Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Would you be interested in some sexual positions and emotional investment?

While most kids my age were listening to songs on popular radio stations when I was in elementary school and well into middle school, I was listening to oldies. I kind of wish I could say that it's because I have an old soul or some shit, or I could cry pretension and say that music just isn't good anymore and I knew it from an early age, but I'd be lying. I listened to the oldies station because my mom made me. She didn't want me listening to Salt-N-Pepa, because lest her young white child grow up with a little flava, so I listened to Magic 102.7 (WRMF, as I remember) and stayed tragically unhip because I had no idea who the fuck Color Me Badd was, but I could sing you every single fuckin' Sam Cooke song ever released into the mainstream.

I broke into Top 40s style music in the late late 90s, just in time for the boy band craze and pop princesses, and with enough time for me to want to be a dancer (there are HOURS of dance footage of me floating around the world, but if there's justice in the universe, it's all been taped over), but i've always had a soft spot for music from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. I skip most of the 70s and hop right into the 80s and 90s, and I've kind of stopped looking for new shit around the early aughts. Allen is usually the person who clues me in to new shit, and Suits has given me some fresh new songs to listen to (Aaron Korsch is fucking KILLING IT with the soundtrack. Score? What would you call it in a TV Show?), but I pretty much stick with my three hour playlist full of artists I already love, because I'm boring as all fucking hell.

I've been sitting at my desk editing photos all day, and listening to music on youtube, and it started playing an oldies list, which was fine by me. I still enjoy listening to music from that general vicinity of decades, I still know all of the songs, I still sing along, but it's fairly mindless 99.9% of the time.

Youtube cycled out Runaround Sue by Dion. It's a fucking bop, I won't lie, it's hella catchy. I was singing it and catching the lyrics, and I was like, huh, well, Dion is really fucking gossiping hard about his business with Sue, but it's unsurprising, exes are bitter.


There's the song, for the uninitiated.

I didn't really think anything of it, but the next song that came up was The Wanderer. Also by Dion.


Well. Would you look at the fucking brass balls on this jagweed.



Here's are the lyrics to Runaround Sue:


Here's my story, it's sad but true
It's about a girl that I once knew
She took my love then ran around
With every single guy in town

Yeah I should have known it from the very start
This girl will leave me with a broken heart
Now listen people what I'm telling you
A keep away from a Runaround Sue

I might miss her lips and the smile on her face
The touch of her hair and this girl's warm embrace
So if you don't want to cry like I do
A keep away from-a Runaround Sue

Ah, she likes to travel around
She'll love you and she'll put you down
Now people let me put you wise
Sue goes out with other guys

Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows
I fell in love and my love still grows
Ask any fool that she ever knew, they'll say
Keep away from-a Runaround Sue

Yeah keep away from this girl
I don't know what she'll do
Keep away from Sue

She likes to travel around
She'll love you and she'll put you down
Now people let me put you wise
She goes out with other guys

Here's the moral and the story from the guy who knows
I fell in love and my love still grows
Ask any fool that she ever knew, they'll say
Keep away from a Runaround Sue

Stay away from that girl
Don't you know what she'll do now


So, it appears that Mr. DiMucci got his heart roughed up by a young lady that is interested in going to sock hops with other beaus, and sharing milkshakes at the local burger joint. That would be a very sad story indeed, if this weren't ALSO a heartfelt croon (which is also a fucking catchy ass jam) from the very same Dion DiMucci. I give you The Wanderer:

Oh well, I'm the type of guy who will never settle down
Where pretty girls are, well you know that I'm around
I kiss 'em and I love 'em cause to me they're all the same
I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em they don't even know my name
They call me the wanderer
Yeah, the wanderer
I roam around, around, around

Oh well, there's Flo on my left and then there's Mary on my right
And Janie is the girl well that I’ll be with tonight
And when she asks me, which one I love the best?
I tear open my shirt and I show "Rosie" on my chest
Cause I'm the wanderer
Yeah, the wanderer
I roam around, around, around

Oh well, I roam from town to town
I go through life without a care
And I'm as happy as a clown
I with my two fists of iron but I'm going nowhere

Oh yeah, I’m the type of guy that likes to roam around
I’m never in one place, I roam from town to town
And when I find myself a-fallin' for some girl
Yeah, I hop right into that car of mine and drive around the world
Yeah I'm the wanderer
Yeah, the wanderer
I roam around, around, around

Oh yeah, I'm the type of guy that likes to roam around
I'm never in one place, I roam from town to town
And when I find myself a-fallin' for some girl
I hop right into that car of mine and drive around the world
Yeah, cause I'm a wanderer
Yeah, a wanderer
I roam around, around, around, around, around, around

Cause I'm a wanderer
Yeah, a wanderer
I roam around, around, around, around, around, around, around
Cause I'm a wanderer
I'm, a wanderer
I roam around, around, around, around

Oh dear. Well isn't this awkward? It would seem that Mr. DiMucci is guilty of a misogynist double standard. Are any of us surprised? No. Is this a revelation? No. 

Really, the only reason I'm writing about it in here is because I laughed my tiddies off at YouTube playing them one right after the other. 

This is a pretty common attitude still. I have had a few male friends who love whoring their dicks around town, and more power to them, it bothers me not at all. What DID bother me was those same male friends making value judgments on the frequency of my slutty escapades like we were somehow different. I am exhausted by men saying they want to whore it up before wifing down, but their future wives can't have fucked too many dudes, if any at all, because who wants that kind of vagina party? Girls must be chaste, while men are free to stick their dicks into everything because LOLMEN, ammiright? Boys will be boys. 

TL;DR? I am listening to the Oblivion OST because I don't wanna hear the Dion Double Standards parade anymore. 

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

We want to know how the night moves


I've been thinking a lot about the double standards of sex lately.

Last night, while Derek and I were taking a shower, I stared off into space thinking about the reasons people have affairs. When Derek asked me what I was thinking about, I posed the question to him and he said that it's what people need to get in order. Look, you guys, my husband thinks he's a fucking cut up, and I think it's time for a divorce.

He continued by saying that affairs are not as messy as a divorce, so they seem like an easier avenue. I countered with affairs being FAR messier, and the debate went nowhere. Besides, that wasn't even what I meant, but this is only tangentially related. Affairs DO play into the double standard of consent, but whether or not I'll get there remains to be seen.

The first time I kissed a boy for reals, with all of the sexual trappings of adolescence and figuring out how much fun kissing was, was in a tree with Jimmy Reyes. I was about 13, I think Jimmy was VAGUELY older than me, it was summer time, Jimmy liked me with his penis, I did not like Jimmy with my vagina, but he was a good friend of mine, so when he asked if he could kiss me, I figured I had nothing to lose. Kissing a boy I wasn't invested in with my blossoming (read: awkward and really fucking oblivious) sexuality seemed like a very safe and logical foray into sex. If I was terrible at it, well, Jimmy had no fucking basis for comparison, now did he? If he was terrible at it, I could make fun of him. See? Safe.

The big take away here is he ASKED. Jimmy asked if he could kiss me, I said yes, we kissed, it was one hundred percent legit. I don't even remember if the kiss was any good (though I think it was, because I VAGUELY remember trying to come up with reasons that Jimmy and I should, you know, keep kissing...in trees, or other exotic locations. Like ditches), but I do remember him asking, and I remember not thinking that was weird or anything. I didn't think it was nice, either. I had no idea WHAT to think about it, because I had never been kissed before in a serious way. I think the first time I kissed a boy, I was in kindergarten, his name was Brad, and we used to call each other on the phone and scream. Literally scream into the phone, because children are fucking bizarre and intensely crazy. That could just be me and Brad, but uh....I'd rather make sweeping generalizations than label myself alone as bizarre and intensely crazy. Having no baseline for how kissing was to be approached, Jimmy asking me to smooch was neither nice nor odd, it just was what happened.

When Richard, the tree I was "dating", wanted to kiss me, he didn't ask, he just went for it. With disastrous consequences. I was scared to kiss Richard, and the bias of memory wants to say him asking for permission to kiss me would have made me feel safer, though I can't be sure. I tell my son a lot about the power of ICK (thank you, Dame Emma Thompson!!!), and I wonder sometimes if I wasn't feeling fear, I was feeling ICK over Richard and I kissing. I can't ever know for sure. I can say that Richard and I did eventually kiss, a few times (Please feel free to revisit my retrospective on kissing Richard, because there is not enough time for me to talk here again about the levels of weird and gross kissing him was), and it wasn't like I wanted to say NO, I just didn't really want to say YES, but I didn't want to be labeled a prude (that, my friends, is the ENTIRE FUCKING BASIS of my career as a promiscuous tartlet. I have come to enjoy being a wanton slag, but if my fear of men not wanting me if I didn't immediately open my legs hadn't been so real, who knows what kind of lady I'd be today?), so I kissed Richard because it was there as an activity.

I don't remember who I kissed next, but I know it was a lot of people. A lot of men kissed me without asking, and you guys....I thought nothing of it. The one time I had been asked permission for someone to touch my body sexually drifted from my memory, and I was lucky enough to be in positions where every single time someone kissed me, I wanted them to. It took....uh....three years for someone to ask me if they could kiss me, and I really fucking tanked it.

I met Gary at a bus stop, like ya do. I remember EXACTLY what I was wearing, because....ugh. Because I was wearing corduroys in earnest with a long sleeved, skin tight rugby shirt in various shades of pink, with fucking gold, sparkly Vans. To say I was a fashion icon would be selling me short, obviously. Gary was wearing a grey t-shirt with jorts (JORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTS. Fucking JORTS OH MY GOD JORTS), and the kind of sunglasses that are mostly worn by fans of Entourage and date rape. He took off his sunglasses to talk to me, he was polite and engaging and really cute, so I gave him my number, he called me later, and the next day, we had a little date. He took the bus to my house (I assume), brought me a little bouquet of flowering weeds, and we went out to Sushi 21 behind my apartment, then took a walk around the area I lived. We walked to this big, open rock space about a mile down the street from my house (I called it my lucky spot, both because I ALWAYS scored with dudes if I took them there, and also because I fucking suck and am gross and am so part of the problem, and ew, lucky spot? I fucking weep for myself at that age), and while we were walking back, Gary stopped me and said, "Do you think it would be alright if I kissed you?"

Here's where I dropped the ball.

Instead of appreciating that Gary saw me as a person with her own feelings and desires that should be respected enough to be asked for permission to engage her body in a sexual manner, I labeled Gary as a coward. I legitimately did that. I vocalized it, too. One of my best friends and I were writing a handbook of sorts about the men we dated. We called it The Guyde, because we think we're the cleverest (to be quite frank, the title still makes me laugh), and we boiled men down to about ten types, five for each of us. This is not an unpopular way to figure people out: OKCupid did the same thing, but with FAR funnier results. I wrote about Gary in The Guyde, and I think I called him The Travelling Salesman. It took me a little bit of time to remember where we had stashed The Guyde so I could quote myself in here, but I tracked it down. I'm glad I did, because it turns out, I didn't recall the details as accurately as I thought I had. Here is what I wrote about Gary asking permission to kiss me:

"Still playing the gentleman I percieved him to be, Gary asked me how I'd react if he kissed me right then and there. I was trying to play suave, so I said I would decline since I didn't have any gum to freshen my breath. In retrospect, it made me sound hygeine defficient, not deathly cool and collected. In one deft movement, he handed me a piece of Winterfresh. A move I hadn't been expecting. He let me chew it for a few minutes, and as I rambled on about losing my favorite earring, he kissed me."

Couple of things:

I have somehow remembered telling Gary off for asking me if it was ok to kiss him, and I don't know why. The ONLY thing I can think of is that somewhere in my head, I thought tearing him down for being a gentleman made me look good, and him look foolish. The woman I am now hates the woman I was then for that idea. This plays really well into how I personally see the rift in where we're at as a society with enthusiastic consent. More on that later.

Second thing, I re-read The Guyde, and I could barely fucking contain my laughter. Some of it is earnestly funny, but the rest of it is so fucking awful that the only thing I can do is laugh. My horrible attempts at comedy make me cringe, and also make me terrified for how I'll feel about this blog in seventeen years (that's how old The Guyde is, and I haven't read it since 2005, with my last entry being The Hopeless(ly lame) Romantic, about a young man named Ronan that I REALLY fucking dealt a raw set to, and I still carry a small amount of guilt for how I treated him). Some of the snippets still strike me as funny, because I remember how real they were when they happened. For instance, if we follow the story about Gary, we get this gem:

" This is where the traveling salesman starts to slip up. Their kisses morph depending on the woman, and I must have been a terrible woman."

This still makes me laugh. I assume it's because it's a personal anecdote, and also because I think I'm fucking hysterical, but I'd also like to think it's because it's a genuinely funny remark. Time will tell, I suppose. Time = my husband.

Gary DID ask to kiss me, I tried to be cool and failed, and then he didn't ask again, he just....did the damn thing. I didn't tell him no. I had wanted him to kiss me, and that's what I've been skirting the whole time.

There's an intensely electric buzz in the air before you know someone that you want to fuck is going to kiss you for the first time. Body language changes, the air is thick, every god damn second melts into forever, and the tension is palpable. I LOVE those moments. They're terrifying and exciting and sexual and intense and delicious. Utterly, utterly delicious. Those moments are compounded when I don't just want to fuck someone, but I want to be real with someone and keep them around. I can't describe those moments at all, even with my best and most flowery of metaphor ridden prose. Those are the absolute best moments of my life; the most alive I've ever felt. The most in touch with my humanity and how deeply troubling it is to want to be vulnerable and sexual and intimate with another human being who may not feel the same way as you do, even though they're going to kiss you for the first time any fucking minute and you have to hold on to the ground through your feet as hard as you fucking can, but also what if it's terrible, where does the spark go and what do you do with your disappointment then? While I have had no shortage of excitement over a kiss that was about to happen, only four have been of that highest echelon: Allen, David, Dan, and Derek. In that order (consecutive order, not order of importance. I should clarify).

Did any of them ask me for permission to kiss me? Not a one. Much like Gary, they all leaned in and just did the damn thing, and that was one thousand percent ok with me. I wanted them to. To me, and perhaps to them (I don't know, I can't speak for them), the permission didn't need to be granted verbally. Body language, facial cues, this shit all signaled that I was way into the impending physicality, so why bother asking for permission when it's far more accepted that just going for it is how first kisses are done? There's no sweep in stopping the moment to fumble your words and ask someone to kiss them. Where's the sexual buzz in that? Where's the drama? Where's the fun? Where's the allowability for your mouths to stop just shy of themselves to smile for a split second before kissing? It's motherfucking nowhere.

Except it is.

It is unfair to Justin that he received an insanely long text about how little he respected my body, how little care he showed for my personal space, how little he picked up on any of the thousands of cues I was rocketing down on him that I didn't want to be physical while Allen, David, Dan, and Derek get to live in a little corner of my brain labeled "WORLD'S BEST FIRST KISSES", because the only fucking difference between my interaction with Justin and my interactions with those four men is that I WANTED them to kiss me. Yes, that is a huge difference, but the principle of all five males' behaviors is EXACTLY the fucking same.

Knowing that, how responsible am I for perpetuating the idea that men don't need to ask permission? Strike that, let me not be heteronormative here: how responsible am I for perpetuating the idea that people don't need to ask permission before kissing someone for the first time? So. Fucking. Responsible. I've been wrestling with the idea of fault since my interaction with Justin a few weeks ago. I definitely, definitely DEFINITELY fucking believe that he is one thousand percent in the wrong for how he behaved. If we are all acting on the idea that one person takes on all of the action to begin sexual engagement, and we base a partner's willingness on body language and physical cues, this is STILL Justin's problem. I tossed rejection left and fucking right, and he ignored it. If that was malicious is something I'll never know, but he still ignored my cues and kept heading down the assumed road to Plow Town.

How much of the burden rests on my shoulders, though? This has kept me up at night, literally. Should I have vocalized my displeasure at the idea of being physical with Justin? The answer is yes, but it's more complicated than yes. It's also no. I don't know if other people have this fear, but my primary motivator for utilizing distance rather than vocalizing a lack of desire for physicality stems from an awkward span of time turning into a hateful span of time. Had I told Justin "Um, look, dude, this isn't that kind of chill sesh. Tone down the 'mones and let's day drink and watch True Detective, because it's REALLY good, and nothing sexual will happen because I am seriously not interested in your wiener", there's every possibility that he could turn right around and say, "WOAH, calm down, Drea, I just wanted to hang out, don't be so god damn presumptuous, I'm not interested." Would I feel like an asshole if I did that? Yeah. I may pretend my ego is rock solid, but it really isn't. Could it also have offended him so much that he just didn't want to hang with me anymore, had his intentions been purely platonic? Absolutely.

About eight years ago, I met my friend Ian on OkCupid. Ian was really fucking cool, Ian was attractive, but being around Ian I got a definitive bestie vibe, not a "someone I want to fuck" vibe. Joke's on me, Ian and I fucked for a little while, and BONUS, he TOTALLY got my consent first, but this was a couple years after we first met. The second time Ian and I hung out, he had come to have lunch with me while I was at work. We were just talking, and I said something about how our relationship would never be sexual, I just wanted him to know that. The look on his face was really surprised, and I don't know if it was rejection, or shock at my audacity, but I've ALWAYS felt strange about vocalizing to a man that we're not going to be lovers in the nighttime ever since. It rings as highly presumptuous to me, and I've since adopted the tactic of crossing that bridge when I come to it.

I'm guilty of kissing men JUST to either have something to do (ugh. More men than I can count have been ways to pass the time, despite my low interest in them), OR to escape a situation that felt threatening to me. I know a lot of people struggle to believe the idea that someone could be physical with someone to keep themselves out of harm's way even though they really don't want to do it, but it's a real thing. I've done it, I have friends that have done it; we are not anomalous, we are legion, mother fuckers.

I didn't fight back when I was raped. I said no a lot, and as he got increasingly violent, I shut my mouth and limply did what he wanted. My absolute fear that this man would fucking kill me if I fought back won, so I didn't. I don't constitute the times where I've gone along sexually to escape a scary interaction with a man as rape, though they skirt the line of sexual assault in my eyes. I don't negatively view the men who have kissed me instead of asking if they can. The spirit of all of these activities stems from people being taught that someone you want to be physical with will appreciate it more if you just GO FOR IT rather than getting enthusiastic consent, and I am part of the problem there.

I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I'm in a relationship where my husband and I can kiss each other without having to ask for permission, and the few times I've said no during sex, he's heard me and we've stopped. The permission phase isn't OVER, but there's an understanding of each other where we know there's no need to ask, we just need to hear the "no" and heed it when it comes. But...what if I were to, say, have an affair? Or what if my marriage doesn't work out, and I start dating again? What woman will I be in interactions like those?

I teach my son about enthusiastic consent. That he needs to be aware of the right others have to their boundaries, and if you're going to be physical with someone, you absolutely HAVE to know, without a doubt, that it is 100% ok to touch them, or kiss them. I believe in what I'm teaching him fervently, I want him to be a good person, and I want him to be respectful and attentive to the needs of whomever he rubs groins with.

Would I require this, though? If I were to find myself cruising for someone new, and I was really into them and they were really into me and I felt that incredible chemistry tickling its way through time and bursting into my head like a lightning bolt, and I silently knew we both wanted to be in each other's mouths....would I expect them to ask me if it was ok? I'd like to think I would. I can imagine that moment being exponentially hotter, broken up with tense requests and anxious hands and heavy breathing, and while I don't chase romance anymore and haven't in two decades, I recognize the romance in the idea that someone sees you as a person with bodily autonomy that is to be respected and treated as an equal, with dignity enough to make sure you want what they want because anything less than a hot and heavy YES just would not be sexy. I see that. But I also still see what I, from the safety of my marriage, consider an antiquated, but hot just the same, method of just taking what you want from your new hopeful partner and counting on them wanting what you want, and dissolving into each other silently, because you both just knew that your bodies had to be touching, as still being a sexy and viable approach, as well. I read that sentence out loud three times, and I know it's clunky, but I said what I said and I'm not sorry about how I said it.

I AM sorry about the sentiment, though. I hate that I still think that's kind of sexy, with the appeal hinging on the sexual viability of the other person in the scenario.

I know I am part of the problem, and I do now know how to get out of this hideous fucking hypocrisy wheel.

This is not to say that I accept blame for Justin. I will grant him that he is not a mind reader, and I should not have been anything other than forthcoming about my non-existent desire to fuck him. I did kind of lead him on, even though I never explicitly stated YES WE ARE DOING THIS...I lead him on by not explicitly stating that he needed to fucking tamp down his notion that we were going to fuck JUST because we had fucked before, or I had mentioned his penis on my podcast, or we were still friendly, when he would float ideas of us being sexual. I relied on my unwillingness to engage him sexually via text as being the sole signal that honestly, his language was tiring and I'm a human woman with a brain that's worth being friends with instead of just seeing as a body that's worth dumping semen on or into, when I should have just flatly said no. I played a part in him thinking something would happen, and while having an expectation of ANYBODY'S body and how they're going to use it with you is fucked up and dangerous, it's not like I don't blame myself for how he got there. I could have done far more to make it clear that my vagina was not open for his business. I thought he'd understood, but I was being naive.

I wonder about who I am now, outside of my marriage. I get to rely on my marriage for a lot of the preaching I do about feminist ideals as they apply to the bodily autonomy of others, and I will be honest: I am scared about what the microscope of being single would reveal about who I am outside of principle.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Let me try with pleasured hands

Mother.

Fucking.

Fuck.

Hawaii isn't perfect. One of the downsides to living here is cabin fever. I've always loved roaming around, having the freedom to go where I want, when I want. Long roadtrips are my jam, and while sure, it takes three hours to get around the island, it isn't quite the same if I start from home and spend three hours driving...home.

The biggest downside so far is the house mice. About a month ago, I wandered into the kitchen to make myself some food, I took out my measuring cups, got out my ingredients, got distracted a little by trying to find a good video essay to listen to on YouTube, came back into the kitchen, and fucking screamed my ass off when I saw a writhing, adorable little mouse in one of my measuring cups. To clarify, I didn't scream because I'm terrified of mice. I rather love them. I screamed because I was very startled, I thought I was hallucinating and my cup was spinning into a fuzzy vortex or some shit, and also maybe because evolution made me do it (it's true! Evolution made me scream!). I screamed loudly enough that the mouse stopped worming around the cup, jumped right out, and ran away. I told Derek that there was a mouse (after running out of the kitchen, of course. Like a perfectly normal human that is not scared of mice in the least), he didn't really believe me, and then the next few weeks, I kept fucking hearing the god damn mouse, and it was starting to drive me crazy.

As I've said every chance I can, I am a holier-than-thou vegan, so when it comes to setting mouse traps, they have to be catch and release mouse traps that won't hurt the adorable little critters (and Hawaiian house mice really are fucking cute). Derek bought three humane mouse traps, we set them up, and waited. For a week, absolutely not a peep from our vermin roommate. I kept baiting the traps with Derek's cheese, but the mouse wanted none of it. I tried a little piece, and...I mean...I get it. The cheese was fucking AWFUL. I tried peanut butter, and BAM! We caught our little house mouse. I was upstairs getting ready for bed, and Derek was frantically calling me to come downstairs, and when I did, aggravated and yelling about not being able to get a moment of peace (which is frankly rich, coming from me), I was so fucking delighted to see we had a little guest. So we put him in a box, drove him five miles away, and then dropped his mousey ass off at a park.

I don't think either of us figured that was it for hice mice, but speaking for myself, I kind of just forgot that house mouses are a problem of living here and I went on living my life. A few nights ago, Derek and I had stir fried bok choy, and kind of sort of went upstairs to go to bed without cleaning up the kitchen, leaving the wok and its bok choy oil on the stove. I woke up at 4am for some water, and when I came downstairs, I heard this really fucking weird noise that I couldn't discern. I was looking around the kitchen, and I saw the wok moving back and forth, so I steeled myself for a huge cockroach (another massive problem in Hawaii. The cockroaches out here are so fucking MASSIVE, and the ONLY thing you can do is kill them, because they are in your house no matter what. Spotless, dirty, it doesn't matter. You share a house with cockroaches unless you put poison down) and peeked in to find instead the world's oiliest mouse trying to jump out of my wok and having zero success at it. It seems that bok choy is a tasty morsel no matter what genus you belong to, and my little house guest had wanted in on our leftover action. I still have no idea how he got in the wok (though I did learn that mice can jump almost two feet, which is extraordinary!), but I was pleased and agitated that we had inadvertently snagged another one.

I went upstairs to wake Derek up, he groggily came down to help me put the mouse mouse into a more secure holding spot (a decked out spinach container, if you're curious, complete with cozy mouse bed, water, peanut butter, and spinach leaves), and in his grog, he accidentally tipped the wok at such an angle that mouse mouse jumped right out, left a splat of an oil mark on our slate tile kitchen floor, and then he ran under the oven. We laughed and went up to bed, knowing we needed to rebait the traps in the morning. no sooner had we rebaited, then who should appear but a tiny little baby of a mouse mouse! Absolutely adorable, no more than a few weeks old, which is way cute, but way bad news, because this means we now have proof that there are enough mice in our house to be breeding. We were hoping these two mice had been one-offs, as we had never seen mice in our house until January. We've lived here since July, and it seemed to make sense that we would have heard or seen them long before now. Some light researching showed that cockroaches, lizards, AND mice tend to migrate in during the winter months on the islands ("winter"), but that doesn't mean we have any less of a problem. The heece meece are making smaller meeces, and mice are fucking voracious little breeders, so I started freaking out that we might have to hire an exterminator to kill off these little dudes that just want to live out their lives like the rest of us:happy, cozy, well fed, and living behind someone's oven. I prepare the spinach box again and bring it outside to Derek so he can help me let it loose into its temporary home, and my dumb ass didn't have the lid on securely, and out it fucking popped, and it scurried under the house. After a light chastising from Derek that I thoroughly deserved (he got one from me after tipping the wok, so it's absolutely fair), I went into the house to replace and rebait the trap.

About a week ago, we got a new cat. A handsome little tuxedo that Derek named Mr. Floopies (he's officially named Ae'o, but Mr. Floopies has a certain charm, and it's just what we call him now). He's Lili's age (seven months), they're good little buddies, and he's a very affectionate, alert, smart little button of a cat with a 90 degree angle in his tail. Two nights ago, an ungodly ruckus kept waking Derek and I up in the middle of the night from behind our bed. Mr. Floopies is a very active critter, unlike our fat fat Lili, who will sleep in her drawer all night without so much as a peep or wriggle. Mr. Floopies wants to be under the covers, then at your head, then in his drawer, then at your feet, then between your legs...he's a very active night cat, so while this new banging around was a new PLACE for him to be active, him making noise at 3am wasn't out of character.

6:30 yesterday morning, I wake up to a chirping Mr. Floopies, very loudly announcing his presence on the bed, and what did he drop on me, you might be wondering even though you shouldn't be because I'm horrible at twists? A dead baby mouse mouse. I praised him for his solid hunting skills, called Derek, and tried to resolve myself to having to dispose of this poor mouse carcass. As I was steeling myself to do just that, Mr. Floopies came back to grab his prize again, I yelled, and he stole his dead mouse toy behind the bat, and proceeded to thwomp around with it for a few minutes before bringing it back out to me so I could appreciate it once again. This time, I praised him again and locked him in the bathroom so I could dispose of this mouse properly. He had bitten out his eyes, and I was quite sad for this little mouse mouse, but pleased that Mr. Floopies is such a keen little hunter.

Now, if you couldn't tell our cats apart because Lili is an orange tabby and Mr. Floopies is a tuxedo cat with a very distinct bend in his tail, one way to figure them out is Mr. Floopies is INSANELY active, and Lili is a lazy priss with a god complex. For the last week, Derek and I have felt pretty confident that Mr. Floopies hears the mice in the cupboards and smells their scent trails, and may see them running around under the oven and fridge. Lili couldn't give two shits about what's going on in the kitchen unless you're offering her morsels of yummies. I've vocalized to Derek more than once my fears of Mr. Floopies being a really good mouser and dropping dead mice on our bed, or hiding them in our laundry (he likes to be in the closet in our laundry bins), or leaving dead mice behind the bed where they will rot and smell. So here we are, I have been right once, and I have a feeling that is not the last dead mouse mouse that Mr. Floopies will gift us.

Last night, in the middle of writing this, I felt compelled to go check the traps. The reason I didn't finish this last night was I found TWO baby mice in one trap. A twofer! So Derek and I had to go drop them off far from the house. Of course I found mice last night while writing about my meece problem. Of course I did. We also went and bought four more mouse traps. I don't want Mr. Floopies killing these little mice, I really don't. I can deal with that better than I can deal with poisoning them, or calling an exterminator, because it's far more natural that HE kill them than WE kill them, but neither path is preferable. The traps are working well so far, we just need to...you know...stop dropping the little guys when we catch them.

Because the universe has no shortage of ironies, when we took our newest meeces to a large field with plenty of hiding spaces for them, it was fucking FULL of cats. Just lousy with felines. I told Derek to take me back to the park, he said I was being ridiculous, and then he took the meeces to the tree and released them.

Welp. Here's to pretending that the mice are now living in Hawaii's version of Redwall, safe from starving ferals.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

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

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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. 




Wednesday, January 2, 2019

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.

Friday, December 7, 2018

Well, it's quittin' time, guess I'll laser off your nards tomorrow.

I fucking finished school yesterday.

31 days off and then forever to go.

How did I spend my first day of freedom? Playing motherfuckin' Skyrim. I'm still cheesed I never got to beat the game myself. I didn't see a point after watching Allen and Dan beat it while I was relegated to picking locks for those two shitheads. But enough time has gone by where I have forgotten the bulk of the game, so I felt pretty confident in picking up. Derek doesn't have the time to play it, otherwise I'm pretty sure I'd be watching ANOTHER person beat the game instead of me.

I have to get cracking on studying for this stupid bullshit test, but uh, I also have to get cracking on finishing my website. I started redoing it a year ago, I paid someone to build it for me, and I have no delivered on my end of the bargain. Because I am a piece of shit.

Shoots this weekend just pile more work on my stupid, shitty shoulders, but uh...thems the brakes?

I also haven't worn a bra in three days, and I must say, free titties are the best titties.