Only this moment holds us together...

I've been putting this off for a couple of months. Mostly because I've been too busy to bother organizing it all. But the bags of books in my trunk were spilling all over the place (which isn't that bad, unless you're like me and couch-surf during the week, which means that chaos is Not Allowed Inside The Vehicle) and I needed to sort out the ones I have read (and relocate them to my abode) and the ones I have not.

And then make a list. Lists are useful, especially when I can't remember if I already have a book or if I still need to buy it. Which is often.

And... my phone keeps going off.

Amusing text mini-conversation for the day:

Redding: "Like I said, I'm waaaaaayy out in the hills ATM."
V: "Cow tipping?"
Redding: "Nah, awards ceremony. One of many the past few weeks."
V: "2009 Cow Tipping Awards?"
Redding: "I hate you."
V: "You love me."
Redding: "I want to stick my penis in you. That's totally different and quite compatible with still hating you."

After the laughter subsided, I realized that it has taken me since last September to finally get him this comfortable with me. It's hard, I realize, when rejection occurs. It's even harder when the person rejecting you has such a variety and excess of lovers and you can't quite understand why you cannot be among their number. He wanted more, I wanted platonic. I'm the stronger personality.

Well, that's not true.

I can be the stronger personality. He's more bullheaded, but I make him awkward. So I take the dominant position.

Then, months after him supposedly accepting that platonic friends "fate", he confesses that he hasn't at all accepted it, and he still fantasizes about it.

This, combined with other events, makes me wonder how many of my guy friends and acquaintances have masturbated in my name. I'd be disturbed... but I'm not. I'd be flattered, but I realize that most of them have this idealized concept of me that they're wanking to.

Which, really, isn't that far of a stretch from most standard relationships.

Christ, it's 9. I was planning on Nyquiling myself into a stupor at 7. I need to stop doing this to myself. I need to sleep in, need to stop going out every single freaking night. But then, who knows what I might miss? I was supposed to kick off my social life for the week tonight, then taper it back down next Monday. But I was exhausted all day, even though I slept 8 hours.

I've turned down my friend's birthday party. I wanted to go- I mean, how often do you get to see a girl strung up in a tree in brightly colored underwear and then smacked with a cane until she throws condoms and lube at you?- but it just doesn't fit in with my schedule.

I started reading Didion's Play it as it Lays. That's the first piece of fiction of hers that I've picked up, and I'm enjoying it. I'm also going through Against Love. It's interesting, reading that right after Baker's Sperm Wars, which I'm going to read again because it was so damn good, and so very on the money when it comes to my operating system. I think that last chapter was the most romantic thing I've read in a long while.

Not that I haven't read romantic things, just that my idea of romance tends to be a bit... skewed.

I've been thinking of Hardwood Floors a bit of late. I miss him, in this odd way. Yes, he's out on the road, touring and the like, having adventures and meeting all sorts of fabulous people. But I miss being around someone so intense, so damaged. We lined up so well.

Someone commented on my screen name, Poetry of Flesh. HF helped inspire it, lying together in bed, talking about our projects and ideas. Then the tattoo was gained.

Visceris.

Of the flesh. Belonging to the core, the heart, the innermost parts of anything.

I remember being out at the Bay Cities Deli in Venice, and lifting my shirt to show some friends how far along it was. Some guys were sitting at a table about twenty feet away. I got to see the double-takes, the "oh holy crap" expressions. That delighted me to no end.

Same thing, at the tattoo studio. When the artist thought I had the image reversed, negative space.

People just don't get that much solid black on their ribs.

Girls don't come in and ask for an eight hour sitting.

Twelve hours later, I've still got another hour or two to go. When I can find the time.

Bah, I'm getting tired and rambling.

I stopped by Starbucks on my way home, to sit out in the sun and read some more of Play it as it Lays. There are three reasons I do this. One, I love to read. Two, there's a guy with some attractive tattoos on his forearms- not quite sleeves, though. Three, there's another guy who is this cocky loud bastard that I would love to ride into the ground. Just give me the opportunity.

However, today there was a man I hadn't seen in a few years.

They call him Rooster, because he's such a dick.

The first and last time I interacted with him, I proceeded to out-asshole him, not react to his prods, and kick his ass at rummy repeatedly. Which I told him I would do but he insisted that, being female, I could never accomplish such a feat. Especially since he was such a seasoned card game veteran.

Guys don't like it when you do that and then don't sleep with them. Where's the compensation for crushing their manhood in front of their friends? I would've felt bad about the whole thing, but... no. If you talk big, you need to be big.

I was amused.

I don't bother approaching that group anymore. I have friends in it, but I'm good, thanks.

I've been flipping out the CDs in my car like mad for the last few weeks. Usually I keep one CD in for several weeks, learn each song, learn the order, memorize the lyrics (all of this unintentional, I just drive a lot), etc. I went from Placebo's MEDS to Goldfrapp's FeltMountain to Massive Attack's Mezzanine back to Placebo, then to Royksopp, back to Massive Attack, toss in some Rollins spoken-word, shift to Torrini's Love in the Time of Science, over to some IAMX, to Depeche Mode, and now I'm back to Royksopp. I'm starting to feel like a musical schizo.

But it makes for totally unrelated blog post titles. I can only imagine rereading this blog years from now wondering where the hell I got the titles for these posts. I love messing with my future self.

I picked up Vicky Cristina Barcelona because enough people in the PUA community have mentioned it to make me feel uninformed. I was going to watch it tonight, but got distracted with books and a keyboard.

Apparently, someone in the movie is has the seduction type of the Rake from Greene's Art of Seduction. I am annoyed by the Rake. I remember reading that tome, thinking to myself of men I know that have used the line, "You're so _____, I just can't control myself" on me or my friends. Yes, pick a random flattering adjective and I, too, can be yours in minutes.

Easy Bake Oven for men?

That behavior flips a switch in my brain. A switch that immediately triggers a, "Oh, no, he did not just throw that goddamned line out there. What a freaking idiot. This is ending now."

You know what I respect? Control and honesty.

If someone tosses out that line to you, they're either lying or lacking in control. Yes, I'm sure, there are other reasons and shades of gray, but I'm just going to go with the basic truth/lie here.

If they're lying, it's just another line. It's a goal. It's a dialogue, probably one that has been used many times. That's fine. But it's common. It's overdone. It's so very, very overdone. I don't mind lines being used on me. If someone is using lines on me and I'm falling for them, that's wonderful because a)yay sex! and b)I'm learning something new. Something I can apply in the future, something that will make me better.

So when someone tosses out that line, and they know it's a line, they're either inexperienced and unpracticed and therefore lacking in interest to me because I expect better quality than that, or they are actually experienced, but they haven't been paying attention to me because if they had, they would realize what does and does not do it for me because I speak it loud and clear.

If they don't realize it's a line, if they sincerely mean it, that's a sign to bolt. Nothing says "yay crazy stalker" like someone who has no control around you. I've had one stalker too many and way too many men caught up in the concept of me, I really don't need another one. And, then, if they're sincere, that tends to mean emotions. That means that even if I want to sleep with them, I can't, because they will take that as a sign of emotional participation/investment on my part.

Because that's what girls do, right?

Emotions and sex?

Or is that chocolate and bon-bons?

Hair and nails?

I need to get better at identifying this "female" stuff.

And it's interesting to me, writing this, and thinking of very recent journal entries. I'm like this fractured person, without actually being broken. I'm just bent at odd angles.

I remember, in 2003, I bought a new car. I still have this car. I went with my father, I needed him to co-sign with me because I was only 19 and didn't have the credit needed to get a good monthly rate.

When we found my current vehicle, he said, "V, this is going to be your car for a long time. You need to make sure it has a high safety rating and that you take good care of it, because you're going to be shuttling your kids around in this car."

At the time, I my reaction was along the lines of, "Kids?? WTF?" and staring at the car, wondering if I would even live that long.

Six years later, I'm still childless, still husbandless. I can't even imagine finding a suitable partner. It doesn't enter into the equation. The guys that I end up dating (you know, seriously dating, long-term type stuff) always want me because I'm this wild and hard creature. I'm always strong, I'm always taking care of anything and nothing ever, ever breaks my shell. They respect and value strength and survivability as much as I do, they focus on it in their own lives, and so we mesh well.

But then they realize that there are parts of me that are so soft, and they tend to lose respect. They don't understand the submission, they don't understand that the ability to compromise is strength, that when I'm giving up something for them, I'm doing it because I know I can take the discomfort, and I'm happy to do so because there's no point in both of us being uncomfortable.

I've been called a she-beast. A predator. A shark.

A lot.

One of my many guy friends actually wrote a story based on my personality, combined with the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast, except the Beauty was also a beast. He published it on his blog. I loved it. I was fascinated by the idea that I could find a beast to love. That there was someone as wild and wrecked as I am, but still manages to function and maintain sanity.

But the more I think about it... I'm not a she-beast. I'm a girl-beast. One day, I hope to be a woman-beast. But that will take time and effort, things I'm more than willing to invest. Every day, I work on myself. Every day I examine myself and see how I can be better, how I can do better, and push myself towards those goals.

Growth has become my life.

And now I better toss up this to-read list so I can finally go to bed.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
Pastoralia - George Saunders
The Geneaology of Morals - Nietzsche
A Supposedly fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
The Mating Mind - Geoffrey Miller
Get in the Van - Henry Rollins
The Star Machine - Jeanine Basinger
Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts - Regena Thomashauer
The Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton
Animal Man #1 - Grant Morrison
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
Journal to the Self - Kathleen Adams
Full Moon, Empty Hands - Lee Mallory
Preacher: Gone to Texas - Garth Ennis
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke - MD Herter Norton
Tender is the Night - F Scott Fitzgerald
The Real Toy Story - Eric Clark
The Wall - Jean-Paul Sartre
Being and Nothingness - Jean-Paul Sartre
Fanatic! - Henry Rollins
World War Z - Max Brooks
Bang! - Henry Rollins
Pulp - Charles Bukowski
Polio Flesh - Henry Rollins
Howl and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg
Cyrano de Bergerac - Rostand
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
Deadpool Classic - Various
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
Notes from the Underground - Dostoevsky
Crooked Little Vein - Warren Ellis
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
Sam and Max: Surfin' the Highway - Steve Purcell
Gut Symmetries - Jeanette Winterson
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - George Saunders
Fear and Trembling / The Sicken Unto Death - Soren Kierkegaard
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Road Fever - Tim Cahill
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
Fragments I Saved From the Fire - Mary Anne Ashley
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

Looking over this, a)I think I'm missing a bag and will have to go look for it and b)I'm an idiot if I think I can finish all of this by the time school starts in August and keep my social schedule. Also, I need to compile in all the recommendations people have tossed my way, so I can check things off as I purchase them.

Note to Self: spend less money on books. Jesus Christ.

Well, tomorrow night launches off my socialness for the week. Lunch plans for tomorrow were cancelled earlier today, so I'll get that respite, I suppose. I have that release party on Friday evening... I may cancel on my date. It's iffy. I enjoy the band, love to see them perform again, but do I really want to be up that late with everything else that's going on this weekend? GV8 lets me sleep in because he's wonderful like that, but if I occupy his bed (in a state of unconsciousness) until 2 in the afternoon because I'm so damn wiped, I'll feel like a complete ass.

I need a Magic 8 Ball.