this, wikipedia?), many couples move on to a level where they regain their seratonin levels, increase other chemicals that create security and attachment, but the dopamine generally decreases, too.  But not in all of them.  There seems to be some correlation between long-lasting, positive relationships and levels of dopamine that are the same as in the early stages of the relationship.  Oxytocin and vassopressin, which is the security and attachment chemical, seems to be related to the process- if those two are higher, dopamine is also higher.

All that's bio-neurology.  It's all very well to say, "OK, my task here is to try to increase production of dopamine which will help create oxytocin and vassopressin and figure out how to keep creating seratonin, all of which will mean that I've got this sorted out."  The day they make a FitBit with an MRI and an app to let you scan your brain whenever you want, I am buying one.  Until that time that I can actually figure out what lights up my own brain and receive certain proof that it's working the way it's supposed to, more crude experimentation is necessary.  

Some Redeeming Features

In the interest of fairness, because I have been getting a little more David Sedaris than I'm strictly OK with.  In the words of Guildenstern, "There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said- no.  But somehow we missed it."  So, since I missed that moment, and I'm forced to admit that things happened as they happened and I didn't think most of them weren't actually all that bad until I opened my eyes to look around, some good things.

This one is mixed, because he actually hated my singing voice, but he never complained when we both sang along to duets at full voice in the car.  This is the only consistently unusual thing that was permitted, and since I secretly sing everywhere, I liked having the chance.

I liked the way he looked in black.  Which was fortunate, as that was nearly half his wardrobe.

While I think now that he was both initially surprised and then a little too appreciative that I'd never done anything with anyone else, he actually did a lot of that right.  He checked in, he asked.  I could say no, things could stop.  What I regret now was that I was in such a hurry to try everything that I didn't notice I wasn't getting much of an opportunity to backtrack until much later, when we got to the end of his list of interests.

The same was true the first time we had sex.  He had done research.  He really didn't want to hurt me.  We tried, and we did several things partly right, but I didn't know enough about my own body at that point to realise that it was going to take quite a bit to ensure I wasn't hurt.  Years later, when some of that initial pain kept recurring, I worked out what the problem was.  This is really, really too much information, but, the downstairs equivalent of a split lip hurts.  A lot.  And there are a couple things to be done about it (1.more often, 2. greater time and attention paid) but only once you realise that it's not *you.*

I said I was going to say good things.  All of the good things have these nasty other sides to them now.  Omit them, and the good things are still good, but, I can't see them without the others.

Because the next one is exactly that.  Due to his particular history, he happened to have a wealth of knowledge about sex shops, including the local laws regarding video booths.  I've been in three sex shops, all of them Romantix brand.  I dislike two things about the porn stores I've been to- the smell, and the fact that your average Spencer's gifts is a classier establishment.  And, really, those two things are related.  It's been years, though.  Now that there's a smoking ban, I'm not sure whether the smell would've gotten better or worse, because that seemed to be the root of it, cigarette smoke and cum.

It was the summer I worked at summer camp and he worked at summer stock about two hours away.  When you live in a canvas tent surrounded by tents full of children you can't use your cell phone.  And this was in the days before data plans and wifi, so the single computer with Internet means that you feasibly *can* get emailed at the camp address, but those messages will be printed off and put in your mailbox.  We'd been together a year.  Our downtime corresponded exactly twice all summer.  The second time, it was pouring rain, so rather than drive down empty gravel roads looking for a dead end, he drove to the college town where the camp staff would usually go on our nights off.

Instead of going to the movie theatre, we pulled in to the porn store.  He'd explained before that they had booths in the back that were supposed to be for watching videos, and were supposed to be single occupant, but because they had doors, they were useful for other purposes.  My "night off" was six hours long and a hotel not being worth the trouble, it was not difficult to convince me.

That was a little bit surreal.  Again, I don't think I'm actually an exhibitionist, because it wasn't about being seen -doors- which also meant it wasn't quite public; it was a very OK kind of different.  But it never, ever happened again.  After that, I could never get him beyond our bed.  I don't know why.  Later on, I asked, several times, "We have an *entire house* Why can't we try something different?"  He didn't know, which means he knew and didn't want to tell me.  Sometimes I think that anything I made it clear that I really enjoyed never happened again.

Ultimately, I think that's the total benefit, that because he was mostly vaguely ashamed of his own sexuality and experience, my exposure to it wasn't, "hey this is what I'm in to, are you in to it, too?" which would have been the big bundle of red flags that would have sent me running.  Instead it was piece by piece, this picture of all of what he was, so I had time between them to understand, process and occasionally justify every single one.  There was probably a better way to learn all of that, but this is what I've got, when I look back, the knowledge that he's going to remain a big part of my sexuality because he was such a big part of its development, and if I can't remember that not all of it was not entirely bad, I'm going to carry him around a lot longer than I want to.  At least until I get some replacements in.

First and Last

You'd think I might remember my first kiss, but I don't.  Well.  The very first one, I do remember.

I went to a poor elementary school, but there was one family who was, "doesn't buy soap," poor.  The youngest boy, Joe, was in my class.  Mostly, we just ignored him, but sometimes, we didn't include him because he smelled terrible.  It wasn't too bad to play with him at recess, because that was outside.  But indoors, we were not kind about it.  

It was second grade.  Things must have been getting a little bit out of hand, and the teachers determined that we needed to be Talked To.  I don't remember all of the details anymore, but they explained that sometimes families were poor and couldn't afford things, and that above all, we should be kind to them and include them.  I took this to heart, and determined that I would be friends with Joe.  I stood next to him in lines, talked to him indoors, and was otherwise friends with him, and where I led, everybody else followed.  This lasted maybe three days.  

Gym class.  We were sitting in a circle on the floor waiting for the gym teacher to come back.  Joe was sitting next to me, on my left side, and next thing I know, he's kissed me on the cheek in front of the entire class, who have erupted in to laughter.  I was mortified, not so much at the laughing, I was pretty regularly paired with one boy or another and teased for it.  It rolled off my back because I knew I was just a friend, I was not a girlfriend, and the opinion of anyone who wasn't me did not matter.  No, it was the idea that he would dare to do such a thing, and just assume it would be OK.  This is not friendship, this is inappropriate.  That was the end of my friendship with Joe.  

So that was the first one.  The second one, the first one I consented to, with the guy who is now my ex-husband, was twelve years later.  Sometime in May, probably.  I don't really remember.  I do remember that it was about two weeks after that he explained that I was a terrible kisser.  Apparently, I never improved, but he was never able to explain what I ought to do differently, and it was only occasionally that he needed to remind me that I wasn't any good.  I had nothing to compare it to so, apart from constantly wondering what I ought to change, I didn't mind.

I remember the disagreement about the wedding.  I didn't want to kiss him in front of a bunch of people.  That I had agreed to a wedding at all was quite enough, why did I have to kiss him with people watching?  He said that he didn't think it would be possible to stop him from wanting to kiss me, and, well, it's not really possible to argue against that, is it?  That ceremony really was a horrible moment.  I knew all my lines, and everyone else's, because I'd written the ceremony, and the vows.  None of which I remember anymore.  I remember standing there, trying to determine whether my hands in his were sufficiently alive as to feel natural, and knowing if I looked at him and actually saw him, rather than just looking in his general direction, that I would make some absolutely terrible face that would indicate just how badly I didn't want to do this.  

It sounds like I didn't want to be there because I didn't want to marry him.  No.  At the time, I did.  I wanted to be with him, I just didn't want to have a wedding.  It's why we signed the license ahead of time.  The ceremony wasn't real, we'd done the marriage part already, this was just the show, and under those terms I could at least try.  But I was badly unrehearsed.  At the rehearsal, I wanted to do the entire thing, to go through the ceremony and vows and make sure we were projecting and hitting the beats correctly and that all the blocking was OK and everyone thought I was insane.  

His proposal was terrible.  The wedding was arduous.

A lot of the things I remember from our relationship now, I remember for their awkwardness, or my having been uncomfortable, or in a couple cases, actual hurt.  Except.  It was right after we got engaged.  It's a moment that's yellow and white and grey in my memory.  Sitting up in bed, head on his shoulder, hand on his chest.  That's it.  That's the extent of the memory, but it feels good and safe, and warm.  That moment, out of all of them, is the one I want to get back to someday.  That scenario probably happened more than once, but that one's the one I remember, just isolated happiness that didn't last, in the end.  

Marshmallow Fudge Ripple

The Australian was a Dom, which was a problem because I'm not exactly a sub.

Or rather, I am.  If I wasn't, I wouldn't have been able to deal with a sexual relationship in which my opinion didn't matter all that much for as long as I did.  But that's a negative side effect of the fact that I enjoy giving up control.  I need a lot of control in my life, I'm particular about what I wear, what I eat, I keep close tabs on myself because it's how I negotiate the bigger, scarier things that I can't control even if I want to.  But my preference would be to be with someone who could talk me out of myself, who knew what things were really necessary, and which ones were arbitrary.  Some of them are.

To be in a relationship where someone says, "Can we?" I want to be able to say, cautiously, "Yes," and have it be OK.  To loan somebody else the responsibility for a while.

Which is why I'm not a sub in a 50 Shades way, or even in a more standard, not entirely abusive way.  I don't like pain (actual pain- there other things that don't quite fall under that category), I don't care for humiliation and I really, really am not comfortable being anyone's whore.  The trouble with D/s is that it's typically sandwiched between B&D and S&M.  I don't need or want to be gagged on a Saint Andrews cross and punished.

I'm fundamentally vanilla, in that sense.  Even if I'm not being overly dramatic about it, I also don't have much interest in many of the lighter elements.  Sensory deprivation is OK, I'll gladly write from a perspective of blindness, heightened senses and uncertainty, but I write in the pain just because the Australian guy likes it.

In chat rooms, where there's generally no conversation before hand, this means that all too often, someone has decided that if biting is OK, choking is, too.  Then you've got two choices:  recognise that this is just words and a fantasy and let it go (because you can, it's not hurting you, it just doesn't do anything positive for you), or, stop the entire scenario and have a conversation about consent and boundaries that are almost certainly not what this dude came here for, and that he's probably not actually capable of having because when you asked him what he was in to, his answer was, "idk, nothing too kinky."

This was considered acceptable because it wasn't the 60 year old who wanted you to be his daughter, or the guy into water sports, or the foot fetishists, or the guys who are definitely actually in to rape fantasies that may not be fantasies.  Honestly, it's no surprise there aren't a lot of women out there.  People with mainstream, acceptable kinks are in mainstream relationships, or are at least capable of looking for them.  I'm only online because I would much rather have a poor experience with an anonymous stranger I didn't have to touch than have formed a relationship with someone else that I liked well enough to get to the place I would be comfortable and then discover, "I don't like this."

But maybe this is where I have an experience formed entirely by porn and the Internet.  Maybe most people are mostly the same, and have the same likes and abilities and aren't really much more adventurous than I am, I just keep stumbling across niche communities.  Except...  I'm vastly tamer than my high school best friend.  She either talked a very good game or at 17 had more experience than I still have.  My ex husband was his own brand of more experienced and kinky, but that lifestyle did not include me.  These are my points of comparison, aside from the occasional comment from a friend who mostly keeps his private life much, much more private than I do.  So maybe I'm stranger than I know.

Literary Experimentation

Every time I look through old notebooks, old flash drives, old folders from computers I don't have anymore, I find writing I forgot about.  Usually I remember as I read who I was when I wrote it.  Sometimes I can tell what author I must have just been reading because I'm definitely parroting, but not always.  Mostly it's just my own voice, in varying degrees of comfort, pretension and arrogance.  It's nice to discover I have a voice, even if I don't necessarily like it.

Then there are the surprises.  Things I don't remember writing, or things that if not for my handwriting, I would assume a friend wrote instead.  Then there are the pieces I recognise all too well, the obligatory poetry, and every single teenage desire for someone to notice me written down in terrible YA prose.  A style I couldn't write in because I'd never even read any.  You can't write YA romance when the closest thing you've read to the genre is Catcher in the Rye, but for some reason, this doesn't preclude the need to write it. 

All of the pieces in this genre break down once it's time for the heroine to actually interact with the hero, after he's noticed her and inexplicably sat down next to her and mentioned all his favourite things which are hers too.  Not *my* favourite things, no, because this character with brown hair and eye colour that can't make up its mind what to be and bitten finger nails in jeans and sneakers can't possibly be me, because her name is Sarah, and she likes different books.  But there was always the point where Brendan or Peter or Etienne or Christian or Michael (Christian was always a compromise, I hated it in theory, but as a name borrowed from Moulin Rouge and a series of French phonemes rather than a religion, I was willing to forgive it), or whoever he was, the boy with the laughing eyes and dark hair would touch her hand and catch her eye and Sarah would escape to the bathroom.  Invariably, these were all abandoned with Sarah and I in the bathroom trying to sort out what had just happened, and what on earth we were meant to do next because neither of us knew.  In real life, I never made it as far as needing to escape to the bathroom, so I was already out of my depth.  

All of my writing is incredibly harmless.  Apart from being embarrassing now, due to inexperience in either life or writing, there's really nothing that I couldn't show to anybody off the street or people interested in my juvenilia.  

Except, going through my Google drive today, I found a piece I wrote last year.  I've read erotic literature for 20 years, but it wasn't until last year that I ever tried to write any.  I made a throwaway account for a Reddit sub.  I can no longer get in to it because past me intelligently created a password that I didn't use for anything else, with the logic that once future me forgot the password, I wouldn't need the account anymore.  Past me knows how future me thinks.

The sub was for sharing logins and scenarios for an anonymous chat app that people tend to use exclusively for sexting and video chat.  I wouldn't do video chat, and after discovering that Redditors in my age bracket are on Reddit to cheat on their wives, I lost interest.  However, before that happened, I got a message from an Australian, the beginning of a scenario.  It wasn't poorly written, though it wasn't terribly original, but it was intriguing enough for me to choose to finish it.

The revisions on the doc indicate it took me four hours to write just under a thousand words.  And it's not well written.  It's got most of the problems that erotica has, you borrow from the four or five ways to describe various things and jam them all together between the specific transitions you want with just enough innuendo to force the reader to make a couple of leaps and there it is.  But I don't believe I wrote it.  I know that I did, because I'm the only one in the doc, and I can see that I picked up on a couple of the guy's specific preferences and included them even though they don't appeal to me at all, which is how I do- write to your audience.  But it is surprisingly effective.

This surprises me because I struggle with my own fantasies.  They either fall in to the experiences I've had, which I don't want to revisit, or I get lost somewhere in the middle, lose track of what I'm doing and unless I go in search of something written by someone else, start balancing my checkbook, or something.  I wonder why this held my attention.  Is it because I had four hours and a topic?  Is it because I opened it expecting an itinerary for a vacation I never took and surprised myself with the subject?  I'm not sure.  But, since this is nearly the same kind of thing that I was unleashing on guys in chat rooms last year, I see why they liked it.

Now that I'm remembering, after reading, the Australian really wanted to get together online at the same time.  Due to the time difference, this didn't happen, but it also didn't happen due to my fear of being called upon to perform to that level in real time.  Also because of the number of things that he was interested in that I wasn't.

This kind of writing is something I should probably get back in to (not here, I'll spare you all that particular discomfort), because it does a lot of positive things for me when everything goes right.  The difficulty is that, like so many other things in my life, it requires confidence, practice, and finding someone who's any good to do it with.  

Sky Rockets

I finally listened to some ASMR with headphones.  The idea is that it's a bunch of sounds that trigger a specific, unusual, positive feeling.  Without headphones, they don't work at all for me.  With headphones, I get it.  They still don't exactly work for me- the best I get is uncomfortable goosebumps and a dull sensation of what it's meant to be at the base of my skull.

The reason they don't work for me?  I know what it is, and there's a spot on the back of my head that triggers it when touched.  My reaction to that is involuntary and I'm not capable of triggering it myself.  So what the videos do is the same thing that happens when someone is standing too close behind me- makes me uncomfortable.  The videos that are literally someone rubbing stuff on a binaural microphone?  Not pleasant.  They can't actually trigger the sensation, they just act like they're going to.

This, of course, led me to hypnosis videos.  And then a particular subset of hypnosis videos.  The latter don't really work as hypnosis is probably meant to.  They did lead me to Google some interesting facts.

A couple years ago, I read Emily Nagoski's book, and one of the things it re-iterated over and over was that the female orgasm is normal, however it comes about as long as it isn't painful.  It stressed that female sexuality has always been seen as lesser compared to men's, mainly because it was studied by men and different indicated lesser.  I don't necessarily agree with this spin on it, but one of the things that the book addressed was the idea that the majority of women don't need medication for orgasm assistance, and stressed that it was OK if orgasm is a process.  What it never did was quantify that process.  There wasn't any, "this is typical," because the book really wants everything to be normal, so it doesn't attach numbers.

One of the things I noticed about the hypnosis videos was how long they were.  Why are they all twice as long as they need to be?  Turns out the reason for this is that length is considered about average.

I was married to someone who believed that I took too long.  I'm not sure what the women he was paying were doing (though I assume faking it), but it occurs to me suddenly that I may be one of the only people that experience could have worked for at all.

I suspect if I were truly interested in doing a lot of sexual exploration, all I'd need to do is put it about that I'd like to try several things, frequently, and I have certain skills and abilities that would make the experience worthwhile.  Except that I'm not ready to get to that point with just anybody just because.  It has, however, been a very long and boring year.

Tripartite Mottos

I go to the eye doctor tomorrow, but I've been checking my vision lately.

In September, 2014, I worked one job part time, had $390 to my name, didn't have a car, no health insurance, my student loan was in default and my credit was a mess.  Oh, and in the middle of all of that, I ended my marriage.

I had two main goals, get a divorce, become independent (which was its own set of subgoals).

Today, I have a full time job with benefits and work three other part time gigs.  I have a not insignificant amount of savings in the bank, my student loan is paid nine months ahead, my credit is good and I just bought a new car.  Oh, and I've been divorced four months.

Whatever else I can say about myself and where I am right now, I made those two things happen.  And the only person this life isn't good enough for is me.  I'm the one looking around and going, "Nope, this isn't where I wanted to be, it's time to change."  Most people would be happy to be where I am.

I'm a human again.  Now I have to work on being a person.  That means I have to look at not just what I need to do to survive, but at what I need to live.

I went back and read some of the diary my 19 year old self kept.  She's got an affected writing style that's irritating, but she is occasionally very happy.  And this was a period in time when I equally believed that I didn't express positive emotions very well.

What does happiness look like now?  It doesn't look like Iowa.  It used to.

I don't have an answer for that right now.

On Reflection

The blog started as an attempt to take risks in my writing; to write the things I'll generally say, and even more of the things I think, but am not brave enough to commit to paper.  I didn't, and I haven't, and this feels a dangerous time to start.

My keyboards stay intact, but I am always writing, I have a lot to tell but nothing to say.  This blog happens now when I spill over the edges, when I need to stop bothering my friends, but when the privacy of my own journal feels like the privacy of my own thoughts.  Why write when no one is reading?  The audience is necessary to complete the cycle.  So put it out where you can pretend someone might be paying attention this time.

Except that risk for the artist is inherently masturbatory.  So maybe I'm an exhibitionist.  There's not a lot of value in watching someone unpack their personal whatever.  Unless there's a story.  A reason.  A lesson.  A theme.  Sure, a connection.  Connection is the reason we do anything.

Connection is free.  Meaning is paid for and earned.  If I tell you this story because I love you, why tell it to people I don't love?  If all I want is their love and approval, maybe that's enough, but what do they get out of listening?  How does it go beyond a connection?  That was nice, what does it mean?

I guess it doesn't have to mean anything, even if it's for a greater audience.  Maybe connection is rare and valuable and exciting enough that it's worth paying for, that it's safer, in an audience.  Behind a mask of people that mean you don't have to watch someone unpack their whatever alone.  Ah.

The girl who can't look people in the eye because they might see too much of her knows this.

Susan's Lament

There are bogeymen 

Under the bed again.  

Of course, there usually are.  

But I'll grab the poker 

And send them away.

Seeing through monsters 

Is easy when you see 

Things as they really are.  

And I walk through the walls

And time stops for a while

And Death will remember it all;

So will I.  

To be just a bit 

Immortal is to
Be just partly human, but 

To be or not to be, 

The skull is family.  

Not a handful of

Atoms that won't be

Here to be tomorrow.

And I walk through the walls

And time stops for a while

And Death will remember it all;

So will I.  

It's comforting to know 

That you're invisible 

And different.  Sensible

Calm and logical,

Helpfulness personified. 

We all have our flaws, 

These are mine.  And there are no

Perfect moments, just Time.  

And I walk through the walls

And time stops for a while

And Death will remember it all;

So will I.  

Molecules of mercy,
Atoms of justice;

The big lies make the
Life that's all you know.

So I'll be here tomorrow,
To save the world again.

Some things are in the bones,

Others in the soul.

And I walk through the walls

And time stops for a while

And Death will remember it all;

SO WILL I.  

Matthew the Raven Wants to Know

I need a different bed. Three years ago, this mattress on plywood was a temporary arrangement. The blankets all cast-offs, binding coming off, the electric blanket that’s old and smells funny but I’m afraid to wash it because I’m not sure what will happen to it if I did, but that I need on cold nights or I will never get warm.

But I continue to think of it, like most aspects of my day-to-day life, to be temporary.  

I know I've woken up to a dream, but I'm still surprised to feel the warmth of someone behind me.  A weight across my waist that I realise is an arm.  It's curious that I should know what this feels like, because I was never in this position in my marriage.  He had to sleep facing the door, and he didn't want his arm to fall asleep, and it was too much trouble.  So I slept behind, until the last couple years when he wouldn't let me touch him.  It takes a greater awareness than I had to consider that and think, "someone who only lets you touch him when there's an orifice involved might think of you much, much differently than you think of yourself."  

So now that I'm here, I don't want to move, because I know I don't have control over this and, and maybe I'll wake up, or the dream will shift or whoever this is will move and I want this as long as I'm allowed to keep it.  "Wake up," a voice at my ear.  "No."  

The hand at the end of the arm finds mine, a touch that's at least six years old.  But I know it's not his hand, and I wonder who this is.  "Wake up," he says, "we've got art to make."  Whose voice?  Whose hand?  Who cares this much?  

And I roll over to open my eyes, except I open them for real, straight in to the light of the morning and whoever he was, he's gone.  

It's a silly thing to cry about.