There's a difference between romantic language and a complete disregard for socio-economic trends

Fair warning: This blog entry is exceptionally long, but I really have a lot to say about everything I'm writing about.

There's a thing I catch myself doing more and more often, and I don't particularly care for it.

I lie.

I lie about things I have VERY strong opinions about. Things that, in the immediate moment following the lie, I get angry at myself for lying about. I always tell Derek, oh, I lied about this, I don't understand why I lied about this because I am not being unreasonable if I tell the truth, and I debate on telling the person I lied to that I lied because X reason(s)...but then I never do because I'm embarrassed, and I still care about what they think for some reason.

Here's one example, and then I will get into my second example. The entire reason I'm ranting in here.

I recently shot a cover for a publication here. It was a fairly disastrous project due to disorganization, and I had a bit of a breakdown over the shoot itself (which I'll discuss in another post, I'm sure), but I did it. I asked the girl I have been talking to through the entire project who to send my media release to, and she didn't understand why I needed to send that at all, I'd totally get paid, I'd totally get credit, etc. Nobody ever needed to send a release before, they just shot and delivered. And I was like, well, that's cool, but I'm serving as a freelance photographer right now, and I do need a release.

And here's where the lie comes in.

I said I don't mean to be a bother, but I've had my work stolen, and I'm just extra cautious now, so as a non-staff photographer having their work used, a release is just for my peace of mind.

That is 10000000000% untrue.

Being very honest, I wouldn't give two leaky shits about payment. Had she asked me to do it as a favor, I absolutely would have shot it for free....and STILL asked for a release. At the end of the day, if I just give someone my work, that gives them license to alter what I've done, and then things will go one of two ways: if the work is well received, the school paper will get the lion's share of the credit, I will receive little advertising for my trouble, and I've put in effort for only monetary pay off, which, as I mentioned, doesn't matter (a matter of 60 dollars, I am fortunate enough to say, will not break the bank, so payment is just a very fringe, fun nod at compensation. I would nod it off, but uh...not after all of this trouble). If the work is poorly received, I take on the full weight of that. It doesn't work out for me at all. If no alteration is done to what I turn in, the same scenario applies. I am aware that the third option of me being blazed with credit, and the photo being well received and I reap all the rewards is a thing, but you show me the small business owner that built their practices on best case scenario, and I'll show you a sign that says "go fuck yourself", because I do not have to justify why I want a media release.

This is how photography works, and I felt very frustrated that I was being given even a light dusting of shit for handling my business, and then having it blamed on me ("I wish you had told me about your business". I responded to that with, "you must have misunderstood what I meant when I said "I am a professional photographer that owns her own photography business"), with the added slight of, "if this doesn't work out, it will be letting down the entire black student body". I cannot unpack that right now, so I will not, but it's a lot.

So I lied. I lied about my reasoning for needing a release, and I shouldn't have to. This is my name, it is my livelihood, it is my work. I do not want it altered, I do not want someone profiting off of my work without my explicit consent, I want my work to remain my work. That's what a release entails, and I shouldn't have to explain away the need for one with some bogus tale of work theft that never fucking happened. But I didn't want to seem like a difficult asshole, so the lie seemed like a better option. I don't like that I did that. I am perpetuating the idea that photographers SHOULD just hand over free license to their work without any kind of release, and I don't think that's true.

I copped to Derek about the lie fairly immediately, and we had a discussion about how I am not being unreasonable. Which I know I'm not. Did I cop to the lie to the publication liaison? You bet your tiddies I did not.

Lie number two, and this one really grinds my god damn gears, because it highlights what a fucking HORRIBLE feminist I can be, and how much I weigh myself down.

A bit of backstory:

After Dan and I stopped whatever it was we were doing, I went on a pretty bleak sexual tear. I wasn't trying to date anybody, because my poor little heart was breaking in new places on the regular, but I mean, why should my vagina suffer for my emotional crisis? I was sleeping around with gusto, and then a couple months into my dick tour, I went out with Justin. We got along really well, the sex was pretty good, I liked him, and he was the first person I liked in any kind of love interest capacity after Dan, and I latched on a little harder than I should have. We spent...uh...three days in total together, and a solid week trying to meet up and hang out again (in retrospect, I feel fairly certain that all of his dodges to hang were less about actual schedule conflicts and more about not caring to be tied up on some rando girl, which I can completely understand), and then he left town to go back to his personal corner of the country. We kept talking, though, and my silly ass even made a plan to fly out and visit him in a couple of weeks because I had spare time, I had the means, and it sounded like a fun weekend fuck romp, so why not? He bailed on it last minute, I got the hint, and that was that. I haven't seen Justin as a romantic entanglement partner since then, and as I got involved with Derek VERY shortly afterward, I didn't need to. Derek was totally the upgrade I needed in my love life, so why bother fucking around with a 6 when you can have a 10? Exactly.

I stayed friendly with Justin, though. We had a lot of things in common, similar interests, and he was a nice enough guy that being facebook acquaintances was a nice cap on the meager tryst we had. This was five years ago, and we've stayed very loosely in touch. Justin got stationed on Oahu a couple of years ago, so when Derek got stationed on Oahu, I was very excited to have a built in friend. Since landing here in July, I've tried to make plans with Justin to hang out, he's made a lot of allusions to us being sexy sexy partners in the nighttime, and I've ignored a great deal of them, and responded to the others with hilarious brush offs. For example, while bemoaning his horniness as we were texting, he told me I could help him jerk off, the assumption being I sexted, or sent nudes, or some combination of the two. So instead, I sent him this inspirational gif:

This is one of my better gif responses, I must say.

He responded with some stupid remark about how if I wasn't going to be actually helpful, he was going to go. So I didn't respond, because why would I? I don't need to be your fodder. Derek and I had a really big laugh about it, I sent the screenshots of the exchange to all of my girlfriends, we all laughed about how fucking gross men are. What's shocking is, Justin's attitudes toward me have not really changed. He'll be friendly enough, but it always deviates into something masturbatory and sexual, and I react one of two ways: vague disregard, or ending the conversation. I can see how the vague disregard has perhaps made him think that there was a chance something might happen between us, and...oops.

Justin has this habit of just flaking out on me when we make plans, so I've started saying yes to all of the plans he makes having the full expectation that he's going to bail. I figure this way, I look like a good friend, but without having to make the actual EFFORT, and at the end of the day, what better kind of friendship is there?? I invited Justin to things, as well, knowing that he's going to bail, he always did, and I rested on my laurels. Thinking Monday was going to be a similar episode, I invited him to hang out with me all day, get high, and go on a shoot with me in the afternoon, everything he enthusiastically agreed to doing.

Color me a dark shade of embarrassed surprised when he showed up on Monday morning, only an hour late. I had a little bit of a panic attack, as I had taken Derek to work that morning and had worn a cute dress and a cute pair of heels, and I didn't want to appear like I was trying to dress in any way that might engage his penis, or trick his brain into thinking I was "sending signals" or doing anything other than just wearing a dress I like, and heels I like, because I like how I personally feel in them. So I dressed down very quickly into a pair of running shorts and a yoga top, and realized "oh shit, these shorts are short and they show the curve of my butt, and this top displays a lot of my back flesh, is this worse than my other outfit??" as I was walking out the door and felt the breeze on my butt curves and back meat. I do want to take this moment to say that I could have gone outside wearing absolutely fucking NOTHING, and it is not a god damn invitation, or a signal that I am in that rude mood. I shouldn't have to make that side note, just like I shouldn't have to think about how what I'm wearing might make someone think they are being invited to my body, but here we fucking are, 2019. Here we fucking are.

So I find Justin, I give him a hug and tell him I'm glad he didn't bail, and he lingers a liiiiiiiiiiiiiitle too long, and makes that weird hugging yummy sound that a great deal of us make when we're hugging someone we're sexually fond of. A harmless enough noise in and of itself, I could easily have mistaken that as something intentional and pointed when it was just a human hugging sound and nothing more, but coupled with the long, lingering hug, and the next thing I'm about to divulge, I knew this spelled trouble with a comically large T.

Here's the extra context: Justin alludes to fucking me a lot, and I vaguely dismiss what he's saying with things like a sarcastic "oh boy", which yes, I know, sarcasm doesn't transcend text well at ALL, and I am PARTIALLY responsible for Justin thinking his coming by was meant to be anything more than a friendly hang. I didn't do anything to swat the ideas down specifically, and here is where my bad feminism comes in. I didn't do anything to swat the ideas down immediately for two reasons: one, I really do want a friend here on island that I can just hang with. I like Stevie's sister well enough, she's VERY sweet, and very nice to me, and an all around pleasant person, but I suspect we don't really have much in common but Stevie, and a friendship friendship wouldn't really work. I met Mary through school, and I really like her, but she has a very young daughter, and is due to give birth to her second child in only a few months, and our lives are very different. While I can be totally accommodating and understanding of the needs of other people's lives, I want the kind of friendship where engagements won't be pushed back because of a lack of sisters, or energy, or time. This is not Mary's fault at ALL, and I'm not trying to speak ill of her in the least. She's lovely to have as a friend, but I need something a bit more available. Justin seemed perfect. He's here, he's childless, he doesn't have much of a social life out here, boom. Exactly the kind of available I want. I already know we get along. Perfect storm! Except for the pesky "he still wants to stick his dick in me all the time" thing; two, I still have that lingering desire to not be "that girl", even though, as previously expressed, that girl is my fucking hero, because she's true to her wants and needs, and everybody else can eat a dick. There may be a third part that enjoyed the attention, but that part was VERY small, because Justin's standards for fuckability are relatively low, so any sexual flattery was to be taken with a boulder of salt. I didn't want to seem like an asshole for being like, WOAH, this is not that kind of party, calm the fuck down while still trying to salvage a friendship out of the scenario because I am quite lonely for a friend out here knowing that Derek is going to be gone for three months, and then very probably an entire year. That's a lot of time to spend with myself, and I am horrible company. Anyway, back on track.

Justin goes in for the creepy hug, I pull away and pat him on the shoulder and tell him I'm glad he didn't bail, and then I walk him to my house, panicking about if I should walk in front of him to lead him to my house because he might think that I'm like...trying to display my cheeks and tatted backside to his starving eyeballs, or if walking next to him might make him think that I was desperate to be close to him, sending yet ANOTHER "signal" to him that would actually be nothing more than friendly politeness on my end. So I opted for walking in front of him. If he's going to look, he's going to look. We get into the house, I ask Justin if he's hungry, he says no, I ask him if he wants to smoke weed and watch a movie, he declines, I ask him if he wants a drink, he accepts. So I stand up, he does, as well, and again, my head was furiously waving red flags at me. I'm making him a drink, mindlessly chattering about what we can do over the next few hours before the shoot, and he makes his way over to me, interrupts and says, "you really do look phenomenal" and his body starts in with that "we're going to aggressively french" posture, and as I'm saying "aw, really?" in that tone that does it's best to convey that this compliment is not wanted, the lean in is inching ever closer to my mouth, so I put my hand over his mouth and say, "now you wouldn't lie, would you? Because I bet you say that to all the girls". His body language changed, he looked very...confused? Hurt? Surprised? Perhaps a combination of all three, plus something else? I couldn't say for sure. But my body rebuffed his body, and I gave him his drink and shrank down into the furthest corner of my seat, as far from him on the couch as I could make myself. I imagine that anybody who hasn't wanted to be pursued by someone who is in their immediate vicinity knows this scene all too well. You flatten yourself against something in a foolish attempt to make yourself as invisible and  unappealing as possible, in the hopes that the other person will read the room and understand that there should be no more trying to participate in making the sexy sexy moves into their personal space. Unfortunately, as the conversation turned to what I'm studying in school (and it's important to note here that it's only because I spurned on the conversation. Justin did not try to participate in engaging me intellectually at ALL), I became more comfortable and loosened up my sitting position, and sat in the chair like a normal, comfortable person. As I talked, I noticed Justin's hand creeping over the drink partition on my couch (the middle seat folds down as a nice little place to put drinks, and there's space enough for two plates, so it's not a small section. One does have to put effort into reaching over), encroaching into my personal space, so I just kind of ignored it and hoped maybe he was just trying to find a comfortable position. The lies we tell ourselves. As I'm gesticulating, which I am prone to doing, he keeps reaching up to meet my hand, and he eventually grabs it and tries to lace his fingers in, so I pull away and say, "Oh, I know, my nails look horrible" and then I move right back into my discussion into traditional Hawaiian customs that I've been studying in school for the last two semesters.

His arm doesn't budge from the center of the couch, except now he's sneaking his hand over into my leg space, and he grazes my leg a little bit. I ignored it, and kept talking, and he got a bit more confident in stroking my leg, so I moved it a bit more out of his reach, and he followed, continuing to stroke my leg with his fingers, and after trying to reposition myself a few times to get out of the way of his snake fingers, I ask him, "hey, uh, so whatcha got there, whatcha doing?" and he said, "your legs are prickly." I responded by saying I was aware, it's because I have dry skin, but what difference does it make? and then I adjusted my legs so he couldn't reach them anymore.

Justin stood up, and I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was tired of sitting, he had been in bed all morning, so I was like, oh, ok, I get it (but in my head, I was quite irritated, because I had a feeling he was going to sit on the other couch, which was much closer to me, giving him easier access to my body, and I wasn't WHOLLY wrong). So instead of wandering around the living room as someone might if their legs are feeling restless, he hovers directly over my chair and leans in to kiss me AGAIN, and here is where we need to take a break, because this blog is brought to you by a generous endowment from

ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT!

Are you tired of trying to read signals to determine if someone wants to touch your genitals?

Have you been rebuffed twice by a potential sexual partner and want an easy way to find out if the third time truly is the charm?

Are you anxious to not be the next Aziz Ansari?

Try a generous helping of Enthusiastic consent!

ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT: you should always ask if they're into it...they are literally right there. 

It's always nice to get a word from our sponsors. 

I placed my hand in front of Justin's mouth AGAIN and said, "what are you doing? This could blow up my life." And he was like, I'm not going to blow up your life. 

Oops, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt this blog to bring another moment from our sponsors! A large section of this blog is made possible by a grant from the 

STOP FUCKING LYING TO FURTHER THE CAUSE OF YOUR IMMEDIATE ORGASM EFFORTS

Foundation.

I think it's important to mention that it must be god damn wonderful to live life with the confidence of even the world's least self-confident man. Justin has spoken at length about his poor self-esteem, and did so again on Monday, and if there's even any credence to that whatsoever, I am left to enviously wonder what it feels like to think you are unattractive and worthless, but STILL feel entitled enough to a woman's body that you can go in for a second attempt at a kiss after she rejected you that way once, and did not meet your physical touches (and consequent negging) with delight and interest. Something doesn't add up there. Either Justin is lying about his self-esteem issues, or this kind of idea that men are entitled to women's bodies is a systemic ideal that is perpetuated in virtually every aspect of American life, and the things I wanted and desired for myself never entered Justin's head because I am merely a vessel for him to jam his dick into. Hm. I wonder what it is. My money is on the latter, though the two can, and probably do, co-exist.

Whoops! We have another sponsor message coming through, I am so sorry for this. 

BODILY AUTONOMY

A grand idea for everyone.

Try it for yourself!

Try it with your neighbors!

Try it with your friends!

Try it with people you're attracted to!

BODILY AUTONOMY: If the body isn't yours, stay the fuck off!

Justin sat down on the couch again (I guess two seconds and a small attempt to tongue someone's facehole are enough to cure a restless body), and I figured now would be a good chance to explain myself. 

Except I didn't really explain myself truthfully (let's unpack the hypocrisy later). 

Nobody wants to hear the truth of the matter, and here's the truth of the matter.

When I first met Justin, he was a hard 5, soft 6 on his best day. Being someone fun to be around, having similar interests as I did, ramped him up to a soft 7. I wouldn't be writing home to anybody about the bangin' dick I landed, but I wouldn't be ashamed to make it known that I had, in fact, touched his genitals intentionally on more than one occasion. Meshing really well sexually and feeling uninhibited around him pushed him into ACTUAL 7 territory, and feeling like enjoying myself around him wasn't forced cemented him as attractive enough to be pretty into for the short time we spent together. Was he memorable enough that, after a month of reminding myself that the first foray into serious dating after a hard break up is probably not as real as it may feel, my interest in him held up to scrutiny? No. I was bummed nothing came out of it at the time, I remember feeling that disappointment (and I have expressed to Justin that I felt that disappointment before, but never in anything more than a passing acknowledgement that I had the initial stirrings of feels for him once upon a time), but the feelings passed quickly. 

When Justin showed up on Monday, giving him a 4 is being generous. And the very real crust of the motherfucker is I'm not going to waste an affair on a 4. A FOUR. What kind of self-respecting woman is going to cheat DOWN? That's some bullshit that men do. I'm going to cheat UP, mother fuckers. Onwards and upwards. If the man attached to the penis isn't a solid 9 on his worst day, I am hardly going to be interested at all, and I am certainly not going to gamble my marriage on anybody that isn't a flawless ten. That can involve maths like I allowed Justin...if the body is a 6, but the face is a 7 and the personality is a 10? That could be a dangerous enough combination that I'd jeopardize my relationship. The primary take away is, Justin would be a huge step down. Let's check out the evidence:

Looks: 

Unappealing, at best. I am willing to forgive a lack of immediate physical attraction, because personality does count, for more than a little bit. So that's not AS important in the overall scheme of things. But they do count, saying otherwise is a stupid lie, and his as of Monday do not count for much.

Personality:

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand. I felt forced to stimulate conversation. I had zero interest in actually conversing, and if I were a more honest person, I would have said, "well, you're a real fucking snoozefest of a human being now, care to liven up the morning by amping up the engagement levels?"

Consideration:

Non-existent. I suppose I should kind of admire the fact that Justin didn't even bother pretending that I was a human being worth speaking to, and my primary interest to him wasn't one of sexual functionality. No asking me how I've been, how I'm doing, no asking about the art on the walls, or for a tour of the house, or any of the courtesies civilized humans extend each other. But this is where I felt my frustration growing, and noticing that was when I was rock-solid on the idea that Justin didn't want a friend, Justin wanted a fuck hole. The friend lie was pretense, and that fib was the only effort he was going to put into the "relationship". 

Justin is a far cry from the Justin that I fucked in the park five years ago, in just about every single way. I could take a moment to say that I am not as attractive as I was physically. I met Justin pre-accident, when I was running every day and had a thin enough body that I didn't loathe looking in the mirror whenever I pass one, as I do now. Time hadn't dragged my tits down, I had nicer skin, I didn't look like a horror prop five years ago is what I'm saying. Because I felt forced to stimulate conversation, with the added bonus of doing the utter most to not try and make him think I harbored ANY romantic or sexual interest in him at all, I only talked about myself because I didn't want to ask him anything about him that would give him the opportunity to talk about being horny all the time, or lonely for the compassionate touch of a woman or some shit, so I probably also came off as inconsiderate and lacking in personality. I may ALSO be in the realm of hard 4 nowadays, but I do want to point out that if I AM a hard 4, that wasn't putting Justin off the scent in the fucking least. I, on the other hand, wanted no mother fucking part of his nonsense. 

I asked Justin if he remembered telling me that he was opposed to open relationships, because when he's with a woman, she is his person, and is imagination is too active to handle the idea of her fucking someone else. He said yes, and I asked him if that went the other way. That perhaps he wanted to fuck other people, but she was the only one that couldn't because it would be too bothersome to his ego. He said no, he felt that he was her person, too, and he also shouldn't sleep around.

I asked him how he'd feel about that if he had an affair with a married woman, and he said he'd see nothing wrong with it, because he's not the one cheating. 

HEDONISM

Society's Worst Look.

I posed the question a different way. I asked him if he had a prolonged affair with a married woman, or me, hypothetically, would he see that woman as his sexual property? He gave a quick no and corrected me with "his person", because what man wants to be confronted with the idea that he thinks of women as commodities?? None of them, that's who! But his person, sexual property, what's the difference? Saying"his" still implies ownership, and things like that are why I wrestle so hard with calling Derek MY husband. Or being called HIS wife. We don't own each other. It's complicated language, but I do want to wrap this blog post up some time in the next four centuries, so I'll leave that for both a blog I've already written, and a follow up blog in the future. You're welcome. 

This is where the horrible lie comes in, because I start talking like a woman who is legitimately contemplating an affair. An affair with Justin. Which I categorically was NOT. Am not. Will never be. I don't know why I didn't just lead with, "sorry, not interested." or left it at "mother fucker, I am MARRIED, I don't know why you think this behavior is acceptable" or even a very direct "who the fuck do you think you are that I can reject you more than once in less than an hour and you decide to keep trying? Have you bothered to ask if I was interested? Did it cross your mind that maybe I'm putting barriers between us because I do not want you touching me? No, it didn't, did it? Get out, you are a terrible person and I fucking hate you and your face and everything about you, you repugnant stale ham sandwich of an excuse for a man." Those options are far better than bolstering the idea that if Justin could just get his shit together, we might have a chance. He doesn't, as many great historians have said. 

I said that Justin is already causing problems for me. The insane shit he texts me could be a problem if Derek were to ever glance through my phone, or see one of Justin's texts pop up on my screen (did I tell Justin that I share all of these things with Derek? No. It's none of his business, and making him understand that I don't see him as worthwhile material for an affair was more fun), he already can't control his urges and we're not even fucking. I mentioned that Justin would have to hang out with me and Derek together to keep up appearances, because him always saying no to hanging out with me and Derek is already suspicious, and his hanging out with me ONLY on a day where Derek wasn't around was deeply troubling, did he understand how bad at affairs he already is and we're not even having one? He assured me again that he wasn't going to blow up my life, and tried to reach over to physically comfort me, and oh my fucking GAWD, read the fucking ROOM, my guy. This story was never going to end with you bedding me. I pulled away and continued my lecture, because I was already into this character, and I was really rolling with it. 

I asked if he'd be able to see me being affectionate with my husband, despite the fact that a prolonged affair might make him think he owned me, and had rights to me sexually, causing feelings of jealousy and frustration and a desire to implode my marriage because he wanted me for himself. I stressed further without letting him answer that I very much love my husband, and I am not leaving my husband, and an affair does not end with me choosing my taken lover over Derek. When I paused, he cut in that he'd be fine with all of it, and he'd be very interested in having an affair with me. 

I couldn't help myself, I laughed and said, "do you see the paradox of your position? You can't bear the thought of someone sleeping with someone you've decided is yours, but you're more than happy to pull the rug out from someone who has that same idea about their wife by fucking her?" He said something along the lines of it not being the same thing, and man, I smell a fucking rat. I feel very confident that Justin was going to say anything to get me to fuck him right then and there, regardless of the consequences for anybody involved, or how it played into my life. Do I think Justin could handle having to share? No. That is specific language he has used about women, which....gross, dude. Fucking gross. But if I were that fuckable commodity, he'd eventually get frustrated and not want to share anymore, and he'd either ruin my shit so he could have me to himself (does that ever work?), or he'd condemn ME for the entire thing, and write me off as cruel for leading him on or some shit. 

I told him that no, if I'm having an extended affair, I need it to be with someone who shares my sexual values and can separate sex from emotion and ridiculous ideas like ownership, and I do not think he is that person. 

I'm not even done with this disaster of a real life look into how below him Justin thinks women are, or at the very least, me. After this exchange, we talk about other stuff for an hour (by talk about other stuff, I mean I pulled out my DSM-V and attempted to diagnose Justin. Not because I think I'm good at it, or that I  have some right to do it, but because what's going to bring down an attempt to plow someone? Them asking you how often your low self-esteem interrupts your life, and why you feel like your last relationship a few years ago failed so horribly, and telling you that it sounds like you're an alcoholic with ADD, have you considered rehab? It was my subtle way of making Justin feel like shit about himself, because I figured it was the only thing that would. Justin interrupted to have a couple more drinks during this hour, maybe hour and a half, and when he stopped to go pee, I talked about the effectiveness of the brain at deleting habit triggers, but how much work you have to do for it to work, and then said I also had to go to the bathroom, and I'd be upstairs, don't be alarmed if you come out and I'm nowhere to be found. 

I go upstairs, and I hear what sounds like my door closing. Since my windows are open all the time, I figure it must have been Doug, my next door neighbor. I go back downstairs, the bathroom door is still closed, so I sit down to wait for Justin to come out. After two minutes, I say, "hey, are you ok?" nothing. "Uh...Justin? Are you here?" Nothing. So I look at my door, it's unlocked and ajar. So I go outside to look for Justin, and there he is, wandering around, so I shout out, HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? And he looks at me and wanders a bit further, so I yell again, "JUSTIN, WHAT THE FUCK?" And he comes walking toward me, so I ask him what he's doing, and he looks around, like he's looking for the right lie to tell me, and settles on, "I was looking for my car." And I was like, are you leaving? He responded with, "hm?" as he was walking through the gate back into my house, and I have always loved the "I didn't hear you" ruse to cover up the fact that you're a horrible liar. So I asked him again, "are you leaving?" and he said, "yeah, I think that's best." 

The utter fucking GALL. But also, props on the lack of pretense?

I told him he maybe shouldn't drive, and also, he was supposed to do the shoot with me, and he said he wasn't really feeling it (did he think "shoot" was a metaphor for "fuck"?), and he'd be fine to drive. I was fully irritated now, so I told him I'd walk him to his car, agreeing that yeah, it's best that he leave. On the way to his car, I'm telling him that he can and should take advantage of having me here as a friend, that i'm actually a really good friend, and if he needs a support system to help him get sober, I'm happy to help, and he slips his arm around my waist. 

Bold move, my dude, and what the fuck makes you think that any of what transpired would make that the best course of action??

Hand from waste removal handled, and when we got to his car, I said it was pretty shitty that he was leaving the way that he was and putting the kibosh on all of our plans JUST BECAUSE we didn't fuck, and that my worth lies in more than my vagina. He repeated that, echoing a hollow sounding, "your worth lies in more than your vagina" and it made me really fucking angry, because I know what a blow off that is, and I know he doesn't think that, and I know a lot of people don't think that. So I yelled, "I'm fucking SERIOUS. My worth lies in more than my vagina and its availability to your dick." And feeling extra feisty as I walked off, I shouted back, "and the same goes for my asshole!" Which....I mean, why. That was so ill-advised, and my neighbors didn't look thrilled to hear about my vagina and asshole at 12 on a Monday, and I don't even think he heard me, and if he did, he probably fantasized about my asshole. 

What level of entitlement must you have to ghost someone in the middle of them peeing because they won't fuck you? How little must you think of them, on a human level, to not even think they deserve the dignity of a lie about why you're skipping out? Say you have an appointment. Say work called and you need to report in immediately. Say that your hemorrhoids are acting up. Say you're about to give birth, I don't fucking care, but say SOMETHING to me that shows you see me as being at least equal to you. If you don't get to use someone sexually and your first reaction is to just dip like a thief while they're upstairs peeing, you are a special category of shit bird. The thing is, if Justin had come clean from the get go and said his only interest in me was grinding groins and not gone in for the whole friendship angle, I would have completely understood. I do not think that it's bad to only want sex from someone, it's perfectly acceptable. What ISN'T acceptable is to make a person think you see their value outside of sex time and use that as your in, and when you figure out they are not interested in having sex with you for ANY REASON AT ALL, you try and leave without even saying goodbye. 

If you ever want to dehumanize someone, that is probably the quickest way to do it. 

Again, I do not think it's bad to only appreciate someone for sex. I've had fuck buddies that only had to text me, or vice versa, we'd get together, fuck, and then go our separate ways. I've trolled the lands for dick that I had no intention of turning into anything more than dick. The difference being I still treated them like people, and we agreed on the parameters of our meaning to each other. I never told dudes I wanted something from them I had no intention of following through on. We'd still say goodbye to each other like people, if we had to bone out of a meet-up, we expressed as much. No details needed, but it's common courtesy, even to someone who serves as nothing more than a living sex doll, to acknowledge their humanity in whatever ways you can outside of the use of their body. By his willingness to not even acknowledge my dignity in that way, Justin showed how little thinks of women, how little he thinks of me, and how empty his claims of being happy to have me as a friend have always been. 

I was working on another blog entry a couple weeks ago about a dude who messaged me on instagram under the same pretenses, and I wanted to tie that into this post, as well, but I have talked SO FUCKING MUCH already, I think I've beaten the horse to death and back. The primary point here, everyone, is that a good deal of men....aint shit. 

The world waits for you to break my patient heart

Sometimes, when I can't sleep at night, my brain likes to play this game with me where I either relive moments of my own that make me so completely and totally embarrassed that I have to physically react by either making some kind of random noise (which is ALSO embarrassing, but I don't have time to unpack that right now) or by scrunching my whole body up into a chubby ball of internal horror; or I relive things that other people have done in my presence that I also have visceral embarrassment reactions to.

I realized the other day that Derek and I will have been together, in some form or another, for five years this January, and with our third anniversary a week away, it's only natural that I'd be up at night thinking about embarrassing interactions with men that aren't my husband.

The first boyfriend that I really took seriously was Richard Robinette. I've wondered more than a few times through the years if his last name was a lie, because I have never once been able to find him via any form of internet platform. LinkedIn? He is not. Facebook? No. Instagram? Nope. The only place I've found his name is the obits from several different states, but they were all WAY older than he would be, and unless he was a master of identity theft at such a young age, I have to assume that none of them are him. Also, as far as names go, his was particularly stupid to me, and it's possible I just forgot his real name and went with something made up that felt equally as ridiculous.

21 years ago, the hip shit to do was go home, crank on that dial up modem, and go cruise chatrooms. My friends and I were WAY hip. I cannot recall how, what kind of chatroom, or what the deal was, but I met Richard on the internet. This set up the idea that online was like a shopping mall of available dudes, because that's seriously how I've found 99% of my jump offs, and aside from my daughter's dad, all of my serious relationships. All three of them. In retrospect, I am the fucking LAZIEST when it comes to meeting men. I'd feel better if I had a better blend of real life meetings and okcupid hook ups, but here we fucking are. I did initially think online dating was WAY fucking weird. Like...really creepy weird. Clearly I changed my tune.

I met Richard, if that is his real name, in a chat room, and I think he lived in, like, Hialeah or some shit, because me making my way to him without having to explain to an adult that my 13 year old ass wanted to meet some strange boy from the internet would have been impossible (an older than me strange boy, at that. 15, I believe! Holy shit, look how mature I must have been at 13 to snag a 15 year old boy. Off of the internet. In south Florida. Where men are notoriously uncreepy and very smart and not at all fucking weird). Him making his way to me was the only conceivable option (though I really wish I had explored not meeting him as the third and wisest course of action), but because I had a curfew on school days, and also because my mom held the fervent belief that a penis near her daughter was a trumpet signaling the apocalypse, Richard had to travel down to meet me in Davie on a weekend, at my friend Angela's.

I barely remember what Richard looked like. I remember he had all of the world's freckles, which never bothered me, I fucking LOVE freckles and have always wished I had some. He was blond, I think he had spiky hair? Like all really cool kids did back in the 90s, and he wore baggy clothes over an obscenely tall, lanky frame. He was REALLY fucking tall. Like, 6'5. I remember he was the first person to ever make me feel truly short, and at 5'9, while doing the most to date men who are in the 6'2-6'3 range, I've always felt perfectly sized. Richard was a god damn giant. It looks like I remember more about him than I initially thought, but here's what I remember the most:

Richard.

Was.

The WEIRDEST.

Kisser.

EVER.

FUCKING.

INVENTED.

I don't know what I did in a past life to deserve this kind of madness at 13, but here's what kissing Richard was like. I didn't really want to kiss him; not because I didn't PHYSICALLY want to, but because I was afraid of being bad at it. A truth that I very shyly told him one night over the phone, and for all of his wisdom, he responded with, "JUST DO IT IT'LL BE FINE". Smooth AND comforting, what a winner! He wouldn't have been my first kiss, but I didn't get any kind of feedback from my first kiss, so obviously without a glowing Yelp review of my mouth, I assumed I was a horrible kisser, and I didn't deserve to kiss anybody ever again.

The next time I saw Richard, I went for it while HE was going for it, and with his gargantuan neck head swooping down to meet my far shorter neck head that had to crane upwards, disaster struck. And by disaster, I  mean my head hit his chin and made a VERY audible KATHUNK sound, and I bit my tongue. Which...serves me fucking right, what kind of idiot goes in for a kiss tongue first? This girl, that's who. So after a laugh and a sit down so we'd be on a more level playing field, Richard goes for it again, and this time, I can see what it is that his face is doing.

Now, I've already explained that I only every kissed one boy before this. A good friend of mine named Jimmy Reyes asked me if he could kiss me while we were up in a tree, and I kinda wanted to get it over with and see what all the fuss was about, even though I didn't want to kiss Jimmy, I wanted to kiss Brian Croes. It wasn't a bad first kiss, as they go. He asked, I consented, we didn't bite each other, nobody did anything weird with their face. So I was fucking wholly unprepared for Richard to spring his facial reflexes on me. I didn't suspect a thing, and I was fucking shellshocked.

There is no way to adequately write out how it is that Richard's face moved when he was coming in for a kiss, but I'm going to try, and then I'm going to attach a vine that is the closest thing I can think of to demonstrating what I mean.

His chin would kind of...shrivel up into what I can now describe as goosepimpled testicle skin, but then couldn't really describe. His nose would twitch a little bit. But it was his eyes. His fucking eyes.

His eyelids would fucking flutter, revealing that the whites of his eyes and his irises were just rolling around in their sockets, going all kinds of crazy. Like this:

It isn't an exaggeration, either. That is genuinely what his eyeballs did, and I'd like you to imagine the horror I felt in that moment. I was already scared that I was going to seem like a bad, inexperienced kisser to my 15 year old boyfriend, so my nerves were already frayed. But then his long face, that was very busy having a seizure, made its way toward me and expected me to be not just happy about it, but orally accommodating to his tongue, which I could only guess was cartwheeling in his fucking face, because his eyeballs looked so god damn crazy OF COURSE his tongue was equally wild.

I kissed him, but it fucking freaked. me. out. I didn't like kissing him. I did my best to not. I seriously stopped hanging out with him as much as I could get away with, because his seizure eyeballs made my vagina really, really depressed. And I didn't know how to talk to him about it, so with all of the maturity of a woman half my age, I just ignored it and pretended I was just a glittering social butterfly with too much shit to do.

So he fucked my best friend.

I was pissed about it, I really was, because that's a bullshit move. Richard came over to apologize, and I told him that I wasn't surprised his mother had abandoned him, he was a useless piece of shit, and I understood not wanting to have anything to do with him like she did. I slammed the door in his face, and I have never felt more victorious in my life than in the moment I saw the tears well up in his eyes, and watched him bludgeon his hand on my concrete steps, punching them repeatedly. That was 21 years ago, and I seriously have never topped that moment of sadistic glee and satisfaction in seeing how capable I was of hurting someone.

In retrospect, that REALLY fucking saved me some trouble, because thinking about what kind of unholy contortions his body and face would make during climax makes me want to fucking scream, and my vagina is seriously dying a little bit at the edges right now. So I guess....I guess I really owe those two fartknockers a HUGE thank you for sparing me THAT reality. Ugh. Seriously, my uterus is blackening at the thought.

Late at night, when I'm really invested in hating myself, or my life is just going a little TOO well and my brain wants to teach me a bit of humility, I'm reminded of Richard Robinette and his horrible, horrible, would-make-Terry-Gilliam-tell-him-to-calm-his-fucking-tits, eyes, and I'm immediately put in my place. I'll make my weird noise, I'll panic my way through the bodily shiver, and then I'll have nightmares about someone with bees for eyes trying to kiss me. Nothing sets me straight like that.

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing me that I was him

Dating sites were still pretty taboo when I was 16, Of course, as a 16 year old, I had no business being on a dating site (according to the dating sites, anyway. Dating is for adults ONLY!). I didn't let that stop me, though. One of my best friends and I were very frequently trolling dating sites, responding to ridiculous requests from men with equally ridiculous requests of our own, consisting mostly of preying on men's fear of women putting anything in their assholes. While there really is no excuse for playing into homophobia (by the way, my guys, science is pretty insistent that you'd all LOVE butt stuff. It doesn't make you gay. Stop being so one sided...if you can put something in my asshole, I should be able to put something in yours. Don't knock it until you try it, weenies, let me milk your fucking prostate) (I am just kidding, I do not want to do that), at 16, my comedic balance was far less centered. While I'm no master of the formula of comedy=tragedy+timing almost 20 years later, I have a much better grasp on how to not stoke societal fears to amuse an audience of one.

That being said.

Steffie and I had a fuckton of fun with my ridiculous as fuck profiles. Steffie used her profile for real, meeting the occasional dude and eventually meeting her first long-term boyfriend since we had been friends (they were together for a LONG fucking time. Too long, if you ask me, Tristan was a walking, talking piece of fucking trash that even trash didn't want to claim as one of its own), but not me. I am not too proud to admit that I thought online dating was weird, and I wasn't about to play around in that madness, so I opted instead to trample on the dating hopes of real people, and to dish out weird shit to dudes who just wanted to jump onto the "let's fuck immediately, my cock is so big" message bandwagon right off the bat. In retrospect, I was really kind of asking for that, because I made my profiles as salacious as I could, doing my best to insinuate that I was an actual, literal streetwalking lady of the night. Though, ironically, I would fucking LOVE IT if prostitution were legalized, and women could profess honestly on dating profiles that they're prostitutes WITHOUT people haranguing them sexually because of their profession, because even having the headline "seedy whore seeks to hone head giving skills", which was the tagline I used on Match.com (which I eventually got kicked off of Match for using. Took them two months to catch on to my shenanigans back in the heady days of profiles not being screened before they went live), and even having a profile that speaks to sex with the real life liberalism that I myself take, nobody deserves to have their dignity and humanity ignored so people can talk to them like sex slaves. In retrospect, I wasn't ACTUALLY asking for men to message me about shoving their cocks down my throat because of my profile. No matter what I put on my tagline, I still deserved to be talked to like a person. Get to know me on a human level before you tackle me with requests for the bombest deep throat of your life, and you're pretty fucking sure to get it, if we connect.

While I regret using homophobic fears as a really shitty attempt to be subversive against a patriarchy that honestly doesn't give two shits about my response to dudes being gross, and it fought against nothing, I don't regret making men squirm enough to respond to me asking them if they liked getting fucked in the ass because it's something I was into doing by calling me an ugly cunt, or a sick bitch, or to fuck off because that shit is for fags (these are real life responses), or railing me for having the audacity to think they're into that sort of shit, who the fuck did I think I was for talking to them that way. Flipping the script on men who think it's acceptable to dehumanize women is still a fucking laugh riot to me, despite how gut-wrenching the reality of all of that is. I know I taught them nothing, and cognitive dissonance is an insanely powerful demon so pointing out the folly would have been as pointless as the entire outing, but something about it made me feel better about being a woman.

I stopped trolling around (on dating sites, anyway. I spent a good deal of time trolling pretentious as fuck webzine subscribers, because being condescending is THE in thing, obvi) and after my son's dad and I broke up, I changed my tune about the strangeness of dating sites, and I hit OKCupid HARD. I thought that their set up was fun and silly, and it seemed to cater to my age demographic, so I went for it. I went into it expecting a lot more vulgarity directly into my inbox, but I only got maybe three icky messages a week instead of several a day. I found a lazy, antisocial groove on OKCupid. I talked to lots of men, and of the men I gave my number to, only 40% of them got gross with the quickness. Mostly, dudes waited until they felt they  had earned familiarity with me in enough bulk to send me unsolicited dick pics, or in one REALLY ballsy show of how fucking INSANELY confident men are, two videos in succession: one of the guy jerking off, and the second of him fucking another woman. Bravo, I guess? I had a lot of fun with my responses to things like that, too. I remember I got an unsolicited (they're ALWAYS unsolicited, let's be honest. Unless I am fucking you, I'm not asking for pictures of your dick, and even THEN, it's less because I want to look at it and more like an insurance policy against the safety of whatever pictures I'm sending you) masturbation video from some guy RIGHT AFTER I gave him my number, so I created a gif of a cartoon hand I drew and cut out and taped to a pen stroking a 2D dick I had drawn on another piece of paper. I really thought I had saved the video, because it was so god damn funny to me, but it doesn't look like I did. On second thought, I think it's on my previous phone. Which is somewhere in my house, because my husband is a fucking pack rat.

Anyway, this all has a point.

As I get older, the experience I have with men soliciting me on any platform (including real life) has flatlined, and I have mixed feelings about this. The vast majority of me is pleased to be so old and ugly that I'm invisible to men and they won't bother with me unless it's an apocalyptic scenario, and old snatch is better than no snatch, but the other part of me realizes I'm married to a 42 year old smokeshow that is seriously slumming it with me, and I panic at the idea that I am invisible to men because:
1. What if I need to initiate a preemptive affair strike??
2. My sexual value has decreased to the point where labeling myself as a seedy whore seeking to hone her head giving skills wouldn't be met with abhorrent levels of deviant enthusiasm from men, but instead skepticism that my ugly ass has had sufficient experience to make the slumming it for blowies route a viable option, so what happens if my marriage falls apart and I need to find penises to enjoy?
3. Nobody wants to believe they're as unattractive as their deepest nightmares tell them they are, and understanding how invisible to the gender you're interested in is the fastest way to realizing that you are, in fact, repugnant.

It's been a long time since I was hit on or paid attention to, or made to feel sexually wanted and viable (even by my husband, because I am pretty fucking positive that his "attraction" to me is just poorly disguised complacency). So imagine my surprise when some dude messaged me on instagram to wish me a happy new year at 1am on Tuesday, and when asked if we knew each other, answered by saying no, he just thought I was beautiful.

Now.

It is Wednesday, and he is still chatting with me, because I'm pretty well accustomed to not wanting to be rude to people who are trying to connect with me as a person, and I respond to the messages he sends me. He sent me a picture of himself, unsolicited (but at least it wasn't his dick, he has that going for him), so I responded by saying I'm married, but he has pretty eyes, and I'm a photographer, he should let me photograph him. I only partially meant it, I was more trying to be creepy and weird enough that he would leave it at "happy new year", and we could go our separate ways. Instead, he counters with being interested in having his photo taken, and he'd have a hard time not flirting with me. I cannot imagine how free and wonderful life feels as a man.

I'm not sure what this says about my self-esteem, or how fucking jaded my own history of internet use has made me, but I feel like this is the fucking STRANGEST catfish there ever was. I find it hard to believe that this is a legitimate person (and even if they are, that they have a legitimate attraction to me), though this is hardly my main point here.

My take away from this is how much I resent my husband for having the flirtations he's had with people while we've been married. He's going on a three month mission in two months, and I told him if he comes home with some kind of dick disease, it's divorce central. I definitely mean it, but it's really bullshit that he's gotten to have the freedom out of our marriage that he agreed he didn't want anymore when I broached monogamy (which we didn't always have). I've offered that freedom back to him, always with the warning that it's a two way street, and open doors for him mean open doors for me, and he always shoots it down as something he is wholeheartedly against, and when he'd continue flirting with women, and skate on the lines of inappropriate without any thought to how often the line was crossed, it was always my marriage that was crumbling, not his. He was having the relationship he wanted while I sat around like a fucking dumb, fat fuckwad. He may not have been fucking anybody...I'll never know if he was or not, he swears he wasn't...but he was way outside the bounds of acceptable behavior for a husband, and I HATED not being able to do the exact same thing.

When I was letting Dan trample all over my feelings like a drunk elephant with no depth perception, I exorcised my hurt by cheating. I suppose it wasn't ACTUALLY cheating, since he refused to call me his girlfriend, I never got to do things with him and his friends, and my existence wasn't validated as anything more than a talkative body pillow with a vagina, but the fact remains that I tossed my vagina all around town because I didn't know how else to make myself feel better. I've always had this problem where I want to hurt people as much as they hurt me, but I think I've only ever been successful at verbally insulting someone enough to match how wounded I was, and it was, admittedly, an insanely cheap shot. Effective, but cheap.

I've tossed around the idea of having an affair and telling Derek about it, for several reasons. One, cheating is a really effective way of hurting someone. It fucking digs at you forever. My daughter's dad cheated on me, and I'm still not over it 16 years later. I have never understood why I wasn't good enough to be faithful to, or why I wasn't deserving of the "I want to fuck someone else" conversation before the actual fucking happened. I remember Dan telling me that he had had a hard time being faithful to me while we were together, and I felt so smug because I hadn't had any trouble being faithful, but I also remember thinking that I had never WANTED to do what I did, I was just hurting. That isn't an excuse at all, but I hadn't been interested in those men, they were just a means to an end. It still hurts that there was a cognitive struggle on his end because I wasn't fulfilling enough, or worthy of having an honest conversation about how he was struggling with our relationship, whatever kind it was. In fairness, I didn't tell him he was hurting me and I slept with half of the fucking army and a quarter of the airforce instead, but listen, I am the victim here for sure. /s
Two, my primary argument when Derek makes me feel like an  ugly piece of shit is asking him how often in our relationship I've made him feel that way. Like he couldn't trust me, or like I was interested in someone else, or like he wasn't enough for me. He always says never. And I think that kind of trust and understanding that your spouse loves you and wouldn't ever intentionally hurt you is too soft a place to be. Sometimes, the demon on my shoulder whispers to me that Derek needs a shake up so he doesn't forget that maybe other dicks might want in on this vaginal action, and he shouldn't get complacent or assume that this is effortless. What better way to teach someone that they have to work for your continued affections than to give them away freely to someone that isn't them? THERE ISN'T ONE.

What hurts the most is not the sex, or the interest of sex, with someone else. Sex is just sex. It's a totally natural and awesome thing. It's the one-sidedness, with one person getting all the fun and the other person sitting around thinking the world is problem-free, and the person they trust most in the world isn't out there betraying the fuck out of their trust. It's the feeling of stupidity and blindness that leaves me the most unsettled. If Derek told me he wanted an open relationship again, it would definitely hurt my pride. A lot. My ego is extremely inflated, but also so fucking delicate and fragile that hearing concretely that I wasn't satisfaction enough would crush me....but only for a couple of days. I truly would appreciate the honesty. I've been more honest with Derek than with any partner I've ever had my entire life. When we started dating, I told him I wasn't interested in a relationship, because I wasn't over my ex yet, and when he asked if we could be in a for serious relationship and tell people we were seeing each other, I told him he was moving too fucking fast for me, and he was free to keep himself drenched in strange until I was ready for a relationship. I told him Dan and I still talked, I read him all of our emails so I wasn't hiding anything from him. When my male friends have tried to get all salacious with me, I tell him straight away. Not just because I don't want to be accused of hiding that kind of thing, but because I've had enough people act a certain way behind my back, and I carry enough regret about my actions when I was with Dan, that I promised myself I would be an open book in my next relationship. That's the thing that hurts second most. When honesty isn't matched, that creates such a shitty fucking imbalance, and it doesn't matter how much Derek insists that he's not being a shady fucknugget anymore (and I haven't busted him doing anything that makes my vagina want to cry), I will never, ever trust him fully ever again. At best, he will earn 75% of my trust back.

And that's when the demon whispers at me again. "Maybe you'll trust him again if you fuck someone else." It's a fucking nefarious little shit, and the still angry part of me thinks that's insanely sound logic. The rest of me knows that's not the case, but I have such a hard time knowing that some stranger on instagram telling me I'm beautiful doesn't make him feel threatened at all. I mean, I'm glad he knows I wouldn't do anything shitty to him, but fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, it feels really shitty that there's no pulse quickening on his part. I get nervous about my staying power knowing other people are breathing in our neighborhood, but I'm sure I don't need therapy.

Sometimes, I really think relationships are one of the cruelest social inventions. Not to like, diminish slavery or anything.