But you like the rush...

The weather is beautiful today. Overcast, misty sprinkles, slight hint of wind. Everything is gray.

This is my weather.

I want to leave the office and drive down to the beach, lay in the sand until I get so cold from the wind blasting over me that I retreat back to my car, heater blasting, then drive up PCH until I feel like I've gone far enough.

Last night was the first time in almost a week that I was able to sleep in my own bed.

I laid there trying, trying so hard, to drift off.

Each night that I find myself by LAX, I have to fight not to drop my car at the office and hop on a plane going... anywhere.

It'll probably happen one of these days. The pull gets stronger and stronger as time goes on. Portland, with Powell's? New Orleans in October? New York or Pennsylvania in the summer? DC in the fall?

It bothers my parents, my need to travel. Well, not my need to travel, but my complete distaste of traveling with other people. They do not like the idea of their daughter flying all over the country by herself, mostly because they know I tend towards bad areas, new people, exploring places I should not be in.

I would just rather be alone.

I've gotten myself out of enough jams to know that I can survive.

The anonymity of this blog has become so enjoyable. The other blog was getting too chaotic, too many people jockeying for attention. I discovered, quite quickly, that having a fan club, that being popular, is not for me. If I ever, for whatever reason, become famous, I'll likely be miserable. Or have a very convincing publicity stunt double.

I think the worst thing about that whole experience were the emails. Either the guys saying that they understood me so very well that we had to talk, or that they were blown away by my honesty about my damage and that we were so alike and no one would understand them like I would and I was the girl for them, oh please oh please pick me.

Of the things that bother me, those two are the worst in that realm.

If they understood me so very well, they never would have had to say it, and they would know that is one of the last things I would wish to hear.

And it drives me up the wall that people don't seem to realize that everyone is damaged in some way, it's just a matter of finding a person that your damage syncs with. It doesn't need to be the same, it just needs to work well, needs to complement, the other person's damage.

Unfortunately, people are uncomfortable being open about it or don't wish to think of the things that hurt them.

But I like the pain.

That's part of my damage.

And when I write so openly about it, that self-disclosure causes people to feel the need to disclose as well, which creates this sort of social/emotional bonding.

Then when I toss my face up there and they realize I'm decently attractive... it becomes a hook.

I was trying to explain this to a guy who I did it to.

The situation was amusing. I was at an indie theater in Hollywood and I noticed this man looking at me. He recognized me, and I thought I might have recognized him. Me being me, I started asking him questions about where I might have known him from.

Oh, he recognizes me from the internet. Yay.

We end up going to a bar near the theater (Which prompts the comment from one of the friends I was out with that evening, "Geez, you're like a magnet for dick." My reply: "Yes, yes I am.") and talking until they boot us out.

During this, we talk about my sex life, his social/sexual transformation when he turned 30, his frustration with the womenfolk, how he hasn't been dating because he's so sick of becoming the dominant personality in the relationship, and how he interacts with the womenfolk. I break some stuff down for him, talk about my own experiences, toss out some game theory, some developmental psychology, some sexual sociology, som ethics theory, some economics. Yay for college.

This is standard, standard stuff.

So he's sitting there as I'm flowing more and more information at him, breaking it down for him in a way he'll understand because, like him, I'm an INTJ. Unlike him, I'm borderline on the I/E and the J/P. So I can flip back and forth quite easily, translating humanities ideas into logic-speak without having to think overly hard about it. And he's overwhelmed. In a good way.

By the end of two hours, I've broken down his various past relationships into their related component parts, found the source of his frustrations, and given him information and ideas for how to go about eliminating that issue in future relationships in a healthy and responsible manner.

But, to do all this, I had to get him to an open point. A point where he trusted me enough to reveal things that he wouldn't reveal to other people, especially when he just met them, as he did me.

I'm very good at this.

Which is how we wrap back around to self-disclosure.

The more you tell people about yourself, without going overboard (and it's really a judgement call on that front), the more they will tell you about themselves. The more you both share, the more you "connect" and "bond" with each other, because you're revealing these intimate details of your lives to each other and really "opening up".

I put the quotes there because when I do this, because I'm not actually opening up. They think I am, but they don't realize that discussing my sex life, sexual psychology, relationship history, damages, abuse, and general pain, is like discussing the weather for all the emotional investment I put into it.

So we're discussing these horribly honest and brutal things and they're really feeling this connect because we're bonding and the like... but there's nothing actually there on my end.

Well, that's not entirely true. Yes, I'm not connecting. But I am enjoying getting to know the parts of people that I find the most fascinating, and my self-disclosure makes my conversation partner comfortable in talking to me, so I end up being told things that they've never told another person. Since I'm so comfortable in my own damage and sexuality, my acceptance of theirs tends to relieve them greatly. Minor healing.

Back to the story.

He ends up sharing a lot more than I believe he expected. He knows how to get a hold of me because he knows where my blog is, but we also exchange phone numbers. He's not my type, but I really think that he could benefit from talking more, and he is oddly fascinating.

Fast-forward two weeks.

I get this odd, odd email from him via my blog. Emotional outpour, like holy crap.

I hate these emails, I really do.

So I'm sitting at my computer, reading this, shaking my head going, "Christ, not again," because I had just received another one of those damn overly emotional emails from a friend of mine who I had thought had resigned himself to a platonic relationship with me but, apparently, had not.

Sigh.

And my friends are sitting there going, "V, you should feel so lucky you get all this attention! You get to pick among all these guys and you have such amazing stories."

Yeah, that's me. Catalog shopping for men.

Well, if we're placing orders, I'd like a thirty-something 6'1" caucasian male with black hair, blue eyes, toned body, six-pack, glasses, a decent brain, straight-edge tendencies, atheistic belief system, steady employment, lacking in children or ex-wives, and a lot of sexual experience with a definite dominant streak.

Where do I turn this order form in?

Oh, you're out of stock?

Figures.

This, this is why I'm staying single.

Anyhow, most of my girlfriends (and even some of my guyfriends) think that I should be happy, even thrilled, whenever some guy goes loopy over me.

You know what's annoying? Being idealized and then being expected to like it.

"Hi, you've fallen in love/lust with a mental construction of me. Good job. I feel so freaking flattered."

I love how choppy and off topic this has gotten. This is what happens when I'm working and thinking. Thanks, blogger, for letting me use you as a notepad. If anyone actually reads this, I'd apologize for the chaos, but if you got this far, you're either enjoying it or terribly masochistic. Which aren't mutually exclusive ideas.

Back to topic, I receive his email that I'm not even going to attempt to convey the contents of because they were all over the place. I think he experienced more emotions in the fifteen minutes he spent writing that email than I do in an entire week.

No, I'm not a robot.

So I shoot back a quick, polite note saying that I'm at work, but I understand he's upset (at himself, not me), so I'll give him a call when I have more time so we can address his upset and get to the root of the issue he's having.

I call him after work, we talk, I break down why he connected so fast, why he felt we were bonding, how I operate with the self-disclosure, how it worked with him, and why I do it.

Yeah, I know. It's like going behind the scenes at Disneyland. Ruins all the magic.

Buuuuuut... in that, disclosing about the self-disclosure methods I employ (which I really only briefly touched on in this post), I just created a further tangle for him. Because now I'm disclosing "reality". I'm sharing a "secret". He feels special. Like I'm telling him something new and exciting, that I'm "opening up" to him on a level that I don't open up to other people on.

Yeah, that'd be incorrect.

Sometimes I wonder if I should be out and about, among people.

I do enjoy talking, do enjoy learning and helping where I can. It makes me happy to take good but sexually damaged men, men who are unsure in themselves, unsure in their bodies, unsure in their techniques, and make them whole again, or at least point them in the right direction.

I've been really selfish in that regard, lately. I've been sleeping with skilled, experienced men, men who come close to blowing my mind with their techniques. I've been sleeping with men that should be modeling or already are, in the case of SFPlayboy. I used to be so concerned with giving back and helping, with finding those guys with heart.

Not so much anymore. I'm dealing with my own crap, and focusing on theirs is just a distraction I give myself, a very valid and "noble" excuse so I don't have to look at myself.

Time to focus on work.